by CT |
Last Updated: April 20, 2021 On a budget but looking for the best gaming laptop under $1,500?
There are plenty of affordable gaming rigs available today – but we’ve narrowed down our list based on some key factors: quality components (e.g., Nvidia GTX 10 series GPU), low cost ($1500+ under), and bringing something more unique/specialized compared to most budget gaming laptops.
The Best Gaming Laptop Under $1,500
Here are our top picks for gaming laptops under $1,500.
1. ASUS TUF FX504
Our first gaming beast on this list is the ASUS TUF FX504. It offers great performance, strong thermals that just don’t quit, and better-than-usual battery life.
- 15.6” Full HD
- 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H Processor
- GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- 8GB DDR4
- 256GB M.2 SSD
- Gigabit WiFi
- Windows 10 - FX504GE-ES72 Black Matter Edition
Design
The TUF Gaming FX504 comes with a modest, yet bold design. Its 15.6-inch display is flanked by a chunky bezel, and the deck is the same plastic with red lines. The keyboard comes with a red backlit.
Graphics & Display
The 15.6-inch screen comes with a 1080p display on the FX504.
It has a sharp and impressive screen packed to cover just 66 percent of the sRGB color gamut, which is well below the 98-per cent entry-level gaming average, as well as the showings from the Razorblade 15 (149 percent).
The panel on this Asus gaming laptop averaged only 220 nits on our light meter, which is dimmer than both the average (256 nits) and the Nitro 5 Spin (296 percent).
Gaming Firepower
The FX504 boasts of an Intel Core i5-8300H CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB SSHD which makes it a little faster.
On the Geekbench 4 overall performance test, the FX504 earned a score of 12,038 and it took the FX504 54 seconds to transfer 4.97GB of files, for a rate of 94.5 MBps. On our Excel macro test, it took the FX504 1 minute and 13 seconds to pair 65,000 names and addresses which is a few seconds behind the average (1:10).
This gaming monstrous beast when tested 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 the average (14:20).
TUF Gaming FX504’s battery is not quite awesome enough for a gaming laptop. It endured for just 3 hours and 57 minutes on Laptop Mag Battery Test 2.0, which continuously watches videos, browses the web and runs through graphics benchmarks at 150 nits of brightness.
The FX504 can keep its cool under a light load. After we streamed 15 minutes of HD video from YouTube, it measured 79 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad, 91 degrees between the G and H keys, and 96 degrees on the bottom — just a smidge above our 95-degree comfort threshold. The FX504 is designed to stay cooler than our expectations while gaming with it. When I played Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the keyboard reached 96 degrees, the touchpad was unchanged and the bottom measured 104 degrees.
2. The Asus ROG Zephyrus S
The second on our list is the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX531GX.
- VR Ready 120Hz FHD Gaming Laptop
- 8Core AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS(Beat i7-10750H)
- 16GB RAM
- 1TB PCIe SSD
- Wi-Fi 6,USB C
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060 Max-Q
- Windows 10 (Moonlight White)
Design
What a beautiful gaming machine! This 15-inch beauty has the slender and elegant design of an ultrabook, that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a gaming laptop. It is packed with powerful gaming components.
It measures 14 x 10.6 x 0.63 inches (36 x 26.8 x 1.61cm; W x D x H) and has a weight of 4.63 pounds (2.1kg). This stunning machine takes on the mantle of the world’s slimmest and sleekest gaming laptop. This sexy beast has a pure aluminum covering. The lid of Zephyrus S comes with a two-tone black design that splits it into two halves diagonally.
The diagonal design divides the brushed aluminum coating and elegant matte making the ROG logo sit comfortably on the brushed side. The ROG logo shines a glossy silver which reveals comic-book-stylized dots that glow magenta when the laptop boots.
Just below the lid, the laptop has a sleek cutout made for the hinge which houses additional ports. Taking into account the powerful components embedded inside this gaming device, it includes a top-of-the-range discrete GPU which is highly impressive.
Graphics & Display
Asus ROG Zephyrus has a nearly bezel-less 15.6 inches HD and 144Hz IPS type display. It equally has a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, an awesome 3-millisecond response time.
Gaming Firepower
This game beast is armed with an 8Th-generation Intel Core i7-10750H (Hexa-core, 9MB cache, up to 4.1GHz) processor, base of 1101MHz, boost of 1265MHz, TDP of 90W, a 512GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 630, 16GB of RAM, and NVIDIA’s latest high-end graphics card (Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q (8GB GDDR6 VRAM).
Asus ROG Zephyrus also comes with all connectivity needed for gaming on the go (Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2 while Type-C (USB-C) ports available at USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Gen 1 speeds, and USB 2.0 ports for a gamepad and mouse) as well as the ROG active Aerodynamic System (AAs), awesome speakers, stunning customizable 4-zone ASUS Aura RGB Gaming Keyboard, an anti-dust tunnel and an upgradable 12V fans to maintain the system stability and cooling performance.
3. Acer Predator Helios 300
The third on our list is the Acer Predator Helios with high-level specs for a gaming laptop.
- 17.3" Full HD 144Hz 3ms IPS Display,
- Intel i7-9750H
- GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB
- 16GB DDR4
- 512GB NVMe SSD
- RGB Backlit Keyboard
- PH317-53-7777
Design
Acer Predator Helios 300 has a gamer aesthetic with its black color and red accents, tapered edges, metal chassis in a metallic gun finish and geometric cuts. It has a silver logo above the predator lettering design and a bottom with two easy-to-remove compartments for the RAM and the hard drive. The laptop is a great size, not too bulky but also amazingly lighter in weight than it looks (5.51 lbs. / 2.5kg).
Graphics & Display
This machine has a 15.6 inches Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen and LED-backlit IPS display and has HD webcam (1280 x 720) that supports Super High Dynamic Range.
Gaming Firepower
Acer Predator Helios 300 boasts of an 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H Processor 2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology of up to 4.10 GHz (9.0 MB Smart cache) with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit. Predator Helios 300 comes with the Acer true harmony plus technology, a graphics card coprocessor of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, dual all-metal AeroBlade 3D fan cooling, two built-in stereo speakers, an Intel wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac gigabit Wi-Fi, backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 5.0, 6 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM and 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD.
If that wasn’t enough, it features a cell Li-Ion battery capacity of 3320 mAh that can last up to 7-hours of battery life plus an extra empty accessible slot for 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD and 2 ports for both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0.
Here is our full review of the Acer Predator Helios 300.
4. ASUS TUF Gaming TUF505
This gaming beast ranks fourth on our gaming laptop list. This gaming machine runs on windows 10 and combines several qualities to make spectacular gaming performance for all the latest games and multitask easily.
- 15.6” Full HD
- 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H Processor
- GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- 8GB DDR4
- 256GB M.2 SSD
- Gigabit WiFi
- Windows 10 - FX504GE-ES72 Black Matter Edition
Design
The gaming TUF505 boast of an IPS-type nano-edge display with a very thin bezel for extreme immersion in a much more compact package. It comes with wide viewing angles that provide lucid and consistent colors even when you are viewing from extreme positions.
Graphics & Display
This gaming machine comes with dimensions of 14.2″ x 10.3″ x 1.0″, weighs 4.9 lbs and offers backlit scissor-switch keys with 0.25mm keycap curves and 1.8mm of travel for smooth and tactile keystrokes on the keyboard.
Gaming Firepower
It features the GeForce GTX 16-Series graphics and a quad-core Ryzen 7 processor. It competes favorably with other gaming laptops in its category given its durable MIL-STD-810G rated chassis and backlit keyboard of about 20-million keystroke durability. Given its latest Intel Wave 2 Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) which is among the fastest Wi-Fi standards, it has the capacity to transfer data up to an incredible rate of 1.7Gbps. In a similar vein, it has an Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) system which makes it handles modern games adeptly while maintaining its stability and reliability.
The TUF505 provides you with a host of I/O ports (1x Headphone-out & Audio-in Combo Jack, 1x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert, 1x HDMI, 1x USB Type-A 2.0, 2x USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen.1)) for your gaming peripherals and a memory of 16GB DDR4, 1TB (5400 RPM) + 256GB PCIe SSD.
5. Razer Blade 15
The Razer Blade gaming laptop is reviewed as a stylish gaming laptop with very powerful gaming hardware that can play virtually all modern games without any lagging or difficulty.
- World's Smallest 15.6" Gaming Laptop
- 60Hz Full HD Thin Bezel
- 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H 6 Core
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q
- 16GB RAM
- 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD
- Windows 10
Design
Razer’s laptops are known to have a great look. The ink-black aluminum chassis is designed to incite a thrill in its user. The Razer blade 15 comes with a 15.6” making it the world’s smallest gaming laptop weighing just 4.4 pounds. The Razer logo sits directly in the middle of the lid with a green color. It has a built compact with durable CNC aluminum unibody (0.78” x 9.25” x 13.98”).
Graphics & Display
The color on the Blade 15’s matte, 15.6-inch full HD edge-to-edge display (4.9mm bezels) is just as striking as its chassis. However, I wish the 1920 x 1080 panel was a tad brighter. The Razer Blade panel has an awesome 144-Hz refresh rate, which will perfectly cut down on jagged images and motion blur. Its display is stunning and capable of reproducing an impressive 149 percent of the sRGB color gamut which explains the vivacious hues. It’s almost on a par with the m15 and the Stealth, which measured 150 percent and still topped the 140-per cent premium gaming laptop average.
Gaming Firepower
The Razer Blade 15 comes with a 2.2-GHz Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q Design VR Ready graphics 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H 6 core processor. This monstrous gaming laptop comes with a dual storage capacity of 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD for improved speed and capacity. It also boasts of a memory of 16GB Dual-Channel DDR-4-2667MHz that is expandable to 32GB.
It comes with multiple ports:
- 1 USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 port
- 3 standard USB 3.1 ports
- A Mini Display Port
- A full-sized HDMI
- Gigabit Ethernet jack
6. Dell G5587
The Dell Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS offers you a modern gaming laptop that can play all the latest games in full HD. It can suffice for all daily productivity and it comes with good battery life and has a reasonable price that doesn’t break the bank.
- Gaming Laptop 15.6" LED Display
- 8th Gen Intel i7 Processor
- 16GB Memory
- 128GB SSD+1TB HDD
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti
- Licorice Black
Design
With the all-metal premium build that comes with the Dell Inspiron G5587, it propels a crafty pleasing design. It has a black body with a red accent and the dell logo sits comfortably at the centre of the lid. It comes with a plastic body and has a soft finish and sturdy body that makes it look simple and elegant. It features a measuring dimension of 0.98 by 15.32 by 10.82 inches (HWD) and weighs about 6.8 lbs. It possesses a relatively slim design which is appropriate for a gaming laptop and doesn’t require much effort for carrying it around.
Graphics & Display
The Dell Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS comes with a 15.6-inch screen with all the whistles and bells, an IPS LED Display, FHD (1920-by-1080) resolution, and anti-glare coating. It does not have touch support but its display is decent for gaming. It features the Waves Maxx Audio Pro for clear sound output and a 1280×720 webcam for Skype chats and filming videos. It offers backlit of white light and the key is of decent quality although it has short key travel. With the smoothness of the touchpad, it offers a comfortable look yet slightly offset.
Gaming Firepower
The Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS’s 16GB of memory, 4GB of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and hexa-core Intel Core i7-8750H is an awesome choice for multitasking, general productivity and effective gaming prowess for the latest game out there. Thanks to the 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) storage which is both spacious and speedy and the additional 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive (that runs up to 4x quicker than conventional SATA, run your machine faster and improve shock resistance) that is available for storing all your files and downloads.
The Inspiron G5587-7866BLK-PUS’s comes with a remarkable battery that can last up to 7 hours 34 minutes which is quite longer than most conventional gaming laptops.
7. MSI GV62
The MSI GV62 8RD-034 comes with the gaming features needed to play all the latest games decently – and continue to be one of the affordable gaming laptops under $1,500.
- 15.6" Thin and Light Gaming Laptop
- GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4G
- Intel i7-8750H (6 Cores)
- 8GB DDR4, 128GB SSD + 1TB
- Windows 10 64 bit
- Steelseries Red Backlit Keys
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- Strong Performance
- Thin and Lightweight
- Customizable Steel Series Keyboard
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- Not VR-Ready
- Short Battery Life
- Middling Gaming Performance
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Design
This gaming monster comes with the same case as most of the MSI predecessors in the GV62 lineup except for some minor changes which include a thinner design and lack of an optical drive. The chassis of this laptop is made mostly of black plastic with some red accents.
This gaming laptop has an overall stylish design and stunning gaming aesthetics in comfortable places for the gamer. It is built to afford expandability and you will be given the autonomy to remove the underside and swap out the RAM if you would love to. Its portability is second to none; hence it is one of the most portable gaming laptops.
Graphics & Display
This gaming machine offers a display of 15.6″ full HD 1920X1080p panel eDP IPS-Level 45% NTSC which gives a wide viewing angle and awesome brightness. The Steel Series’ built-in keyboard is very comfortable to type on and well designed with a very responsive and smooth one-piece keypad.
Gaming Firepower
This gaming beast boasts of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card with 4GB of DDR5 memory. The MSI GV62 8RD-034 packs the new 8th Gen Coffee Lake-H Core i7-8750H chip combined with the speedy SSD and the configurable 8GB of RAM which can be easily upgraded up to 32GB which enables this gaming laptop to handle all demanding and rigorous tasks such as gaming and video editing with ease. Although it comes with a newly designed CPU to save battery life, it does not have a good battery life span.
8. Eluktronics MECH
A Premium Option for the Best Gaming Laptops Under $1,500
Although Eluktronics is not well-known in the gaming world, they have earned a good reputation and decent name. The Mech continues that great reputation.
- G3 Ultra Performance 15.6" Laptop
- G-SYNC & Advanced Optimus Technology
- Intel i7-10870H NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super Max-P
- 16GB RAM
- 1TB NVMe SSD
Design
This gaming machine is designed with a black brushed matte finishing overall and comes with an aluminum lid which carries the Eluktronics logo that sits elegantly on the lid together with attractive internals.
Graphics & Display
Eluktronics MECH-15 G1Rx is packed with a 15.6 inches Full HD (1920 x 1080) narrow bezel 144Hz Full HD LG IPS 72% NTSC Anti-Glare Display (1920 x 1080) and a set of brown switch type premium mechanical gaming per-key RGB backlit keyboard with NKRO, anti-ghosting, 10-key numeric keypad, and customizable RGB light bar.
Gaming Firepower
Boasting of a Hexa-core 9th Generation Intel Core i7 Processor with NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super Max-P, coupled with 16GB of RAM which makes it a very awesome computer beating most of the all-purpose laptops in the market. It is packed with 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD making it able to handle almost all kinds of games thrown at it at around 80 to 1000 fps.
When fully charged, this gaming beast can outlast more than 5 hours of continuous usage which is a decent pack for a gaming laptop of its size and 144Hz display.
9. MSI GS65 Stealth
Slim, fast, and long-lasting battery life. One of the more sleek gaming laptops under $1,500.
- THIN-051 15.6" 144Hz 7ms
- Ultra Thin Gaming Laptop GTX 1060 6G
- i7-8750H 6 Core
- 16GB RAM
- 256GB SSD
- RGB KB VR Ready
- Black w/ Gold Diamond Cut
- Windows 10 Home 64bit
Design
This gaming beast is fashioned with gold accents and it’s beautiful without being ostentatious. The laptop’s whole chassis is made from black, matte sandblasted aluminum alloy. Instead of the popular logo, MSI replaced it with a little Midas touch, with a printed black-and-gold emblem.
Since its basic design is for both work and play, it is equipped with a flexible hinge that affords it to lay flat on a 180 degree. You can as well flip the screen orientation 180 degrees for a better view by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Down arrow key. The laptop’s interior has more black aluminum while the power button and touchpad are lined in gold with some delicate stunning floral design on the part of the interior with the top-mounted vent.
Graphics & Display
The GS65 comes with a 15.6-inch matte IPS 1920×1080 display, which features an awesome 144 Hz refresh rate that is immediately obvious at first glance due to the fluidity of even such mundane motions as mouse movement. The contrast and brightness seem average but colors pop vividly. The color coverage from the display is pretty cool with 92% of sRGB and 60% of AdobeRGB.
Although this might prove insufficient for serious photography or heavy graphic design, it’s a good catch for practically everyone else. It has a color accuracy that is reasonably strong for the GS65; measuring ColorChecker/Greyscale DeltaE averages of just 2.77/4 and a ColorChecker maximum of 5.89 (Blue). The Total Gamma of 2.27 and CCT Average of 6901 are also good results.
Gaming Firepower
The GS65 is a very fast gaming laptop in general performance and it manages a strong PCMark 10 overall score of 4646.
Subjectively, this gaming laptop is indeed very fast and no notable hiccups were encountered during our time with it. MSI GS65 notebooks are powered by an i7-8750H 6 Core, 256GB SSD, RGB KB VR Ready. 16GB RAM DDR4-2400 MHz dual-channel RAM. This CPU is produced using the Coffee Lake “14 nm++” process and boasts clock rates ranging from 2.2 and 4.1 GHz (3.9 GHz with 6 cores).
It also carries a TDP of 45 W. The powerful VR ready graphics makes gaming on this laptop comes with confidence in ultra settings as you employ the NVIDIA’s cutting edge GTX 1070 graphics to enhance your gaming and VR experience.
Its performance while unplugged is notably below that while plugged in; the second run of 3DMark 11 while operating on battery power yields a score of just 5758. Elsewhere, LatencyMon reveals no issues with DPC Latencies.
This laptop crushes all the heat generated while gaming with Cooler Boost Trinity. 3 fans and 4 heat pipes that ensure maximum performance even under extreme gaming conditions. The GS65 is powered by a Samsung PM981 256 GB NVMe SSD, a quite fast and popular SSD that comes with many top-end notebooks.
It produces a respectable AS SSD Score of 2039 (based on reading/writing scores of 815/802 and speeds of 1612.2/1474.76 MB/s). CrystalDiskMark 5.2 reports much higher still Q32T1 Sequential read/write values of 3472/1529 MB/s.
Takeaways
There are a lot of variations when it comes to gaming machines – between graphics cards, displays, screen size, RAM and memory, processors – not to mention the price – you could search for days and weeks finding the right laptop.
I hope our picks for the best gaming laptops under $1,500 helped you find that amazing gaming experience and performance without breaking the bank. We hope that with this gaming laptop buying guide, you will be able to find the right laptop for what you need.
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