The best gaming laptops under $1,000 in 2023

One of the biggest criticisms of cheaper gaming laptops is that they’re often stuck with slower, outdated hardware. This isn’t a worry with the Dell G15, a budget-friendly juggernaut that includes an Nvidia RTX 40-series graphics card and high-end 13th generation Intel Core processor.

The Dell G15 comes in a variety of configurations. But for a typical sale price of exactly $1,000, you can snag a model with an RTX 4050 and Intel Core i7-13650HX, which is among the best laptop CPUs currently on the market. This combo, which is supported by 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a terabyte of solid state storage, gives the G15 high-end performance that’s shockingly good for the price.

One of the G15’s most standout qualities is its screen. Our recommended configuration from Dell comes with a 15.6-inch QHD (2,560×1,440) screen that offers a refresh rate of 240Hz*, a response time of 2ms, and a peak brightness of 400 nits. Those are rare stats not only for a gaming laptop this affordable, but for gaming laptops as a whole. It makes fast-paced games like Valorant look beautiful — after playing at 240Hz, you’ll never be able to go back to 60Hz.

The G15’s few flaws mostly have to do with its physical design. It’s pretty big and bulky, weighing in at more than six pounds, and also comes with a bizarrely huge AC adapter that adds three more pounds. And like its Alienware siblings, many of the G15’s ports, including the only USB-C slot, are stuck on the back of the laptop where they can be hard to reach.

Despite those few flaws, you’d be hard pressed to find a gaming laptop better than the Dell G15 for under $1,000. And if our recommended build jumps up in price, you can always find G15 options with a less powerful (but still capable) RTX 3050 GPU for under $1,000. 

Read our Dell G15 review.

*The configuration we link to on Amazon uses a 165Hz FHD screen, and the Best Buy listing uses a 120Hz FHD screen.

When it comes to affordable gaming laptops, the Acer Nitro 5 is nothing short of a miracle. It offers great performance, fantastic thermals, and options for a big 17-inch screen for less than $1,000. It delivers an unmatched level of value for the money. That’s why we recommend a smaller version of the Nitro 5 as our top budget pick in our guide to the best gaming laptops.

Current Nitro 5 configurations start out with at least an RTX 3050 GPU. And although that’s not the newest or most powerful graphics card around, it’s still enough to run all but the most intensive games, many at high settings. And the CPU, while not high-end — most models have either a 12th-generation Intel i5 or a 50-series AMD Ryzen 5 — is enough for plenty of multitasking. 

Depending on configuration, you can get the Nitro 5 with either a 15.6-inch, 16-inch, or 17.3-inch screen. The specific model we’re recommending here has an RTX 4050, an Intel Core i5, and a big Full HD 17.3-inch screen. It’s especially difficult to find good gaming laptops at this size for under $1,000.

Unfortunately, there’s some variance when it comes to that screen’s quality — in my time with a 17.3-inch Nitro 5 model, I found its display to be pretty dull and dim. But for the money, some buyers may still prefer this model’s bigger size versus something like our G15 recommendation, which is brighter but smaller.

The Nitro 5’s physical design also has its pros and cons. Pro: I don’t know how Acer has done it, but the Nitro 5 has the best thermals I’ve seen on any laptop. At no point using it, even with the most intensive games, did it ever get more than lukewarm to the touch. Con: It’s pretty big, bulky, and not very nice to look at. And while the full-sized keyboard is good, the trackpad is cramped.

The Acer Nitro 5 does make some compromises to keep its price low, but it punches far above its weight. However, if you’re open to paying more for a laptop with a big screen, check out our full guide to the best 17-inch gaming laptops for options with even better performance.

Read our Acer Nitro 5 review. 

Lenovo is probably best known for making laptops for office work and other productivity tasks. But over the past few years, the company has been silently building a portfolio of fantastic gaming hardware — like the Lenovo Legion Slim 5, a gaming laptop that mixes portability with power for under $1,000.

Portability is disappointingly rare in gaming laptops, which is a problem considering that’s their biggest benefit over gaming desktops. But the Legion Slim 5 weighs in at just over five pounds, which is lighter than nearly any other gaming laptop in its price range. And as the name implies, it’s also remarkably thin: Less than an inch thick when closed, or when taking advantage of the 180° hinge to lay the screen out flat.

The Legion Slim 5 doesn’t disappoint when it comes to performance either. This $1,000 model comes with an RTX 4050 GPU, and either an Intel i5-13500H or an AMD Ryzen 5-7640HS CPU, which all belong to the newest generation of hardware. It’s true that they’re not as powerful as the components you’d find in the Dell G15, for example, but it’s still enough to boot quickly, maintain loads of internet tabs, and play nearly any game at high settings. The RTX 4050, while the weakest of the RTX 40-series, also supports Nvidia’s DLSS feature that can boost frame rates by generating new images on the fly.

The Legion Slim 5’s flaws are pretty standard. Like most laptops under $1,000, the 16-inch Full HD screen isn’t very bright or vibrant. Combine that with some very basic onboard speakers, and the Legion Slim 5 doesn’t work very well as a standalone media center. And although the laptop looks nice right out of the box, its aluminum chassis tends to pick up fingerprint smudges easily.

Most gaming laptops fail in the portability department because of their bulky size. With a thin frame and outsized performance, the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 doesn’t fall into that trap.

Unfortunately, Lenovo Legion laptops can be hard to find at online retailers. The model we recommend seems to only be available directly from Walmart right now.

If I had to pick one word to describe the Gigabyte G5 KF, it would be “industrial.” From the design right down to the name, the 15.6-inch G5 KF is simple and no-nonsense. But it also carries the best GPU of any laptop on this list: An RTX 4060.

Most user benchmarks show the RTX 4060 performing about 30% better than the 4050 when it comes to average frame rates, 3D rendering, and reflection handling. These are mobile GPUs, so they can’t match desktop performance — but it’s still the best graphics card you can get for the price, and can carry you comfortably through even intensive games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Unfortunately, the high-end GPU means that the G5 KF has to cut corners in other places. Its i7 or i5 CPUs, for example, are from Intel’s older 12th generation of chips. That’s not bad — 12th-generation chips still work wonderfully — but it doesn’t compare well to the 13th-generation chips in some of the other laptops we recommend. And the stronger graphics card also means more stress on the fans, which rev up incredibly loud under load.

On the outside, the Gigabyte G5 KF doesn’t look very special. But for the price, it’s a powerhouse and easily one of the best gaming laptops under $1,000.

Do gaming laptops and gaming desktops use the same hardware?

They don’t. Even if a gaming laptop and gaming desktop have the same listed specs — they both have an RTX 4050, for example — they aren’t the same. The laptop is using a “mobile” version of the desktop part, which is smaller and less powerful.

There are a few reasons why. The main one is size: Desktop hardware and the power supplies needed to run that hardware are too big to fit in a laptop. Because of this, the “mobile” hardware simply can’t perform as well as its desktop counterparts.

For more details, check out our guide comparing gaming laptops versus desktops.

What do high-end gaming laptops have that laptops under $1,000 don’t?

High-end gaming laptops from brands like Alienware and Razer are better than even the very best gaming laptops under $1,000 in a variety of ways, but the two biggest improvements are in graphical power and storage space.

If you’re shopping exclusively for the best gaming laptop under $1,000, you’re probably never going to find a model with anything better than an RTX 4060, and even that’s rare. If you want the best graphics available on a gaming laptop, you’ll need a more expensive model with an RTX 4080 or 4090. These high-end models also have better power supplies, which adds to the performance strength.

And although data storage is cheaper now than ever, built-in storage still comes at a premium. Depending on the brand, you might need to shell out hundreds of dollars just to upgrade from 512GB to 1TB. Luckily, most laptops let you upgrade the storage yourself by opening up the chassis and installing a new M.2 stick, which is usually much cheaper. It just takes some technical know-how.

If you’re willing to expand your price range a bit above $1,000, check out our guide to the best budget gaming laptops for more options, including some that have slightly better specs for a bit more money. 

Our guide to the best gaming laptops under $1,000 was written using a combination of hands-on testing and research. When deciding which picks to feature, I evaluate laptops across a variety of categories, including GPU and CPU performance, listed specs, build quality, and — particularly for this guide — price. The best gaming laptops under $1,000 will excel in all these fields, but I may overlook flaws if the laptop makes up for them in other areas.

To evaluate GPU and CPU performance I use benchmarking programs like Geekbench and PugetBench, along with crowdsourced user data and extensive research to cross reference our findings with other reputable publications. I also have a specific list of games and apps I run across laptops to compare performance — this includes popular titles like Valorant, low-power titles like Mini Motorways, and intensive titles like Cyberpunk 2077.

No two laptops are the same. Each potential pick is compared to every other, to make sure we’re only featuring the gaming laptops that are actually worth your money.