gaming laptops that dont overheat 2022

There are great laptops available now [as

], and you can see our tested favorites below. But if you yearn for the latest and greatest, check out our news and reviews of laptops with AMDs Ryzen 5000 and Intels Tiger Lake CPUs, and Nvidia RTX 30-series mobile GPUs. [Psst:We also have a list of.]

Here are the latest news and reviews, along with our top picks below.

Gaming laptop cheat sheet

Our quick-hit recommendations:·

• Best 15-inch gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition{{/url}}{{^url}}Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition{{/url}}
  [bestbuy.com]
• Best budget 15-inch gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}Acer Nitro 5{{/url}}{{^url}}Acer Nitro 5{{/url}}
  [bestbuy.com]
• Best 17-inch gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}Gigabyte Aorus 17G{{/url}}{{^url}}Gigabyte Aorus 17G{{/url}}
  [Gigabyte.com]
• Best budget 17-inch gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}HP Omen 17{{/url}}{{^url}}HP Omen 17{{/url}}
  [amazon.com]
• Best portable gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}Asus ROG Zephyrus G14{{/url}}{{^url}}Asus ROG Zephyrus G14{{/url}}
  [bestbuy.com]
• Best price-is-no-object gaming laptop:
  {{#url}}Origin EON17-X{{/url}}{{^url}}Origin EON17-X{{/url}}
  [originpc.com]

Here are the latest stories:

• {{#url}}Razer has launched the latest generation of its Razer Blade 17{{/url}}{{^url}}Razer has launched the latest generation of its Razer Blade 17{{/url}}
  gaming PC[previous generations were known as the RazerBlade Pro 17]. It will be available on July 30 in seven configurations, starting with a base price of $2,399 up through $3,699. You can preorder now on Razer.com.
• This isnt a gaming laptop, but we still thought youd enjoy reading about the gaming PC Gordon Mah Ung found in the gutter.
  Gordon Mah Ung

  Photo illustration: Yes, Gordon really found this functional 5th gen Core i7 with a GeForce GTX 1080 in a pile of trash.

• {{#url}}Having your laptop stolen{{/url}}{{^url}}Having your laptop stolen{{/url}}
  is stressful because you need to replace a pricey piece of hardwareand it also poses a threat to your digital security. Read on to learn about how to prepare yourself against the possibility of notebook theft, how to report the theft if your laptop is stolen, and how to protect your data after its in the hands of thieves.
• You dont already subscribe to The Full Nerd podcast for PC enthusiasts? You should! In the latest episode, we talk about
  {{#url}}AMDs Advantage laptops program{{/url}}{{^url}}AMDs Advantage laptops program{{/url}}
  , as embodied by the Asus ROG Strix G15. Check it out.

The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition gets all As: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, AMD Radeon RX 6800M, and AMD Advantage, meaning its the first machine to meet AMD guidelines designed to make mid-range gaming laptops better. And yes, its made by Asus, too.

If youre on the hunt for an affordable yet stupidly fast laptop on a medium budget, just stop reading and buy the Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition right now because of its stunning price-to-performance ratio.

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The Acer Nitro 5 surpases what we expect of rock-bottom budget laptops. Its display is a bit dim, and its GTX 1650 graphics is only going to feel slower as time goes by. However its performance is solid overall, and its battery life is a nearly unheard-of [for gaming laptops] five hours. If youre looking for solid budget value, or if you plan to buy cheap and upgrade more often [a reasonable plan in the ever-advancing world of gaming], this is a respectable entry-level machine.

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Runner Up

The Pavilion Gaming Laptop punches well above its weight in the entry-level range. Its every bit as sturdy and refined as its high-end counterparts, and it even has surprisingly respectable battery life. The Pavilion Haming Laptop has sacrificed a few things to hit that budget level, namelya dismal display and no mouse buttons. Still, with models starting as cheap as $800 on HP.com, you can configure this overall solid machine to fit your budget.

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Gigabytes Aorus 17G gaming laptop, with its high-end parts and sharp-angled design, looks like it should be loud, but its not. Its amazingly quiet, actually.Weve heard ultraportable laptops produce more noise under a load than the Aorus 17G does while gaming.

It may spoil your fun a bit to know that Gigabyte achieved this feat by taking the RTX 3080 mobile GPU down a notch in performance. If you always want the ultimate gaming machine, youll invest in a good pair of gaming headphones and put up with a shrieking hair dryer shaped like a laptop. But if you wished gaming laptops werent so loud, the Aorus 17G grants your wishwith a modest tradeoff.

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[$2,700 MSRP as reviewed;

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HPs Omen 17 gaming laptops have a reputation with us that can be summarized in four words: solid performance. Surprisingly affordable.

Granted, its price has actually gone up recently because of a pandemic-fueled stampede of laptop purchases. Still, the Omen 17 has its place. Is it a looker? Debatable. Is it the best gaming laptop? Definitely not. But HP always manages to cram more hardware than youd expect under the hood, then sell the Omen 17 way below market rate.

Im not sure how HP pulls off this bit of wizardry, but its made the Omen 17 a hit. And the trend continues, as the 2019 model were testing [poetically monikered the 17-cb0040nr] packs in some of the latest and greatest CPUs and GPUs for hundreds of dollars less than the competition.

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The ROG Zephyrus G14 debuts with AMDs stellar Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU, and we can safely say: Just give Asus your money. This laptop packs a stupid amount of performance into a stupidly small and stupidly light [3.5-pound] frame. Youre talking about a weight class that typically gives you lower-power CPUs and GPUs. Yet the G14 can hang in CPU performance with laptops that weight 10 pounds.

Obviously the star of the show is the

separately. But the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 as a whole package is nearly as impressive..

Alienwares Area-51m flagship gaming laptop is big, thick, and fast, a return to form that should reassure people who got worried when the company unveiled the

last year. The new Area-51m very well might be the first gaming laptop to bring the Holy Grail of features to consumers: Upgradable graphics and an upgradable CPU. Read our full.

Runner-up

The Alienware 17 R5 packs Intels debut

, which turns this already beastly gaming laptop into an utter monster. The version we tested [] pumps out more performance than weve ever seen in a gaming laptop with all-mobile parts. It offers over 55 percent more multi-thread performance than its already-potent direct predecessor. CPU benchmarks this fast were practically unthinkable.

IDG/Gordon Ung

The MSI GS63VR features a 4K resolution panel but not enough GPU to really drive it for todays games.

When you buy a gaming laptop, one of the most important decisions youll need to make regards the screen. After all, what you get on day one is what youre stuck with until you junk the device. You could run an external monitor but then, whats the point of a laptop?

Screen size

The size of the screen dictates the size of the laptop itself, and thus weight. You cant, for example, get a 17-inch gaming laptop thats four pounds [although MSIs excellent GS75 gets awfully damned close at five], so think long and hard about whether youre willing to take the weight penalty in exchange for the screen real estate.

If the laptop is going to be your only gaming machine, having a 17-inch screen might be ideal. We should also add that a 17.3-inch screen is easier on weaker eyes than a 15.5-inch screen. This is very much a matter of personal preference.

Screen resolution

The buzzword today is 4K. That high resolution delivers sharper photo viewing and more space for video editing, but that doesnt mean its for everyone. Anything not using the panels native resolution of 3840×2180, such as games running at lower-than-4K resolution, wont look quite as sharp unless you exponentially increase the graphics power of the laptop.

If youre running at 1920×1080 resolution because your GPU cant hit 60 fps at 4K, that feature is moot. For many gamers, 1920×1080 [1080p] or 2560×1440 [1440p] is more optimal.

IPS vs. TN vs. OLED

The panel technology is also a key feature. IPS [in-plane switching] generally produces much greater color accuracy and superior off-axis viewing, but tends to lag in response times, which can lead to blurring. TN [twisted nematic] panels can offer far higher refresh rates and usually better response times than IPS, but can look washed out or just blah.

A middle-ground technology thats appearing more often is VA [vertical alignment]. VA is sometimes alternately referred to as wide viewing angle technology. [Many assume this to spec to be IPS, but its not]. In our experience, weve found VA panels to run the gamut from being worthy competitors to IPS to being worse than the better TN panels.

Generally, if color accuracy is important, go IPS [a trademark of Sharp], and if you want the fastest response times go for a gaming-oriented TN panel. With the variability of VA, we recommend you check feedback from reviewers and users of a particular model.

The wildcard in all this is OLED. OLED-based panels have been used in phones for years but have recently migrated to larger screens in laptops. IPS, TN, and VA all use LEDs behind the screen or along the edges. Black is produced by a shutter-like mechanism that blocks light from coming through. As you can imagine, theres usually some light leakage, which means the black tends to be gray.

OLED panels dont rely on edge- or backlighting. Instead, each pixel generates its own light. To produce black, it just switches off the light. This amounts to truly stunning contrast ratios and vibrant colors. OLEDs also boast fantastic response times.

The negatives include smaller screen sizes [we havent seen anything larger than 15.6 inches yet], higher cost, and lack of support for variable refresh rate.OLED panels can also use more power than conventional methods if the image is on a white background.

G-Sync and FreeSync

Okay, we called this section G-Sync and FreeSync, but the reality is, when it comes to beefy gaming laptops, its a GeForce GPU world. And that means its a G-Sync world. In a nutshell, Nvidia and AMDs respective variable-refresh-rate technologies help synchronize the monitor and the GPU to greatly reduce screen tearing. Variable refresh rates can make gaming at 40 fps far smoother to your eyes than a screen without it.

The first variable-refresh-rate panels for laptops maxed out at 75Hz, only marginally better than the standard 60Hz. More recently, weve begun to see laptop panels that can push 120Hz, 144Hz and even 240Hz.This generally means smoother and sharper gaming to your eyes. It even helps smooth out everyday tasks such as scrolling a browser page or Word document.

The downside of high-refresh rate panels is the technology its available on: TN. As we said earlier, TN generally looks less vibrant and less accurate than IPS. The off-axis view is generally inferior, too.Youll also need a far more powerful GPU to feed that high-refresh rate monitor at its native resolution.

One last very important note: G-Sync screens have to be connected directly to the laptops discrete GPU, which means a large hit in battery life. In most laptops without G-Sync, the Intel integrated graphics is connected directly to the screen, so the GPU can be turned off when not being used. So while G-Sync is beautiful to behold, the cost in battery life is huge.

Which is right for you? If its primarily a gaming laptopgo for a high refresh rate and G-Sync [or FreeSync, if you can find a laptop that supports it with a Radeon GPU]. If you tend to also push pixels in Photoshop or do any color-critical work, skip variable refresh for an IPS panel.

A new trend in gaming laptops is the offset trackpad, which is more conducive to gaming than a dead-center trackpad. The concept is sound, but anyone who actually cares about PC gaming will just plug in a mouse. The worst thing about that offset trackpad is when you try to use it for non-gaming purposes.

As far as keyboards go, the most important gaming feature is n-key rollover. This means the keyboard physically scans each key separately. If you wanted to, you could press 20 keys simultaneously and theyd all register, as each is independently wired. That probably sounds excessive, but keyboards that lack this feature can suffer missed keystrokes, which both ruins gameplay and hurts in everyday tasks. Anyone whos used an Adobe product that might require a left-Alt, left-Shift, left-Ctrl plus two more keys to do something may have run into the limitations of non-n-key keyboards.

Other keyboard considerations include LED backlighting [which adds ambiance but does nothing for gameplay] and mechanical keys vs. membrane. Mechanical keys are excellentbut are available on only a handful of laptops that usually weigh a ton. We have seen a few designs with low-profile mechanical keyboards, but even we admit they can be an acquired taste.

Samsung

With the massive size of todays games, make sure the SSD in your laptop is large enough.

Having your games load from an SSD instead of a hard drive significantly cuts down on load times. But beyond that, we havent found it to matter that much whether its a super-fast NVMe PCIe drive or a slower SATA SSD.

What does matter more today is the size of the SSD rather than the interface it uses. With games now topping 50GB and some touching 100GBs, a once-spacious 256GB SSD will feel too small with just four games installed.

So when specing out that gaming laptop, be mindful of just how much total storage you have. If you go for laptop with a small SSD and large hard drive combo, expect to install your games to the hard drive. If the laptop will have an SSD only, choose an absolute minimum of 512GB, with 1TB preferred.

When laptop makers spec out gaming laptops, one of the levers they use to try to convince you to buy their product is upping the amount of RAM. Its not hard to find gaming laptops with upgraded configurations that go from 16GB of DDR4 to 32GB.

While having an adequate amount of RAM is important for gaming, todays games typically top out at 16GB of RAM, and sometimes can run fine with just 8GB of RAM. Anything more than 16GB [our standard recommendation] is usually a waste of money.

You might want to blame laptop and PC makers for cynically using an erroneous spec to manipulate the public, but the blame actually lies with the average buyer. PC makers have told us for years they only over-spec RAM because the public thinks more is better.

Besides the amount of memory, a couple of other important, but not critical, questions to ask is what clock speed and what mode. Modern CPUs let you run RAM in sets to increase the memory bandwidth.

More memory bandwidth immediately helps laptops that are running integrated graphics, but the conventional wisdom has long been that discrete GPUs in laptops dont benefit as much because they have their own dedicated, much faster GDDR5 RAM to use. Thats typically the case, but the performance of todays GPUs and CPUs can make this conventional wisdom wrong.

Gaming performance is often about a balance between the CPU and the GPU, and how graphically intensive a game is. With games that are graphically intensive, the GPU is the primary bottleneck on performance. Play a game that isnt graphically intense, though, and the CPU can rapidly become the bottleneck on performance.

With the power of todays GPUs, a lot of games, especially at a sedate resolution of 1920×1080, have shifted more performance to the CPU.The reason were talking about this now is if you rob the CPU of memory bandwidth, even a decently fast one, you can take a sizable hit in gaming performance.

The basic lesson is you should opt for dual-channel memory bandwidth configurations when possible. On a laptop spec sheet, you typically would see this expressed as dual-channel or 2 x 8 to indicate that two 8GB memory modules were used in a laptop.

Some laptop makers will express memory in clock speed, so youll see DDR4/2,133 or DDR4/2,400. While a higher memory clock does increase memory bandwidth, the impact isnt quite as great as going from dual-channel to single-channel mode.

Intel

There may be real competition between AMD and Intel when it comes to gaming CPUs in desktops now, but in gaming laptops, the world is still very much 95-percent Intel.Thats not necessarily a bad thing, as Intels laptop CPUs are excellent. Still, there are a few things you need to consider about the CPU for your gaming laptop.

A typical Intel laptop CPU will pack from four to eight processor cores. Most will feature Hyper-Threading, which lets the CPU offer virtual CPUs to use its resources more efficiently.

Gaming laptops today mostly give you a choice of 8th-gen H or 9th-gen H high-power CPUs. Thats led to a lot of confusion for consumers. We recommend that you not sweat

. Outside of security mitigations, the change is mostly a clock speed bump on Core i7 and Core i5 models.The key difference is at the high end, where the 9th-gen Core i9 gives you two more cores than the Core i7.

If youre shopping in that zone of do I buy 8th-gen gaming laptop? or do I buy a 9th-gen gaming laptop? weve broken out each models differences. For contrast, we also break out that the biggest performance improvement was going from Intels 7th-gen to its 8th-gen chips.

IDG

Its pretty had to live up to the huge performance boost the 8th gen chips gave us, but 9th gen Core i9 gives it a good try.

How many cores do you need in a gaming laptop? For most people on a budget, a 4-core CPU with Hyper-Threading will function just fine in most games, especially when combined with a lower-cost and lower performance GPU.

Still, if you have the extra cash, a 6-core CPU with Hyper-Threading is likely the sweet spot for today and tomorrow. If you plan to stream your gaming live or edit it, investing in a 6-core is recommended.

Intels top-end 8-core CPUs will deliver the greatest benefit to those who might do other graphics-intensive tasks, such as 3D animation or video editing. If you also plan to record and stream video, the 8-core will offer a performance benefit there, too.

If youre thinking, great, let me buy a 4-core Core i5 CPU with a luxury laptop to save money, you usually cant, because PC makers typically only offer budget CPUs with other budget parts. Why? Well, most budget shoppers cant afford any luxury items, and most PC makers like to add in the extras to increase the profit.

Nvidia

How to pick a GPU for a gaming laptop

The single most important piece of hardware in a gaming laptop is undoubtedly the GPU. For AMD fans, the situation is as sad as it is in CPUs: Its an Nvidia GeForce world.As with CPUs though, the good news is that the dominating products are top-notch.

The hardest part will be deciding just how much GPU you need. Our general guidance is to buy as fast a GPU as you can afford and are willing to heft. Generally, the faster the GPU [or GPUs], the larger and heavier the laptop.

Because one of the easiest buying mistakes is to not be armed with enough knowledge, weve compiled a list of results weve seen from gaming laptops using 3DMark Time Spy. Its a DirectX 12 test that is a good representation of modern gaming. Our score focuses in on the graphics portion only, so the CPU differences have very little impact on the score.

IDG

Heres how various gaming laptops perform in the DirectX 12 graphics test Time Spy. We hone in only on the graphics performance so the CPU performance doesnt matter very much.

We generally think the GTX 1050 or GTX 1650 is a good 1080p GPU, if youre willing to play on medium settings. To hit High in some games, youll need to lower the resolution to 720p.

If you really want 60 fps at 1080p with few compromises, the GeForce GTX 1660Ti or GeForce RTX 2060 is a good level of graphic card to shoot for.If you need to feed a high-refresh panel of 144Hz or 240Hz at 1920×1080, wed recommend notching up to an GeForce RTX 2070 or even higher.

If youre talking about playing on a higher-resolution panel of 2560×1440 at high-refresh rates, then keep increasing the amount of money spent on the GPU.

One other wrinkle you have to sort out in a gaming laptop is support for hardware ray tracing. Ray tracing is a graphics capability touted by Nvidia that creates more realistic plays of light and shadow over any given scene in a game.Nvidias GeForce RTX-series of cards accelerate ray tracing in real time using Microsofts DirectX Ray Tracing API.

One rub against

when enabled. Also, the techniques are supported in only a few games [and mostly sparingly]. Games such as Remedys Control, however,how beautiful ray tracing can be.

The performance penalty, especially in laptops, is steep. Using Nvidias own ratings for ray tracing performancea Giga Raythe parity between mobile and desktop isnt what it once was.

A full-power GeForce RTX 2070 in a laptop is speced for the same Giga Rays as a GeForce RTX 2060 desktop graphics card. The Giga Ray specs for the lower-power Max-Q rated RTX cards is even worse. The GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q, for example, has the same Giga Ray spec as the full power GeForce RTX 2070.

IDG

Even by Nvidias standards of measuring ray tracing performance, laptops are a little behind the power curve.

In actual games, such as the punishing Control, the GeForce RTX 2060 mobile might push 30 fps, while the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q and the GeForce RTX 2080 without Max-Q might hit the 40-fps range. Thats with the game set to its highest settings with all of the DirectX Ray Tracing features turned on. The vast majority of DXR games today arent likely to use as many bells and whistles as Control does.

The good news is that even if the ray tracing performance of the mobile parts is a bit disappointing, the cards are also fast when ray tracing features arent used. If you want the fastest gaming laptop today, reach for one with a GeForce RTX 2080 in it.

Adam Patrick Murray

The Acer Predator Triton 500 features an 8th gen Core i7-8750H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU along with 16GB of dual-channel RAM and 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD.

Were now in our second generation of laptops with Nvidias Max-Q technology. Max-Q is essentially the same GPU as the full power version, but tuned to run at a lower power and thermal output. This lets laptop makers stuff performance previously unheard-of into a thin laptop.

As expected, there is a performance cost, which is similar to what we saw with the 10-series of Max-Q laptops. Most of the performance hit is taken at the top end with the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q. It sees a large power savings along with a large performance penalty. Weve seen the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q perform on a par with a full-power GeForce RTX 2070 in conventional gaming. The two lower rungs of RTX Max-Q cards dont save you as much power. No surprise, the performance isnt as bad either, with the hit being around 10 percent.

The basic lesson in life is you cant have your cake and eat it too. If you want to lug a five-pound gaming laptop instead of a nine-pound gaming laptop, the cost is performance.

Gordon Mah Ung/IDG

An external Thunderbolt 3 cabinet combined with an ultra light laptop is a good way to get your game on but still give you a light computer.

The last category you should think about is the burgeoning support for external graphics in gaming laptops. Customers of Alienware have long enjoyed this with its relatively inexpensive [and proprietary]

technology, but many new laptops support external graphics cabinets using Thunderbolt 3.

These cabinets let you plug your laptop into a more powerful discrete GPU. The

[which you can find on] is one such Thunderbolt 3 cabinet thats helped usher in lower prices. Although external graphics are primarily desired by users who run on integrated graphics, a gaming laptop with Thunderbolt 3 support could come in handy when the GPU inside gets too old to play the latest games.

The last topic well cover is battery life. The best way to understand battery life on a gaming laptop is to accept that itll be horrible for all things gaming.

The minute you crank up a GPU on a gaming laptop to play a game, youre basically limiting yourself to an hour or an hour and a half of battery runtime. Period. And in some cases, far less than that.

The only reason to consider battery life on a gaming laptop is if you want to use your laptop unplugged for non-gaming purposes. In that respect, youll find a lot of variance, with somesuch as Gigabytes Aero 15offering decent battery life, albeit with a trade-off in gaming performance.