Gaming laptops are becoming increasingly popular for PC gaming that isn’t shackled to a desk or for gamers who don’t want to own multiple computers for gaming and work.
Laptop technology has come along in leaps and bounds, so the old complaints about high prices and low performance aren’t nearly as much of an issue anymore. With a budget of up to $1200, we’re solidly in the upper entry-level or lower mid-range of the gaming laptop world, but that’s just in comparison to $3000 desktop replacement gaming monsters.
So don’t be fooled by where we are in the possible range of gaming laptops. There’s a lot of fun to be had if you only have around a grand in your pocket.
What We’re Looking for in a Gaming Laptop Under $1200
The gaming laptop market’s $1200 or less segment has become something special in the last few years. Gaming laptops didn’t experience the massive price inflation of desktop gaming systems. So suddenly, these all-in-one gaming systems started to look attractive and sensible. For the price of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 desktop GPU, you could have a whole computer with performance not that far off what you’d get from a desktop built around that GPU.
That’s exactly what we’re looking for when spending this type of money: mid-range desktop gaming performance. With that in mind, we’d like to see at least eight CPU cores with multithreading, at least 16GB RAM, at least a 3.5GB/s NVMe SSD as the main drive, and a graphics card capable of running modern games at high to ultra settings at 1080p.
Other gamer-centric features such as a backlit keyboard, or unicorn-vomit RGB all over the place, and weird angular designs are secondary when every ounce of performance counts. We’re also not looking at common features, such as HDMI ports, Ethernet connectivity, or webcams, which we expect even on the cheapest budget laptop. If you have non-gaming concerns about a particular laptop, reading through each model’s detailed spec sheets is a good idea.
Please note: We have included laptops that sometimes cost no more than $50 over our budget limit. Price ranges fluctuate on Amazon, so there’s a good chance you can actually buy these systems for less.
If you’re looking for the best possible performance for this budget, and don’t specifically need a laptop, check out our roundup of the best gaming computers under $1000. If you want to consider gaming laptops a little cheaper than these midrange systems, have a look at our suggestions for the best budget gaming laptops.
1. The Best Gaming Laptop for $1200:MSI Katana GF76
With the Katana laptops, MSI has tried to bring the quality and performance of higher-end gaming laptops into the budget range. The biggest difference you’ll notice here is that this is a 17.3” laptop with a significantly larger screen and visually thinner bezels than the other laptops here.
If you’re mainly going to play on the laptop’s screen and not connect it to an external monitor when home, that’s a pretty big bonus and not all that common at this price point. The styling is also definitely worth mentioning since the Katana takes some pointers from MSI’s Stealth series and dials down the gamer aesthetic into something cool and elegant. You could use this laptop in a boardroom one minute and at a LAN party the next.
It’s got the popular Core i7 12700H CPU, which has more than enough grunt for 1080p gaming at high refresh rates. It has 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVME SSD. With the RTX 3060 completing the puzzle, you have a 1080p gaming monster on your hands that’s also a nice comfortable size for doing serious work on the go or at a desk at home.
3. Best Gaming Laptop for Travel:Acer Nitro 5 AN515-58-527S
This is some of the best value we’ve seen for the money. With an RTX 3060 under the hood this system is knocking on the door of the PS5, and will easily surpass it when technologies like DLSS or Ray Tracing are considered. The only caveat here is that you only get 6GB of VRAM, which means 4K and in some cases even 1440p may be out of reach.
However, since this laptop has a 1080p 144Hz refresh rate screen, you can divert all that power towards pushing as many frames as possible, while keeping your settings high.
Everything else is right up to date for a modern gaming system looking to play next-gen games, with a 12th-generation Intel Core i5 CPU with 12 cores, four of which are fast high-performance units that can hit 4.5GHz. You get 16GB DDR4 3200 RAM, and a Gen 4 PCIe 512GB SSD. You can add another PCIe drive and a 2.5” drive without removing anything. If you’d like it’s possible to swap out the 16GB of RAM for up to 32GB.
The main weakness of this laptop is its screen brightness, which could be a little better. It’s also a little bulky, but that’s what makes its performance possible, with a great cooling system and decent power levels for the components. Battery life isn’t amazing, but still decent for non-gaming day-to-day use, and with newer games featuring DLSS technology, you’ll get more out of this system as time goes on.
On average, we’d take the Helios 300 over the Acer Nitro 5, but there’s something to be said for the Nitro’s more understated design, and overall their relative performances in games will be quite similar.