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With the big event coming up fast, we’re spotting some early Black Friday deals already. There are some great discounts on gaming laptops in particular if you simply can’t wait any longer to make a purchase. Below we’ve picked out some awesome Black Friday gaming laptop deals with something for nearly every budget and including all the biggest names in the field. Let’s guide you through the deals now.

Today’s Best Black Friday Gaming Laptop Deals

HP Victus 15 (Intel) — $550, was $900

The HP Victus 15 is one of the cheapest gaming laptops in the market, but it still provides decent performance with the latest 13th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card, and 8GB of RAM. With these specifications, you can play today’s most popular games, but you’ll have to go with low to medium graphic settings for the more demanding titles. The gaming laptop is also equipped with a 15.6-inch Full HD screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, and a 512GB SSD with Windows 11 Home pre-loaded.

HP Victus 15 (AMD) — $650, was $950

With the AMD versus Intel rivalry intensifying over the past few years, you may want to try the HP Victus 15 with the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS processor. It’s paired with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050 graphics card and 8GB of RAM, while maintaining the 15.6-inch Full HD display. It’s also equipped with a 512GB SSD with Windows 11 Home out of the box.

Asus TUF Gaming A16 — $750, was $1,100

The Asus TUF Gaming A16 focuses on durability, so you won’t be worried that it will get damaged if you take it with you to different places. For a relatively affordable gaming laptop, it provides decent performance with its AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor, AMD Radeon RX7600S V8G Graphics, and 16GB of RAM that’s the recommended starting point for gaming by our guide on how much RAM do you need. It also comes with Windows 11 Home in its 512GB SSD, and a 16-inch Full HD screen with a 165Hz refresh rate.

HP Omen 16t — $780, was $1,150

The HP Omen 16t is powered by the 13th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM, which are pretty decent specifications for a relatively cheap gaming laptop. It comes with Windows 11 Home in its 512GB SSD, and you’ll enjoy playing your favorite video games on its 16.1-inch Full HD screen with a 144Hz refresh rate.

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 — $800, was $1,200

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is a mid-range gaming laptop featuring a bright and colorful 16-inch display with WUXGA resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate. It’s equipped with the 13th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM, and you’ll have ample storage space for your games and save data on its 512GB SSD with Windows 11 Home out of the box.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 — $1,250, was $1,600

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a unique entry in our list of the best gaming laptops because it’s there for its portability. It’s small and light with its 14-inch screen featuring QHD resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate, which is different from most gaming laptops that are big and bulky. However, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 also provides powerful performance with the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM, and it ships with Windows 11 Home in its 512GB SSD.

Razer Blade 15 — $2,000, was $3,000

The Razer Blade 15 is the best 15-inch gaming laptop in our list of the best 15-inch laptops because of its sleek design with its 15.6-inch QHD screen with a 240Hz refresh rate, and exceptional performance provided by its 12th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, and 16GB of RAM. You’ll be able to install several AAA titles on its 1TB SSD, which ships with Windows 11 Home out of the box.

Razer Blade 17 — $2,400, was $3,400

For a larger version of the Razer Blade 15, go for the Razer Blade 17 with its 17.3-inch QHD display offering a 240Hz refresh rate. The gaming laptop retains the 1TB SSD with Windows 11 Home, but elevates performance to further maximize the bigger screen with the 12th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, with the same Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card and 16GB of RAM.

Alienware m16 — $2,800, was $3,500

For a gaming laptop that’s prepared for the best upcoming PC games of the next few years, you can’t go wrong with the Alienware m16. Inside the device are the 13th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, and 32GB of RAM. The gaming laptop’s 16-inch screen with QHD+ resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate will give justice to its powerful performance, and it will be a while before you run out of space on its 2TB SSD with Windows 11 Home.

Who Has the Best Black Friday Gaming Laptop Deals?

All the major retailers, such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, will be slashing prices for a wide range of gaming laptops. If you’re asking which one of them will have the biggest discounts, unfortunately, it’s too early to tell. We’re expecting minimal differences between the sellers though, so either you go on the online platform that you’ve been using the most for familiarity, or you decide on a specific gaming laptop that you’ll be searching for across all the websites.

One thing’s for sure though — if you’re willing to give up some performance by going for gaming laptops with older components, retailers will be selling these devices with bigger price cuts. You’ll have to figure out how far back you can go in terms of these specifications though, especially if there’s a game or two that you’re planning to play on the device. You’ll surely be able to find a nice laptop to fit your needs, especially if you’re using our list of the best Black Friday gaming laptop deals.

Should You Buy a Gaming Laptop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday will offer eye-catching bargain prices on different kinds of products, but retailers will be focusing on electronic devices for this shopping holiday. That includes gaming laptops, among all the things that gamers can buy. There’s a possibility that gaming laptops will be cheaper on Cyber Monday, so some believe that you should skip Black Friday entirely and just wait for Cyber Monday to pull the trigger on some purchases.

While there’s certainly a chance that the gaming laptop that you want to buy will get a bigger discount on Cyber Monday, it’s not advisable to eschew Black Friday deals altogether. There’s no certainty that the device will get cheaper, and even if it does, it may not be by much. You’re risking being able to purchase a gaming laptop at a price that you can afford in favor of savings of just a few more dollars. That trade-off isn’t worth it, so if you see an offer that you like from Black Friday gaming laptop deals, take advantage of it right away.

Editors’ Recommendations

Not everyone needs the fastest CPU and the highest-quality high-resolution display. Sometimes, a machine with a last-gen CPU and a decent Full HD display is plenty for the web browsing, email, and Office applications that make up many users’ workflows. This can be true for students, and sometimes buyers are looking for a secondary machine to augment one of the best laptops you can buy.

That’s where budget laptops come in. The definition is a loose one, with some machines costing a bit more but offering a lot more to go with it. But they’ll save you hundreds over midrange and premium laptops that are overkill for what you need. This list will provide several options, including for gamers and those with the lowest budgets. You can check out our best laptops under $500 and best laptops under $300 lists for even more affordable options.

Dell XPS 13 (9315)

A surprisingly affordable ‘premium’ Windows laptop

Why you should buy this: It’s an amazing laptop for under $1,000.

Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a premium laptop for much less money,

Why we picked the Dell XPS 13 9315:

Yes, the XPS 13 9315 costs $849 for its entry-level model, which is at the high end of the budget range. But it makes this list because you simply won’t find a Windows laptop for less than $1,000 that can match the XPS 13’s excellent build quality, attractive aesthetic, and outstanding battery life.

For that low price, you get a 9-watt Intel Core i5-1230U CPU with 10 cores and 12 threads that delivers competent productivity performance. It’s not the fastest laptop we’ve reviewed, but it’s sufficient to get your work done. As a lower-watt part, though, it affords outstanding battery life. You even get a 512GB SSD, which is a lot at this price, with a build quality and good looks that are unusual without spending a lot more.

Asus ZenBook 14 OLED

Best budget laptop

Why you should buy this: The features and battery life are game-changers at the price.

Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a beautiful display for less money,

Why we picked the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED:

Sometimes, companies have to cut corners to fit a laptop into a $700 price. The display is often one casualty, with a panel that might suffer in terms of color quality and contrast. The ZenBook 14 OLED is an exception, offering a spectacular OLED display that’s bright, colorful, and displays inky blacks. It’s equal to displays on laptops costing twice as much.

But that’s not all. The AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 CPUs on offer provide competent productivity performance to go with great battery life. And, the laptop’s build quality is excellent, with a great keyboard and touchpad with an LED numeric keyboard. It’s a tremendous value all-around, landing it on our list of best laptops.

Surface Laptop Go 2

An excellent budget laptop for students

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget laptop for students.

Who it’s for: Students, buyers on a budget.

Why we picked the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2: 

Students usually want a few things in a cheap laptop — something that’s easy to carry around, that provides good enough performance for getting their homework done, and something that’s not going to embarrass them when they pull it out to take notes. Oh, and it needs to be affordable. Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Go 2 meets all those criteria — making it one of the best laptops for students in college.

We’ve linked to our Surface Go review above because the biggest change to the Surface Go 2 is the upgrade to 11th-gen Core CPUs. Graphics have been upgraded to Intel Iris Xe, the entry-level storage has been doubled to 128GB, there’s an improved webcam, and the laptop ships with Windows 11 Home instead of Windows 10 in S mode. The Surface Laptop Go 2 is also a highly mobile device with a 12.4-inch IPS touchscreen display that, although it’s not quite FHD resolution, is still of very high quality and a pleasure to use.

If you want a newer version, the Surface Laptop Go 3 is available, but we weren’t very impressed.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3

A Chromebook 2-in-1 that won’t break the bank

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget Chromebook.

Who it’s for: Anyone on a budget who doesn’t mind sacrificing performance for extreme value.

Why we picked the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3:

Chromebooks have become popular budget choices over the last few years, and many have won us over as well. One style that hasn’t done as well as some others is the detachable Chrome OS tablet. That changed with the introduction of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, now in its third generation, which not only is a very usable tablet but one that represents tremendous value thanks to the included kickstand cover and detachable keyboard.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3’s low price brings some limitations and basic specs. Its Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage don’t deliver stellar performance, although it’s good enough for the kinds of tasks you’ll want to run on it. The display is very nice, with a 15:9 2K (2000 x 1200) resolution that’s not as pixel sharp as Apple’s baseline iPad that the Duet competes against. If you want a tablet for web browsing, light productivity work, and consuming media, then the Chromebook Duet 3 and Chrome OS have you covered.

HP Victus 15

Solid gaming for less than $1,000

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget gaming laptop.

Who it’s for: Gamers and only gamers.

Why we picked the HP Victus 15:

Although the best gaming laptops are typically expensive, the HP Victus 15 is a great example of why they don’t need to be. Often priced at less than $900, you get some impressive specs. That includes a 13th-gen Intel Core i5-13500H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD), with options for faster CPUs, more powerful graphics, extra and faster storage, and memory if you don’t mind spending a little more. Every model comes with a 15.6-inch, 1080p IPS display, and for just a little more, that display can run at a refresh rate of 144Hz.

With a decent build quality and surprisingly good gaming performance, the Victus 15 offers an all-around solid gaming package at an impressively competitive price. It does have its weak points, most notably that the starting graphics card isn’t as powerful as what you’ll see in more expensive laptops, but it’s still enough for entry-level gaming.

Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Laptop

A business laptop for less

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget business laptop.

Who it’s for: Office workers who want to save the cash for other investments.

Why we picked the Dell Inspiron 15 3000:

Whether you’re typing up another spreadsheet or winding down with a game at the end of a long workday, the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 strikes a great balance as a business laptop. It features powerful and efficient general computing power, like a 12th-generation Intel Core i7-1255U CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. That’s a lot of computer for just $700, even if Intel did just announce their 13th-gen Core processors.

With the typical Inspiron build quality, we’d expect this system to borrow several great design features from the more premium XPS range but make them available in a more affordable form. It’s not the lightest laptop at just under 4 pounds, but it has a great, spill-resistant keyboard, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth connectivity, and a top-mounted 720p webcam for conferencing.

The Dell Inspiron 15 3000 also comes in an attractive business black paint job, which helps it fit in with any setup.

Microsoft Surface Go 3

The all-around best 2-in-1 for less

Why you should buy this: It’s the best budget 2-in-1.

Who it’s for: Anyone who needs the on-the-go mobility of a small, 2-in-1.

Why we picked the Microsoft Surface Go 3:

The Surface Go 3 may be limited by its small size and, at the entry level, by a low-powered Intel Pentium processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage — the processor can be upgraded to an Intel Core i3 and twice the RAM and storage for $230 more — but it offers something never before seen in the Windows world: A truly budget-minded 2-in-1 laptop. Its build is every bit as solid as its bigger sibling, the Surface Pro 8, and it boasts a beautiful, bright display to boot. The best part? It’s actually thin and light enough to be held in one hand like a proper tablet, which is a key reason why we see this as the best budget 2-in-1 laptop.

While performance doesn’t feel as smooth as on something like an iPad or even a Chromebook, those devices can’t do quite as many things as the Surface Go 3, which runs a full version of Windows 10. On the battery front, however, it’s a bit lacking. That’s its most unfortunate compromise since this is a device made for portability. Also, we still wish the excellent Type Cover keyboard and Surface Pen came bundled in.

Apple MacBook Air M1

The only MacBook that could be considered ‘cheap’

Why you should buy this: It’s the only modern MacBook you’ll find for well under $1,000.

Who it’s for: MacBook fans who don’t want to pay thousands for a newer model.

Why we picked the Apple MacBook Air M1:

The MacBook Air M1 isn’t the latest and greatest MacBook, but it still holds it own in a number of ways. Its performance is still excellent, competing easily with recent generation Windows laptops. It also sports impressive battery life, with close to 20-hours between charges. In typical MacBook fashion, too, the build quality is excellent, and the display is Apple’s usual Retina-grade with a high resolution and crisp, bright picture.

The design is lightweight and portable, making it good for use in transit or when commuting, and it supports the fastest possible Thunderbolt 3 connections (up to 40 Gbps) so will work well with any external display or accessory. There’s not a lot of storage space in this base model, but there’s enough there to get you started and external or cloud storage can make up the short fall.

This model is a few years old, but still holds its own well. Grab one while you still can.

Acer Aspire 3

Best cheap Windows laptop

Why you should buy this: It’s performance is impressive for the price.

Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a capable laptop for a fair price.

Why we picked the Acer Aspire 3:

For basic business and entertainment use, you’ll find little better than the Acer Aspire 3. It’s a very affordable laptop using a new CPU design – although based on an older Zen 2 architecture – with four cores and support for eight simultaneous threads. It has some fast DDR5 memory and a full half terabyte of SSD space, which gives you plenty of room for documents, films, and and for backing up your important data.

The onboard Radeon GPU is fine for the most casual of gaming, but it won’t be powerful enough for anything taxing. With Thunderbolt 3 you could attach an external GPU if you wanted, although that’s a very expensive add-on for this affordable machine. The Thunderbolt 3 ports are super handy, though. With support for up to 40 Gbps data transfer speeds, you can attach anything from an external monitor to a high-speed external storage drive.

There’s fast networking on this laptop too, thanks to its Wi-Fi 6, though you’ll need to use an adapter if you want Ethernet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Editors’ Recommendations

One of the most interesting features of Intel’s recent Core i9-14900K is its AI-assisted overclocking. Available through the Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), AI Assist is billed as the natural next step of automatic overclocking. It uses AI to push chips further rather than relying on a predetermined list of checks that Intel already offers through XTU.

That’s the pitch, at least. But according to my own testing, AI Assist doesn’t do much of anything.

Not only does it provide minimal benefit by being restricted to the Core i9-14900K, it also shows the dangers of haphazardly adding AI in places where it doesn’t belong. That’s a shame, too, because we’ve seen some clear examples of how AI can enhance performance on PCs. AI Assist doesn’t fit in that mold.

Too little to matter

Don’t get your hopes up for a big performance boost out of AI Assist. It takes about 45 seconds to run the feature on your PC, and Intel says XTU tests applications during that window to determine the optimal overclocking settings. AI Assist is supposed to go beyond what the automatic overclocking in XTU offers, but it actually produced identical results.

The result: a whopping 100MHz boost across all cores. I ran the overclock through Cinebench R23, which produced a 1.5% improvement in multi-core performance and a 1.6% improvement in single-core performance. When testing a real application, there’s no difference at all. In our Handbrake transcoding benchmark, the AI Assist overclock produced an identical result to a stock Core i9-14900K.

I’ve never expected huge performance gains out of an automatic overclocking feature, but what’s frustrating is that the automatic overclocking in XTU produced the exact same overclock settings, along with identical performance. It’s not clear what AI is doing here, but from my testing at least, it’s no better than the otherwise limited automatic overclocking already present in XTU.

The application is the problem here, and that’s true on two fronts. First is the Core i9-14900K. This is already a chip pushed to its absolute limits, as it’s essentially a juiced-up version of last-gen’s Core i9-13900K. It doesn’t provide a huge performance lift, as you can read in our Core i9-14900K and Core i9-13900K comparison, so expecting overclocking to do much — AI or otherwise — isn’t a good idea.

It’s also the application of AI to overclocking. You could imagine how AI could be useful for automatic overclocking — train a model on thousands of different PC configurations and their components and use those patterns to figure out optimal settings — but it doesn’t look like Intel is doing much with AI Assist. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but whatever it is, it doesn’t appear too sophisticated. And based on the final result, that still holds true.

Wrong application

We’ve seen plenty of examples of AI being applied where it shouldn’t be this year, but the disappointing thing about AI Assist is that it could work. It just doesn’t do much right now with the Core i9-14900K and Intel’s seemingly basic AI implementation.

AI can dramatically improve the power of a PC, and we have a great example of AI doing just that: Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). It started off as just an AI-assisted upscaling tool, but it has grown to apply AI to frame generation and ray tracing denoisers, with all three working to improve performance and the gaming experience on PC.

DLSS and AI Assist aren’t the same thing, but DLSS is a prime example of applying AI to a problem and seeing tangible benefits from it. AI Assist is not. It’s applying AI in a situation where the performance gains are already limited, and doing so in a way that doesn’t do anything to improve the performance or user experience.

Intel has been pushing AI hard, as has the rest of the computing world. Its next-gen Meteor Lake chips come with a dedicated AI processor, despite the fact that the only clear application for one is Windows Studio Effects. We now have AI-assisted overclocking, despite the fact that the days of minor overclocks producing big performance jumps are far behind us. And next month, Intel is launching its next-gen CPUs for laptops with an event titled “AI Everywhere.” I’m not against AI being everywhere, but it needs to make sense.

AI Assist in XTU unfortunately doesn’t. It could be a great feature, particularly for lower-end chips that have some headroom to spare. And it could bring AI into the fold in a place where it matters, given that the model behind the scenes is truly delivering something you can’t get with a one-click overclocking tool. It’s possible we could see that in the future from AI Assist, but it’s not here now.

Editors’ Recommendations