How Much Money Should You Spend on a Gaming Laptop?
I hate it when I spend money on things I don’t need, and this is easy to do with gaming laptops as they can get expensive fast.
Entry level gaming laptops start from about $500, while top of the line models can easily exceed $5000 – 10x the cost!
How much can you comfortably afford to spend on a new gaming laptop? Only you can decide this – but here are my thoughts on some different price ranges.
Entry Level to Low-End
Honestly the entry level stuff at $500-600 for RTX 2050/3050 is worth avoiding if you can. You get so much more in terms of build quality and better performance by increasing the budget to around $700-800. We’ve had some great RTX 4060 deals for this price on models like Lenovo’s LOQ (my favorite budget gaming laptop).
Mid-Range
At $1000 or so you can either stick to a budget model like an ASUS TUF but boost the GPU up to an RTX 4070 with the right sale, or look at more premium laptops with better screens and design with the 4060. The 4070 is around 20% faster in games, so this comes down to personal preference.
Upper Mid to High-End
Higher end 4070 laptops like the ASUS Zephyrus M16 or Lenovo Legion Pro 5 push things up to $1300-1500, while higher end models like the Legion 7i are often in the $1600-2000 range.
But good RTX 4080 laptop deals have been seen for $1750, so you’ve got to pick between better performance or better build quality and features. Well, best case we’ve had $1500-1600 4080 deals, but that was MSI’s GP68HX which has a low quality screen.
Anyway, the 4080 is around 55% faster than the 4070 in games and can absolutely be worth stepping up to if you can afford the extra performance. Plus it boosts the VRAM from 8GB to 12GB, which will give it more longevity.
High-End
By the time we get up to the RTX 4090, which seems to start from around $2100-2500 on sale depending on the laptop it’s in, diminishing returns are well at play. The 4090 is around 20% faster than the 4080 in games, but usually costs a fair bit more.
The 4090 boosts the VRAM up to 16GB and actually does a good job of running modern games at 4K high settings, even without FSR or DLSS – an impressive feat for a gaming laptop.
Find The Sweet Spot
Sometimes it’s worth spending more for the next tier up if you can afford it, but other times it’s not. The sweet spots seem to be RTX 4060 for $800-900, RTX 4070 for $1000-1300, and RTX 4080 for $1750-1900.
6 Comments
Ryan
Hey Jarrod,
Regarding the topic of new laptops and value for money, I noticed you haven’t done a metabox review in years. I know that your older videos definitely influenced my initial purchase with this particular clevo rebrander (and the business location being only 10mins down the road…).
I’m just curious if there’s any reason you no longer review their products? They still seem to have the best bang for buck, and I can testify to the much improved chassis builds these days (my last was the excellent PD-50-PNN-Ultra). Would love to see a review on their newest Prime-xr at any rate.
Anyway, keep up the great content. You’re my go to for a no BS review ever since I found your channel.
Cheers.
Jarrod
Unfortunately they are only sold in Australia and Australia accounts for 2-3% of video views. A review takes 1-2 weeks of our time, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to cover when the majority of our audience will have no interest. Yeah they’re still good value locally, that’s why we have some deals from them on the https://gaminglaptop.deals/australia page, we just don’t have the capacity to review them anymore when we have the option of doing other models that more people want to know about.
Allen Francis
I’ve never spent more than $400 on a quality laptop before as a freelance. I’m now in the market to get a gaming rig and I see that to get a quality one might cost $1,000+ because of the computing power and how fast they heat up. Thank you for this article but it is making me rethink my choices.
Marcelo
Hey Jarrod, sorry for just dropping a message, I’ve been following your channel for some time since I’m doing some research for my first gaming laptop, and between a lot of post and comments I’m kinda scared about my choices.
I really liked the Lenovo LOQ and then saw all the things about the dead mobos, then looked at Acer Nitro and then saw a lot of comments about the build quality in general, and the same about other affordable models like HP Victus and stuff.
I’m really lost about what to look for, since I live in a country with really bad warranty protection (3 months max by law and they just kinda say they’ll talk with the manufacturer and then you’re screwed without a machine for the time, IF they actually get it repaired) and buying from the US and having it shipped is an option but it kinda makes it hard to send back if anything goes wrong.
I really don’t want to screw up since it’s the only big purchase I can make for quite a while, I’ve saved and made a big effort for this budget since the currency here is not that strong, but a good laptop would help me be able to work on my field (music production and recording, I also teach) and be able to game in the off time.
I saw a lot of good options like the Legion, I really like them, but it kinda goes way over my budget (about 850usd), are there any recommendations you can make at that price range? Is buying a Legion of past years, like 2022 a good option if they drop in price with the passing years, are they still available cheaper with the passing years? What about your experience with the LOQs that you showed on your review? I was also thinking about waiting for Black Friday, but still, between all the options and the pros and cons you read on Reddit, I’m lost.
Again, sorry for just sending a message like this, but if you have any recommendations or info that could help me, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
Jarrod
Unfortunately I am not in a good position to comment on long term use. In most cases I only use a laptop for a few weeks to make the review before it gets sent back, but also my experience is one single data point and not very useful for me to say something like yes the laptop did not die for me (expected outcome in most cases). Best bet is to get on reddit and see what is happening to the majority, keeping in mind people only complain when they have issues, most people don’t post when everything is going well. Basically there’s no real way to know, Lenovo claims that they have not had an increase in warranty requests for LOQ series though, it may simple be normal failure rates we are seeing just more people talking about it because they sold more of them than others. Overall I still think LOQ series is good.
Jamie
How you doing jarrod. quick question whats the best rtx 480 gaming laptop for under $3000 Dollars. In your opinion.