Lenovo's 5i Pro is beyond the reach of seriously tight budgets, but it's extremely fast at a still-entry-level price. Driving that display is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU for impressive frame rates. That extra word, 'Pro,' indicates a considerable step up in performance and features, with a trendy 16-inch screen (and that slightly taller 16:10 aspect ratio) at a crisp 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution. Read on for a breakdown of our current best budget gaming laptops, all given PCMag's thorough testing regimen, followed by a guide to what to look for in the right laptop for you.ĭon't confuse Lenovo's Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 with the Legion 5i Gen 7 listed above. The traditional $1,000 mark for budget gaming systems has gotten a bit murkier in 2023, with costs rising, but we'll run down what to look for, sticking as closely to that figure as possible. Ultimately, though, they too are still well short of the performance of a discrete GPU found in a gaming laptop. These, and the latest processors, can run some 'real' games at low settings, as shown in our integrated graphics testing. While this is true, Intel's 11th Generation 'Tiger Lake' CPUs changed the calculus on this position somewhat, as they introduced notably improved integrated graphics. For us-and for sellers of laptops-that's the bright line that divides a gamer from a pretender. No laptop is a true gaming machine unless it comes with a dedicated graphics processor (GPU), as opposed to the integrated graphics built into most laptops' main processor (CPU). Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions.

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