20 Best Gaming Laptop For 1500 (2023 Updated)

I’ll start with the good. The build quality on this laptop is exceptional. The all aluminum frame is sturdy and fairly smudge resistant as long as your hands aren’t covered in food grease while you’re using it.

Any smudges come out easily with the included micro fiber cloth. The screen is nothing short of gorgeous with the QHD and high refresh rate. This laptop is light and the power brick is as well, totaling about 6 pounds between the two.

It packs a 3080 ti (laptop) GPU and an incredible powerful alderlake CPU. But the hardware is where the good ends for me. The Razer software (Razer synapse) just pales in comparison to ROG and armoury crate.

The performance customization is severely lacking. When plugged in you are provided with 3 options. Silent, balanced, and custom. On silent mode you have no performance options, on balanced you can customize the fan speed and on custom you can alter CPU and GPU performance, with selections of low medium high and ultra for the CPU and low medium and high for the GPU.

What I find infuriating is custom mode takes away control of the fan. It makes it automatic so the laptop thermals spike up to near maximums before synapse kicks on the fan, meaning the laptop starts running hot right away.

Compare this to Armoury Crates custom mode which allows you to adjust clock and boost speeds of the CPU and GPU, and full control of the fan, as well as a companion app to give you control without exiting your application and there’s just no comparison.

Additionally, sometimes when I exit games, the aspect ratio and zoom changes away from the default to a lower resolution and a non 16:9 native aspect ratio, and this can only be rectified by restarting the laptop.

If you’re going to charge $3,700 for a laptop it needs to be free of software quirks like this. While the 3080ti is nice, it’s not necessary. If you’re buying a laptop for pure gaming, go with a 17 inch laptop with a far cheaper 3070ti you can get models with a similar screen (slightly lower refresh rate but same quality), better software, and better performance.

All for $1,300 to $2,000 less than this computer. It is not worth the money and I’ll be returning mine for something else.

I really like this laptop. I mostly use it for digital photo editing and for some video editing as well. I wanted a screen that would present accurate color. This one even though it’s not OLED it does give you accurate color at 144hz refresh rate so there’s no need for a separate screen just for photo or video editing.

it’s 17. 3 so it’s large enough to do work. This will work with a thunderbolt drive and the CFExpress cards I use so file transfers are fairly quick. The 2. 5GB NIC card Should be fast enough for most people’s needs.

I do wish it was 10GB but it will be great for what I do. I work with a lot of a large files from my Canon R5. I like that its windows based so I’m able to use it for my regular tech work as well. The Microphone is awesome I get compliments on it daily in Zoom meetings.

The Web Cam is 1080 HD while it’s not as good as some it still does a good job. The speakers are ok but are still a little bit tinny side but does have great spacial audio separation. Since Windows 11 has hello there was no need for a fingerprint reader since it performs facial recognition to logon.

The spacing on the keyboard is a bit smaller than others I’ve used but you get used to it after a week or two of using it, it’s no big deal as others would have you believe. I have the 32GB memory version which is very good.

Overall, I’m very happy with this laptop it’s a true desktop replacement.

The worst experience I have ever had with a laptop and a company’s customer service. I will NEVER buy from razer again. Currently in the process of trying to get a refund and get something else. I had a hard crash and display issues my second time booting up.

Razer support had no solutions and couldn’t tell me if the issues were indicative of an issue with the laptop (if this is a common thing I feel bad for razer owners everywhere). The 1 star is only representing that it can indeed run games at high settings well, so it does that when it isn’t just blue screened.

I really want to reinforce that the crashing and driver issues started with NOTHING installed complete blank and crashing on second boot. Even after clean installing reinstalling updating etc etc with the drivers no improvement, and Razer has 0 offerings.

Basically been told sorry that sucks nothing we can do, nowhere I can bring it, nothing to to besides send it in for a week – and no they don’t offer any temporary solutions here. Absolutely the most frustrating and crushing experience I’ve ever had I will try and persuade any single person from buying a razer laptop for the rest of my life.

If someone from there sees this more than happy to provide case numbers, but it’s really just sad. Don’t buy.

I really wanted to like this laptop (Razer blade 17 2022 with QHD 240 hz and 3080 ti) but do not recommend buying. This is first product review I have ever written but felt compelled to write one. Bought this 3 different times: 1st: bought it directly from Razer website.

Came defective with dead pixel and graphics card. Discussed with Nvidia first. Thought stuttering and screen glitches may have been software or advanced optimus related. Troubleshooted windows 11 and reinstalled.

Updated graphics card drivers. Entered bios to discrete GPU only. Did everything. Still issues with it with screen flickering during gameplay and overall stuttering including on UFO stutter test. Razer’s customer service was worst I’ve ever experienced.

Each time they would contact me with different support agent with a different case number. Eventually was able to return. 2nd: bought it from Bestbuy since totaltech member. Everything really smooth.

Incredible QHD screen and G-sync made everything really smooth. The best gaming experience I’ve had. However, the panel came in with dead pixel. Unacceptable for $4,000 laptop. Returned it soon thereafter.

3rd: No dead pixels this time. Again everything running smoothly. Best gaming experience I’ve had. Would get hot so I had cooling pad which helped while gaming. Also did a lot of work on it including microsoft word and excel, etc.

17. 3 inch screen made huge difference. Used this extensively for more than a month. Best laptop I ever had. Then suddenly had blue/green artifact on screen. Took it to Bestbuy Geek Squad right afterwards.

They believed this was a hardware issue. Reseted PC with them and issue persisted. Luckily was able to return since had 2 month return policy. I am honestly not sure why critic reviews are really good for this laptop.

Perhaps they receive good review units. Or they do not use this laptop for a long enough time. I cannot believe a $4,000 laptop has such poor reliability and that Razer has poor laptop quality control.

Please do not buy because I had 3 of these laptops and cannot be coincidence to have so many faulty units.

Razer has the best build quality in gaming laptops hands down. The fans are quiet and don’t make that annoying whining noise most laptops make. The keyboard is crisp. The screen is beautiful, bright enough, and colorful with no noticeable pixel-ghosting.

Track pad is smooth and accurate. And thermals are fine. Performance is amazing. I think the 3070ti is a much better option. The 3080ti version is 800 dollars more for what? About 5% performance increase? No thanks.

I do wish for more battery life though. But I guess this is typical for a 17 inch gaming laptop. You might get around 2 hours or so watching youtube. And for this price it really should have come with 32gb of ram.

But that’s beyond me. Overall, if you have the money and want something that is both sleek and powerful, get this Razer.

This device is great, but there are some flaws I would love to address. First off, you’ve heard everyone talk about the ram. The memory included with this device bottlenecks it, so if you want the true performance, expect to spend at least around 100 dollars in RAM.

Secondly, the WiFi card that comes with the device is. interesting. It is a MediaTek MT6721 (I think?) As a result, there aren’t many devices that use it. (Pretty much only Asus laptops and motherboards.

) As a result, Linux kernel support is lacking for 5. 17 (or at least I could not find the module I need to enable it. ) Expect to upgrade the WiFi card for another 30 dollars added onto the upgrade price.

Lastly, this is only a small problem. The SSD that comes with this device has a read-write speed of around 1 GB/S. Pretty much only a minor issue, as it works flawlessly in terms of storage. 512 GB (you’re really buying ~480GB) is pretty much all you will need.

When I got this device, I wanted to like it. However, with the manufacturer spending money on low-cost parts, my rank for this goes down. Props on the manufacturer for allowing the customer to upgrade absolutely everything I mentioned so far.

(2 full M. 2 SSD slots, 1 slot for WiFi card, easy RAM access. ) The display is amazing. The processor and graphics card is amazing. If you were upgrade this laptop to the maximum without having to replace the motherboard, I would consider this a great laptop.

This laptop is worth the price simply just because of the display, processor, battery management, and GPU.

This ASUS ROG Strix Scar is a great gaming laptop! It packs a real punch with these tech specs and I am blown away with how snappy it is. The QHD screen is extremely beautiful and the games I have tried look so good and run perfect with some on their highest available graphical settings (though this really kicks the fans into overdrive).

The design and build of the laptop feels study and excellent quality, the casing can be a slight fingerprint magnet but it’s easy to wipe clean. Only issues I’ve come across are; – Relatively short battery life when not doing anything too taxing on graphics/CPU.

– An issue which caused a consistent ‘Power Surge on USB’ Windows notification with nothing plugged into the USB ports which was fixed by a BIOS update using the included MyASUS dashboard software. – The trackpad can also be somewhat unresponsive to clicks and movement.

I’d give this laptop a 5 star because it’s honestly an incredible, powerful piece of kit, minus the above few quirks. I’m extremely happy with the overall build, specs and the ability to further upgrade with a second NVME and more memory down the line.

The ordering and speed of dispatch to delivery from Overclockers was fantastic as usual, thanks!.

I got this laptop a month ago and boy, it was worth it. The laptop is super fast and can run the average game (Fall Guys, Among Us, Roblox, Valorant, Minecraft, Rocket League, Fortnite, Genshin etc. ) at the highest graphics level at 120+ fps (although I would cap it at your monitor’s refresh rate so the fans don’t get too loud).

The laptop has 3 USB-A ports which I use for my mouse, keyboard, and headset. The laptop also has a customizable RGB keyboard which you can personalize with Aura Creator (but I disabled it because it’s a waste of power).

The only downsides are that the laptop has no camera and the fact that the built-in monitor’s picture quality isn’t so good. If you already use or plan on using a standalone monitor, the laptop works just fine as a secondary.

I’ve already checked everywhere and this laptop is the best in its price range, and I wouldn’t suggest getting the higher-spec model unless you plan on playing Cyberpunk 2077 or something. Other than gaming, this laptop is also great for schoolwork (Windows 11, fast load times, etc.

). Pro tip: This laptop goes on sale every month-or-so so don’t buy it until then. TL;DR: Buy this laptop and you won’t regret it.

Bought this laptop a few weeks ago and I honestly couldn’t be happier. at first it had a bunch of random restarts but that was because it had some BIOS updates and windows updates. Watched a couple of reviews on youtube and what I found was that due supply shortages Asus had to ship this laptop with slower memory (1Rx16 as opposed to the faster 1Rx8 ram).

Once the memory is upgraded it should unlock more performance especially when connected to an external monitor via the USB C port (preferably USB C to display port). Keep in mind when gaming on the laptop monitor it uses the iGPU instead of the dedicated 6800m and because it has no mux switch theres no way unlock all of the performance unless if a external monitor is connected to the USB C port, which when done puts this laptop on par with some of the most powerful gaming laptops that have full powered RTX 3070’s and 3080’s.

Like other people have said there seem to be some quality issues although the only one I’ve found so far is that theres a visible line at the bottom of the display (which I’m not too bothered about cus its connected to a monitor).

Unfortunately it only comes with a 512GB SSD but its easy enough pop open the bach panel to install a 1TB or 2TB SSD and with the ram upgrade you’d still save hundreds of dollars whn comparing to other laptops of the same calibur.

All in all great value for money gaming laptop.

I needed a gaming machine that was capable of running a high end VR setup and also used for graphic design and regular office application machine so I considered buying a desktop but decided to give the Razor Blade a trial to see if it could perform all these tasks.

Now a month in it I’m pleasantly surprised it has performed outstandingly. With 3Dmark scores only slightly behind the equivalent Alienware and MSI machines I was sure that it would be able to run games at ultra settings no worries and so far I’ve thrown Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5 and Doom Eternal which it’s eaten up no worries.

I run a Samsung G9 49″ Superwide monitor (at 5120 * 1440) off this laptop which pushes the GPU to the limit but frame rates remain consistently high and Ray tracing processing is flawless. There have been issues with the latest Nvidia drivers not being compatible with some games and occasional flicker on my monitor but this is across all Nvidia GPU’s and will be patched at some stage so not holding it against the Razor Blade.

Also there is an intermittent screen flicker on the laptop. Screen when running at 360hz which is common across all the 360hz razor screens but I run the laptop off external screens so it hasn’t bothered me.

If I was using the laptop screen I would probably just run it at 60hz. Kind of defeats the purpose of 360hz but not a deal breaker for me Likewise the Vive VR setup runs amazingly smooth off this laptop with no issues.

More than enough power and connecting through a usb-c to display port apapter has been fine. The laptop is set to performance mode which runs the GPU at high speed so the fans can be quite noisy but airpods are always in so not a huge deal.

This is normal for all gaming laptops and I’ve heard worse. If I’m running excel etc I set the CPU/GPU to low settings and it’s a lot quieter. Not as quiet as my Macbook Pro but it’s a good compromise.

Overall I’m very happy with my purchase especially at $1k cheaper than equivalent Alienware and MSI alternatives. Pros Very powerful GPU Built in Razor Software very easy to use Fantastic value for money Cons Plain looking case compared to other high end gaming laptops (not an issue for a mature gamer like me though) Loud fans when under high load (expected and heard worse) Occasional NVIDIA driver conflicts on some games and with G9 monitor (will be patched) 4.

5 stars out of 5.

I have had a number of laptops over the years, but this is one of the best I have had. The Razer implementations of GeForce graphics technologies has been awesome. I remember the days when integrated graphics in the CPU and a dedicated chip would cause all kinds of headaches for users, and with this it seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Switching between Optimus and dedicated graphics on this model is not on-the-fly; you do need to reboot after each switch. And it does trip off BitLocker hardware change monitoring, so you will need a BitLocker recovery key if you utilize that.

Why I would take a star off this one is two major points: the price tag and the battery. While Optimus helps, I would have hoped laptop battery tech would have gotten to a point where you could switch over to a lower power hardware configuration and have all day power to the device (if not the full horsepower).

And that the lack of battery run time comes at a $4k price tag for just 3 hours of battery time (if you are lucky) is a little annoying. Hopefully on next generations of the laptop this can be remediated.

The 4K OLED screen is beautiful, the performance for such a low profile design is brilliant and the battery life is more than respectable as long as you kill any discrete graphic apps (use the integrated graphics), lower the brightness, turn bluetooth on only when needed and you’ll get 6-8 hours in normal usage and up to 10 hours with mild office based use.

The only real disappointment is the poor quality webcam – maybe use your phone as the webcam (simple setup on iOS and android via wifi or usb) and the other minor complaint is the speaker quality. The speakers can get to a medium level of loudness but there is very little body to the sound and the built-in EQ options make no real difference.

Overall – a great device (helped because of the 60hz screen) with touch screen interaction – perfect for Windows 11 and the android/mobile app functionality that will be built in. The 3080 is a little undercooked compared to other 3080 laptops but the heat is managed well in such a small enclosure – it’s probably closer to a 3070 in real life performance.

Obviously the real power of this laptop is when it is plugged in – on battery life it is best used as an office/productivity device though you will get around 1. 5-2 hours on discrete graphic enabled programs/productivity apps.

Highlyrecommended as the 11th gen version of this may be slightly more powerful on the CPU side, it does use significantly more battery/power (though you do get a 1080p webcam on that model).

The Ryzen 5900HS in this bad boy reaches almost 5500 during the all-core stress test in CPU-Z. By comparison, my desktop’s freakin’ Ryzen 7 5800x scores about 6800 with all-core at 4. 7ghz. Single-core performance is about 50 points behind on the Asus laptop, but it also draws less than 20 watts versus my desktop’s near 100 Watt — and that’s after I carefully set the voltage curve for optimal TDP and performance.

Oh, and this laptop has an RTX 3070. TDP is only 95 watt I believe, but for 1080p gaming on any title that supports DLSS 2. x, you’re set for the next 5 years at least. Personallly, I use it for both productivity as well as gaming.

Adobe CS and Ableton run like a dream, at least, considering the portable form factor. For serious musicians, this bad boy, a Push, a nice interface, and some instruments/pedals/whatever othher fun noisemakers you have on hand are all you need for a solo performance at a nice venue.

You might wanna bounce some of your samples in place after you’ve pushed their pitch envelope into outer space and smashed them together like a PBJ before mapping them onto a drumkit — ya know, before you start layering those clips and adding live instrumentation — but seriously, the Ryzen 9 in this is, well.

it’s a Ryzen 9. For video editors, you’ve got Nvidia NVENC, thanks to the RTX 3070. Graphic designers, illustrators, or more serious photographers will want an external display as the color accuracy and overall display quality are a bit.

dismal. But again, it’s a laptop — you can’t just bring your triple-display, RTX 3090, I9-12900K, 64 gig DDR5-ram powered beast on a cross-continental flight, can you?) Unfortunately, the followed up does NOT have an Nvidia Card, so get this year’s model if you can.

You won’t regreg it.

I purchased my G15 GA503 from the Clearwater, FL BestBuy as an open box in “good condition”. By the looks of it, it could’ve fooled me for being brand new, aside from it not coming in the original box, which is the reason they couldn’t classify it as an excellent condition open box.

Everything works good on it, good power limits, good clock speeds, good thermals. Screen looks fantastic, but it isn’t the brightest screen on the market. The software for controlling the 5900HS cpu is kind of a joke though.

By default, the system runs the cpu either AT turbo boost(4. 4 or 4. 6, whatever it is), or very close to it. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it will be running at near max speeds just sitting on the desktop with nothing open.

Not a problem though, there’s a way to disable the turbo boosting, and that DRASTICALLY drops the CPU temperatures. Before I did this the CPU temps were typically 65-75c at idle, which is very unacceptable.

After disabling turbo, the cpu idles between 40-55c, and that’s with the fans spinning slow, or completely off. -My one complaint though, about two weeks after I had purchased it, I noticed the hinge for the display was making a noise.

I am 100% certain it was not making this noise right after I got it, because I am VERY meticulous and thorough with my purchases. It is a noise that I wouldn’t be able to accurately describe, but it'[s almost like a creaky/clicky noise.

It does it if I move the laptop at any angle, and it only occurs with the left hinge. I would definitely like to get some reassurance from ASUS that it’s something that isn’t a big deal. But worst case scenario I don’t want my hinge failing, or worse the hinge mechanism is rubbing up against a ribbon cable and does serious damage.

Aside from the hinge, the build quality is quite decent. Only plastic parts are the bottom part of the shell(quite typical on laptops), and the chin bezzle of the display. – Anyways as long as this hinge issue does not lead to anything serious, this laptop with these specs was a STEAL for only $1260.

Couldn’t find any other laptop with similar specs for under $1800, so I jumped on this the moment I saw it.

IšverstiShow in original languageI’ll end on a good note, but hear’s my cons first: 1. Have wifi problems? Update the driver from Lenovo (go to the subreddit Lenovo Legion and search for wifi and the first post has a link to the drivers).

I don’t know why Lenovo sends the laptops out with old wifi card drivers but it really made set up stressful 2. The trackpad will randomly stop working, like the two finger scroll will just boom! Stop and then you have to open a couple windows to see if it’s a program issue (it’s not) and then in a minute or so it’ll start working again.

Not sure what’s causing that since I have a light load going when that happens (like 50+ tabs on Chrome that’s it). It’s just super frustrating since I’m using this for research/school and use that function a lot.

3. The speakers sound like a cheap Bluetooth speaker. I don’t ask a lot of my computer’s speakers because I don’t often use them but for the price I really expected better. To describe the sound, listening to IU’s Lilac, the song sound like it’s not whole or empty, maybe that’s what they call tin-y.

I use headphones a lot and so I guess that’s not a big deal but it was worse than I expected. 4. They really did my face injustice with the webcam. I really feel like it gives off early 480p YouTube quality days.

They definitely skimped on that. Okay now for my pros: 1. The screen, just wow the screen!!! It’s so bright and colourful and with the matte even in the full sun it looks great. Also I’m coming from a 1080p laptop so not gonna lie having the UHD took some time to get used to since it’s so crisp and detailed.

I was actually worried about downsizing from a 17″ to a 16″ and I honestly think with the smaller size with the UHD I prefer that to a 1080 17″. 2. I got the RGB keyboard, I like how the zones blend into each other and there’s a short cut to switch between the settings which is nice.

3. I like the aesthetic, I know a lot of ppl weren’t happy about having the weird triangle thing on the back but I have to say my immediate impression when unboxing it was that it looks like a work computer haha 4.

The battery life is great, just testing it now and looks like I can get a good 3-4 hours at least just browsing and stuff at 50% brightness 5. Saved the best for last but the fans on this computer are SILENT.

Like I regularly have trouble sleeping from laptop fans if they’re on and this one has so little sound I am incredibly impressed. Haven’t run any heavy games so can’t say what it’s like at max power but it’s so nice to have such a quiet fan.

So overall, 3. 5 stars. Minor inconveniences like the trackpad being weird, having the laptop come with an older wifi card driver, and skimping on the speaker’s and webcam are really what brought this review down.

It really is a great laptop though :).

IšverstiShow in original language4. 5 STARS I’ve been a Mac user for almost 10 years and purchased this because I needed a Windows computer with high-end graphics and dedicated VRAM to run ArcGIS Pro for my professional certification course.

I’ve always considered Lenovo the top-of-the-line when it comes to PCs, so they were my default choice. I ran this laptop through just about every test you can think of (I’m pretty savvy with technology) and opened up the back just to check everything out.

This computer performs at the standard I would expect for all of its components at a GREAT price with one exception – I wish the battery performed better. In all honesty the battery is about average for this level gaming computer, but Lenovo claims “exceptional” battery life and I would disagree with that statement (hence the loss of half a star).

I let the computer sit idle, screen brightness relatively low but on, with only a browser window open (single tab), and the battery made it to about 4 hours before it was below 10%. Perhaps I am spoiled as a Mac user.

but I expected more longevity out of the battery, especially at such a low CPU load. One other small point. the images for the laptop displayed it with the RGB keyboard and it did not come with that (just the standard backlighting), so that was disappointing but far from a deal breaker.

Still, this laptop checked all the boxes for me and performs very well, especially for the price. I can’t speak to overall longevity yet as I’ve only had her for about 2 months now, but hope she holds up well over time.