Gaming laptops are in a phenomenal state right now, maintaining an alluring balance of cost and quality, but you must know something before making a decision.
It’s our duty at Laptop Mag to recommend the best hardware in their respective categories, and if you’re looking at gaming laptops, there are epic options available. We could talk about the surprisingly powerful yet sub-$3,000 MSI Vector 16 HX A14VHG for high-end buyers or even the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i for those needing affordable yet still excellent.
Products of this quality make it seem like the perfect time to invest in a gaming laptop, and don’t get me wrong; we absolutely do recommend these laptops (alongside anything on our best gaming laptops list).
However, there’s another way to look at the shifting tides of this industry, and depending on your perspective, it might not actually be a great time to invest in a gaming laptop.
Why you might want to wait on buying a gaming laptop until early 2025
Gaming laptops are complicated beasts, and we’d recommend one over the other for plenty of reasons. Whether it’s related to its display, processing power, design, battery life, port selection, or whatever other features it knocks out of the park, these aspects are important for what results in a great product.
But ultimately, the most important facet boils down to the graphics card. Video games are why you want a gaming laptop, so ensuring you have the power to support the most demanding games (depending on what you can afford) is vital.
With Nvidia’s latest 40 series laptop graphics cards, you’re getting the best of the best on a mobile device. Whether it’s an RTX 4050 or 4060 for budget consumers, an RTX 4070 for mid-range options, or an RTX 4080 or 4090 at the high-end, each is a good choice, depending on your circumstances.
Yet time leaves all hardware in the dust. What was once the best option available will eventually go out of date. We’re swiftly reaching the point in the RTX 40 series’ lifespan where it will be overtaken by the next best thing. In this case, that’s the RTX 50 series.
The RTX 50 series has not been given an official release date, but we make a substantial prediction based on previous launches:
- RTX 40 series laptops: Launched February 8, 2023, with the 4080 and 4090.
- RTX 30 series laptops: Launched on January 12, 2021, with the 3070 and 3080.
- RTX 20 series laptops: Launched on January 29, 2019, with the 2060, 2070, and 2080.
The consistency of this pattern is clear, and by following the path laid out by prior launches, we will almost certainly see the first RTX 50 series laptops in early 2025, likely within January or February. While there is a chance that the RTX 50 series will be an exception to the pattern for whatever reason, we wouldn’t bet on it.
We will almost certainly see the first RTX 50 series laptops in early 2025, likely within January or February
When you’re on the prowl for a gaming laptop, you have two options: Bite the bullet and invest in one of the 40 series laptops available now, or wait roughly six months until you can get your hands on Nvidia’s new GPUs.
Six months might seem like a long time, but a gaming laptop should last five years or more, and frankly, waiting those extra six months could put an additional two years on how long you keep that gaming laptop. It could be the best choice in the long run.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that RTX 40 series laptops will suddenly belong in the trash or stop being sold in stores. These gaming laptops are still incredible and will remain that way for a long time, but they will become outdated before RTX 50 series laptops.
If you're on a budget, buying a gaming laptop right now could smart. Here's why.
There’s a pretty strong argument against the idea I proposed, and it has everything to do with budget. Graphics cards are at their highest MSRP when launching, excluding specific circumstances like when a GPU is no longer in production and becomes difficult to find or there’s a component shortage. However, assuming neither of those issues springs up, RTX 50 series laptops will be rather expensive when they first launch.
We can prove this by looking at the cost of gaming laptops during the RTX 40 series’ earliest moments of launch. In March 2023, we reviewed the $1,599 MSI Katana 15 built with an RTX 4070. We can compare it to the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i, the latest gaming laptop I reviewed, which is also built with an RTX 4070 and costs $1,694.
For only a hundred dollars more, the Legion Pro 5i features a vastly superior display in brightness and color depth, a lighter chassis, a sturdier design, greater processing power, higher resolution, larger RAM, and better battery life for nearly the same price.
That’s how much of a difference only a year of waiting makes. And when we look at a laptop like the Origin EON16-S, which we reviewed in April 2023 for its $2,386 price point, the Legion Pro 5i still outpaces it with greater processing power for a significantly lower price.
We expect to see the exact same developments throughout the RTX 50 series. What was once powerful and affordable will look overpriced in a year, which is why companies often discount older models before launching new, better configurations.
To wait or not to wait?
This all boils down to the ultimate question: To wait or not to wait?
Ultimately, we cannot recommend the latest RTX 40 series laptops enough. Still, there’s a point about the importance of future-proofing your gaming laptop to ensure it can last as long as possible before being replaced. If you’re worried about keeping your hardware for as long as possible and want to ensure it stays modern for several years, waiting for the 50 series is fine.
If you’re less concerned with keeping your hardware modern and are more than comfortable investing in something great now, that won’t break your bank and boast a balance of great features beyond just the GPU — there’s no need to wait. Buy wit h confidence.
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