Gaming laptops used to be easy. They had been highly effective however thick and unwieldy. Lately, you’ve gotten choices. There are gaming laptops that prioritize efficiency in any respect prices and others that house in on thinness, value, or design. Heck, there are even gaming tablets and 2-in-1s.
That breadth of selection means selecting a gaming laptop computer in 2026 is not easy. Whereas choosing any possibility from our Finest Gaming Laptops, Finest Low cost Gaming Laptops, and Finest Laptops guides is an effective place to start out, you continue to won’t find yourself with a gaming laptop computer completely suited on your wants. Having examined many gaming laptops in over a decade of reviewing merchandise, I am going to break down every factor of those spendy machines to guide you in the fitting route, in addition to clarify what to anticipate from the foremost laptop computer manufacturers.
Up to date February 2026: We have added info on the newest gaming laptop computer bulletins from CES, in addition to the brand new context on pricing, the reminiscence scarcity, and CPUs.
Desk of Contents
What Measurement Gaming Laptop computer Ought to You Get?
It is a good spot to start out when looking for a gaming laptop computer. After we discuss “sizes” of those machines, we’re normally evaluating show sizes, measured diagonally. You may typically see three sizes throughout manufacturers: 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch.
16-inch is the glad medium. Although they’re massive laptops, they offer the highly effective gaming {hardware} sufficient house for the thermals to breathe. Having a bigger display screen is definitely not a nasty factor both. These 16-inch gaming laptops changed the 15.6-inch gaming laptops of the previous, which used a 16:9 side ratio display screen. These 15-inch laptops aren’t fully gone, although, with a few of our favourite gaming laptops just like the Lenovo LOQ 15 nonetheless utilizing 16:9. With a number of exceptions, most fashionable shows use a 16:10 side ratio show with thinner bezels. 16-inch laptops might be skinny just like the Razer Blade 16 and Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 or thick just like the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 or Asus ROG Strix G16.
14-inch and 18-inch gaming laptops are extra area of interest, however nonetheless have particular use circumstances the place they’re good options. 14-inch laptops are a more moderen growth, tending to be extremely transportable and compact. The 2 main standouts are the Razer Blade 14 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, however there are different fashions, just like the Acer Nitro 14, Asus TUF A14, and HP Omen Transcend 14.
18-inch gaming laptops are the precise reverse. They’re too massive for baggage, too heavy to comfortably journey with, and are sometimes fairly thick. These are gaming laptops meant to primarily be left at a desk or workstation. Why purchase them? Effectively, if you happen to plan to principally recreation at house, you won’t thoughts the additional heft. The 18-inch display screen offers you a number of actual property to recreation on. That is particularly good if you happen to aren’t enjoying on an exterior monitor. A few of the notable choices are the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 or MSI Titan 18 HX AI.
The best way to Navigate Efficiency
There’s lots to think about on the subject of efficiency, however the place to start out is with graphics playing cards. A gaming laptop computer wants a discrete GPU to be prepared for 3D gaming, and usually, which means selecting from one thing in Nvidia’s RTX lineup. The most recent choices, the RTX 50-series, launched all through 2025, embrace the RTX 5090, 5080, 5070, 5070 Ti, 5060, and 5050. Nvidia could have you consider that multi-frame technology is the explanation to purchase a brand new laptop computer with one among these GPUs, although in my testing, that hasn’t all the time confirmed true. Both means, the characteristic is there to play with no matter which GPU your laptop computer has.
As you’d count on, efficiency and worth scale step-by-step. I will not checklist out all of the specs for these graphics playing cards, however there are a number of necessary issues to know when deciding. The RTX 5090 (24 GB), 5080 (16 GB), and 5070 Ti (12 GB) all obtained further VRAM over their predecessors within the RTX 40-series, whereas the RTX 5070, 5060, and 5050 are all caught with simply 8 GB. Meaning for sure recreation efficiency, the improve from the RTX 5070 to the 5070 Ti is larger than the 5060 to the 5070. It is also necessary to do not forget that these laptop computer GPUs don’t correspond with the desktop variations by way of specs.
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