Best 15-inch gaming laptops

The best 15-inch gaming laptops are not much different from the best gaming laptops in general, except this selection is intended for those who seek something travel-friendly.

We test laptops that can get as large as 18-inches, like the phenomenal Asus ROG Strix Scar 18, so it's understandable that consumers might be looking for hardware they can fit in their bag. After all, 15-inches is close to the bottom floor for a gaming laptop (or at least the ones that we recommend spending money on).

Otherwise, we determine the quality of a gaming laptop by testing the color depth and brightness of its display, performance metrics in both gaming and productivity tests, the fullness of its sound system, the satisfying clickiness of its keyboard, whether it runs at a comfortable heat, and how long its battery life lasts.

If you're shopping on a budget, be sure to check out our best laptops under $1.500 and best cheap laptops pages for the best deals on the market.

And if you're in the market for a peripheral or two, take a gander at our pages for best gaming headsets, best gaming mouse, best gaming monitors and best gaming keyboard.

The Quick List

Best overall

The MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbow Six Extraction Edition comes to us through a partnership between Ubisoft and MSI to craft a standout gaming laptop worth your money. It’s powerful and prepared to handle modern games with ease, all while boasting design elements inspired by Rainbow Six: Extraction.

Right now, you’re probably thinking: “Rainbow Six Extraction? The game that launched earlier this year and was forgotten in a month?” Yes, that Rainbow Six Extraction. Now I bet you’re thinking: “Why would I purchase a laptop featuring designs from a game I don’t care about?” That’s totally fair, but hear me out!

The Crosshair 15 does a good job of balancing its design elements without making overt references to its source material. On top of that, the laptop is an absolute beast, boasting fantastic gaming performance, a staggeringly vivid display and solid battery life. It’s not perfect, thanks to a dimmer-than-average display, thick bezels, and some small keys, but beyond that, it’s a solid gaming laptop overall.

See our full MSI Crosshair 15 R6E review

Best battery life

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 is easily one of the best gaming laptops you can buy right now. The laptop offers amazing performance from its AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS processor, though varied performance from its Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. It boasts a similarly long-lasting battery life, a clicky keyboard, a 15.6-inch, 1440p display, and a set of powerful speakers wrapped up in an even more elegant Moonlight White design.

The Zephyrus G15 boasts a 15.6-inch, 2560 x 1440-pixel panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, making it sharper and smoother than its 14-inch counterpart. If you're looking for a reliable gaming laptop, the the Zephyrus G15 is right up your alley.

See our full Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 review.

Best gaming performance

If you need something powerful and affordable with a 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel IPS display at 144Hz, look no further than the MSI Katana 15. Its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card and Intel Core i7-13620H processor ensure its power is top notch, alongside 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage giving you what you need to feel satisfied. And considering it has a decently punchy sound system, affordable price of $1,199 at Amazon, and satisfying keyboard, it will appeal to many.

However, you'll have to deal with an underwhelming display in both color and nits of brightness, with a dreadful 46.1% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 248 nits. And with a battery life as low 2 hours and 48 minutes, you won't survive very long when detached from an outlet. Regardless, the MSI Katana 15 is still a good choice for those who seek the power of an RTX 4070.

See our full MSI Katana 15 review.

Best value

The ASUS TUF Gaming F15 is currently the best value 15-inch gaming laptop available now, as its original price has been nearly cut in half now that it's available for $893 on Amazon. This certainly makes sense, as not everyone will appreciate its somewhat dated RTX 3060 graphics card and Intel Core i7-12700H processor, but if you're okay with saving some money to get your hands on a modest gaming laptop with an impressive 7 hours and 35 minutes of battery life, this is a great choice for a laptop.

With a tactile keyboard, impressive performance, and light build, this will be a great pick for anyone in need of a value product. If you can deal with a terrible webcam, loud fans, and spongy trackpad, this is the one for you.

See our full Asus TUF Gaming F15 review.

Best Budget

The HP Victus 15 won’t appeal to professional gamers who demand the latest and greatest, but it has enough razzle dazzle to win the affections of casual players. The HP gaming rig sports a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, a 144Hz refresh rate display, updated thermals, and a sophisticated, office-friendly onyx chassis that can double as a work laptop. The HP Victus 15 is a dream for unpretentious, budget-conscious gamers.

As long as you don’t plan on running Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is known for bricking GPUs, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or any other game that requires a lot of graphical juice, you should be fine with the Victus 15.

See our full HP Victus 15 (2022) review

How to Choose the Best 15-inch Gaming Laptop

When shopping for a gaming laptop, there's a lot to consider. To help you choose a system, here are five key points to keep in mind when choosing a system.

Budget: What you get for the money

You can find good inexpensive gaming laptops for under $1,000. However, more powerful mainstream gaming laptops are often priced between $1,500 and $2,000. Premium systems typically cost more than $2,000 and come stacked with a host of high-powered goodies such as high-powered specs and tricked-out software.

Screen Size: 15 inches is the go-to

It's very rare that you'll find a 13 or 14-inch gaming laptops nowadays as smaller bezels and lighter frames have paved the way for seriously thin-and-light gaming laptops. That means the days of chunky 15.6-inch laptops putting a strain on your back are over (almost).

From there, you have the 17.3-inch desktop replacements that like their smaller counterparts are becoming super svelte. But there are still the big behemoths that don't skimp on the specs. However, weighing upwards of 8 pounds, those big boys are made for your home gaming station.

Screen Resolution: 1080p for high refresh rates, 4K for detail

When it comes to gaming laptops displays, you want to strike a balance between frame rates and aesthetics. And in case you're planning to get a truly mobile system battery life is also deserves consideration. We recommend checking out a system with a 1080p resolution. Panel makers are now serving up screens with high refresh rate, topping out at 360Hz with a 3 millisecond response rate. But don't count out 4K screens yet as we're starting to see laptops with 4K displays with 120Hz. Keep in mind that laptops with lower resolutions tend to have longer battery life overall.

Refresh rate: 120Hz is the sweet spot

Depending what kind of games you're playing, particularly first person shooters and MOBA, you'll take anything that will enhance accuracy. Surprisingly, the higher a display's refresh rate is, the more accurate your shot become. It's a phenomenon that we've experienced first hand during many demos. And while 60Hz is passable, right now we recommend investing in a panel with at least a 120Hz refresh rate.

Intel or AMD?

A couple of years ago, the answer to this question would have been undoubtedly Intel. But AMD has made a furious comeback with its new Ryzen CPUs, which are delivering great overall performance. Thanks to the architecture in the new Ryzen chips, they're super power efficient without sacrificing productivity. The Ryzen 5000 series CPUs have consistently impressed with its performance versus battery life.

Not to be outdone, Intel's 11th Gen chips are nothing to sneeze at. Laptop manufacturers have started rolling out systems with the Intel's 11th Gen H-series Tiger Lake chips. The 10-nanometer chips are extremely powerful, but still at the low-end of the spectrum with the overclockable HK-series CPU, due to launch soon. Why do you want to invest in an overclockable processor, because with the touch of a button, you can squeeze even more power out of the system. It comes in handy when you're multitasking or playing a really demanding game.

Battery Life: At least 4.5 hours

Unless it's plugged in, gaming laptop battery life tends to be very short, especially when gaming. However, gaming laptop battery life has gotten increasing longer over the years. So much so, that anything under 4.5 hours is considered below average. But we've just reviewed our first gaming laptop that's lasted into the double digits. With results like that, we expect gaming laptops will match their non-gaming counterparts sooner than later. Our most power-efficient gaming laptop ran over 11 hours and sits on our longest-lasting laptops page.

Specs: 1080p / Core i5 / 16GB Are Best Bets

You can spend a lot of time delving into specs, but here are the key components to think about. If you just want really good mainstream performance, go for a Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 1080p screen.

How We Test the best 15-inch gaming laptops

We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.

In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.

To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.

We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise.

These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.

See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.

Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops every year, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.

We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades, and we continue to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.

Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.

Our editorial trustworthiness is enforced by one of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.