9 Thin Gaming Laptops You Can Take Anywhere

If I had to recommend one laptop based on the average gamer’s needs, it would be the Lenovo Legion Slim 5. Equipped with a 14.5-inch OLED screen, an RTX 4060, and a terrabyte of SSD storage, it has everything you’d want from a portable gaming device. Plus, it’s in a reasonable price range, and when it’s on sale, it enters the no-brainer zone.

In terms of specs, we have a pretty top-of-the-line laptop here, which you won’t believe when you pick it up. Thin and light but still mighty, the Lenovo Legion is the Samus Aran of gaming laptops. Just don’t let Nintendo catch you playing any of its games on it, because, you know, lawyers.

If you want to go all out, there’s the Razer Blade 15. The cleverly named gaming behemoth has one of the sharpest-looking screens you’ll find on a fifteen-inch gaming laptop. It’s remarkably thin while still having room for an acceptable variety of plugs and ports (stares at Apple). This is just the base model, too, and if you want to upgrade the GPU, RAM, or data storage, you can customize those details before making your purchase.

If you prefer something a little larger with the same impressive internals, opt for the Razer Blade 16 or 17.

Can I just be real for a second? If you care about graphics enough to give a shit about refresh rates, get this one. The Alienware x14 R2 is one of the most advanced thin gaming laptops I’ve ever encountered. While the RTX 4060 is nothing special, the QHD display and 165-hertz refresh rate are. Your games have never looked this good before, and now the person sitting next to you on the bus will know it, too.

For the price (and the size of the keyboard), the fourteen-inch screen can feel a little small. But you’re packing a lot of color and detail in each and every one of those pixels, so it’s an easy wriggle to quickly adjust to.

Most proper gaming laptops will set you back somewhere between one and three grand. Often, that can be the same as investing in a home computer or a 4K TV and console setup. With the latest MSI Katana, you can get performance at a discount. It won’t deliver on state-of-the-art graphics, but it has you covered on anything else. With a 144-hertz refresh rate and a modest RTX card, it’s shocking how much competitive gaming you can do on this thing and not drain either your battery or your eyes afterward.

The least expensive of our picks, the Katana winds up being the heaviest—and it’s far from the thinnest. But it’s well built, it never overheated on me, and it’s one of the more reliable gaming laptops I’ve used.

In the past, I’ve needed a new laptop but have also wanted a powerful gaming machine. I wish I could bring that version of me forward in time and equip past me with the Dell XPS 15. It’s a solid choice for gaming, but if you also want to work or create on this all-arounder, you’ll really get the most out of it.

To put it this way, the best features of the Dell XPS 15 improve the gaming experience, but none of them are exclusive to gaming. The audio, for example, is stellar, a lot better than what’s expected out of a fifteen-inch gaming laptop. The anti-glare display, too, is obviously useful for gaming, but it's way more useful for getting work done on a sunny day.

If you want a small-screen experience with a big PC feel, go for the ROG Zephyrus G14 from ASUS. The same brand that brought you the powerful ROG Ally handheld is serving up 120 hertz in a mere three-and-a-half-pound, fourteen-inch wonder of a laptop. Its keyboard will make you feel like you’re back at your home-office desk, no matter where you're traveling.

While it has a battery life that can last up to nine hours (though it rarely does when you’re gaming), the Zephyrus G14 does compensate with CPU fans that get pretty loud. I get it; that’s a pretty rad CPU to fit in a laptop like this. Still, this one is best when plugged in. If you’re looking for something to play fast-paced online games on for less than $2,000, this might be your guy.

More isn’t always merrier, but when it comes to screen real estate, I find it hard to say no. This makes the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo an interesting proposition. The fourteen-inch laptop screams gaming PC in terms of specs (between the 12o-hertz refresh rate and GeForce RTX 4060 graphics, this is some real performance), but it also has a secondary ScreenPad Plus that covers the area between the keyboard and the top screen. It’s honestly a marvel it works as well as it does.

Both are touchscreens, which in our phone-obsessed world comes way more naturally than expected—especially on the bottom Screenpad. Streamers will love the Zenbook Duo as much as graphic designers, and everyone will be impressed by how hard it is for smudges to ruin that OLED screen.

The MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo is an affordable option for those of us who want a little more screen space. At sixteen inches and less than three and a half pounds, this agile piece of tech doesn’t just have a big screen—it has the best big screen. The stunning display is matched by AI-boosted processing that gives you more power than the hardware specs suggest.

You aren’t going be hitting 100-plus frame rates on the graphics card, but you should be able to run most modern games on half-decent settings. Considering the mobility of this particular MSI model, let me remind you how impressive that is.

Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad X1 is another powerful multipurpose machine. This time, though, it’s seriously thin. The laptop weighs less than three pounds, yet you can still crank out a consistent frame rate on Fortnite. And yes, it even runs Cyberpunk 2077.

The Intel-powered internals aren’t nearly as impressive as the thirty-two gigs of RAM, which can ensure you don’t experience a catastrophic meltdown when you’re playing, streaming on Twitch, and chatting on Discord all at once. The keyboard also adjusts so that you can go full tablet mode, which is useful for travel but otherwise not a boon for gaming.