Gaming Laptops Buyers Guide

Whether you’re a high school student who loves to spend all your free time playing the latest PC games or an adult who just can’t get enough of that realistic first-person shooter game, if you want to be able to enjoy modern video games with the latest 3D graphics there simply isn’t an alternative to buying a gaming notebook. Gaming notebooks are focused on providing a high-performance laptop platform for rendering high-resolution graphics at frame rates that generally exceed 30 frames per second for a real-to-life gaming experience.

Most gaming notebooks come equipped with the fastest processors and the most advanced dedicated graphics cards available for laptops. Sure, you can play solitaire on a budget-priced general purpose notebook, but if you want to play the latest zombie-killing shooter then you need a good processor and even better graphics. Until recently all gaming notebooks were either 17-inch or 15-inch desktop replacement notebooks since high-performance CPUs and the latest graphics cards required massive cooling fans and heatsinks to keep those power-hungry components from overheating. More recently we are starting to see ultraportable gaming notebooks with 11-inch screens that allow you to play cutting-edge games on the road and still have several hours of battery life. Ultraportable gaming notebooks don’t offer the same level of performance as larger gaming notebooks, but these laptops still deliver a more enjoyable gaming experience than a general purpose laptop.

Gaming notebooks usually come equipped with lots of system memory, massive hard drives for storing lots of video games, and sometimes even high-speed Solid State Drives (SSDs) for extremely fast system start up, and even faster loading speeds for games. Prices for gaming notebooks run the range from just under $1,000 to more than $4,000 for some of the custom-built gaming rigs with the latest generation of multi-core processors and graphics cards.

Recent Gaming Laptops Reviews

Lenovo Review

Lenovo IdeaPad Y70 Touch Review

Charles P Jefferies - January 17, 2015

Lenovo's flagship entertainment notebook features an outstanding 17.3-inch touch display and good performance at a digestible price point. Read full article

Gaming Review

Eurocom M5 Pro Review (Clevo P650SE)

Charles P Jefferies - January 9, 2015

Eurocom's sleek new 15.6" gaming notebook features a 4K display, Nvidia GTX 970M graphics, and 32 GB of RAM in a well-built package. Read full article

Review

Lenovo IdeaPad Y40 Review

Charles P Jefferies - November 11, 2014

Is it possible to get a thin-and-light gaming notebook with enough power to play today’s games for around $800? Lenovo designed its 14” IdeaPad Y40 to answer that question. Read[...] Read full article

Review

Lenovo Y50 Review

Michael Wall - October 8, 2014

This 15-inch laptop sports a slimmer design and potent upgrades including Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 860M graphics and a 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor. Is this a great budget gaming[...] Read full article

Review

Eurocom M4 Review

Charles P Jefferies - September 25, 2014

This 13.3-inch powerhouse packs a QHD+ display, Nvidia GTX 860M graphics and quad-core processor in a portable and affordable package. Read full article

Review

Alienware 17 Review (2014 Edition)

Charles P Jefferies - July 23, 2014

This iteration of the Alienware 17 features AMD's flagship Radeon R9 M290X graphics card and a quad-core processor at a manageable price point. We see how AMD stacks up to[...] Read full article

Review

Aorus X7v2 Review: Portability Meets Power

Michael Wall - July 14, 2014

Gigabyte updated its popular Aorus X7 with the latest Nvidia GeForce graphics to bring us the all new Aorus X7v2. Take a look at what a new GPU means for[...] Read full article

Review

MSI GT70 Dominator 2PC Review: Bigger is Better

Michael Wall - June 30, 2014

The MSI GT70 Dominator makes the case that bigger is better. This gaming desktop replacement delivers powerful graphics with equally impressive Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and two storage[...] Read full article

Review

Eurocom Shark 3 (Clevo W355SS) Review

Charles P Jefferies - May 30, 2014

This value-oriented 15.6-inch gaming notebook offers powerful Nvidia GTX 860M graphics, an Intel quad-core processor and a beautiful high gamut 1080p screen. Here's our take. Read full article

Review

AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A Review

Charles P Jefferies - May 5, 2014

Carrying the title of the world's fastest 15.6" notebook means packing serious power, like an Nvidia GTX 880M 8GB graphics card. Here’s our teardown. Read full article