Modern video game enthusiasts require fast computers to keep up with the new games that come out every year. And since you can’t take your PC with you, it’s also important to get a laptop that delivers the best gaming experience possible. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, here is a list of the best gaming laptops for 2019.
Best Gaming Laptops
If you’re looking to buy a gaming laptop, you’ll have different needs to consider than if you were buying a desktop PC. You’re going to want to pay particular attention to the graphics card, display refresh rate, thermal performance, and more.
These models from Lenovo, Acer, Razer, MSI, Alienware, and Gigabyte take the cake when it comes to speed, performance, design, and portability.
Lenovo Y740
The Lenovo Y740 is a thin and fast gaming laptop featuring an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics card with Max-Q design. It has a Dolby Vision-enabled 144Hz display, which gives you a bright and color-accurate screen. The Lenovo Y740 supports Nvidia G-Sync, an innovative display technology that removes screen tearing, so you can enjoy smooth graphics for an immersive gaming experience. While most devices do not allow you to disable G-Sync, you can do so with this unit to preserve battery life.
Lenovo has addressed thermal performance with its Legion Coldfront feature. The laptop has circular cut-outs at the bottom to provide more airflow, as well as air exhausts on the back corner, and left- and right-hand sides. With Lenovo Vantage Software, you can adjust the power limits of the CPU and GPU to quiet, balanced, and performance modes.
Acer Predator Triton 500
The Acer Predator Triton 500 is for the gamer that also wants to be productive. Weighing at around 4.4 pounds, the Triton 500 is a 15-inch slim and portable laptop that comes with a 2.2-GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM. With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or 2080 graphics card, gamers can enjoy realistic effects with real-time ray tracing technology that simulates the true behavior of light.
Gamers who want maximum performance out of their unit can push a dedicated button for overclocking the GPU up to 100 MHz to increase game performance and get up to four more frames per second. The keyboard features zoned lighting, which you can customize in the PredatorSense app. It also has fan control, monitoring, and game sync. The Triton 500 can handle editing 4K videos, making it a powerhouse for both work and play.
Razer Blade 15
Touting itself as the “world’s smallest gaming laptop,” the Razer Blade has an ultra-compact 0.70-inch thick screen in a sleek aluminum body. It comes with different configuration options for the graphics cards, display, processor, finish, and storage. The mercury white option, for instance, is only available with the GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics card.
If you go with the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q option, you can configure it with the OLED 4K touch display, which brings out vibrant colors with its True Black certification. The Blade webcam is integrated with Windows Hello facial recognition, so you can have your laptop scan your face instead of typing in your password.
MSI GS65 Stealth Thin
Claiming to be the “world’s first 144-Hz thin bezel gaming laptop,” the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin packs powerful features in a sleek black-and-gold design. The GeForce GTX 1070 With Max-Q Design GPU brings gaming visuals to life in its 144Hz IPS display, which has a response time of 7 milliseconds. At 254 nits and 98% sRGB, the display has a good color gamut, which makes it great for playing games or editing photos and videos.
To control your laptop’s performance, you can use hotkeys or the Dragon Center to switch to turbo mode, sport mode, comfort mode, or eco mode. For thermal performance, the MSI uses Cooler Boost Trinity or three fans in the unit: two for the GPU and one for the CPU, with side and rear outlets.
Alienware Area 51m
If you want power and performance, and you don’t mind compromising on portability, the Alienware Area 51m might be for you. This laptop fits a desktop-level 9th generation Intel Core i7 or i9 processor into its 17.3-inch display. For the GPU, the basic configuration runs on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060 6GB GDDR6, but it is upgradeable up to the RTX 2080 version.
Three out of four configurations support Tobii eye-tracking. With this technology, sensors pick up what you are looking at, calculate your gaze points, and let you interact with the laptop with nothing but your eyes.
Shop: Dell
Acer Predator Helios 300
The Acer Predator Helios 300 is one of the best-selling laptops on Amazon, and for a good reason. It’s powerful enough to meet your gaming needs without breaking the bank. The processor can be configured with either an Intel Core i7-8750H or an i7-9750H.
For the graphics card, low-end units carry the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. The display is a standard 144-Hz panel with good color accuracy at 97% sRGB and a brightness level of 343 nits. More importantly, you can play games comfortably at up to 140 fps for models with the NVIDIA GTX 1660ti GPU.
Acer has solved the thermal issues that came with the 2018 models by under-volting the device and redesigning the fan. At any rate, you can turn up your fans to the maximum by pressing the dedicated turbo button.
Gigabyte Aero 15X
The Gigabyte Aero 15X is a lightweight laptop that gamers and content creators can both appreciate. With its black aluminum body and a 5-mm near-borderless bezel display, it sports an industrial look that would be welcome in any office space or gaming den.
There are two configurations available: one with the 8th Gen Intel Corei7-8750H processor, and another one with the 7th Gen Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor. Whatever model you get, you will have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU, which allows you to push games up to 100 frames per second or enjoy them in virtual reality (VR) mode. Both configurations have X-Rite Pantone calibration, which ensures color accuracy. For transferring large files, especially video files, there’s an SD card slot that supports USH-2 speeds at a whopping 250 to 300 megabytes per second.
Alienware m17 R2
The Alienware m17 R2 is the revamped version of the m17 R1 that was released last year. It has a magnesium-alloy body with a honeycomb design on the back and the top of the keyboard. Configuration options include either a 9th Generation core i5 or i9-9980HK processor, or an Nvidia Geforce GPU.
Thermal enhancements include fire-resistant fan blades that are made out of a Kevlar-like material. Updates made to the Alienware Command Center now give you the options to create gaming profiles, control overclocking, and control the per-key Alien FX keyboard lighting.
Shop: Dell
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