Now, there’s another class of high-end laptop that focuses more on performance than thinness or portability. The Lenovo Legion 7i Genesis 10 it’s one of my favorites in this class, with a beautiful white chassis and a sparkling OLED display. Unlike other OLED screens, the Legion 7i screen can shine up to over 1,000 nits of brightness. The result is stunning HDR performance that brings games to life. HDR is a great way to improve the visuals of your games without the cost of gameplay. Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the best in this regard.
It’s still very thin at 0.7 inches thick too, while most of the ports are available on the back. It’s the definition of a “pure” gaming laptop. It’s no slouch when it comes to performance, offering either the RTX 5070 Ti or the RTX 5080 for graphics.
Decent Gaming Laptops
No gaming laptop worth buying is actually cheap. High refresh rate displays and exceptional graphics will make them more expensive than regular laptops. But when you approach $1,000, there’s one laptop I always come back to: the Lenovo LOQ 15. Pronounced “Lock,” this sub-brand from Lenovo is known for slowing down and focusing on giving gamers the performance they need at an affordable price. No laptop does that better than the LOQ 15. Many laptop manufacturers sell their RTX 5060 configurations for hundreds of dollars more. In fact, if you’re buying around $1,000, there’s no reason not to buy LOQ 15. Just do it.
If you want to save some extra money, there is another option that is much cheaper than LOQ 15 with a few compromises in key areas. The Acer Nitro V 16 it’s the laptop, which comes with an RTX 5050. This was as cheap as $600 at the same time last year—before prices on laptops went up due to progression. memory loss—but it remains the only laptop cheaper than the Lenovo LOQ 15 that’s worth it. It’s pretty powerful for an RTX 5050, and while the screen is pretty bad, it’s not a bad-looking laptop. One big caveat is that the 135-watt power it comes with doesn’t provide enough power to charge it in Performance mode. Read more about this issue in my review, as it is important to know if you plan to buy it.
There are others cheap gaming laptops out there I’ve tried, like MSI Cyborg A15but either Acer Nitro V 16 or Lenovo LOQ 15 are better, cheaper options. You’ll also find plenty of gaming laptops under $1,000 that use older graphics cards, like the RTX 4050 or 3050. In general, I’d recommend avoiding these. It’s only a generation or two behind, but remember: Nvidia only releases new graphics cards for laptops every couple of years. Therefore, the RTX 4050 laptop may be more than two years old already, and the RTX 3050 is more than five years old. Not only do you get worse graphics performance, these laptops are more likely to need replacement sooner.
Experimental Matters
One of the exciting things about the world of gaming laptops right now is experimentation. While gaming laptops with a standard Nvidia GPU are the most common option, there are a few different ways to take your PC games on the go that stretch the limits. You can consider a handheld gamingfor example, like Steam Deck or Xbox Ally X. These handles have their fans, and while you can’t do your homework on these devices either, they’re great on coaches, trains and planes.
