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What you need to know about a cheap gaming laptop

If you're a gamer, staying ahead of the competition is essential. A cheap gaming laptop can provide excellent performance while staying within budget. However, finding a cheap gaming laptop can be a daunting task.

SummaryWhat Are Cheap Gaming LaptopsWhat To Look For In A Cheap Gaming LaptopWhat To Ignore In A Cheap Gaming LaptopWhat Is The Best Cheap Gaming Laptop?Final Thoughts

As complicated as it is, it's not impossible to find one that meets your needs, especially if you know a handful of things. In this article, we'll dive deeper into some things you need to know before buying one.

What are cheap gaming laptops

Now that AMD is making a resurgence in the world of budget gaming laptops and Intel has just released its 11th Gen chipsets, the market for budget gaming laptops is booming. These inexpensive gaming laptops can do everything their flagship competitors can, including support for VR headsets and high frame rates.

At the same time, AMD developed its flagship 5000-series GPUs. Meanwhile, fearing competition in the gaming industry, NVIDIA released its latest 3000-series graphics cards.

You may be thinking, how come such high-end products can be found in cheap gaming laptop?

Yes, you're right. But wait a minute.

The release of the latest generations of chipsets, GPUs, and graphics cards means a significant price drop for previous gaming laptops. It also means you can get previous generation gaming laptops at a reasonable price without compromising on performance.

What to look for in a cheap gaming laptop

The world of gaming laptops is full of all sorts of options. We find the best of the best on the market when it comes to gaming laptops.

Most of these laptops fall into the four-digit category. However, they offer fantastic performance, crazy displays and longer battery life.

You don't have to spend $4,000 on a flagship when you can service your gaming habits with less than a thousand dollars for all intents and purposes.

It would be better not to consider that you need to buy the best to experience the real thrill of gaming. While buying a cheap gaming laptop, you need to carefully consider the configurations. You can enhance your gaming experience with an external monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and other accessories.

  • The first thing you need to pay attention to is the processor. Unlike storage and RAM, this essential component of a gaming laptop cannot be upgraded or modified.
  • It would also be better to look for a laptop with an older Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti. You can also look for a newer GTX 1650 graphics card when it comes to graphics.

These graphics cards can run graphics-intensive games at high or medium settings. If you don't mind spending $1,000 on a gaming laptop, you should go with a laptop that comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or 1660 Ti.

In addition to a graphics card, make sure your laptop has the following or better:

  • A seventh or eighth generation Intel Core i7 or Core i9 chipset
  • At least 6 GB of RAM
  • A 256 GB solid-state drive

Most gaming laptops allow you to easily customize your RAM and storage. This means that you should invest your money in buying a better CPU and GPU.

What To Ignore In A Cheap Gaming Laptop

You don't need to have a 1TB SSD for most of your gaming needs. However, high-end games can take up to 50GB of storage quickly.

With storage less than 256 GB, you may have to uninstall and reinstall the game. This is not a good thing to do and can be a painful task.

When buying a cheap gaming laptop, think about the components you can sacrifice. When it comes to this, you can compromise on keyboard features such as backlighting, display, and build quality. You can also Sell your used laptop for cash to save a few bucks and add some extra components to your new laptop.

Either way, most gamers use a mouse or gamepad, so you don't need to have a fancy keyboard.

The backlit keyboard is just an exhausting feature, even though this isn't a gaming laptop. Also, the keyboard lights distract your attention a lot.

What is the best cheap gaming laptop?

When it comes to cheap gaming laptops, Acer Aspire 5 Slim is the best option for everyone. It has a plethora of features and costs less than $600.

The main feature of this machine is its Ryzen 5 3500U processor. Although not the best in the industry, it is still a top product.

The good thing about this processor is that it performs well for both gaming and video editing. On the other hand, Intel CPUs are only good for gaming and don't perform well on video editing.

The second best thing about this laptop is the Rj-45 port. This port doesn't even come in some flagships.

The laptop has a USB-3 port in addition to two USB-2 ports. Acer could have done better than that by packing only the USB-3 ports and none of the USB-2 ports. A USB-3 port is 10 times faster than a USB-2 port.

This machine hosts 8 GB of DDR4 RAM and 256 GB of SSD. The laptop comes with an integrated AMD Radeon Vega 8 graphics card, which is more than enough for most of your gaming needs.

Last thoughts

If you're an avid gamer but don't want to break the bank, don't worry. Without worrying about fancy features, you can easily get a cheap laptop. Be sure to check out the features and specs of the laptop as we mentioned above.