Some of today's games, especially in the strategy and simulation categories, tend to hammer the processor. That said, a maxed-out Core i7 or Core i9 CPU is less crucial for gaming than for processor-intensive tasks, such as video editing and media file production work. This is because you'll get plenty of gaming pep even from Core i5 CPUs. Intel's 13th Gen chips were launched in 2023, and as expected, they increased both power and efficiency. The 14th Gen followed shortly after. While 14th Gen's quick HX processors are often found in higher-end machines, the occasional entry-level system, such as the MSI Katana 15 HX, also runs these chips.

Adding to the complexity, Intel also sells chips under its newer brand, Core Ultra, with dedicated AI processing core clusters called neural processing units (NPUs). The first two generations of these chips, "Meteor Lake" and "Lunar Lake," have not been commonly found in budget gaming laptops, although their performance is decent. Additional Core Ultra chips, dubbed "Arrow Lake," were launched in 2025, and they're slowly approaching budget models from the midrange downward.

In any recent generation, a Core i7 or Ultra 7 is a highly efficient processor that, while beneficial and offering a marked performance difference, may be overkill for casual gamers on a tight budget. A modern Core i5 chip will likely serve you just fine in a budget gaming laptop. If you can afford the upper end of entry level, you'll appreciate the extra speed of 7-tier, including for workloads beyond gaming.

Meanwhile, things are looking up on the AMD side of the fence. Previously, AMD CPUs and GPUs were rarely seen in midrange and high-end laptops, but they were ideal fits for budget laptops (because the components were value plays, to begin with). Even then, there weren't too many laptops with AMD chips.

Today, you can get "Zen 4" architecture-based Ryzen 7000 and newer Ryzen 8000 models; some have made their way down to the budget tier. AMD also sells its own NPU-bearing Ryzen AI chips (the first series being the Ryzen AI 300), but the adoption story for gaming is the same as with Intel's Arrow Lake, for now: These are generally found only in more expensive laptops. We now see more laptops equipped with AMD's Ryzen 5 or 7 mobile CPUs than ever, but Intel remains the more common choice overall in gaming laptops.

Throughout this article, we've mapped out our top-rated models to investigate. As mentioned, some configurations sent to us for testing exceeded $1,000; this is virtually unavoidable given today's market conditions. Some remain under that mark, while others rise and fall below that line depending on availability, deals, and generally fluctuating costs.

Also, note that most of these models are a single version of a machine in a varied line. So, use the linked reviews as guidelines, not absolutes, when assessing each laptop family. You may not achieve the same level of performance we did if key components are downgraded to keep the price below $1,000. But you should get a solid idea of the various laptops' screens, build, and input quality from our reviews.

In addition to poring over our reviews and checking out the vendors' sites, using the price filters at a reseller like Newegg.com can help you see different configurations at different price points. Some manufacturers offer multiple versions of the same laptop with varying specifications (e.g., more storage in one configuration, a better GPU in another). Playing with the filters on these sites can be an illuminating exercise in give-and-take.

Want to round out your PC gaming experience? Check out our picks for the best gaming mice and headsets, as well as our picks for the best gaming laptops overall, price aside.

Even in the budget tier, laptops now default to using solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of hard drives (HDDs). We used to see a combination of a smaller SSD (to serve as a boot drive with Windows and essential programs or games) and a larger traditional HDD (to host the bulk of your library), but we stopped seeing traditional hard drives in systems some years ago. Now, any combination of dual drives is almost certainly twin SSDs. Small and midsize laptops will opt for just one SSD, while a few larger systems may run two or more drives, if you can afford it. (Note that most budget gaming laptops under a grand will be 15.6-inchers or 16-inchers.)

You'll need as much storage as possible, given how large modern game installations have become, often ballooning to more than 100GB in size. Even more modest titles will run somewhere in the 20GB to 30GB range, while the average AAA blockbuster is often 60GB or more in size. Your small SSD will fill up quickly, so 512GB is the bare minimum you should aim for in a gaming laptop's boot drive, and 1TB is much better.

The good news about the near-universal switch to SSDs? Your storage subsystem impacts game load times and in-game level changes, and SSDs deliver much faster load times compared with hard drives. Not all SSDs are created equal (some have significantly faster read and write speeds than others), but on average, even budget gaming laptops now have much quicker drives than in the past. That can be particularly important in open-world games, where huge environments load in real time, or in multiplayer games where you're frequently loading into different lobbies. (See our picks for the fastest SSDs.)

Optical drives are extinct on new gaming laptops at any screen size these days. If you have legacy games on disc you just can't quit, know that you can always use an external USB DVD/CD drive in a pinch, and they cost just $20 or so.