Best Gaming Laptop Under 1500$ Reviews & Buying Guides

If you are looking to buy a new gaming laptop for less than $ 1,500, you have come to the right place. We have tested and reviewed more than 30 models in this price range to help you find the one that suits your needs.

Gaming laptops have come a long way, from bulky and expensive machines to equally powerful and affordable handheld gaming machines. I’ve been looking for the perfect gaming laptop for under $ 1,500 and found some hidden gems – inexpensive gaming laptops with little compromise.

We have tested and reviewed all of these models to help you make an informed decision. Our reviews are based on actual performance, not just specs. So if you want a gaming laptop under $ 1,500 that can play games on high settings without breaking your budget, this is the place!

We’ve designed a list of the best gaming laptops that are under $ 1,500. They’re affordable, portable, and powerful enough to run your favorite games without breaking a sweat.

You don’t have to worry about ending up with a shoddy model to save money. All of our recommended laptops are made by reputable brands and offer excellent value for money.

Having a portable play station opens up new possibilities to enjoy your games, as you no longer need to be glued to your desk. Plus, you can use the gaming laptop’s power to double as a workstation for professional work on the go, especially if you opt for a model with a minimal, low-profile design.

While there are dozens of gaming laptops under $ 1,500 that will give you a great gaming experience, not all of them are perfect for your gaming setup. Finding the right one requires paying attention. Ready to make it easy for you to find the right laptop.

Our first gaming laptop that is super cool on this list is the ASUS TUF FX504. It offers great performance, powerful thermals that just won’t stop, and better-than-usual battery life.

Design

The TUF Gaming FX504 has pretty good prospects in its own modest design. It’s made from a piece of black plastic with a faux aluminum blush and red paint in an angular, striped pattern that makes you think Asus wants you to think ‘cybernetic’ when you look at it.

The Asus logo is positioned as a reflective red in the center of the cover. The cover has a small cutout that allows you to see the status lights even when the laptop’s cover is closed, which is a nice feature that steals from the premium Zephyrus range.

A large bezel flanks its 15.6-inch screen, and the platter is the same plastic with hideous red lines. The keyboard comes with a red backlight.

Graphics and visualization

The 15.6-inch comes with a 1080p screen on the FX504. It is bland, dark, and lifeless. On the bright side, it has a crisp and impressive display that makes it easy to distinguish every glare from a broken glass window.

The FX504 is packed to cover just 66% of the sRGB color gamut, which is well below the 98% entry-level gaming average, as well as the Razorblade 15’s projections (149%).

The panel on this Asus gaming laptop averaged just 220 units on our photometer, which is lower than the average (256 units) and the Nitro 5 Spin (296%).

Game firepower

The FX504 has an Intel Core i5-8300H processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSHD, making it slightly faster. In the Geek bench 4 general performance test, the FX504 scored 12,038, and the FX504 took 54 seconds to transfer 4.97 GB of files at a speed of 94.5 Mbps.

In our Excel macro test, the FX504 took 1 minute and 13 seconds to match 65,000 names and addresses, a few seconds behind the average. This monstrous gaming beast, in its testing, excelled in our Handbrake video-editing test.

It was able to Transcode 4K video to 1080p in 11 minutes and 15 seconds, which is faster than average. The TUF Gaming FX504’s battery is not powerful enough for a gaming laptop.

It only lasted 3 hours and 57 minutes on Laptop Mag Battery Test 2.0, constantly watching videos, surfing the web, and looking for graphical benchmarks at 150 units of brightness. The FX504 can stay cool under a light load.

If you are watching a video on youtube and exactly after watching 15 minutes of HD video, it calculated 79 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad, 91 degrees in between the G and H keys, and 96 degrees down, just slightly above our 95-degree comfort threshold.

The FX504 is designed to stay cooler than our expectations while we play with it. When I played Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the keyboard was at 96 degrees, the touchpad hadn’t changed, and the background was 104 degrees.

Second on our list is the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX531GX.

Design

What a beautiful gaming machine! This 15-inch beauty has the sleek, sleek design of an ultrabook, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a gaming laptop. It’s packed with powerful gaming components.

It measures 14 x 10.6 x 0.63 inches (36 x 26.8 x 1.61 cm; W x D x H) and weighs 4.63 pounds (2.1 kg). This impressive machine takes on the role of the world’s slimmest and most stylish gaming laptop.

This sexy beast has a sheath of pure aluminum. The Zephyrus S case comes in a two-tone black design that divides it into two halves diagonally.

The diagonal design divides the brushed aluminum cladding and the sleek matte, allowing the ROG logo to sit comfortably on the brushed side. The ROG logo glows bright silver revealing stylized dots in a comic that glow magenta when the laptop starts up.

The laptop has a sleek cutout made for the hinge that houses additional ports below the cover. Considering the powerful components built into this gaming device, it packs a high-end discrete GPU that is very impressive.

Graphics and visualization

The Asus ROG Zephyrus has a nearly bezel-less 144Hz HD IPS-like screen. It also has a screen resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels, an impressive response time of 3 milliseconds.

Game firepower

This gaming beast is armed with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-10750H processor (Hexa-core, 9MB cache, up to 4.1GHz), 1101MHz base, 1265MHz boost, 90TDP W, a 512GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 630, 16GB RAM, and NVIDIA’s latest high-end graphics card (Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q (8GB GDDR6 VRAM).

The Asus ROG Zephyrus also comes with all the connectivity you need for gaming on the go (USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports and Type-C (USB-C) ports available in USB 3.1 Generation 2 and Generation 1 speeds, and 2.0 USB ports.

For a gamepad and mouse), as well as the ROG Active Aerodynamics (AA) system, impressive speakers, an impressive 4-zone customizable ASUS Aura RGB gaming keyboard, a dust tunnel, and 12 Scalable V fans to maintain the system stability and cooling performance.

Third on our list is the Acer Predator Helios with high-end specs for a gaming laptop.

Design

Acer Predator Helios 300 has a gamer aesthetic with its black color and red accents, tapered edges, metal frame with a metallic finish, and geometric cutouts.

It has a silver logo over the predatory letter pattern and a bottom with two easy-to-remove compartments for RAM and hard drive. The laptop is large in size, not too bulky but also incredibly lighter than it sounds (5.51lbs / 2.5kg).

Graphics and visualization

This machine has a 15.6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen and LED-backlit IPS screen and HD (1280 x 720) webcam that supports super high dynamic range.

Game firepower

The Acer Predator Helios 300 is powered by an 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H 2.20GHz processor with Turbo Boost Technology up to 4.10GHz (9.0MB Smart Cache) running 64-bit Windows 10 Home.

Predator Helios 300 comes with Acer True Harmony Plus technology, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card coprocessor, two all-metal Aero Blade 3D fans, two integrated stereo speakers.

An Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi, backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 5.0, 6GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM and 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 memory, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD.

If that wasn’t enough, it has a 3320 mAh lithium-ion battery capacity that can last up to 7 hours of battery life, plus an additional empty slot for 2.5-inch HDD or SSD and 2 ports for USB. 2.0. And USB 3.0.

This gaming beast ranks fourth on our list of gaming laptops. This gaming machine runs on Windows 10 and combines various qualities to easily deliver spectacular gaming performance for all the latest games and multitask.

Design

The TUF505 for gaming features an IPS-like nano-edge display with a super slim bezel for extreme immersion in a much more compact body. It comes with wide viewing angles that provide clear and consistent colors even when viewed from extreme positions.

Graphics and visualization

This gaming machine has dimensions of 14.2 “x 10.3” x 1.0 “, weighs 4.9 pounds, and offers backlit scissor-switch keys with 0.25mm curves and 1-key, 8mm travel for smooth, tactile keystrokes.

Game firepower

It features 16-series GeForce GTX graphics and a Ryzen 7 quad-core processor. It competes favorably with other gaming laptops in its class due to its durable MIL-STD-810G certified chassis and backlit keyboard, the durability of approximately 20 million keystrokes.

Considering its latest Intel Wave 2 Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), which is among the fastest Wi-Fi standards, it has the ability to transfer data at an incredible 1.7 Gbps.

On a related note, it has an Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) system that allows it to handle modern games skillfully while maintaining its stability and reliability.

The TUF505 offers you a multitude of I / O ports (1x combined headphone out and audio in the socket, 1x RJ45 LAN socket for LAN insertion, 1x HDMI, 1x USB Type-A 2.0, 2x USB Type-A 3.1 ( Gen.1)) for your gaming peripherals and 16GB DDR4, 1TB (5400rpm) + 256GB PCIe SSD memory.

The Razer Blade Gaming Laptop is considered a stylish gaming laptop with powerful gaming hardware that can play virtually all modern games without any lag or difficulty.

Design

Razer laptops are known for their great looks. The ink-black aluminum frame is designed to provoke emotion in its user. The Razer Blade 15 comes in at 15.6 inches, making it the smallest gaming laptop globally, weighing in at just 4.4 pounds.

The Razer logo is located directly in the middle of the cover with a green color. It has a compact construction with a durable CNC aluminum body (0.78 “x 9.25” x 13.98 “).

Graphics and visualization

The Blade 15’s 15.6-inch edge-to-edge matte Full HD screen color (4.9mm bezels) is just as eye-catching as its chassis. However, I would like the 1920 x 1080 panel to be a bit brighter.

The Razer Blade panel has an impressive 144Hz refresh rate, which will perfectly reduce jagged images and motion blur. Its display is impressive and capable of reproducing 149% of the sRGB color gamut, which accounts for the vivid tones.

It’s almost on par with the m15 and Stealth, which measured 150% and still beat the premium gaming laptop average by 140%.

Game firepower

The Razer Blade 15 comes along with a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H processor. It has 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD. It has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q Design VR Ready 8th Generation Intel Core graphics processor i7 -8750H 6 cores.

This monster gaming laptop comes with a dual 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD storage capacity for increased speed and capacity. It also features 16GB dual-channel DDR-4-2667MHz memory that can be expanded to 32GB.

It comes with several ports:

• 1 USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 port
• 3 standard USB 3.1 ports
• One mini display port
• One full-size HDMI
• Gigabit Ethernet socket

The Dell Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS gives you a modern gaming laptop capable of playing all the latest games in Full HD. This can be enough for all day-to-day productivity, and it comes with good battery life and is reasonably priced that doesn’t break the bank.

Design

The premium all-metal construction that comes with the Dell Inspiron G5587 drives a sleek and pleasing design. It has a black body with a red accent, and the Dell logo sits comfortably in the center of the deck.

It also comes with a plastic body and has a smooth finish and sturdy body that makes it simple and stylish. Along with a measurement dimension of 0.98 by 15.32 by 10.82 inches (HWD), it weighs approximately 6.8 pounds.

You also notice a relatively slim design suitable for a gaming laptop and does not require much effort to carry.

Graphics and visualization

The Dell Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS comes with a 15.6-inch display with all the whistles and bells. An IPS LED display, FHD (1920 by 1080) resolution, and an anti-reflective coating.

It doesn’t have touch support, but its screen is decent for gaming. Includes Waves Maxx Audio Pro for clear sound and a 1280 × 720 webcam for Skype chats and video recording.

The best part is it offers white light backlighting, and the key is of decent quality despite having a short key path. With the smoothness of the touchpad, it offers a comfortable but slightly quirky look.

Game firepower

The Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS’s 16GB of memory, Nvidia’s 4GB of GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and the hexadecimal-core Intel Core i7-8750H are a great choice for multitasking, general productivity, and efficient gaming prowess For the last game there.

Thanks to the spacious and fast 128GB SSD storage and additional 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive (which runs up to 4 times faster than conventional SATA, get your machine up and running faster, and improve impact resistance) available for store all your files and downloads.

The Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS comes with an extraordinary battery that can last up to 7 hours and 34 minutes, which is much longer than most normal gaming laptops.

The MSI GV62 8RD-034 comes with the necessary gaming features to play all the latest games decently, and it continues to be one of the affordable gaming laptops under $ 1,500.

Design

This gaming monster comes with the same case as most MSI’s predecessors in the GV62 line, except for a few minor tweaks that include a slimmer design and no optical drive. The chassis of this laptop is mainly made of black plastic with red accents.

This gaming laptop has a sleek overall design and impressive gaming aesthetic in gamer-friendly locations. It’s designed for scalability, and you’ll have the battery life to remove the bottom and swap out the RAM if you want.

Graphics and visualization

This gaming machine offers a 15.6 ″ Full HD 1920X1080p 45% IPS NTSC level EDP panel that provides a wide viewing angle and impressive brightness.

The Steel series built-in keyboard is very comfortable to type and is well designed with a very responsive and fluid one-piece keyboard.

Game firepower

This gaming laptop doubles up with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card and 4GB of DDR5 memory.

The MSI GV62 8RD-034 contains the new 8th generation Coffee Lake-H Core i7-8750H chip combined with the fast SSD and configurable 8GB RAM that can be easily upgraded up to 32GB, allowing this laptop to games handle all rigorous and demanding tasks like gaming and video editing with ease.

Although it comes with a newly designed processor to save battery life, it does not have good battery life.

A premium option for the best gaming laptops under $ 1,500. Although Eluktronics is not well known in the video game world, it has gained a good reputation and a decent name. The Mech continues this great reputation.

Design

This gaming machine is designed with a brushed matte black finish. It comes with an aluminum cover that bears the Eluktronics logo, which sits elegantly on the cover with attractive internals.

Graphics and display

Eluktronics MECH-15 G1Rx comes with a 15.6 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) narrow 144Hz Full HD LG IPS 72% NTSC Anti-Glare Display (1920 x 1080) screen, and a high-end mechanical gaming set of type brown switch per-key RGB backlit keyboard with NKRO, anti-ghosting, 10-key numeric keypad, and customizable RGB light bar.

Game firepower

Boasting a 9th Gen hexa-core Intel Core i7 processor with NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super Max-P, coupled with 16GB of RAM, making it a very impressive PC outperforming most general-purpose laptops on the market.

It is packed with a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD, which allows it to handle almost all types of games launched at around 80-1000 fps.

When fully charged, this gaming beast can last for over 5 hours of continuous use, a decent pack for a gaming laptop of its size, and a 144Hz display.

Slim, fast, and long battery life. One of the most stylish gaming laptops under $ 1,500.

Design

This play beast is fashioned with gold accents, and it looks good without being ostentatious. The whole laptop frame is made of matte black sandblasted aluminum alloy.

Instead of the popular logo, MSI replaced it with a little Midas twist, with an emblem printed in black and gold. Its basic design is for both work and play. It comes equipped with a flexible hinge that allows it to lay flat at 180 degrees.

You can also reverse the screen orientation 180 degrees for a better view by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow.

The laptop’s interior has a black foil, while the power button and touchpad are lined in gold with a gorgeous and delicate floral design on the part of the interior with the vent mounted on the top.

Graphics and display

The GS65 comes with a 15.6-inch 1920 × 1080 IPS matte display, which features an impressive 144Hz refresh rate immediately evident at first glance due to the smoothness of even mundane movements mouse movement.

Contrast and brightness seem average, but the colors stand out vividly. The screen color coverage is pretty cool with 92% sRGB and 60% Adobe RGB. While this may not be enough for serious photography or heavy graphic design, it’s a good take for just about anyone.

It has reasonably strong color accuracy for the GS65; measure Color Checker / Greyscale Delta E averages of only 2.77 / 4 and a maximum Color Checker of 5.89 (blue). The total gamma of 2.27 and the CCT average of 6901 are also good results.

Game firepower

The GS65 is a high-speed gaming laptop in terms of overall performance and manages a solid PCMark 10 overall score of 4,646. Subjectively, this gaming laptop is high-speed, and no noticeable hiccups were encountered during our stay with it.

MSI GS65 laptops are powered by i7-8750H 6 Core, 256 GB SSD, RGB KB VR Ready. 16GB DDR4-2400MHz Dual Channel RAM.

This processor is produced according to the Coffee Lake process “14 nm ++” and displays clock frequencies between 2.2 and 4.1 GHz (3.9 GHz with 6 cores).

It also features a 45W TDP. Powerful VR-ready graphics allow gaming on this laptop to benefit from ultra-reliable settings, as you use NVIDIA’s state-of-the-art GTX 1070 graphics to enhance your gaming and gaming experience virtual reality.

Its performance when unplugged is significantly lower than when plugged in; running 3DMark 11 for the second time while running on battery power gives only 5758. Elsewhere, Latency Mon does not reveal any problems with DPC latencies.

This laptop crushes all the heat generated during gaming with Cooler Boost Trinity. 3 fans and 4 heat pipes that guarantee maximum performance even under extreme playing conditions.

The GS65 is powered by Samsung PM981 256GB NVMe SSD, a fairly fast and popular SSD with many high-end laptops.

It produces a respectable AS SSD score of 2039 (based on reading / write scores of 815/802 and speeds of 1612.2 / 1474.76MB / s). CrystalDiskMark 5.2 reports even much higher Q32T1 sequential read / write values of 3472/1529 MB / s.

Best VR-Ready Gaming Laptops under $ 1,500

Design

The Sager NP8957 shakes the market with its slim and sleek “0.78” design cool to the touch. The monstrous computing power is neatly encased in a machined aluminum casing.

The NP8957’s aluminum alloy chassis hides monstrous power in precision engineered form. The structurally designed aluminum alloy provides angular contours that make the body feel cool and smooth to the touch.

It’s designed to be reasonably weighted (4.6 pounds) yet sturdy and accentuated by an illuminated top cover. It is designed with a customizable RGB backlit keyboard that you can independently set to 3 zones or set all 3 to a solid color to enjoy the dramatic effect you want.

Graphics and visualization

Hitting the market with a 72% NNTSC wide-viewing angle 144Hz (1920 x 1080) matte screen, this laptop brings you a bright and detailed image quality 144 times per second. You can be sure of an amazing screen with no ghosting or blurring.

This beast features a 170-degree wide-angle screen and a 72% NTSC screen that offers full-color and wide-spectrum output for the best gaming experience.

Its multi-view capability offers up to three additional screens that allow you to have a true video experience games and other operations that you would like to perform.

Game firepower

This monstrous powerhouse of this gaming laptop has the latest Intel Core i7 processor, which makes it capable of performing countless operations, playing and loading modern and latest games in an instant without any difficulties.

It also comes Optane-ready for flawless performance and faster response in the toughest conditions. Control a 4X DDR4 RAM (OPT DDR4-3000) that gives you breakneck clock speed and bandwidth with next-generation DDR4 memory.

Along with its ultra-high performance PCI-E GEN3 X 4 RAID storage systems that deliver its massive storage at full speed, the Sager NP8957 has 64GB dual-channel memory that delivers peak performance for high-end gaming more demanding and complex and means you can always dream of.

With its NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX-2070 graphics, the AI-based shader has a MAX Q design. It boasts impressive graphics capabilities, new complex and immersive experiences that blur the line between virtual and real and generate dynamic and dynamic environments.

Real responsive that captures your wildest imagination. RTX traces light paths billions of times per second to create a spectacular setting for richer lighting, reflections, and shadows.

The improved thermal cooling design offers an innovative cooling system that prevents overheating by removing heat while maintaining peak performance.

The thermal cooling system is designed with multiple heat pipes to remove heat from the GPU and CPU faster, while the multiple fan blades amplify the volume of the airflow. You will agree that a powerful speaker adds to the dramatic and lifelike experience while gaming.

This gaming laptop comes with Sound Blaster x Pro-Gaming with upgraded larger speakers producing an amplified and realistic, immersive audio experience and sensitive auditory cues to easily detect your enemies’ secret movements. Delivers unmatched range, clarity, and strength for vocals and audio effects.

Buying Guide: What to Consider When Choosing a $ 1,500 Gaming Laptop?

Now that you’ve seen what these laptops have to offer, there are a few things to consider before deciding to buy one for yourself. There are a few parameters that you must configure and that a laptop must meet before you can choose it.

Battery duration:

The laptop you decide to purchase should have a battery life of at least 7 hours. This is important because high-end games tend to be power-hungry, and you’ll want to focus on your gameplay and performance rather than constantly worrying about charging your device.

Update frequency:

The higher the refresh rate of the laptop screen, the faster it will redraw the action. This is very important for multiplayer games that require faster reflexes like CS: GO and PUBG or Fortnite, but it is not very essential in single-player games like the need for speed and the like.

Laptop memory:

More memory is one of the most basic requirements for a gaming laptop. The more RAM your device has, the more games your laptop can support and the more fluid the game will be. Otherwise, you will have a lot of lag, and the game will be very choppy.

Laptop storage:

Like the memory of a laptop, the storage of a laptop or SSD is of great importance. Your laptop will never have enough SSDs as new games and updates to existing games keep increasing in memory.

In my opinion, you should get an SSD of at least 500GB in the beginning and increase it if necessary.

Mouse / Touchpad:

Every laptop comes with a trackpad under the keyboard, but if you buy a laptop specifically for gaming, you need a gaming mouse as well. This is because the laptop’s touchpad cannot provide you with the control and mobility that gaming requires.

Frequently asked questions

 

1. What is the most important aspect of a gaming laptop?

The most important thing about a gaming laptop is its graphics card. But recent developments and the introduction of the GPU have complicated it a bit more.

Since a GPU’s performance is highly dependent on the cooling of the system, you need to know how much power the graphics card is using and installed in what type of chassis.

2. Does screen resolution matter?

Obviously, the screen resolution has a big effect on your performance, but that does not mean that you go to the market and buy a screen with 4K HD resolution. You can play your games well with 1080p resolution screens.

3. Do I have to get a separate keyboard?

All laptops include keyboards, even gaming laptops that you can use for whatever type of work you can get out of them. But just like gaming mice, there are many gaming keyboards with a wide variety of functions available on the market that you can connect to your laptop.

4. What’s the l factor when it comes to higher frame rates for some special games?

If you have a display with a restrictive refresh rate, namely 60Hz, that will limit the amount of fps you can get for a game. Despite the more powerful GPU package and bulky VRAM, the laptop’s screen refresh rate limits the FPS.

Conclusion

The budget gaming laptop market has matured over the years, making it easy to find an attractive package for less than $ 1,500. We hope our guide has made your buying decision easy and we are confident that whatever model you choose you will get your money’s worth.

In this recap review, we’ve provided you with a list of the best gaming laptops under $ 1,500. Each laptop has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it is up to you to decide which one suits your needs.

We hope that after reviewing our reviews, you can decide which laptop is right for you. We started by reviewing 7 of the best gaming laptops under $ 1,500 before narrowing this list down to the top three options.

However, looking at several variables, including screen size, processor speed, SSD, and RAM, and other features like touch screens and backlit keyboards.

Spending over 60 hours researching and testing all of these products to bring you this guide. I hope this helps you choose one of the amazing laptops above that suits your needs! The 3 best options are:

Razer Blade 15

Acer Predator Helios

Asus TUF

You have reached the end! Thanks for reading our review. We hope that we helped you find a laptop that meets your affordable gaming needs.