How to buy the right gaming laptop this Black Friday without breaking the bank
Gaming laptops are a great way to play the latest games when you’re away from home, and they’re increasingly powerful enough to be great desktop replacements for many gamers.
It’s no surprise that gaming laptops are among the most popular deals of the time Black Fridayespecially because many best gaming laptop also quite expensive. This is even more true for laptops with RTX 3080 High resolution and high refresh GPUs or monitors from top brands like Razer, Gigabyte and Alienware. But with some good Black Friday gaming laptop dealsthese laptops can see some significant discounts, sometimes over $500/£500.
But even if you are looking for something more in the mid-range or budget category, there will still be some cheap gaming laptop dealsand in many cases you will be able to find a lot, like HP Victor 15that won’t force you to sacrifice too much in terms of hardware or performance.
However, there are some laptop deals that you’ll want to avoid and not just at the low price, where you’d expect to find some more quality products. There will be plenty of high-end gaming laptops that look great at first glance, but get much worse as you dig deeper into the specs.
As we all get ready for the holiday sale, there are plenty of reasons to expect great deals this year and we’ll help you sort through which deals to look for and which ones to look forward to. Which treats should be avoided.
What to look for in Black Friday gaming laptop deals
So, what should you watch out for when shopping on Black Friday? There are several key points to remember when buying a gaming laptop.
First, we pushed the limits of what a great gaming laptop really needs to play Best PC gamesince nearly every modern AAA game targets console compatibility first instead of trying to maximize what Best gaming PC capable of handling. The days ask “But can it run Crysis?” have come and gone, to be honest.
Therefore, there is little reason for you to look up 12th Gen Intel Core i5 or one AMD Ryzen 6000-series The CPU is paired with a Nvidia RTX 3060 . GPUsince this type of gaming laptop is more than capable of playing everything available at fairly high settings at 1080p.
And since 1080p is what even high-end gaming laptops typically use to maximize the display’s refresh rate, you don’t need more than this right now and they’ll see some drops. Great prices this Black Friday.
Second, keep in mind that on a laptop, a 4K display doesn’t really get you any more than 1080p in terms of sharpness. Yes, you’re doubling pixels-per-inch, so the image will be twice as sharp, but the image will also be much smaller on a 14 or 15-inch screen than it would be on a 14- or 15-inch screen. best gaming monitor 32 or 42 inch horizontal push.
Our eyes can’t appreciate the small details on something as small as a gaming laptop screen, especially when things go brilliant in an action title like Doom Eternal or several competitive shooters. Max, look for 1440p if all you care about is PC gaming. You don’t have to miss out on much by settling for 1080p, but you’ll likely save a lot of money.
There are some Black Friday-specific considerations that should also be mentioned. First, you will see a lot laptop with game-specific hardware will get some hot deals this Black Friday.
Here’s an example from last year:
If you want a laptop that can play the latest games with the highest possible graphical fidelity, then you can find some great deals on best mobile workstation for creative professionals has all the same hardware as the highest-end gaming laptops, but comes with perks like a 4K OLED display that gaming laptops often lack.
The drawback is that these monitors will have a standard 60Hz refresh rate, since that’s not something advertisers really need for their work. Non-OLED displays can also have poor pixel response, making them less suitable for fast-paced gaming.
That said, if you’re looking to enjoy eye candy at a leisurely pace, a creative workstation can be a smart way to get a lot on very powerful hardware. However, if you’re looking to play games competitively, you’ll want to stick with the right gaming laptop with a more responsive, higher-refresh display.
Gaming laptops across the board will drop in price
We’ve been doing this for many, many years now, and we have a lot of experience tracking how Black Friday and Sales on Cyber Monday events tend to run. The past few years, with the coronavirus pandemic and supply chain issues, things have certainly remained unresolved.
Still, there are some fairly consistent lines, namely that the gaming laptop release cycle provides plenty of incentive for retailers to clear inventory and clear the way for new products. with the latest hardware.
Later gaming laptops are usually the least likely to be discounted, but it will still happen, so don’t expect the only gaming laptops on sale to be the latter. a generation or two compared to the others.
Furthermore, most of the latest mobile computing hardware, like mobile processors and new GPUs, is announced at the beginning of the year, usually around CES. And since most laptop hardware has been on the market for several months now, if not more than a year, we are expecting new mobile CPUs and GPUs to be announced or at least in October. 1 from AMD, Intel and Nvidia.
That means demand for current-generation tech is likely to drop this Black Friday as everyone waits to see what’s revealed next year. As a result, the prices of current-generation gaming laptops will have to drop lower to compensate, and you should definitely take advantage of these deeper discounts.
One of the best ways to see what gaming laptop deals to expect this year is to look at what we saw last year. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, we’re able to bring you some highlights from our Black Friday 2021 coverage to illustrate.
Regardless of what game you’re planning to play, there are a few things you’ll likely see this Black Friday that you’ll want to avoid unless the prices are completely uncompetitive.
First, don’t look for anything with less than 8GB of RAM unless you’re just planning on doing casual gaming. Windows 11 will take up a lot of RAM, so you won’t have much to work with with your other programs, and gaming often requires a good bit of RAM to run smoothly.
If you’re considering high-end devices, make sure you’re not paying extra for “premium” hardware from two or three generations ago. If you see a $2,000 gaming laptop with a ninth-gen Intel Core i7 in it, you can get new hardware for almost the same price elsewhere, and you definitely should. do like that.
Another thing you’re probably seeing a lot right now are “gaming” Chromebooks. Look, don’t get us wrong, we love Chromebooks, but Chromebooks often don’t have the specs necessary for locally installed games (and can’t run most of them). that even if it is) and cloud gaming is possible but still iffy on a Chromebook. Come back to us next year when we’ve had a chance to really push the new line of gaming Chromebooks to see what they’re capable of before making that kind of leap.
Finally, there’s the question of the MacBook. Normally, MacBooks aren’t taken seriously as gaming machines, and that hasn’t really changed even with Apple’s latest silicon.
There are tons of games that you can play on your Mac, mind you and some of us are actually pretty optimistic about it. The Mac’s Gaming Potential in the coming years. Capcom just released Resident Evil Village on Mac and other developers are likely to start following suit in the coming years, but we’re not there yet and the future of Mac gaming remains to be seen. If you are looking to play all the latest PC games right awayyou will still need one Windows Notebook.
Gaming laptop specs sheet
One of the most overwhelming things about shopping for a gaming laptop on Black Friday is trying to figure out those completely confusing specs that manufacturers tend to throw at customers. If you’ve never bought a gaming laptop before, or you’re buying it for someone else and you’re not a gamer yourself, it might feel like reading a foreign language.
Luckily, we’ve tested a lot of gaming laptops and we’ve learned what’s worth buying and what’s best to avoid. We’ve broken down the spec types you’ll want to target for high-end devices, our recommended specs for the best balance between performance and price and specs The minimum specs you should be targeting if you’re looking for more budget but still want a laptop that offers a solid gaming experience.
Element | Reward | Recommended | Minimum |
---|---|---|---|
CPU | Intel Core i9-12XXX or AMD Ryzen 9 6XXX | Intel Core i7-12XXX or AMD Ryzen 7 6XXX | Intel Core i5-11XXX or AMD Ryzen 5 5XXX |
GPU | Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti and above | Nvidia RTX 3060 or RTX 2070 | Nvidia GTX 1650 |
smack | 32GB or more | 16GB | 8GB with free DIMM slot |
Warehouse | More than 1TB | 1TB | 256GB |
Monitor resolution | 2160p (4K) | 1440p | 1080p |
Monitor refresh rate | 240Hz or more | 165Hz | 144Hz (60Hz if 4K resolution) |
Today’s best gaming laptop deals
If you don’t want to wait for Black Friday, you can watch some best gaming laptop deals available now.