How to Buy the Right Gaming Laptop: A Guide for 2023

Razer Blade 16 — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

While the desktop remains supreme among many PC gamers, sometimes you just need something a bit more portable. A gaming laptop is a rig on the go, with the power to play games in a size you can take with you.

But when you’re buying a gaming laptop, you’re not just looking at specs. You’re looking at a whole computer, including a built-in keyboard and display. Here, we explain all of the decisions you’ll have to make when buying a gaming laptop so you can get the best one for your needs and budget.

Get a good GPU: Most games are GPU-dependent, and you can’t upgrade these in laptops. A good GPU will ensure your laptop plays games at high settings for a few years.
Consider upgrading later: Many, though not all, gaming laptops let you upgrade your RAM and storage.
Pick resolution or speed: The fastest displays, going up to 480 Hz, only come at 1920 x 1080 resolution (or, on a 16:10 screen, 1920 x 1200) right now, so a 4K screen will be slower.
Get a good keyboard: You don’t want to play your games on something mushy or stiff. Some top-of-the-line gaming laptops use mechanical keyboards, which are our favorites.
Battery life will probably be bad: Very few gaming notebooks get 8 hours or more on a charge, and you need the power supply to get the best performance anyway.

The latest graphics cards on the Nvidia series are the newest RTX 40-series cards, from the RTX 4050 through the RTX 4090. On the AMD front, there's the Radeon RX 7000M and 7000S series, with the main difference being power limits, which are higher on the M line. AMD's latest cards include the Radeon RX 7600M and 7600M XT, RX 7700S and RX 7600S.

A note on Max-Q: Nvidia has changed this from a type of GPU to a set of technologies that laptop manufacuters can choose to use. (Check how to tell if an RTX laptop uses a Max-Q GPU.) The best way to tell if you'll get an Nvidia GPU meeting your requirements is to check the specs, while more and more manufacturers have been listing in full.

Entry-level gaming: If you don’t need to play on the highest settings, you can go for a RTX 4050 or an older Radeon, which will let you play most games, albeit on middling settings. An RTX 4060 will give you a bit more power, and we generally think it’s noticeable and worth the investment. A laptop with these cards will roughly cost you between $800 and $1,100, though recently we've seen them being slightly more expensive, likely due to the component shortage.
Mainstream Gaming: Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 is a good middle-of-the-road card that will let you play most games on high settings, though the RTX 4070 or will give you a meaningful bump. Expect laptops with these cards to fall between $1,100 and $1,500, but again, the market is in a bit of flux.
VR and the Highest Settings: An RTX 4070 will let you play through just about anything on high settings, while the RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 are the most powerful 40-series cards out there and will allow for smoother VR and special effects. These are the cards that will let you start pumping up effects like Nvidia Gameworks. Laptops like this can start around $2,000, and, depending on what other specs you need, go over $3,000. But with the new RTX series, you can play ray-traced video games and get faster frame rates. An RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 may even be enough for you to play games in 4K, depending on the settings that you use.

RAM: Gaming can be RAM intensive, and 8GB is what we recommend for even average productivity tasks. If you can, you should go for 16GB on a gaming PC. A laptop with an RTX 4050 usually comes with 8GB. Once you get to a RTX 4060 or higher, some will come with 16GB of RAM. If you can’t get your laptop with 16GB of RAM now, consider upgrading it in the near future. Memory is upgradeable in many gaming laptops, so this is an area that you can consider boosting later if you’re handy with a screwdriver.
Storage: Hard drive or SSD? Why not both? Some budget gaming laptops will come with only a single best hard drive (usually 1TB), but the majority of gaming notebooks also include a small SSD to serve as a boot drive. It’s not uncommon to see a 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD working in tandem in a budget system. If you can get a larger SSD you may see decreased loading times, but that will also cost you quite a bit more money. Make sure you get a faster, 7,200-rpm HDD as opposed to a 5,400-rpm HDD.

Size: Most gaming laptops have 15 or 17-inch screens, though there are a few huge systems that have 18-inch panels and a handful of 14-inch systems. What size you like is matter of personal preference, but remember that the larger the screen, the bigger and heavier the laptop.
Resolution: Never get anything less than a 1920 x 1080 display. It’s rare to find one with a lesser resolution, but if you do, run. 4K (3840 x 2160) screens are an option on some gaming laptops, but you still may need to turn down some settings, especially if you enable ray tracing. More and more laptops are shipping with a 1440p middle ground, which is an excellent choice.
Refresh rate: Most laptops you’ll see will have 1080p resolution and a 60Hz display. And for many gamers, that’s absolutely enough. Higher resolution displays (2560 x 1440, 3840 x 2160) are pretty, but often top out at 60Hz. That’s why for some gamers, 1080p may be the best option. Some vendors offer FHD displays with a faster, 144 Hz, 240 Hz or even 360 or 480 Hz refresh rate for smoother gaming. Of course, you need a great GPU and to play on settings that emphasize frame rate over graphical fidelity to take advantage.
Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync: Some gaming notebooks, particularly on the high-end, support technologies that sync the display with the graphics cards, which eliminates screen tearing and ghosting.
Avoid touch screens: While not inherently bad, touch screens are unnecessary on gaming notebooks (some 2-in-1 models notwithstanding). They kill battery life and can make the display overly glossy.
OLED: An increasing number of gaming laptops are shipping with OLED display options. These often have slower refresh rates than LED displays, but with deeper blacks and more vibrant colors. Some gamers, however, worry about the possibility of burn-in on these panels. Mini-LED has also proven to show off gorgeous colors without the risk of burn-in.

Key Travel: This is how far down you can press a key. In general, we prefer keys with over 1.5 millimeters of key travel, and if you hit 2mm, that’s even better. This can keep you from “bottoming out,” or hitting the keyboard’s frame. When you get to some really expensive laptops, you can even find mechanical keys.
Actuation: This is how much force you need to apply to a key to press it down. We usually like it between 65 and 70 grams, which is enough to provide resistance without feeling soft.
Macro Keys: It’s more difficult to find macro keys on gaming notebooks than on desktop keyboards, but it’s not impossible. A good set of programmable macro keys will let you easily complete the most common tasks you complete in games. There’s usually custom software by the laptop manufacturer for this.
Anti-ghosting and n-key rollover: These are two features that will keep you performing at your best in games. Anti-ghosting means that when you mash on several keys for combos or perform several actions, they will all register. Additionally, n-key rollover means that each key is independent of the others and will be registered no matter which other keys are being pressed.
Backlighting: While budget gaming laptops will provide backlighting, it’s either just red or white. The best keyboards have RGB backlighting. Some do it by zone (or section of the keyboard), while others allow customization on a per key basis. Some even let you change the lighting depending on the game.

MSI - MSI’s gaming laptops are often big, black and red, though the company’s recent Stealth Thin showed it can do something more subdued as well. Of course, you’ll always notice the trademark dragon logo. MSI includes its Dragon Center software, which recently went through a redesign. It allows for system monitoring, multiple performance profiles, controlling the fans and customizing keyboard backlighting.

If you’re using your laptop to play games, you need to keep your laptop plugged in to get the full performance out of your GPU. And if you don’t, you’ll be lucky if your laptop lasts an hour gaming. In our testing experience, most gaming laptops last only a few hours on a charge when performing other tasks, but never as long as ultraportables without discrete GPUs. If you need something to last 8 hours while you work, it won’t be a gaming notebook.

Some do last long, but that’s often at the expense of the display, and you don’t want to play all your games on a dark, dim or inaccurate screen. Others are getting better Mux switches, which choose between the discrete and integrated graphics based on what you're doing on the PC.

Thankfully, an increasing number of gaming laptops work with both barrel chargers and USB Type-C. The latter won't deliver enough power for gaming, but can top you off if you're doing productivity work.

When buying a gaming notebook, get one that will last you for a few years. If you can afford it, get a mid-range to high-end GPU, though obviously a better card will offer better performance. That choice is more important than RAM and the CPU, though you should pay attention to those as well. Storage is the most likely to be upgradeable, but more is better, as games take up a lot of space. Decide if you prefer high resolutions or faster displays and consider what software will be helpful to you, but realize that you won’t get great battery life. How all of those work together determines just how well a gaming notebook does on the Tom’s Hardware test bench.

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Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01