The best cheap gaming laptops in 2023 under US$700

Updated on November 16, 10:23 p.m. (GMT+8): Improved relevancy.

There are a lot of reasons to get a cheap gaming laptop. Perhaps you are budget-conscious when it comes to entertainment, need a gift for a budding gamer, or are looking for a secondary option when you want to game but don’t have access to your main machine.

Here are our recommendations for the best cheap gaming laptops, with options for a big screen, lots of storage, or just a machine most friendly to your wallet.

Best cheap gaming laptops

• Acer Nitro 5
• HP Victus 15
• ASUS TUF F17
• Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3
• acer 2023 Cloud Gaming Chromebook 516 GE

Acer Nitro 5

The Acer Nitro 5 comes with an i5-12500H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, 512GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM. Usually coming in at US$899, it might be possible for you to find it on sale at an even better bargain.

The highlight, especially for this price, is the 144Hz screen which is rare at this price range.
This means you’ll be able to tune your laptop for buttery-smooth gameplay at the expense of some graphic settings.

And while the storage is small, there’s inbuilt room for extra storage. That’s an uncommon thing in most laptops, even for higher price ranges, and gives you added flexibility to stockpile your game library instead of needing to scrimp on disk space.

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HP Victus 15

The HP Victus 15 (2022) is one of the cheapest machines around that still has a last-gen, 30-series GPU.

With a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H, GeForce RTX 3050, 16 GB RAM, and 1TB SSD, the laptop comes in under US$750 — a genuine steal for these specs. All this powers a 144hz, 1920 x 1080 screen, and most games should push 60FPS and still run well.

The Victus 15 has since been upgraded to a newer model. But if you want one of the most affordable options, the 2022 model is still good enough and wallet-friendly.

ASUS TUF F17

The cheapest ASUS TUF F17 option comes in just under US$800, with a Intel Core i5-11400H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, 512GB SSD, and 8GB of ram.

The biggest positive about this laptop? Its large, 17-inch IPS screen, which makes it perfect for gamers who want more screen real estate, or would like a portable coop machine to share with friends or significant others.

ASUS also purports this laptop to have “military-grade toughness,” which means that it should be able to handle a beating even if you aren’t used to its more unwieldy weight or size.

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3

If you are looking to stretch your wallet to its limits, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 is a laptop that is often on sale for under US$700.

It’s definitely lower-spec compared to its cousins, the Lenovo Legion and LOQ line, but still capable enough for most games – especially esports titles that are usually less demanding.

A Ryzen 5 5600H CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD powers the 15.6 inches IPS screen that supports up to 120FPS.

This laptop is also one of the fastest-charging on the list, if you prefer not to be tethered during gaming. Lenovo purports that its Rapid Charge can up this machine’s battery by 40 percent in just 15 minutes.

Acer Cloud Gaming Chromebook 516 GE

This Acer Chromebook is a bit of an out-of-pocket pick — you likely won’t be able to actually download games on it, but will have to rely on cloud gaming services like the Xbox Game Pass or Nvidia’s GeForce NOW.

As a Chromebook, you won’t get access to most of your gaming libraries in Steam, for example. The cheapest option also has a small 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, a 12th Gen Intel 12-Core i5-1240P, and no dedicated graphics card. This will make it near impossible to have the storage for most games, or play them at a reasonable frame rate or quality.

With so many caveats, why is this an option? Well, the money you saved on a graphics card basically goes towards a beautiful screen: all 16 inches, 120Hz, and 2560 x 1600 pixels of it.

If you’re able to connect to internet at all times during gaming, you get a sleek, well-designed, and portable machine that can run games beyond most of the options on this list (subject to availability on the gaming services, of course) on a delightful display.

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