Battery life will probably be bad: Very few gaming notebooks get 8 hours or more on a charge, and you need the power supply to get the best gaming performance anyway.

You can upgrade some parts later: While the best CPUs for gaming and GPUs are almost always soldered down, most gaming laptops let you replace the RAM and storage, so you can buy cheaper now and add more memory and a bigger hard drive or SSD down the road.

If you splurge on a powerful GPU now, you’ll be gaming comfortably for a few years.

Focus on the GPU: Most games are dependent on the GPU, and those aren’t upgradeable.

The picks on this list should be ready to run Windows 11, which released this month. When you need a powerful rig you can take with you, there's no substitute for a gaming laptop. While many gamers may go to desktops to get the most performance for their money, try lugging a tower, monitor and keyboard around in your backpack. But here are a few quick tips to get you started down the road to the right portable gaming rig for you. For much more on how to narrow down your list of best gaming laptop considerations, check out our best gaming laptop buyer’s guide.

To help you find the best gaming laptop today, we've compiled a list of the best models we've tested and reviewed recently. Just like desktops, anything with the latest graphics can still be hard to come by right now, thanks to a global components shortage. Intel's next desktop release is its hybrid 12th Gen 'Alder Lake' chips for desktops, and we expect that to come to laptops sometime soon after. The latest technologies in processors include Intel's 11th Gen 'Tiger Lake' processors and AMD's Ryzen 5000 CPUs. On the GPU side, Nvidia's RTX GPUs are in far more laptops, though AMD is slowly starting to pair its own graphics cards with hits CPUs for what it calls an ' AMD Advantage.' While Intel is still a popular option, AMD's Ryzen processors are becoming more common, though the majority of notebooks in general still use Intel. There is more choice than ever in components, too. Several gaming laptop go as fast as 360 Hz. While many of the best gaming laptops come with a 1080p display and high refresh rates, some include 4K screens, so you can pick between fidelity and resolution. Some come with full-size Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards, while others go for the more efficient Max-Q designs that enable thinner chassis and (sometimes) quieter fans. Thankfully, there are more gaming laptop options now than ever, from budget-friendly to desktop replacements.

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