6 Best Gaming Laptops (2024): From Cheap to Premium

Choosing the right laptop can be a delicate balance. The raw power you usually find in gaming desktops takes a lot of power, and if you put that into a laptop, it can drain the battery quickly. Similarly, faster refresh rates on gaming monitors can lead to more power consumption. If you plan to keep your laptop plugged in most of the time, you can rely on more powerful hardware, but if you want to play with the battery a lot, then balancing power and efficiency should be your priority.

Size is also a factor to consider. If you’re gaming at home, you might want the biggest, brightest screen you can find, but if you have to carry that screen around, the bulk and weight can be (quite literally) a drag. If you plan to travel with your laptop, you may want to think about how much heft you’re willing to lug around.

Regardless, you should expect to make some unusual sacrifices with conventional laptops. It’s not uncommon for a laptop to last less than two hours when you start playing games on it. And unless you have a lot of (often expensive) power under the hood, you may not be able to play modern AAA games as well as you could on a desktop without spending a little time fiddling with the game’s graphics settings.