Most cheap gaming laptops share a lot in common. They are typically between 0.8 and 1 inch thick and tend to have simple gaming hardware. Here are some of the key specifications to look for:
Display: 15 or 16 inch screen. Depending on the aspect ratio, they will have base displays with a standard resolution of 1920 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200. You won’t find higher resolution panels on gaming laptops under $1,000. Also take a look at the refresh rate. 144Hz is the standard, but the higher the better for less motion blur and smoother animation. While OLED and mini-LED are more common on high-end gaming laptops, all budget options use IPS LED.
Processor: The latest Intel and AMD processors will all be present, and on a budget level, the differences are not as significant as in the high-end options. For AMD, this is usually the Ryzen 5 220 or the Ryzen 7 250. Intel’s latest gaming chips in this price range are the Intel Core Ultra 5 225H or the Core Ultra 7 240H. Although Intel has announced its next-generation Core Ultra Series 3 chips, they have not yet been released.
GPU: We’re currently in Nvidia’s RTX 50 graphics cards, releasing in early 2025. In gaming laptops under $1,000, you’ll be stuck with the RTX 5050 or 5060. These probably won’t be replaced until at least 2027, so you can safely buy them for now.
Memory: You want at least 16GB of RAM, and that’s usually what you’ll be stuck with in budget gaming laptops. Many gaming laptops allow you to upgrade the RAM yourself later, but with the standalone memory price Nowadays, it might not be a bad idea to configure it with 32 GB in advance.
Storage: Gaming laptops start at 512GB, and that will be enough for most. Upgrading to 1 terabyte isn’t a bad idea though, whether it’s set up in advance or you do it yourself later. You can still store games on a external hard drivebut with the size of games these days, the more storage you have, the better.
