The best gaming laptops for students: Best overall, best budget, and more

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro tics off a lot of boxes. It offers fantastic gaming performance, a wide range of connectivity options, a rugged design, and so much more. The pricing is competitive, too. This machine is more than capable and the best bang for your buck.

The Legion 5 Pro has an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. According to our tester, the laptop “screamed at 148 frames-per-second” during the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark. The non-touch IPS display has a resolution of 2560×1600 and a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. The display is also bright, but it’s not as colorful as others we’ve seen. Overall, we feel the pros far outweigh the cons here.

If you’re looking for strong gaming performance at an affordable price, the Asus VivoBook Pro 15 OLED is a fantastic choice. According to our tester, this laptop can easily handle “gaming, streaming, and day-to-day productivity.” It has an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of NVMe PCIe SSD storage. You may need to drop down to medium or high graphics when playing newer AAA titles. That said, this machine should be able to run older games just fine. The OLED panel is also superb and battery life is great. In fact, it lasted over 11 hours on a single charge during our battery-life benchmark. That’s impressive for a gaming laptop. There are a few minor nitpicks to be aware of, though.

The fingerprint scanner is downright finicky and the overall aesthetic is uninspiring. The port selection isn’t too diverse, either. If you can live with those caveats, the VivoBook Pro 15 OLED is an absolute joy to use and well worth considering. If you’re interested in more budget gaming laptop recommendations, be sure to check out our picks for the best gaming laptops under $1,500 and the best gaming laptops under $1,000.

Another option for the budget-conscious buyer is the Acer Nitro 5. This 17.3-inch laptop provides ample performance and plenty of screen real estate for a very reasonable price. It includes a Ryzen 7 processor, RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD. Those are pretty good specs for a laptop that frequently goes on sale for under $1,000.

The main reason it didn’t take the top spot over the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 was due to the differences in displays. The Vivobook Pro 15 comes with a stunning OLED display while the Acer Nitro 5 only has a 1080p IPS panel. The Nitro 5 is also a bit more expensive, but it does come with a bit more performance for that money. Overall, the two are very close, but which you buy will likely come down to what is most important to you—slightly more gaming performance, or a better display.

The Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X combines the rare combination for gaming laptops of being both ultra-lightweight and powerful. Weighing in at just over three pounds, it lives up to the name of ultraportable. In such a tiny package they somehow manage to fit an AMD Ryzen 6900HS CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. This means that you can expect strong gaming performance even while on the go.

There honestly aren’t many knocks against it. While the display is sharp, it’s not OLED and the battery life is lacking a little bit. But these are minor inconveniences and don’t really take away from the overall appeal of this ultraportable. One thing to note however is that the RTX 3050 GPU is fine for most games, but it won’t be able to handle ray tracing, so if playing at the ultra settings is important then you may want to consider a laptop with a more robust graphics card. However, if you’re looking for a portable gaming laptop that promises solid performance, the Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X is a great option.

The HP Victus 16 has a really comfortable keyboard, which is great for schoolwork because of longer typing sessions. According to our tester, he was “happy to use the keyboard on a long-term basis.” HP put a number pad in there as well, which is perfect for gamers. But how does it perform? Well, let’s get into the guts then.

This laptop should be able to run most older games on medium to high graphics, as well as everyday tasks like writing papers, browsing the web, and so on. It features an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. The 16.1-inch display has a resolution of 1920×1080 and a refresh rate of 144Hz. The display hinge is a little flimsy though, so you’ll want to be mindful when handling it.

We didn’t have many knocks against this laptop, but the design is anything but a head-turner, that’s for sure. If you can live with the ho-hum design, the Victus 16 is a solid choice, especially if you’re on a strict budget.

If you want the cream of the crop, the Alienware x15 R2 is the one to pick. It’s rocking an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. The 15.6-inch display has a resolution of 2560×1440 and a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz. Wow. Just wow. It has some quirks, though. The rear ports are difficult to reach and the RAM is soldered on. That said, the features really dominate any drawbacks.

If you’re in a position to shell out the cash, the Alienware x15 R2 will surely deliver an out-of-this-world experience.

Absolutely! 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum I’d recommend, but if you can afford it, go for 16GB instead. This will help overall browser performance, which is important when you’re doing schoolwork. Memory is typically upgradeable, so you can always swap it out and add more later on.

Storage directly impacts how many games you can install on your computer. You should get at least 512GB of SSD storage plus a hard drive, as newer titles tend to eat up a ton of space. SSDs load games faster because the data is stored on chips rather than a spinning disk. Plus, SSDs are quieter and more power efficient. You’ll also need the space to store homework and so on.