Ah, budget gaming laptops are a hot topic right now. There seem to be a lot of questions as to which one is the best, so I figured I would break down the top 3 budget gaming laptops under $1000 that you can order right now. Each laptop has amazing specs considering that they are all under $1000! The Asus ROG Strix GL553VD-DS74 has solidified its place as the best gaming laptop under 1000 in terms of value per dollar with the updated specifications at the time of this article.
Best gaming laptop 2023
Finding the best gaming laptop will be dependent on a number of factors, including how much you’re looking to spend, how much power you need your laptop to have and the size of the screen. At the end of this article we’ve also got links to other similar articles so you can make an informed purchase decision.
Laptop gaming is a strange world of compromises and making sacrifices. I’ve done my fair share of research and have finally found three laptops in the under $1000 range that could run the current games on ultra settings.
Best budget gaming laptop 17 inch
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The Best 17-Inch Laptops for 2022
Muscle up! Today’s biggest-screen notebooks are formidable desktop alternatives for work and play alike. Here’s all you need to know to choose the right 17-inch gaming rig or workstation, along with our top lab-tested picks.
Eric Grevstad
By Eric Grevstad
Updated February 9, 2022
Related Laptop Picks:
Best Gaming LaptopsBest Cheap Gaming LaptopsBest Business LaptopsBest Mobile Workstations
OUR 12 TOP PICKS
Best Overall 17-Inch Laptop for Mainstream Use
Dell XPS 17 (9710) Image
editors’ choice
4.0
Excellent
Dell XPS 17 (9710)
$1,599.99
at Dell
See It
Well-equipped (as it should be for nearly $3,000), the Dell XPS 17 is the standard-bearer for non-gaming 17-inch laptops.
Read Our Dell XPS 17 (9710) Review
Best 17-Inch Budget Laptop for General Use
Asus VivoBook 17 M712 Image
editors’ choice
4.0
Excellent
Asus VivoBook 17 M712
$698.00
at Amazon
Check Stock
The Asus VivoBook 17 M712 offers enough AMD Ryzen-based muscle to make light of simple tasks, and its 17-inch screen and stylish silver chassis belie a very attractive price.
Read Our Asus VivoBook 17 M712 Review
Best 17-Inch Budget Laptop for DVD Watching
Dell Inspiron 17 3000 (3793) Image
3.0
Average
Dell Inspiron 17 3000 (3793)
$1,148.00
at Amazon
See It
Most everything about the Dell Inspiron 17 3000 says “economy model,” but it’ll work for large-screen DVD viewing, web surfing, and homework.
Read Our Dell Inspiron 17 3000 (3793) Review
Best Extreme 17-Inch Laptop for Gamers
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 (2021) Image
editors’ choice
4.0
Excellent
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 (2021)
$2,179.99
at Amazon
See It
The Zephyrus S17 is a highly capable 17.3-inch gaming machine with exotic touches and a supercar price.
Read Our Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 (2021) Review
Best 17-Inch Laptop for Mainstream Gaming
Alienware m17 R4 Image
editors’ choice
4.0
Excellent
Alienware m17 R4
$2,081.50
at Dell
See It
Given its feature set and premium price, the Alienware m17 R4 is an aspirational laptop for serious gamers. Its blazing frame rates, quality build, and unique mechanical keyboard set it apart from the pack.
Read Our Alienware m17 R4 Review
A Thinner Alternative to the Alienware m17
Alienware x17 Image
3.5
Good
Alienware x17
$2,199.99
at Dell
See It
The Alienware x17 is an attractive, powerful, and pricey new toy, but it’s not convincing as a redesign of the company’s m17 flagship, considering its similar performance and extra weight.
Read Our Alienware x17 Review
Best 17-Inch Budget Gaming Laptop
Acer Nitro 5 (17-Inch) Image
3.5
Good
Acer Nitro 5 (17-Inch)
$1,349.99
at Acer
See It
Acer’s latest 17-inch Nitro 5’s top-end RTX 3080 and Ryzen 7 parts ensure brisk 1080p gaming for a bit less than its premium competitors.
Read Our Acer Nitro 5 (17-Inch) Review
Lightest 17-Inch Laptop You Can Buy
LG Gram 17 (2021) Image
editors’ choice
4.0
Excellent
LG Gram 17 (2021)
$1,546.99
at Amazon
See It
A lean, good-looking machine that boasts a giant screen, weighs less than 3 pounds, and gets excellent battery life, the 2021 “Tiger Lake” update of the LG Gram 17 is one of the best large laptops you can buy.
Read Our LG Gram 17 (2021) Review
Best 17-Inch Content-Creation Laptop With a 4K Pantone Panel
Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR XA Image
4.0
Excellent
Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR XA
$3,798.10
at Amazon
Check Stock
$1,699.99
at Best Buy
Free Shipping
The Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR XA combines blazing, game-worthy performance with a 4K display that will put digital content creators in ecstasy.
Read Our Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR XA Review
Best 17-Inch Content-Creation Laptop With a Mini-LED Screen
MSI Creator 17 Image
4.0
Excellent
MSI Creator 17
$2,049.00
at Amazon
See It
Its pioneering Mini LED display lives up to its billing, making the MSI Creator 17 a tempting choice for deep-pocketed creative pros on the lookout for a large-screen laptop.
Read Our MSI Creator 17 Review
Best 17-Inch Laptop for Content Creators Who Also Game
Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) Image
4.0
Excellent
Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020)
$2,729.99
at Amazon
Check Stock
The 2020 Razer Blade Pro 17 is essentially a larger, more powerful version of its 15-inch sibling. And that makes it one of highest-performing, most portable premium 17-inch gaming laptops out there.
Read Our Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) Review
A Solid Alternative to the Razer Blade Pro 17
Aorus 17G YD Image
3.5
Good
Aorus 17G YD
$1,999.00
at Amazon
See It
$2,599.00
at Newegg
The elite Aorus 17G gaming laptop packs a panoply of bleeding-edge tech, including an 11th Generation Core H-Series CPU, but its sheer graphics performance trails that of the Alienware m17 R4.
Read Our Aorus 17G YD Review
PROS & CONS
COMPARE SPECS
Compare Specs: Our Picks Side by Side
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Our Experts Have Tested 133 Products in the Laptops Category in the Past Year
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. (See how we test.)
If you’re a big-picture sort of person, you need a laptop to match. You yearn for a notebook (the word “laptop” is a bit of a misnomer for these bulky thigh-crushers) that not only capably replaces a desktop PC, but also gives you an easy-on-the-eyes, panoramic view of your workspace or playing field. That means a 17-inch model, one with the largest popular screen size in the portable universe.
Almost all 17-inch laptops feature displays that, technically, measure 17.3 inches on the diagonal (just as so-called 15-inch laptops usually measure 15.6 inches corner to corner). That’s enough for a magnified view of full HD or 1080p resolution (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), or a comfortable view of higher resolutions such as 4K (3,840 by 2,160), which can make you squint on a smaller screen.
17 Inches: Should You Really Go This Large?
On the negative side, this screen size dictates a bulky machine—one that’s often too big for a briefcase, requiring a special laptop bag, backpack, or roller bag, and too heavy for more than occasional transport between home and office or cubicle and conference room.
Dell XPS 17 2020
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
The lightest 17-inch laptops, with one major exception, weigh in at just under seven pounds. (The outlier, the LG Gram 17, is an extraordinary case that comes in at under 3 pounds.) The heaviest, which are invariably gaming models, tip the scales at a back-breaking 10 pounds or more, and in some cases, that’s not counting two ponderous AC power bricks. Airline tray table? Forget it. More like checked baggage.
Nor should you expect long battery life from a plus-size notebook. These machines are designed to run on AC power most of the time. If yours can endure unplugged for more than four hours, consider yourself lucky. (Just take a look at the tested runtimes of our favorites in our spec comparison table.)
The Best Laptop Deals This Week*
*Deals are selected by our partner, TechBargains
Dell XPS 13 9305 Intel i5 256GB SSD 13.3″ Touch Laptop — $829.99 with code 50OFF699
Dell Inspiron 15 5510 Intel i5 256GB 16GB RAM 15.6″ Laptop — $599.99 (List Price $818.99)
Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Ryzen 5 256GB SSD 8GB RAM 14″ Laptop — $499.99 (List Price $609.99)
Gateway Creator Intel i5 RTX 3050 512GB SSD 15.6″ Laptop — $799.00 (List Price $1,099)
HP 15 Intel i3 256GB SDD 8GB RAM 15.6″ Touch Laptop — $494.99 (List Price $569)
Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020)
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
So, are these tradeoffs too much to suffer merely for a pleasing view? Are luggables just the large-print books of the laptop world?
No—they’re also the performance leaders. Their chassis accommodate the most powerful processors and graphics cards, the strongest cooling systems, the most memory, and multiple solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard drives for ample storage. They have plenty of room for all the ports you might need, as well as spacious, near-desktop-class keyboards with full keypads for numeric data entry.
Jumbo laptops aren’t for frequent fliers, but they fill a big niche. Let’s look at what they can do, and what to look for as you shop for one.
Work or Play: Which Is Your Main Aim?
A few 17-inch laptops are general-purpose PCs for people who want an occasionally portable system with a large screen. Most, however, fall into one of two camps with diametrically opposed, but equally hardcore, audiences: mobile workstations, and serious gaming laptops.
Both types can handle what many PC users think of as work: office productivity and email using Word, Excel, Outlook, Chrome, Slack, and so on. But mobile workstations, as seen in our special guide, laugh at such modest apps. Instead, they carry independent software vendor (ISV) certifications of compatibility and smooth operation with programs for way tougher computing jobs: computer-aided design (CAD) and advanced 3D modeling and rendering, crunching through huge scientific or engineering datasets, or delving into video editing and the creation of worlds for virtual reality. And they rely on state-of-the-art CPU and GPU power to do so.
Acer Predator
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
With the exception that CPU muscle is a little less important while GPU strength is paramount, much the same applies to gaming rigs (also the stars of their own buying guide and roundup of ours that’s worth checking out). They’re designed to play the latest and greatest titles at high speeds—at least 60 frames per second, double the rate recognized as providing minimally smooth gameplay—with all the visual details and eye candy turned up to 11. Onscreen stuttering or tearing just won’t cut it. Lag can be fatal during a fragfest.
Whichever class of 17-inch machine you are considering, you’re likely drawn to it by the one big thing the two main types have in common: the screen. Let’s look at that.
The Display Panel: What to Look For
In the 17-inch class, workstation and gaming laptops alike benefit from choosing the right screen type. A solid baseline pick would be an in-plane switching (IPS) or indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) panel, which gives you the sharpest colors and contrast, as well as the widest off-center viewing angles. Touch screens aren’t very popular in either class, with both gamers and workstation pros preferring the pixel-by-pixel control of a mouse.
Asus ProArt StudioBook 17
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
Gamers often choose displays capped at 1080p resolution for high frame rates’ sake; fast gaming at 4K resolution requires a costly, top-of-the-line graphics processor (GPU) like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 Super, GeForce RTX 3070, or GeForce RTX 3080. By contrast, some workstation users enjoy the highest-resolution screen possible to mimic the desktop experience of multiple monitors or for editing 4K video. Some mobile workstations also excel at precisely matching what’s seen on screen to your finished work’s destined output, offering a choice of the web’s sRGB, print’s Adobe RGB, or cinema’s DCI-P3 palettes or color spaces. A few recent models from makers such as Asus and Gigabyte also come with validations by Pantone for color accuracy.
Aorus 17G XD
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Most standard laptop LCDs have a refresh rate of 60Hz, redrawing the image on screen 60 times per second. That’s fine for the human eye—television is 30Hz and most movies 24Hz—and for 90-plus percent of applications and users. But it’s not enough for fanatic gamers who’ve invested in graphics chips that can crank out more than 60 frames per second. Hence the availability of gaming laptops with so-called “high refresh” 120Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz or even 300Hz displays. (See more about whether you really need a high-refresh display.) Shoppers in this stratosphere will also find some screens that support Nvidia’s G-Sync technology, able to synchronize the refresh rate of the display on the fly to the GPU’s output for smoother appearances.
The Heart Under the Hood: CPU, Memory, and Storage
When it comes to CPUs, Intel parts teamed with discrete GeForce, RTX A-series (formerly Quadro), Radeon RX, or Radeon Pro graphics processors lead the popularity contest over AMD’s mobile Ryzen 5 and 7 chips with their integrated graphics. The most popular option for 17-inch gaming notebooks is Intel’s Core i7, in 10th or 11th Generation guise (indicated by model numbers in the 10,000s or 11,000s, respectively) with at least six processing cores—models with 12th Generation CPUs have started hitting shelves, but are still pricey and harder to find. These are dubbed Intel’s H-Series chips, to distinguish them from the lighter-hitting U-Series CPUs that show up in thinner, lighter laptops. The mighty—and mighty costly—Core i9 chips occupy the top of the market. (Read much more on choosing the right laptop CPU.) Intel’s 12th Generation H-Series CPUs should increasingly dominate the market, in the newest models, as 2022 progresses.
For mobile workstations, the Core i7 and Core i9 are joined by Intel’s Xeon processors, which offer support for server-style error correcting code (ECC) memory. Though outside the mainstream for ISV apps, ECC’s ability to detect and fix single-bit memory errors is a plus for scientific, architectural, or financial computing jobs intolerant of even the slightest data corruption.
Laptop Interior
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
Regular, non-ECC RAM will serve just fine for most buyers, though. An allotment of 8GB of memory is the bare minimum for a gaming laptop, with 16GB preferable. (More than that’s not really necessary, unless you have buckets of money to burn.) Workstations have a heartier appetite for RAM, with 16GB a practical minimum and 32GB not uncommon; many models support a whopping 64GB or 128GB. In the case of a workstation portable, you’ll want to look into the specific RAM requirements of the applications you plan to run to gauge how much you should splurge on memory.
As for storage, look for one or two M.2 solid-state drives, often joined by one or two 2.5-inch hard drives—the SSD for the operating system and favorite applications, the roomier hard drive for games and data. Most performance-conscious portables use slightly quicker PCI Express (PCIe) rather than SATA solid-state drives. In connection with PCIe SSDs, you’ll often see the acronym “NVMe” (for Non-Volatile Memory Express) bandied around, as well as a few proprietary monikers, such as HP mobile workstations’ Z Turbo Drives. Both indicate the fastest SSDs. (See our guide to the best PCI Express NVMe SSDs.)
Half a terabyte of storage (for an SSD-only system) is the smallest amount you should accept; 1TB or 1.5TB is more mainstream, and some workstations boast up to 3TB or 4TB of capacity. If money is a limiter, a smaller SSD (say 256GB or 500GB) as the boot drive, paired with a roomy hard drive, is a good compromise. A 17-inch laptop is the kind most likely to have room for both. Some 17-inchers may have an empty bay to let you install an aftermarket 2.5-inch drive or an M.2 SSD yourself. This can be an economical option.
Choosing a GPU: Again, the Work/Play Divide
Mobile workstations’ graphics cards are divided between Nvidia’s RTX A-series (formerly Quadro, and much more common) and AMD’s Radeon Pro (much less common) brands. Their silicon is optimized for different operations than the companies’ respective GeForce and Radeon parts for gaming laptops, as well as for hard-charging, constantly-on rendering or calculations.
On the gaming side of the fence, too, Nvidia enjoys a big market lead in mobile GPUs. Its “Ampere” architecture defines its current GeForce RTX 30 Series offerings, seen first in desktop video cards like the GeForce RTX 3080. At the higher end of the gaming-laptop market, these GPUs, indicated by “GeForce RTX” instead of “GeForce GTX,” are replacing chips based on the “Turing” architecture of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 20 series, though you’ll still see some laptops based on these for sale.
The basic story for both workstations and gaming rigs is a familiar one, though: Higher model numbers and higher prices bring you more speed and higher frame rates. They also gain you support for features such as virtual reality (VR), though midrange and high-end gaming-laptop GPUs like the GeForce RTX 1660 Ti (Turing) and above, and all of the current GeForce RTX chips, support playing and exploring VR worlds, while high-end mobile-workstation parts like the Nvidia RTX A series support VR authoring or creating them.
Alienware m17 R4
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Nvidia’s gaming-laptop GPUs in 2021 saw a shift. Before the launch of the 30-Series Ampere and 20-Series Turing laptop chips, it was a simple ladder: They climbed from the GeForce GTX 1050 to the GTX 1050 Ti, then the GTX 1060, with the formerly high-end GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 topping the line. The last three were replaced by the GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2070, and RTX 2080 (and slightly faster “RTX Super” versions of the last two), which are themselves giving way to the RTX 3050, RTX 3050 Ti, RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and top-end RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti. Only the last two will truly satisfy gaming hounds planning to play the latest titles at 4K resolution with all the image-quality settings dialed up, while the GTX chips and lower RTX chips have been designed for gamers with full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) screens. The RTX 2070, RTX 3060, and RTX 3070, meanwhile, straddle the full-HD and 4K realms.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 17
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
At the lower end, the current chips are the mobile versions of the GeForce GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Ti, and GTX 1660 Ti. (There is no mobile version of the GTX 1660.) At this writing, new machines with the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti were hitting the streets; these are the first low-end RTX-class GPUs. All of these GPUs have supplanted the GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, and GTX 1060. You’re looking at an up-to-date laptop if it has one of these GTX 1600-series chips or an RTX 3050-class one.
Traditionally, a very few huge, heavyweight gaming laptops carried not one but two GeForce GPUs for ludicrous speed, using Nvidia’s SLI (and in the latest generation, NVLink) multi-GPU technology. But they cost a fortune, their battery life was invariably brutish and short, and not all games benefit from dual-GPU setups, anyway. They are now an anachronism, and if you see one, a sign of old tech. AMD’s Radeon RX mobile GPUs have made some modest inroads of late in a few machines, but they tend to appear so far in 15-inch-class machines, not 17-inchers. Nvidia dominates laptop GPUs.
So, Which 17-Inch Laptop Should I Buy?
That’s about it for general advice, except for matters of personal preference. Keyboards, for instance: Some gaming laptops go wild with colorful, customizable RGB backlighting and feature macro keys for storing frequently used command or combat sequences, while some mobile workstations’ touchpads or pointing sticks feature the third (middle) mouse button often used in CAD and similar applications. And we don’t think you should buy a 17-inch laptop in either of these groups that doesn’t have at least one Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 port, which combines USB-C and DisplayPort functionality with daisy-chainable support for external docking and storage solutions.
Dell Precision mobile workstation
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
At any rate, you’re ready to shop for the notebook of your big-screen dreams. Get started by checking out the reviews we’ve assembled here, and good luck: Flex those biceps and get your back-strengthening routine down pat. You’re going to go big. On the flip side, your eyes will be very, very happy.
COMPARE SPECS
The Best 17-Inch Laptops for 2022
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About Eric Grevstad
Eric Grevstad
Formerly editor-in-chief of Home Office Computing and editor of Computer Shopper, Eric Grevstad joined PCMag as lead laptop analyst and now serves as a contributing editor. A tech journalist since the TRS-80 and Apple II days, Grevstad reviews notebooks and mobile workstations from a catful home office in Bradenton, Florida. Email him at homeoffice.eric@gmail.com.
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