The best gaming laptops pack a lot of high-end CPU and GPU power into a relatively lightweight frame. However, they’re not all created equal.
Some have a tendency to drain your battery within the blink of an eye, while others boast impressive battery life. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is one such example, sporting a 90 watt-hour battery that lasts up to 11.5 hours on continuous usage.
1. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
When it comes to balancing power and portability, few gaming laptops are as appealing as Asus’s sleek, slim ROG Zephyrus G14. Whether you’re a gamer, graphic designer or other professional, this 14-inch laptop has the hardware to handle your daily tasks and triple-A games. Its most impressive feature, though, is its AniMe Matrix display that uses 14,969 tiny drilled holes to showcase custom images, texts and animations through a pre-installed ROG Armoury software suite.
The 2023 G14 offers a host of other features that makes it one of the best laptops for gaming in its price range. For starters, it’s incredibly lightweight at less than four pounds and under an inch thick. Combined with its powerful 90WHrs battery, most tests show that it can last for over nine hours on a single charge.
Under the hood, Asus’ latest high-end processors and GPUs make this one of the fastest laptops for gaming in 2023. Depending on the model, you can get your hands on an RTX 40-series graphics card that’s built for thin and light laptops. The version I tested came with an RTX 4090, which is one of the most powerful GPUs available to consumers. Those on a budget can still snag an RTX 3050 Ti, which is just as capable but won’t break the bank. It also boasts quad speakers that deliver crisp fidelity, and its webcam can record in HD with Windows Hello facial recognition log-in support.
2. MSI Creator 17
Though designed for creatives, the MSI Creator 17 is a great laptop for gamers too. It comes with a powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card that can handle demanding games at high settings. The i7 processor can also process image and video editing tasks quickly. The laptop is also backed by Cooler Boost technology to keep its components from overheating during gaming sessions.
MSI’s latest Creator 17 laptop is the first to use a miniLED display that offers superior resolution and contrast. The “TruePixel” display uses 240 LEDs that are a fraction of the width of traditional LEDs (typically 3mm). This allows for a much higher density, brightness and evenness of backlighting to deliver stunning images on the screen. In fact, it can hit 1,000 nits and supports a full 100-percent DCI-P3 color gamut. And since it’s a laptop for content creators, every model is CalMAN color-calibrated from the factory.
The Creator 17 also has a great balance between resolution and refresh rate. Its 2560 x 1440 screen packs in more detail than 1080p displays, yet the 240 Hz refresh rate can easily handle smooth motion in demanding games. This is the same kind of performance you’ll find in the Dell XPS 17 with an RTX 4080, but the MSI costs about $4,000 less than that laptop.
3. Razer Blade 16
The Razer Blade 16 combines one of the best gaming laptop designs with some of the most cutting-edge components in a portable package. Its sleek, slim body is anchored by a stunning mini-LED display that can natively support both 4K at 120Hz and 1080p at 240Hz. Normally, you would have to configure a 4K screen to lower its resolution to get those frame rates, which usually results in a muddy mess. Razer’s dual-mode display is a game changer.
The Blade 16 is also powered by Intel’s 13th-generation mobile CPUs and Nvidia’s powerful RTX 4090 GPUs, which should provide overkill power for both gaming and content creation. Two 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs offer lightning fast storage and plenty of headroom for both games and apps. The top-end configuration of the Blade 16 features 32GB of DDR5-5,600MHz RAM, which is plenty for even the most demanding of gamers.
Despite its high-end specs, the Blade 16 doesn’t sacrifice battery life for performance. It lasted 5 hours and 29 minutes on our Laptop Mag battery test, which is well above the premium gaming laptop average of 3:48. It also comes with a great grouping of ports, including a Thunderbolt 4 capable USB-C port that supports 100W power delivery, three USB-A inputs, and an HDMI 2.1 output. Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and an SD card reader round out the impressive list of connectivity options.
4. Acer Predator Helios Neo 16
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop with more of a mature look, the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is a good choice. This laptop has a matte black finish that’s not overly flashy, though it does have a slightly translucent ‘Predator’ logo on the lid that glows with a purple tinge. The rest of the case is a darker shade that looks less like a gaming laptop and more like something you’d find in an office environment.
On the inside, this laptop is a powerful beast. It has a Intel Core i7-13700HX CPU and a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU with 16GB of system RAM. This combination can handle most triple-A games with ease, and the RTX 4060’s 8GB of dedicated vRAM can help you make use of Nvidia’s DLSS 3 upscaling voodoo.
When tested with 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, the Helios Neo 16 scored a score in the 10,000s. This means you’ll be able to play the latest titles at full settings without any problems.
The keyboard is a comfortable affair with keys that have decent travel and a pleasant click. You can also customize the keyboard’s RGB lighting with the PredatorSense app to get your own unique look. The 512GB SSD is plenty of storage for most gamers, but you’ll likely need to add an external drive if you plan on keeping a large game library.