The age of gaming laptops has truly come into its own.
The best gaming laptop must do more than pack the best specs into a big aluminum box.
It cant just be a vehicle for taking a high-end GPU on the road.
As much as some like to make fun of gaming laptops’ obsession with RGB lighting, we all know we’d miss it if it weren’t.Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
It cant be the most expensive, nor can it feel cheap.
Beyond all that, it should still be portable.
Its a laptop, for heavens sake.
Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
Compromise is inevitable, but where a PC compromise is important.
Similarly, there are plenty of devices out there that promote theiraccess to cloud gaming services.
In that way, we found the best gaming laptops dont feel like a compromise.
The funny thing is that everything remains true with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i.
Its hard not to come away impressed.
It sports a full-sized keyboard with a numpad and the per-key RGB lighting you expect from gaming-minded machines.
All that, and it still doesnt go above $4,000.
The latest version of the 7i sits at $3,640 for all that and 32 GB of RAM.
The interior shelf is a little bit too squishy, though not enough.
Youll see it sag under the weight of your writest.
The keyboard is weighty with fair travel and comfort.
The shelf is comfortable and grippy while still feeling sturdy.
All that, and it will fit into the laptop holder in your backpack.
Thats especially true in stock with a 240 Hz refresh rate display.
Its small and surprisingly light despite managing to pack up to an RTX 4070 and an AMD Ryzen R9-8945HS.
Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
It feels sturdy and features a great keyboard and fair trackpad.
The main issues with it are the keyboard and trackpad.
The former is simply fine, though not the pinnacle of laptop design.
The latter is very annoying, especially the abysmal palm rejection.
If you want to push every game in your Steam library to the absolute limit, Blade 16 can.
However, that access doesnt come cheap.
Thats enough to stretch anybodys budget and likely turn off a huge segment of the buying public.
Thankfully, there are a fair few quality budget gaming PCs you should turn to instead.
Anything below $1,500 could be considered cheap for a gaming PC in laptop form.
Acer does have a pretty solid lineup of cheaper gaming laptops.
It has an average keyboard and a trackpad that feels more like rough leather than smooth glass.
Its display quality is merely okay and has a really poor battery life.
In the meantime, you should explore several other options for cloud gaming.
Then again, your phone might also work just as well.
Hell, most laptops with strong WiFi connectivity will suffice.
With all that being said, Apple has moved to get more high-profile titles onto the macOS ecosystem.
The M4 Max chip is also supposed to have strong gaming capabilities.
Its Apple, so everything you expect will work with the MacBook Pro 16.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
However, some of our most-anticipated tech for the month won’t arrive until April.
I just wish it were more blue.
