How to buy the right gaming laptop on Black Friday without breaking the bank

It’s no wonder then that gaming laptops are among the most popular deals during this period Black Friday especially because many Best gaming laptops It is also somewhat expensive. This is even more true for laptops with RTX 3080 High-resolution, high-refresh GPUs or displays from top brands like Razer, Gigabyte and Alienware. but with some good black friday deals for laptops These laptops can see some huge price cuts, sometimes over $500 / £500.

But even if you are looking for something more in the mid-range or budget category, there are still some great things to do cheap gaming laptop deals And in many cases, you will be able to find many, such as HP Victus 15 It won’t force you to sacrifice much when it comes to hardware or performance.

There are some laptop deals you might want to avoid, and it’s not just on the lower end of the price spectrum where you’d expect to find some shoddy products. There will be plenty of gaming laptops out there that look great at first, but will be less important as you delve deeper into the specs.

As we all gear up for the holiday sale event, there are plenty of reasons to expect great deals this year and we’ll help you decide which ones to look for and which ones to avoid.

What to look for in a Black Friday gaming laptop deal

So what should you look for when you go shopping Black Friday? There are a few key points to remember when it comes to buying a gaming laptop.

First, we’re really pushing the boundaries of what a great gaming laptop needs to play Best PC Games since almost every modern AAA game targets console compatibility first rather than trying to get as far as possible. The best gaming PC able to handle it. Days of asking “but can he run Crysis?” I came and went, honestly.

As such, there is no very good reason to hold your nose up 12th Generation Intel Core i5 Processor or a AMD Ryzen 6000 Series The CPU is associated with an extension Nvidia RTX 3060 . GPU since this type of gaming laptop is capable of running everything currently available at very high settings at 1080p.

And since 1080p is what even high-end gaming laptops generally stick to in order to maximize screen refresh rates, you won’t need much more than that right now and you’ll see some big price cuts on Black Friday.

Second, keep in mind that on a laptop, a 4K screen really doesn’t give you more than 1080p in terms of clarity. Yes, you’re doubling the pixels per inch, so the images will be twice as sharp, but the images will also be much smaller on a 14- or 15-inch screen than they would on a Best gaming monitor Push 32 or 42 inches across.

Our eyes are unable to appreciate minute details on something as small as a gaming laptop screen, especially when things are on fire in an action-packed title like Doom Eternal or some competitive shooter. At most, go for 1440p if all you care about is computer games. You don’t miss out on much by setting 1080p, but you’ll probably save a lot of money.

There are a few Black Friday considerations that should be mentioned as well. First, you will see a lot of high-end things laptop With gaming hardware, grab some eye-catching discounts on Black Friday.

Here is an example from last year:

If you are keen to get a laptop that can run the latest games at the highest possible graphics resolution, you can find some great deals at The best mobile workstations For creative professionals who own all the same hardware as the most premium gaming laptop, but come with perks like 4K OLED screens that gaming laptops generally lack.

The drawback is that these screens will have standard 60Hz refresh rates, since that’s not the kind of thing creators really need for their work. Non-OLED screens may also have terrible pixel response, making them less suitable for fast-paced gaming.

However, if you’re looking to enjoy a leisurely break, a Creative Workstation might be a smart way to get a great deal of extremely powerful hardware. If you’re looking to play competitively, you’ll want to stick to gaming laptops with more responsive and higher refresh displays.

Gaming laptops across the board will see price cuts

We have been doing this for many years now, and we have a lot of experience watching how Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday Sales Events tend to run. The past couple of years, with the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting supply chain issues, have definitely turned things around.

There are still some consistent guidelines, though, which is that the cadence of gaming laptop releases provides plenty of incentive for retailers to remove some inventory and make room for newer products with the latest hardware.

These gaming laptops are usually the least likely to see price cuts, but that will still happen, so don’t expect the only gaming laptops on sale to be those that are a generation or two behind everyone else.

Moreover, most of the latest mobile computing hardware, such as new mobile processors and GPUs, were announced early in the year, usually around CES. And since most laptops have been in the market for several months, if not more than a year, we’re expecting new mobile CPUs and GPUs to be announced or at least teased in January from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. .

This means that demand for current-generation technology is likely to subside on Black Friday as people wait to see what will be revealed next year. As a result, the prices of current-generation gaming laptops have to come down to compensate, and you should definitely take advantage of these deeper price cuts.

One of the best ways to see what kind of gaming laptop deals to expect this year is to take a look at what we saw last year. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can give you some highlights from our 2021 Black Friday coverage to make it clear.

No matter what kind of games you plan on doing, there are a few things you’ll likely see on Black Friday that you’ll want to avoid unless the price is absolutely unbeatable.

First, don’t look for anything less than 8GB of RAM unless you plan on playing casual games only. Windows 11 will take up a lot of RAM, so you won’t have much to work with for your other programs, and games generally require quite a bit of RAM to run smoothly.

If you are looking for high-end devices, then make sure that you do not pay extra for “premium” devices of two or three generations. If you see a $2000 gaming laptop with a 9th generation Intel Core i7 processor, you can get new hardware for roughly the same price anywhere else, and you definitely should.

Another thing you might see a lot at the moment is a “gaming” Chromebook. Look, don’t get us wrong, we love Chromebooks, but Chromebooks usually don’t have the requisite specs for locally installed games (and almost none of them can be played even if they are), and cloud gaming is viable but still iffy on a Chromebook. Come back to us next year once we’ve had a chance to push the new line of gaming Chromebooks to see what they’re capable of before making that kind of leap.

Finally, there is the matter of MacBooks. Ordinarily, MacBooks aren’t thought of as gaming machines in a serious way and that hasn’t really changed even with Apple’s latest silicon.

There are a lot of games you can play on your Mac, keep in mind that some of us are actually pretty optimistic Mac gaming capabilities in the next years. Capcom just released Resident Evil Village on the Mac and other developers will likely start taking the same approach in the coming years, but we’re not there yet and the future of Mac gaming is still waiting to be seen. If you are looking to play the latest PC games Immediately I still need a file Windows laptop.

Cheat Sheet Gaming Laptop Specifications

One of the most impressive things about shopping for a gaming laptop on Black Friday is trying to understand the completely incomprehensible specs that manufacturers tend to tell customers. If you have never bought a gaming laptop before or are buying one for someone else and you are not a gamer, it may feel like you are reading a foreign language.

Fortunately, we’ve tested so many gaming laptops that we’ve learned what’s worth buying and what’s best to avoid. We’ve broken down the types of specs you’ll want to target for premium devices, the specs we’ve suggested for the best balance of performance and price, and the minimum specs you should aim for if you’re looking for a bigger budget option but still want your laptop to provide a solid gaming experience.

Today’s Best Gaming Laptop Deals

If you don’t want to wait until Black Friday, check out some Best gaming laptop deals available now.