Best Gaming Laptops in 2021
When we’re talking about gaming laptops, it’s important to note the specifications of the model you’re buying. In conclusion, it’s about how powerful it is, and how long the battery lasts if you were to use it intensively. Hardware manufacturers have started using efficient architecture in technology to make your battery expectancy, and general performance better than what it used to be a couple of years ago.
Every year improvements are made to the current generations of chipsets and hardware components. The laptop market is as intense because of what it takes to make a good gaming laptop. Furthermore, innovations in the CPU, GPU, and display of laptops make them extremely power efficient, even when you’re gaming.
Gaming laptops couple with the new Nvidia RTX line-up have top-notch performance and efficiency thanks to DLSS. DLSS is an Nvidia-only feature that renders the resolution via AI to boost your frames per second in games and 3d software. This new architecture allows for longer gaming sessions before the battery runs low when compared to older Nvidia or AMD cards.
If you’re planning on making a gaming laptop purchase, we’d rather you pick up an RTX series laptop. Ray Tracing and DLSS are going to slowly become part of the gaming standard, so picking one up will not only future-proof you, but also ensure you squeeze every ounce of performance out of your laptop. It’s also a fact that Nvidia cards are more power-efficient than their AMD alternatives.
AMD has made a comeback with their new Ryzen chipset series and their well-known RX line-up of GPUs, but they’re still not as compatible and power-efficient as Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series line-up.
Let’s take a look at the most recent gaming laptops you can purchase in 2021. We’ve summed up some of our favorites:
Best Gaming Laptop #5
Dell G5 Ryzen 7
The Dell G5 15 SE is one of the best gaming laptops you can buy for around the $1000 price point. It has a 144Hz screen and comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor. It’s capable of playing the most demanding games at 1080p. It features a mini DisplayPort with an HDMI connection, ethernet jack. It’s overall great value for money.
The gaming notebook features AMD Radeon RX 5600M Graphics which can handle heavy games with a modest frame rate of between 30-60fps. Casual gaming can give you much higher framerates of up to 144hz.
Best Gaming Laptop #4
Razer Blade 15 Advanced
The Razer Blade 15 is one of the most stylish, minimal, and lightweight gaming laptops of this year. It’s the perfect solution to the balance between performance and portability. The Blade 15 also sports a 360Hz display and only weighs 4.7 pounds.
On the internal side of things we’ve noted some more specifications below:
- CPU – Intel Core i7-10875H 8-Core
- GPU – RTX 3070
- RAM – 16GB DDR4
- Storage – 1TB SSD
Very serious hardware comes with a hefty price tag, however. The fact that the Blade 15 comes with an RTX 3070 makes it future-proofed for at least another 5 years. You can expect the best gaming performance, even at 4k if you hook it up to an external monitor. Framerates shouldn’t be an issue if you’re gaming at a resolution under 4k.
Best Gaming Laptop #3
Asus ROG Strix Scar 15
This is one of the more traditional premium-styled gaming laptops available on the market. It’s very colorful and flashy, with gaming leds on the sides. It’s very close to what Alienware has done with their R3/R5 series. The gaming laptop has an easy-to-use and comfortable keyboard.
The Asus ROG Strix Scar comes with a 300Hz display. The model we’ve reviewed has a 10th generation i7 processor. Powered by RTX 2070 graphics by Nvidia, you won’t run into any performance problems with the latest games on the highest settings.
Best Gaming Laptop #2
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is one of the best 14″ gaming laptops available this year. It includes an AMD Ryzen 9 and an Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card. However, another model is featuring Ryzen 5000 and an RTX 3000 series graphics card. It costs just under $2000 but it crams all of the most powerful components into a 14″ design.
The display is excellent and crisp enough for today’s standards, featuring 1080p Full HD at 120Hz.
The Zephyrus handled every modern game we’ve tested on it flawlessly. Even the battery life is good, an important factor to consider if you’re gaming on the move.
The Ryzen 9 version goes for $1340 on Amazon.
Best Gaming Laptop #1
Dell Alienware Area-51M
This is one of the more hefty rigs out there. Basically a desktop in laptop form, the Alienware Area-51M has a 17″ display and full-sized keyboard. This is the ultimate option for replacing your desktop with something more portable, but as powerful.
This heavy-duty gaming laptop uses desktop-class parts which can be upgraded by the user. The Area51M was specially designed and manufactured to futureproof and modular. The price to own this beast is around $2500, however, you can get different versions directly from Dell’s website.
The best gaming laptops change every year. However, the top gaming laptops are now different. Manufacturers have put powerful desktop-based versions of their cards as well as desktop-based processors into the laptops. Modern gaming laptops now all come with refresh rates above the 100Hz mark. If you haven’t tried 144Hz we suggest you give it a go on this range of quality gaming laptops.
