Best Gaming Laptops – Tested & Reviewed in 2019

While definitely not in the budget category, this mid to high-end price point we felt was quite fair for the quality on hand. Let’s jump into the positives 1st.

We just have to start with the screen. Typically these panel type displays offer high frame rates but sacrifice a bit of richness when viewing streams, movies, and the likes. This particular screen is surprisingly good in both departments. The 5ms response rate is nowhere close to what you can get with typical gaming monitors but is quite decent for a laptop. The 120HZ refresh rate is particularly useful in FPS gaming scenarios.

The Nvidia GTX 1060 is a pretty solid graphics card, but we felt that for the price this was a slight letdown as we were expecting at least 1050 considering we are spending well over $1k on this laptop. The 7th Gen Intel 7700HQ coupled with 1060 makes for a quick machine however which can play most titles out there at very high-performance levels.

Its speed is also influenced by the presence of an SSD and an SSHD. The hybrid offers the right combination of speed and storage space. In case you were wondering, the SSHD is indeed faster than conventional hard disks but nowhere close to the performance that a proper SSD has on hand. There are plenty of USB ports too so if you like streaming or recording videos and need a bunch of devices to support your process then you have 3 USB 3.0, 1 USB type C and 1 USB 2.0 slot at your disposal.

Aesthetically, the Scar edition has a lot going for it. The RGB lighting is kind of what you expect for the price, but the exteriors are very polished and elegant. The keys have a 20 million keystroke life and do support anti-ghosting which we thought was very cool. The profile is also super slim for a 17.3-inch laptop. While this usually is pretty good, this laptop does have some niggling cooling issues.

Speaking of cooling issues that’s where some of the downsides of this laptop start to show. Despite the dual fan setup and heat pipe design, we found this laptop can get a tad hot when gaming. Many users also mentioned having throttling issues during prolonged sessions. This sadly seems to be a common theme among many ROG series laptops. Not all laptops have cooling issues, but the Stealth pro by MSI which topped our old list is known to have excellent cooling and falls into a similar price point.

Another con is the battery life. Yes! We all plug our laptops and play to get max performance anyway, but the computer does chew up its charge rather quickly even in non-gaming or simple multitasking scenarios.

The design of this laptop is quite friendly for those who like to upgrade components like their hard drive of SSD yearly. If you feel that the 1Tb or 256 GB SSD isn’t enough then the design drive bays are very easy to access. Overall, the numerous positives definitely make this a worthy contender in our eyes. The excellent display and storage on offer mustn’t be overlooked, but a marginally better cooling system and the 1070 card would make this a truly awesome laptop.

The main competition in terms of price on our list is the Lenovo Y700 but the Predators 7th gen processor and the NVidia GTX 1060 more than ensures that the Predator Helios 300 trounces the Y700 regarding performance.

Let’s start with the good stuff. This is one of the cheaper laptops containing the NVidia 10 series cards. The computer is also VR ready which makes is one of the things that makes it among the most appealing budget laptops. The full HD IPS panel display is good for gaming and also for multimedia. You can very easily use this laptop for movies & streaming as the color quality is top notch too. The Acer Predator sense gaming control panel is pretty good, and you can customize things like fan speed, performance pre-sets, etc. Aesthetically this is one of the better ones out there as well. The trackpad was easy to use & the laptop weighs just over 5 pounds which is not too bad for its price class. Slimmer laptops tend to be pricier.

Heading into 2019 we can very easily treat the presence of an SSD or SSHD as a basic requirement on gaming laptops & desktops. The Helios 300 comes with a 256GB SSD which is very fast. This is a bit of pro & a con when you consider that you need another hard drive to store your games. So the space on offer is quite limited. Some games and a few orphaned windows update files, and you will feel the effects of the limited size very quickly. Cooling was not bad & we didn’t experience too much-overheating issues on shorter gaming sessions at least. The casing, however, does get hot during prolonged use.

Battery life was okay. While Acer does mention that the laptop has up to 7 hour’s battery life in practice we found this not to be the case. During gaming, we kept the computer constantly plugged into the power socket since we needed max performance. Otherwise when watching movies or performing browsing & other tasks we found that we were able to get a solid 3-4 hours of battery life which was not bad for a gaming laptop but still nowhere close to the 7 hours mentioned.
A minor con was that while the metallic exterior does give it a pristine look, your fingerprints can be clearly visible on the surface. An issue that was more of a pressing concern was that many users mentioned having problems with the compatibility of different drivers. Issues like the screen freezing, or stuttering performance happened a few times, and we thought Acer need to do a better job on this front regarding quality & support.

Overall, this is definitely a laptop that should be on the minds of gamers on a budget. You can pretty much run all of the latest titles shy of extreme settings in some cases. You might not be able to get the frame rates on offer by the GTX 1080 card, but 1060 is definitely no slouch. The main Achilles heel is that while the numbers are impressive on paper Acer need to do a better job of stringing all the components together, so there are no software conflicts or glitches in the long term. If you can find & stick to a stable configuration, this laptop will serve you will for a pretty long time.

The 12-hour battery life is something we liked very much. It gave us much more flexibility, albeit at the cost of some performance.

This Acer Aspire is the only one on the list that has a slightly lower spec i7 processor, but when playing titles like Call of Duty and Dying light the performance was still good.

The NVidia 940MX handled most games well, at normal graphics settings, the moment you ramp up the games to run on full graphics, this laptop struggles. You can run games like Overwatch, Heroes of Storm, and Ice Wind Dale, quite comfortably.

Storage is another thing that we found was an issue, with Acer offering just a 256GB SSD. Granted, the SSD (Solid state drive) makes for a quick machine when performing routine operations, but the storage is simply inadequate. If you like carrying all your videos, music and games primarily on an external drive, then this laptop should suit you fine.

The laptop is not too heavy and can easily be carried around. Other than that, if the computer had come with an option to upgrade the RAM to 16GB, then it would have been great. Nonetheless, for its price, it’s still a trendy choice amongst entry-level gamers and videographers alike.

The Y700 delivers great performance for a lower mid-range option in the gaming segment. Featuring a full HD 15.6-inch screen and an NVidia GTX 960M, this laptop delivers solid performance regarding texture detail. However, the Y700 does not come with an SSD and instead has just a 1TB hard drive.

For gamers, looking for cutting-edge performance and highest frame rates when playing games like Battlefield and COD, this laptop can be a letdown.

The most significant negative from our point of view was the battery life. The average is around 4, which is usually something we find in high-end gaming laptops like the Razer Blade or MSIs. However, if this laptop is going to be spending most of the time on a desk, then it really shouldn’t matter too much.

Games such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry, LoL, DOTA, FIFA, and Counter-Strike run exceptionally well.

On most performance benchmarks, we noted that the Lenovo Y700 performed much better than similar products like the Dell Inspiron i7559 and the Acer Aspire V Nitro. The keyboard, along with the whole chassis in general, feels great.

An aspect where this laptop excels is the sound quality. We were a bit surprised by how good the sound quality is.

The customizations for the Y700 include adding 8GB of RAM to the existing 8, as well as swapping the 1 TB hard drive for a 256GB SSD. The RAM option does make sense. However, the SSD – HDD trade-off can put off some folks from buying. Overall, a pretty solid choice for the MOBA or MMO entry-level gamer.

For a gaming notebook that is somewhere in the mid-range segment concerning pricing, the graphics quality, and feel are something that you usually find amongst high-end devices.

The storage is quite adequate with the SSD + HDD combination offering quick loads for games and plenty of space for movies and music.

The laptop also comes loaded with the GameFirst 3 technology from Asus that promises to reduce lag during games.

Games like DOTA2 run at about 100fps which are fantastic. If you are used to gaming with ultra-high graphics settings, then this laptop is a perfect fit. You can run games like Fallout 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Guild Wars, and Elite: Dangerous, etc.

As for negatives, we found that there were initial driver issues with the onboard graphics and Wi-Fi. However, fixes can be easily found on most forums for this. Annoying but certainly not off-putting.

Unlike the Alienware, this laptop does come with a DVD drive. However, it would have been better, if Asus decided to ditch the drive and improve cooling some more.

For a lot of folks, an investment of this kind usually makes them look towards the long-term. This device caters to that way of thinking too. You can easily upgrade the Storage and RAM as time wears on, to make sure the speed is as good as when it was new.

The image quality was quite beautiful thanks to the Ultra HD screen offering resolutions as high as 3840x 2160.

The processor and the RAM are comparable to the Asus ROG. An NVidia GTX 970M card delivers the graphics, and does it very well. We, like a lot of other users out there were a bit disappointed that we weren’t getting a 10 series card that delivers even better graphics for the price.

Games like Shadow of Mordor, Doom, Dark Souls III and Battlefield 1 run extremely well.

Overclocking features are present that keeps internal temperatures cool within the carbon fiber chassis. Copper thermal modules also protect your graphics card from overheating, when you are gaming for many hours.

The laptop features no optical drive and has a 256GB SSD + 1 TB HDD combo that offers plenty of storage and quick load time. A high-end Windows 10 comes pre-loaded with this device too.

Another negative is the laptop’s weight. Weighing in at a whopping 7.1 pounds, this laptop can’t be carried around by most people for extended periods of time.

Like most other Alienware on the market, this laptop performs admirably, but we feel it is just shy of being truly great for its price range.

Note: An upgraded graphics card, processor, or even a 4K screen can make this laptop an ideal choice for a lot of gamers. Nonetheless, with stable and consistent cutting edge performance, this laptop will allow you to ascend to the next level.

We found that you can play just about any game available in the market today. Games like Fallout 4, Street Fighter 5, and the Witcher III, etc.

Unlike, the Alienware the light weight of this laptop makes it highly portable. It will fit quite comfortably into most bags designed for 17-inch laptops, unlike other 17inch Alienware’ which has been designed to spend most of its time on the desk.

The Nahimic 2 Virtual Surround Sound tech is an exciting addition, the promises a super immersive gaming experience.

The MSI adopts a solid state drive and hard drive combo offering plenty of storage to download and store hundreds of games, with ease.

Stealth Pros over the years are known for its fantastic cooling capabilities, which allow you to game for hours on end without affecting performance. Well, this laptop has excellent cooling too! The only issues are that the fans can get a bit louder than other models. The SteelSeries keyboard, 16GB of super-fast DDR4 RAM and anti-ghosting keys make for a fully loaded laptop that gets your ready for any e-sports experience.

The 512GB SSD can reach read speeds above 2000 MB/s which is higher than most common SSDs found in the market. The laptop boots up in an instant thanks to this.

With VR taking center stage in the tech arena, this VR ready laptop can be a great investment for any gamer in the long-term. MSI also has a great reputation when it comes to handling Warranty repairs so that you can be confident of a positive experience.