Best Gaming Laptops under $1000 (2020)

While buying a gaming laptop your major focus should be on graphics cards. This is because you won't be able to upgrade your graphics card or CPU for that matter and if ever you feel the need to upgrade you'll have to change your laptop.

Graphics cards play a major role in gaming. They render each frame on the screen and makes it feel like you're playing a game. The major part of a game is run with graphics card and with RAM rather than the CPU. The CPU's role is minor while gaming, but always make sure that they are fast enough so that it doesn't bottleneck your graphics card.

RAM is something you can upgrade any day, and so is storage. So don't fret too much on them. If you feel the need to upgrade, RAM modules are pretty cheap these days, and so is Hard disk drives. But if you want a big SSD, you might find yourself shelling a bit too much of money.

We have gone through a large number of laptops and have hand-picked the best in the lot based on the laptop's gaming performance. We have made sure that you get the most value for your laptop.

These are the best gaming laptops under $1000:

Best Laptops under $1000
ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DV Editor's choice
Acer Nitro 7 AN715-51 Runner up
Lenovo Legion Y540 Honourable Mention
HP Pavilion 15-bc514tx Honourable Mention

Editor's choice: ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DV

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7-3750H
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GDDR6 6GB
Storage: PCIe NVMe 512GB M.2 SSD
Display: 15.6" (16:9) LED-backlit FHD (1920x1080)

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The Asus Tuf Gaming FX505DV holds an outrageous amount of power and it is so powerful that it is not fair to sell one of these under $1000.  But when you find such sheer power under 80k, there's only one thing you do: give it a crown and bring it home, and that's exactly what we did.

But we want to keep things clear here, this is a gaming laptop, and if you neither game nor edit videos, you might want to stay clear of this and take a look at what Microsoft has to offer for you.

The Asus Tuf Gaming FX505DV offers an RTX 2060 graphics card which has 6GB of GDDR6 Frame Buffer. The RTX 2060 is from the latest line of graphics cards and offers sheer power. The RTX laptops has a trick down its sleeve, and it is called Ray Tracing. Ray Tracing, if you have not heard, is the technology by which the path of a ray of light is tracked and thereby giving you shadows and lights which you see only in movies in real time. Earlier games were displayed on screen by a technology called rasterisation and if you want to take a look at what the difference is Nvidia has a neat blog here.

Also speaking of RTX 2060, it has the power of the outgoing GTX 1070 graphics cards which where very powerful and can easily play almost all the current games in Ultra.

Now let us talk about the processor our choice laptop has to offer. The Asus Tuf pairs the Nvidia RTX 2060 with an AMD Ryzen 7-3750H. Now don't be sad when you here AMD, because this is pretty powerful, almost more power than you'll ever need. The Ryzen 7-3750H is almost as powerful as the latest i7 processor, if Intel i processors are what you compare processors with. The processor is a quad core processor with a base clock speed of 2.3GHz and has a max boost clock speed of around 4.0GHz.

The Asus Tuf Gaming FX505DV features 16GB of DDR5 RAM which is upgradable to 32GB, if some day you feel, nah I'll pop in some more RAM. And for more permanent storage options you have 512GB of SSD. If that put a frown on your face there are extra SSD bays where you can put more SSD's though you have to buy them.

For ports, the laptop has one audio jack, one USB 2.0 slot, two USB 3.2 ports,one HDMI port and one RJ45 LAN jack. The laptop doesn't feature a USB C port.

Overall we feel like this is the best gaming laptop which you can get under $1000.

Runner up: Acer Nitro 7 AN715-51

Processor: Intel Core i5-9300H
RAM: 8GB DDR4 RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR6
Storage: 1TB SSD
Display: 15.6" display with IPS technology, Full HD 1920 x1080, high-brightness (300 nits) Acer ComfyViewT, supporting 144 Hz

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The Acer Nitro 7 is another bang for the buck gaming laptop. Though this doesn't provide the Ray Tracing Technology which the winner of the Editor's choice gives, it comes with a graphics card which handles games as good as the Nvidia GTX 1070, or even better.

The Acer Nitro comes with the latest Intel core i5 processor. The fact that it doesn't have the number 7 attached to it shouldn't worry you. The processor is a quad core processor based on the Coffee Lake. It has two threads per processor giving you 8 threads. The processor has a base speed of 2.4 GHz and can go up to 4.10 GHz. From the specs itself you can see that this is not a processor that shies from battles.

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As said earlier the laptop features an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Graphics card. The graphics card is one with Nvidia themselves compare to a GTX 1070, and as we know the GTX 1070 was a brilliant card, able to play all the games offered at that time in Ultra. The GeForce GTX 1660 is even more powerful than that graphics card.

The laptop comes with only 8GB RAM which is a disappointment, but can be upgraded so we are not that disappointed. It features DDR4 ram which is quiet cheap and can be easily upgraded.

The Acer Nitro 7 has 1 TB SSD which we are surprised to find in a laptop at this price range. Usually manufacturers go for an SSD which is smaller in size and pairs it with a 1 TB HDD. Acer has gone all the way to provide us with a 1 TB SSD which is quiet surprising, and a pleasant surprise indeed.

The display in this laptop is absolutely gorgeous. It has a 15.6 inch IPS panel which has a resolution of 1920x1080 which is great for gaming as well as watching movies. The frame rate is also brilliant (144GHz) in this laptop.

We think this laptop is an absolute steal and if not for the missing RTX, this would have had topped the list.

Honourable Mention: Lenovo Legion Y540

Processor: 9th Generation Core Intel I5-9300H
RAM: 8GB DDR4 RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX1650 Graphics with 4GB memory
Storage: 1TB SSD
Display: 15.6-inch screen with (1920X1080)

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Another contender for the best gaming laptops under $1000 who couldn't bid for the top spot just because it didn't have a Ti badge at the end of the graphics card.

The Lenovo Legion Y540 is a powerhouse that is able to eat all the tasks you give it with incredible ease. This is owing to the 9th Generation Core Intel I5-9300H processor. It has  2.4 Ghz base speed and 4.1 Ghz max speed with turbo boost. The processor features  4 Cores and 8Mb Smart Cache. That's almost the top of the line spec, and rarely would occasions arise where you will or might have to test the limits of the laptop.

The main attraction of a gaming laptop is its graphics card and it shines extremely well in this department, owing to 4GB of GDDR5 Frame Buffer which comes with the Nvidia GTX 1650 Graphics card. Nvidia claims that the performance of GTX 1650 is 2X the GeForce GTX 950 and up to 70% faster than the GTX 1050 on the latest games. The graphics card has a memory speed of 8Gbps and a max clock speed of 1665 MHz.

For RAM the laptop has only 8GB, which is a tad bit low. But you can upgrade it. Mostly you won't notice the fact that it has only 8GB, but in case you feel the dire need, which you might feel especially if you're a developer or  edits videos a lot.

In the storage department, the laptop is available in multiple configurations, but we prefer the one with 1 TB SSD. That should handle most of your storage needs and is fast enough to for great boot times.

The laptop features a 15.6inch gorgeous IPS display. The laptop has Anti Glare technology and has a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

This laptop is a great buy under 80k, and we feel the laptop is great value for money.

Honourable Mention: HP Pavilion 15-bc514tx

Processor: 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 8GB DDR4 RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX1650 Graphics with 4GB memory
Storage: 512GB SSD
Display: 15.6-inch screen with (1920X1080)

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HP Pavilion gaming laptop is one gorgeous laptop to look at. The gorgeous finishes and acid green colour makes the laptop just fabulous.

The laptop features a 9th generation Intel Core i7-9750H. The laptop has a base frequency of 2.6 GHz, and can go all the way to 4.5 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology. The processor is a hexa core processor and has 12MB cache.

HP Pavilion has a GTX 1650 graphics card which can get you by all the latest gaming titles. You might not be able to max it at Ultra but it can easily play on Medium on the very least. The GTX 1650 graphics card is at par with GTX 1070, but the fact that RTX is missing should be something that should worry you a bit. The graphics card has, as mentioned earlier has 4GB of GDDR5 Frame Buffer.

In terms or RAM the laptop has 8GB of RAM and for more permanent storage it has a 512 GB SSD, which is pretty much enough for most of the storage needs. If need arises, you can buy an external hard disk or pop one inside the extra slot inside the laptop.

HP Pavilion features a 15.6 inch Full HD Display which is a pretty decent display. We wouldn't go as far as to say this is one of the best displays in the market but it gets the job done and in an excellent way.

This laptop is not too much clunky and we loved the build of the laptop.

Conclusion

These are the best gaming laptops we found under $10000, and we feel the editor's choice is definitely the laptop to buy.

Happy Gaming

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tRUSTED REVIEWs