The Best Gaming Laptops for 2022

Purists will argue that you need a PC to truly play games, especially if you’re a fan of pushing the levels of graphics quality beyond the capabilities of a mere gaming console. To do that, the gaming desktop is still king, particularly when it comes to having the kind of components and horsepower needed to run 4K games smoothly and support virtual reality (VR) setups. But if you want or need something you can tote around the house or over to your friend’s place, we’re here to help you choose the right gaming laptop.

Our list of picks is ever-evolving as we test new models. We have organized our choices into our current favorites in the budget (under about $1,200), midrange (between budget and $2,000), and high-end ($2,000 and up) categories at each of the two major gaming-laptop screen sizes (15-inch and 17-inch). Smaller 14-inch gaming laptops fall into the “ultraportable gaming” class, and we’ve also designated a few additional favorites for areas such as overall value and unusual designs (such as twin-screen models). On occasion, we may designate a model in a different price class than what we tested it at, if the base model starts at a lower price.

Also note that the budget class saw some price inflation through 2021 into 2022, given the silicon shortages and supply-chain issues that have plagued the industry since the pandemic began. Before, we’d have set a hard limit of $999 for budget gaming machines, but we are seeing price rises at the lower end of this market. So we’ve lifted the price ceiling for this class of gaming machines.

More About Our Picks

How to Buy a Gaming Laptop

Gaming systems have higher-end components than run-of-the-mill consumer laptops, so their prices consequently will be higher, but the range across the category is huge: from under a grand to $4,000 and up. Budget gaming laptops start at around $750 and can go up to about $1,250. For that, you get a system that can play games at full HD resolution (1080p) with the settings turned down in most titles, or at maximum quality settings in simpler games. Storage may be a hard drive, or more likely, a modest-capacity solid-state drive (SSD). An SSD as the boot drive is always preferable, and nowadays, hard drives have mostly been relegated to secondary drives in larger laptops.

Want something better? Midrange systems give you smoother gameplay at high or maximum settings on a better-quality 1080p screen (which will support high refresh rates; more on that in a moment), and should add support for VR headsets. These models will range in price from around $1,250 to $2,000.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

High-end systems, meanwhile, should guarantee you smooth gameplay at 1080p with graphics details maxed out, invariably on a high-refresh screen. They even might let you play at 4K resolution, if the screen supports it. A high-end model should also be able to power a VR headset and support additional external monitors. These machines tend to come with speedy storage components such as PCI Express solid-state drives, and they are priced above $2,000, often closer to $3,000.

Some laptops in this class support QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) or 4K screens, a hard drive to supplement the SSD, and ultra-efficient cooling fans as optional extras. Thanks to modern advancements, an increasing number of these are even fairly thin and portable. With laptops in this tier, you’ll either pay a premium for high-end performance in a thin chassis, or for pay for the most possible power in a chunkier build.

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Put the GPU First: Which Gaming Laptop Graphics to Get?

The main attribute that makes or breaks a gaming laptop is its graphics processing unit (GPU). We don’t consider a laptop to be a gaming laptop unless it has a discrete graphics chip from Nvidia or (less commonly) AMD.

A quick crash course for the uninitiated: In general, the higher the number in a GPU series, the more powerful it is. For example, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 will generally produce higher frame rates and higher-quality graphics than an RTX 3070, and so on down the stack, while the “30” denotes the generation. Nvidia is the dominant player in the field right now, currently producing discrete mobile GPUs based its “Ampere” microarchitecture. Ampere GPUs sell under the GeForce RTX 30-Series name (i.e., the RTX 3070 or RTX 3080) and originally launched on laptops in early 2021.

This platform supplanted the previous “Turing” (20 Series) generation, and you will rarely see these 20-Series GPUs (for example, the RTX 2070) in 2022. They may appear in past laptops that are still in stock at some online retailers, but you won’t find them in new systems. Unlike prior generations, the top-end GPUs available on new laptops carry an “RTX” designation rather than “GTX,” a nod to the ray-tracing technology that the platform offers for enhanced in-game visuals (with games that support it). 

Ampere laptop GPUs are not 1:1 performers in line with their desktop counterparts, but performance is still very strong, and they’re more capable of ray-tracing than Turing. With Ampere, though, we’ve found that there can be some sizable performance variance between the same GPU in one laptop versus that same GPU in another depending on the power that laptop makers deliver to the GPU. To see our findings on why this is, read our mobile Ampere testing article. This makes laptop shopping a bit more complicated than going by just the GPU name on paper. Our individual testing of each system is more important than ever.

Nvidia also upped the ante for high-end laptop GPUs at CES 2022 with the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti. We’ve reviewed just a few systems with these so far, but like the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super, they inch the power ceilings ever higher from the base GPUs, and allow laptop makers to pick even more granular performance and price points for different systems.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Now, let’s move down the power hierarchy a bit. The distinctly midrange RTX 3060 occupies the space just under the RTX 3070 and 3080, at the bottom of the 30 Series stack, are the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti, which launched in spring 2021. Joining these is the newly announced RTX 2050, filling out the middle ground between these and the previous generation. That’s a bit out of the ordinary, but its last-generation name and strange timing reflects supply shortages for 30 Series GPUs.

Compared with the premium RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, these GPUs are available in budget-friendlier gaming laptops (or in the base configurations of more premium machines), bringing Ampere architecture and, crucially, ray-tracing to entry-level machines. (See our primer on ray-tracing on the PC.)

Below the RTX 3050 are the GeForce GTX GPUs mentioned earlier. These are GPUs without the ability for ray-tracing, based on Turing architecture, including the GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Ti, and GTX 1660 Ti. These still offer good full HD/1080p gaming performance, cutting costs by dropping GeForce RTX-specific features like ray-tracing. (We’ll get into this a bit more below in the cheap gaming laptops section, where it’s most relevant.)

These GTX GPUs are older and less potent, but not yet irrelevant. The lowest-end gaming laptops, or non-gaming systems that want to provide some discrete GPU power, are still releasing with these GPUs, but the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti will replace them in most cheap gaming laptops going forward. You will also see, for example, the GTX 1650 Ti employed in small gaming laptops like the Razer Blade Stealth 13, and in non-gaming laptops that can benefit from some graphics oomph, like the Dell XPS 15.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Nvidia is still the main player in graphics, but chief rival AMD is seeing an increase in adoption. A rising number of gaming laptops offer Radeon RX 5000 or 6000 Series GPUs. Radeon GPUs are sometimes paired with an Intel processor, though we’re also seeing more frequent examples of AMD graphics combined with AMD processors than before. (Dell and MSI, for example, were offering a few AMD-on-AMD CPU/GPU machines.) The latest are GPUs like the Radeon RX 6800M, RX 6700M, and RX 6600M, but we’ve still only seen and tested them in a handful of systems, like the MSI Delta 15.

Even with all the above complexity, we can still draw some basic conclusions about graphics performance. In 2022, a single midrange or high-end discrete GPU will let you play the latest AAA gaming titles on a 1080p screen with most of the bells and whistles turned on, and be fine for powering VR play. The RTX 3070 and 3080 have made smooth 1440p gaming the norm, and the latter GPU especially has made even 4K gaming on laptops much more plausible than before.

Combined with a rendering technique called DLSS, the high-end GPUs are even able to push ray-tracing at higher resolutions in some titles. More-demanding games may not hit 60fps at 4K, especially with ray-tracing on depending on the laptop, but it’s much more plausible to do either on their own with these top-end options. We’ll also see how much better the RTX 3080 Ti can do when available.

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The Panel: How High a Refresh Rate to Get in a Gaming Laptop?

In the past, the power of an RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 would look like overkill for sticking with gaming at 1080p, but several new factors can absorb that extra potential. A high-refresh-rate screen is now the expectation in most gaming laptops, which allows for display of lofty frame rates in full to smooth out the perceived gameplay. You’ll need a powerful graphics chip to leverage the benefits of a high-refresh panel with demanding games. You’ll be able to identify machines like these by marketing lingo touting, say, a 120Hz, 144Hz, or 240Hz screen. (A typical display on a laptop is a 60Hz panel, but new gaming models will all have a 100Hz-plus display at this point.)

(Credit: Molly Flores)

A 144Hz panel is emerging as the most common, but we’re also seeing some 240Hz and even 360Hz options in pricey models, so they can display more than 60 frames per second (for example, up to 144fps, in the case of 144Hz screens). This makes gameplay look smoother, but only high-end GPUs can push those limits, in many cases. Additionally, the aforementioned ray-tracing techniques (think real-time lighting and reflection effects) are demanding to run, and as more video games implement the technology, the more you’ll wish you could flip them on.

Because of that, you have multiple reasons to opt for an RTX 3070 or RTX 3080, even if playing games at a full HD (1080p) resolution doesn’t look too demanding to you on paper. On the lower end, DLSS can also help less powerful hardware like the RTX 3050 run or enable ray-tracing with limited downsides, so you’re not totally out of luck if you can’t afford the top-end chips. DLSS support is not yet universal, but it’s appearing in more and more titles.

Nvidia’s G-Sync and AMD’s FreeSync technologies are more down-to-earth. They help increase the quality of the gaming experience and smooth out frame rates by letting the laptop screen rewrite the image onscreen at a variable rate that depends on the output of the GPU (rather than the fixed rate of the screen). Look for support for one of those technologies if you’re a stickler for perfectly rendered visuals. These technologies, collectively known as “adaptive sync,” are becoming more common, but they tend to show up in pricier machines, with G-Sync being much more common.

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The Processor: Which CPU to Get in a Gaming Laptop?

Intel launched its first 11th Generation “Tiger Lake H” processors in early 2021 (often dubbed the “H35” class), with the rest of the higher-powered chips debuting in May. By the end of 2021, these were virtually the only CPUs you would find in Intel-based gaming laptops. (We’ll get to AMD in a moment.) They will continue to show up in 2022, but Intel announced its 12th Generation “Alder Lake H” chips at CES 2022, and they’re poised to dominate the gaming laptop market this year. Early in 2022, we ran our first tests of this platform on a beefy Core i9 chip, followed by our first review of an Alder Lake-H laptop in the Alienware x14.

For now, most laptops included here encompass enthusiast Tiger Lake Core i9 CPUs, Core i7 processors for thin-and-light gaming laptops, and fresh Core i5 chips for budget machines. Unlike the processors from the initial wave, these more potent chips have at minimum six cores and 12 threads, and the Core i7 and i9 units boast eight cores and 16 threads. Alder Lake laptops will no doubt begin to replace them as we move through the year.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Even Alder Lake’s coming Core i5 offerings will include as much as 12 cores and 16 threads, though it’s not as simple as raw count these days. As with the hit Alder Lake desktop chips, Intel will be deploying its Performance Hybrid architecture, which makes use of Efficiency cores and Performance cores (or E-cores and P-cores). You can read more about the Alder Lake architecture here.

That’s not to say core and thread count still doesn’t help: The top-tier Core i9-12900HK will boast 14 cores and 20 threads, made up of 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores. One of what will doubtless prove to be among the most common of these chips, the Core i7-12800H, is using the same core mix. We will put laptops using these chips through their paces as soon as they’re in our hands here in 2022.

In general, more cores and higher clock speeds bring better overall efficiency and much-improved performance on multithreaded tasks like media projects, but it’s less vital for gaming, making most of the Tiger Lake H family a good fit. Gaming doesn’t usually see as much of a boost from more threads as many media tasks do, but they certainly don’t hurt. The eight-core/16-thread Intel Core i7-11800H, in particular, became the go-to for most high-end gaming laptops by the end of 2021.

Theoretically, you may find a gaming laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor, but those are uncommon: Systems with Intel Core i3 and comparable entry-level AMD processors are certainly capable of playing many games, but why limit yourself from square one? That said, if you have to make the choice between a high-end CPU and a high-end GPU, go for the graphics. For example, we’d recommend getting a Core i5 CPU over a Core i7 if the money saved could then go toward an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU instead of an RTX 3060. Spending the money on the GPU makes more sense than spending it on the CPU if gaming is your main concern.

Look for Intel Core i5 processors in midrange systems, with Core i7 H, HQ, and HK processors in higher-end gaming laptops. The H-series processors are higher-power, and tend to show up in more expensive gaming laptops, while lower-power U-series chips are designed for thinner, more portable machines. They are quite different, in terms of thermal profile, as well as overall performance potential; a U-series Core i7 processor may not even have the same number of processing cores as an H-series Core i7 chip. (Intel has started using a “G” suffix on its U-Series chips in its 11th generation to denote the improved integrated graphics, but they are functionally still U-Series processors).

(Credit: Molly Flores)

U-series chips are uncommon in true gaming laptops, but they are out there. H is better. The most expensive, biggest gaming laptops out there will even offer Core i9 H-Series processors, which are also superior for media tasks. Alder Lake U-Series laptops will follow later in the year.

On the AMD side, times are changing. Previously the mobile versions of the company’s Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 processors played far second fiddle to Intel’s offerings. They have their own performance advantages in desktops and laptops, but they have traditionally been far less common in gaming laptops than Intel’s offerings.

Things have been different since 2020 when, alongside its desktop chips’ success, AMD launched its new generation of mobile processors based on the Zen 2 architecture. The 4000 Series, and then the Zen 3-based 5000 Series in 2021, have been seriously impressive, and we saw more AMD laptops in 2021 than most years prior. Compared to Intel’s equivalents, these chips performed better on media tasks and offered comparable gaming performance at a lower cost. AMD offers lesser Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 chips, too, which have proven equally as capable.

Zen 3 has given CPU dominance over Intel on laptop and desktop, and while Alder Lake has the potential to wrest it back on both, AMD is not relenting. Team Red announced the “Rembrandt” Ryzen 6000 Series at CES 2022, which arrived in laptops in February. You can see the results and analysis of our initial Ryzen 6000 Series testing here. Again, for now, our top picks mostly include Tiger Lake H and Ryzen 5000 offerings, but it won’t be long before they’re replaced by Alder Lake H- and Rembrandt-based laptops as we move through 2022.

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Display Size: What Screen Size to Get in a Gaming Laptop?

In terms of display size, a 15.6-inch screen is the sweet spot for a gaming laptop. You can buy models with larger 17-inch displays, but this will almost certainly jack up the weight to well beyond 5 pounds and put portability in question. In terms of resolution, however, it’s less of a question: A full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) native-resolution screen is the default minimum at this point, whatever the screen size.

Also note that 14-inch panel sizes, as well as 16-inch ones that are slightly bigger than the 15-inch class, are starting to emerge on the market here in 2022 as third and fourth classes of gaming-laptop display, not just one-offs. Major makers such as Acer, Alienware, Asus, and Razer have 14-inch gamers now.

Larger displays are capable of giving you higher-than-1080p resolutions, but choose wisely, as a resolution of QHD (uncommon), QHD+ (3,200 by 1,800 pixels, and even less common), or 4K (3,840 by 2,160 pixels, a bit more common) will boost the final cost twice: first for the panel, and second for the higher-quality graphics chip you’ll need to drive it to its full potential. As mentioned, look for increasingly common G-Sync or high-refresh-rate screens (as discussed earlier) if you want smoother visuals.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Because they require the most potent GPUs for smooth gameplay at native resolution, gaming laptops with a 4K screen (3,840 by 2,160 pixels) are still an exception, and still expensive. And keep this in mind: Only the most powerful graphics cards can render complex game animations at playable frame rates across the full screen at 4K, so a 1080p screen may actually be a better use of your money if all you do is play games (particularly if you can also get a high refresh rate screen). Even though the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 can handle 4K gaming much more reasonably than any laptop GPUs before them, we still don’t think it’s worth the cost to seek out 4K gaming in laptops. The screens sure do look nice, though, especially since they’re often paired with OLED technology.

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Gaming Laptop Storage: Stick With an SSD

You should definitely give preference to a system with a solid-state drive as the boot drive, since prices have fallen considerably over the past few years. SSDs speed up boot time, wake-from-sleep time, and the time it takes to launch a game and load a new level. Only older laptops and extreme budget models will still have a hard drive as the boot drive.

Go ahead and get a gaming laptop with an SSD, but make sure you configure correctly. A small-capacity (256GB) SSD with a roomy (1TB or greater) spinning secondary hard drive is a good start if you also download the occasional video from the internet. (Only thicker gaming laptops will tend to support dual-drive arrangements like this.) High-capacity SSDs (1TB or more) are available, but choosing one will increase the purchase price of your gaming rig by a bunch. A 512GB boot SSD is a good balance for a basic gaming laptop.

SSDs are very fast, but in terms of capacity, your money goes much further with hard drives. Adding more SSD capacity can make the price rise very quickly. Still, recognize how big modern game downloads can be (in the tens of gigabytes) and shop accordingly. A too-small SSD can mean you’re forever shuffling games on and off the drive.

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How Much Memory to Get in a Gaming Laptop?

Before we forget, let’s talk memory. In a gaming laptop, look for at least 8GB of RAM. (In practice, no self-respecting model will come with less.) That will give you some breathing room when switching back and forth between your gameplay window and your messaging app, but we’d save researching game tips for when you’re not playing, as each successive browser window you open eats into your RAM allotment.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

For a high-end system, we recommend 16GB, so you can have more than one gaming session, your messaging app, several websites, a webcam program, and your video streaming program open simultaneously. A midrange gaming laptop should function fine with 8GB of memory, but be aware that many new laptops are not upgradable. You may be stuck with the amount of memory you order. For an investment-grade gaming laptop, 16GB is the ideal target; for most folks who aren’t extreme streamers or multitaskers, more than that is overkill.

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Buying the Best Cheap Gaming Laptop

If you’re shopping for a gaming system on a limited budget (in this case, between roughly $700 and $1,200), you’re going to need to make some sacrifices. Maximizing power while staying within a limited price range is the goal, but you’ll have to accept that some of the components won’t be comparable with the more expensive laptops you’ll see while browsing. That said, $1,200 is a reasonable ceiling for what some buyers are ready to spend on a gaming laptop, and you can still get a solid system for that much or less. (Check out our side roundup of the best cheap gaming laptops.)

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The main drop-off will be the graphics, since the dedicated graphics chip is one of the most expensive components in a machine and the major factor in a computer’s gaming prowess. The graphics chip almost single-handedly defines the class of laptop you’re dealing with, so it’s important to pay attention to that part when browsing options. Fortunately, even the less powerful GPU options these days are quite capable.

Past budget systems were equipped almost exclusively with those wallet-friendly Nvidia Turing GPUs like the GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Ti, and GTX 1660 Ti. As mentioned earlier, the GeForce RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti has started replacing these in laptops as low as $799. These, plus the new RTX 2050, are now the entry option for RTX GPUs, and for the advanced ray-tracing lighting technology that the “RTX” name denotes, bringing it to budget gamers for the first time.

The GTX 16-Series will remain available in some new budget laptops as a starting option, or mainstream laptops that want any discrete GPU, but the two new RTX 30-Series GPUs should be the expectation in new 2022 laptops.

With the GTX 1650 and GTX 1650 Ti, you’ll be able to play smoothly at 1080p, just not at the very highest settings in newer games. That’s less of a worry for the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti if you go that route, as it’s impressively capable in 1080p/full HD for the price, but even there you’ll have to accept dialing down a few settings for 60fps gaming in some titles. (That is much less the case for the RTX 3060.)

Virtual-reality gaming may be a stretch in this price range, but the GTX 1660 Ti is the current least-expensive VR-capable mobile GPU, so some laptops at the higher end of this price range will (just) get you in the door.

Processors are the next biggest difference. You’ll likely get a capable Core i5 instead of a faster Core i7. Still, some of the benefits of an i7 machine aren’t a major factor for gaming, but instead benefit video editing and other creative uses, so an i5 will do the job. The newest generation of these chips is fast and efficient at a base level, and won’t be too much of a bottleneck for gaming. Over the past year, we saw more Ryzen chips in cheap, general-use laptops than in cheap gaming laptops, despite their adoption in some higher-end or ultraportable gaming systems.

AMD GPUs are much less common in budget gaming laptops than Nvidia ones. The few new ones that we have seen in the last couple of years mainly use the Radeon RX 5500M or 5600M paired with an Intel CPU, but on the whole, there haven’t been as many. (One rare example is the good MSI Bravo 15.) There are more all-AMD laptops available than in the past, but not all are gaming systems, and just as few are budget-minded machines.

Outside of the graphics card and processor, the other components should actually be closer to more expensive machines than you’d expect. As far as storage is concerned, the price margin between hard drives and SSDs is narrowing, but hard drives hang on more stubbornly here than in other gaming-laptop classes. A 1TB hard drive with maybe a small boot-drive SSD alongside is common in budget laptops, but watch for models that are hard-drive-only; we strongly prefer an SSD boot drive, even in this price range. The display will almost certainly be 1080p, as 1,366-by-768-pixel panels are now reserved only for cheap non-gaming systems. The RAM will likely top off at 8GB in budget laptops, but you will find some (more ideal) 16GB laptops in this range.

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What Else Do You Need to Up Your Game?

Given that high-end components tend to drain battery life, don’t plan on taking any of these gaming rigs too far from a wall socket very often. Cutting-edge ports like USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 are beneficial now, and will only be more so down the road, but look for at least two ordinary-shaped (aka, “Type-A”) USB 3.0 ports so you can plug in an external mouse and a hard drive for your saved media files.

If you want to attach a VR headset to your GeForce GTX 1660 Ti-or-better rig, look for the right loadout of ports to accommodate it. You’ll need a well-placed HDMI or DisplayPort video out (it depends on the headset which one you’ll need) and enough USB ports for a possible hydra-head of cabling. Other video ports, like DisplayPort or mini-DisplayPort (sometimes implemented over a USB-C port), will be helpful if you want to play games on an external display, but they aren’t absolutely necessary if your laptop’s screen is large enough.

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