Best gaming laptops under $1,500 in 2024

Gaming laptops under $1,500 might be budget-friendly, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be compromising your capability of running the latest titles and having a blast while doing so. 

These devices might not be the turbo-clad behemoths of higher price brackets, but thanks to technologies like Nvidia's DLSS performance and visual enhancing tools, you can still breeze your way through your Steam library with impressive results. At this price bracket, you're likely to secure a great all-around performer with a solid CPU and GPU capable of taking on the latest AAA titles with solid visuals in tow.

If you won't accept anything less than pushing every slider to the right on your graphics menus then why not check out our list of the best gaming laptops for a fuller selection of top-notch gaming notebooks. And if your budget is tight, there are always some top entry-level options to choose from in our best cheap gaming laptops or you can peruse the best handheld gaming devices.

However, if you're looking for gaming goodness without breaking the bank, read on for our selection of the best gaming laptops under $1,500 in 2024.

The Quick List

Best overall

The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is the best sub $1,500 gaming laptop out there and it's no contest. Boasting superb RTX 4070 performance that outperforms its many competitors without a sweat, alongside excellent productivity scores to satisfy your needs in everyday tasks.

The Legion 5 Pro also boasts a personal favorite keyboard, and I even went as far to call it my keyboard soulmate earlier this year. By giving the arrow keys its own little nook, featuring its own touchpad, and having a wonderful feeling 1.5mm of key travel, it stands out and excels as one of the best.

And while the Legion 5 Pro doesn't have the best display, it is surprisingly high quality for a laptop at this price point. Managing a DCI-P3 score of 82.4% and 319 nits of brightness at this cost is often unprecedented. It also has a surprisingly powerful audio system.

With a AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, this laptop excels with a Geekbench 6 score of 13,063, alongside only taking 4 minutes and 5 seconds to convert a 4K video into 1080p resolution through the HandBrake app. And with the final cherry on top being 2,150 megabytes per second transfer rate, every aspect of its performance is unbelievable.

See our full Lenovo Legion 5 Pro review.

Best handheld

Right now, you're probably wondering: "Wait, that's not a laptop," but it simply brings us to the point we're trying to drive home: For many people, the Asus ROG Ally is a better choice than purchasing a gaming laptop. You get superb performance in your palms, with the hardware boasting a 3.3-GHz AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe M.2 2230 SSD and AMD Radeon Graphics RDNA 3 with 4GB of VRAM.

But that's not what makes this thing truly special. As our reviewer Sherri L. Smith puts so elegantly, "the Ally is a gaming laptop in handheld’s clothing." This has everything to do with the fact that the Ally operates on Windows 11, meaning you can do everything you could on a gaming laptop on this device. 

And even if you're not in the mood to play in your palms, you can connect it to a screen, pull out a gamepad, and play from the comfort of your couch. It's essentially a Nintendo Switch but more powerful and offers everything Windows does. So yes, the Asus ROG Ally is one of the best affordable gaming laptops out there. The best part? Its most expensive model is merely $699.

See our full Asus ROG Ally review here.

Best budget

Put your snobbiness away for the HP Victus 15. No, it doesn’t come with a killer response time, a fancy-schmancy Nvidia RTX 40-series GPU, nor a glitzy, animated RGB keyboard, but come on, you’re only shelling out $800 for this laptop, so give it a break!

At this point, if you’ve already turned your nose up like a petulant child snubbing their vegetables, the HP Victus 15 is not for you. However, if you’re still intrigued, good! This means you’re willing to temper your expectations. The 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 starts with a Intel Core i5-13500H processor, RTX 3050 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage, At only $800, the HP Victus 15 is a dream for unpretentious, budget-conscious gamers.

See our full HP Victus 16 review

Best performance

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i is a great pick for those seeking for a staggering degree of power, but specifically focusing on productivity performance. Featuring a Intel Core i7-13700HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 with 8GB VRAM graphics card, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 16-inch, QHD (2560 x 1600) display at a 165Hz refresh rate makes an excellent gaming laptop.

With a phenomenal Geekbench 6 score of 13,634, it is the strongest on this list by a good bit. And with a display at 82.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, alongside hitting 349 nits of brightness, its display is surprisingly great at this price point. Overall, it's the right pick for those who need a solid balance between graphical and processing power without sacrificing too much of one or the other.

See our full Lenovo Legion Pro 5i review.