What to Look while Buying Budget Gaming Laptop?
Everyone is talking about the latest RTX graphics card, the latest Intel Core i9 processor, AMD Ryzen 9 processor and the massive 64GB DDR5 RAM, and OLED displays but why no one is talking about the budget of a user.
Not everyone in the market looking for the most powerful gaming laptop and spend $3000-$4000 on a gaming laptop. There are a lot of people who are just starting with gaming, students who are looking for an affordable, budget segment of a gaming laptop.
If you are someone who is looking for an affordable gaming laptop and confused about the specs, and hardware you should be looking at, this guide will give you an idea about that. You can easily grab the best gaming laptop under $800, $700 and even under $600. Surely there would be big difference in the performance of a $2000 gaming laptop and $800 gaming laptop but we get what we paid for.
So, without any further ado, let's see the things you should be looking at while buying a budget gaming laptop:
Budget Gaming Laptop Guide
1. Processor
The processor is the most basic thing you should be looking at when buying a budget gaming laptop. A processor is the heart of any gaming laptop that basically runs all the other functions of the gaming laptop.
Now if you are looking for the best gaming laptop under $1000, you can get an Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7 processor. While if you are looking for $800 gaming laptop, you can get Intel Core i7 but most of the time, it is Intel Core i5 processor or AMD Ryzen 5 processor.
Things don't end of the processor name, you also need to take care of the generation and model of the processor.
Don't fall for 10th Gen or even an 11th Gen Intel processor. Go for the 12th Gen Intel Core processor or the 5th Gen AMD Ryzen 5 or the 6th Gen AMD Ryzen 7 processor. The new-gen processor is more competent and provides better overall performance.
The processor core is another thing you should consider. While most budget gaming laptop comes with Octa Core and 6 core processor, a few gaming laptops also comes with 12 Core processor. The more is better. Just keep that in mind.
2. RAM
RAM is another crucial thing you should not miss while buying a budget gaming laptop. Most budget gaming laptop comes with 8GB or in a few case, 16GB RAM but along with the big RAM number, also take care of if it is DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. DDR5 RAM is the latest RAM that is power efficient and offers better performance. Here is an in-depth difference between DDR5 vs DDR4 RAM.
Along with that, the clock speed of RAM. In most cases, you will only find 3200Mhz RAM which is good but if you are getting more than 3200mhz, do consider. The bigger the number, the better would be reading speed of RAM.
3. Graphics Card
For gaming, Graphics Card is the most important thing. You can go for 8GB RAM if you are getting RTX 3060 or an even better GPU in a budget gaming laptop. While buying a budget gaming laptop, make sure you are getting an RTX series GPU. There is an outdated variant of gaming laptops in the market that costs ~$700, ~$800 but still comes with GTX 1650. Just ignore them.
The latest gaming laptops right now are coming with RTX 3050Ti, RTX 3050 and even RTX 3060 which should be your priority. Along with that, also look for VRAM of GPU. It can vary from 4GB to 8 GB. The bigger the number, the better it is.
RTX series of GPU comes with Ray tracing cores, DLSS, Nvidia Max-Q technology, and Nvidia AI tech which is responsible for high-quality gaming performance. If you don't know about Ray tracing yet, here is the basic info about Ray tracing.
4. Ports
Considering the latest scenario and future of connectivity, you should definitely check if the gaming laptop has USB Type-C or Thunderbolt 4 port with DisplayPort support. Along with that, there should be HDMI 2.1 port. No HDMI 2.0b or HDMI 2.0. HDMI 2.1 supports 4K 120FPS gameplay on an external monitor which also makes your laptop future-proof.
Other than that, there should be an RJ-45 LAN port for high-speed cable connection for lag-free gaming. All the other ports are secondary ports. These 3 ports are the most important ports for any budget gaming laptop.
These are the only things you should give extra care of. All the other things like Display, build quality, and design are secondary things.
One thing you should accept is, budget gaming laptops come with decent build quality which usually came in plastic build. The battery should not be your concern. Gaming is a high-power process for laptops and it consumes way too much power. You have to plug in the charger if you are playing games on the laptop.
For display, you should consider IPS display only. IPS is the best kind of display that gives the best colors, viewing angles and accuracy. You can always connect an external monitor for big screen, better colors, high resolution, and best gaming visuals.
