When you’re not at home, gaming laptops are a terrific way to play the newest games, and many gamers are finding that they are a great desktop PC substitute.
Given that many of the greatest gaming laptops are also rather pricey, it should come as no surprise that gaming laptops are among the most sought-after discounts during Black Friday. This is even more true for laptops from reputable manufacturers like Razer, Gigabyte, and Alienware that include RTX 3080 GPUs or high-resolution and high-refresh displays. However, these laptops can experience some significant price reductions during Black Friday, occasionally by more than $500/£500.
However, even if you’re searching for something more in the middle or budget range, you can still discover a lot of excellent cheap gaming laptop options, like the HP Victus 15, which won’t require you to make too many hardware or performance compromises.
However, there are some laptop offers that you should avoid, and they’re not simply at the lower end of the price range where you might anticipate finding some of the worse-quality items. There will be a lot of high-end gaming laptops available that appear fantastic at first sight but are considerably less appealing when you examine the specifications in greater detail.
There are many reasons to anticipate excellent deals this year as we all get ready for the Christmas sales extravaganza, and we’ll help you figure out which ones to seek for and which ones to avoid.
What to look for in a Black Friday gaming laptop deal
So what should you watch out for when buying on Black Friday? When purchasing a gaming laptop, there are a few important considerations to keep in mind.
First off, since practically every modern AAA game is geared toward console compatibility first rather than aiming to push the limits of what the best gaming PC is capable of handling, we’re already stretching the limits of what a fantastic gaming laptop truly needs to play the best PC games. Sincerely, the days of wondering, “But can it run Crysis?” are long gone.
Due to the fact that a gaming laptop with a 12th-generation Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 6000-series CPU and an Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU is more than capable of running every current title at fairly high settings at 1080p, there is very little cause to disapprove of them.
You don’t need much more than this at the moment, and these are going to see some nice price reductions on Black Friday because even high-end gaming laptops typically stick with 1080p to maximise the display’s refresh rates.
Second, remember that a 4K display on a laptop doesn’t really offer much more clarity than a 1080p panel. Graphics on a 14- or 15-inch display will be much smaller than they would be on the top gaming monitors pushing 32 or 42 inches across, even though you are doubling the number of pixels per inch, making the images twice as sharp.
Especially when things are flashing by in an action-packed game like Doom Eternal or some competitive shooters, our eyes simply can’t take in the tiny details on a gaming laptop display. If PC gaming is all you care about, at most look for 1440p. By settling for 1080p, you won’t lose much, but you’ll probably save a lot of money.
There are a few more factors to consider that are unique to Black Friday. First off, Black Friday is likely to bring about some shocking price reductions for a tonne of high-end laptops with hardware that is specifically designed for gaming.
15.6-inch 4K AMOLED, Intel i7-11800H, Nvidia RTX 3080, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD are all features of the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED YD. $2,999 At Newegg, $1,899 (Instant savings and rebate)
Save $1,100 – With this Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED, you immediately save $800, but you can save an extra $300 thanks to a mail-in rebate offer, bringing your overall savings to $1,100. This is undoubtedly one of the best Black Friday gaming laptop discounts we’ve seen, but if you want to save a lot of money on this beast, you must act quickly as it expires early tomorrow morning.
You can find some great deals on the best mobile workstations for creative professionals that have the same hardware as the most expensive gaming laptops but offer extras like OLED 4K displays that gaming laptops typically lack if you are interested in purchasing a laptop that can play the newest games with the highest graphics fidelity possible.
The disadvantage is that these screens will only have 60Hz refresh rates, which isn’t what creatives actually require for their work. As a result of their poor pixel responsiveness, non-OLED screens are less suited for fast-paced gaming.
Having said that, a creative workstation might be a wise method to get a great price on really powerful technology if you want to enjoy the eye pleasure at a leisurely pace. However, if you want to play video games competitively, you should stick to dedicated gaming laptops with more responsive, higher-refresh displays.
Gaming laptops across the board will see price cuts
Since we have been doing this for a very long time, we have a lot of experience observing how the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events typically proceed. With the coronavirus epidemic and the ensuing supply chain problems, the last few of years have undoubtedly changed the game.
Though there are still some fairly consistent trends, one of them being the cadence of gaming laptop releases, which gives merchants plenty of motivation to get rid of some stock and make room for fresh items with the most up-to-date hardware.
Don’t anticipate that the only gaming laptops to go on sale will be those that are one or two generations behind everyone else. These latter gaming laptops are often the least likely to experience price reductions, but that will still happen.
Additionally, the majority of the most recent mobile computing gear, such as mobile processors and GPUs, is unveiled early in the year, usually around CES. Additionally, given the majority of laptop hardware has been available for several months, if not more than a year, we anticipate AMD, Intel, and Nvidia will introduce or at the very least tease new mobile CPUs and GPUs in January.
As a result, demand for current-generation technology is probably going to decline this Black Friday as consumers wait to see what will be unveiled in the coming year. As a result, current-generation gaming laptop prices will need to decrease more in order to make up for this, and you should definitely take advantage of these larger price reductions.
Examining what we saw the previous year is one of the greatest ways to determine the types of gaming laptop bargains to anticipate this year. We’re able to show you some highlights from our 2021 Black Friday coverage as an example because of the wonders of the internet.
Avoid these pitfalls when buying a gaming laptop this Black Friday
Things to avoid this Black Friday when shopping for a gaming laptop
Regardless of the type of gaming you want to engage in, there are a few items you’re sure to see this Black Friday that you should avoid buying unless the price is truly unbelievable.
First off, unless you simply intend to play casual video games, don’t seek for anything with less than 8GB of RAM. You won’t have a lot of RAM left over after installing Windows 11 for your other apps, and gaming often needs a significant amount of RAM to function properly.
Make sure you’re not paying extra for “premium” hardware from two or three generations ago while looking at high-end gadgets. If you see a $2,000 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor that is nine generations old, you can obtain new hardware elsewhere for around the same amount, and you should.
A “gaming” Chromebook is something else you might notice a lot of right now. Don’t get us wrong, we love Chromebooks. However, most Chromebooks lack the specifications needed to run locally installed games (and couldn’t even if they did), and cloud gaming on a Chromebook is still questionable. Before making that kind of leap, check back with us the following year once we’ve had a chance to put the new range of gaming Chromebooks through their paces.
The MacBooks issue is the last one. Even with the most recent Apple silicon, MacBooks have historically not been regarded as significant gaming computers.
Of course, you can play a lot of games on a Mac, and some of us are really rather optimistic about the Mac’s gaming prospects in the coming years. Resident Evil Village by Capcom was just launched for the Mac, and other publishers will probably start doing the same in the upcoming years, but we’re not there yet, and the future of Mac gaming is still uncertain. You will still want a Windows laptop if you want to play all of the newest PC games right now.
Gaming laptop spec cheat sheet
One of the most challenging aspects of Black Friday gaming laptop shopping is attempting to make sense of the absolutely illogical specifications that vendors frequently throw at buyers. It may seem like you’re reading a foreign language if you’ve never purchased a gaming laptop before or if you’re purchasing one for someone else while not being a gamer yourself.
Fortunately, we’ve tested a tonne of gaming laptops, so we know what to buy and what to steer clear of. We’ve outlined the kinds of specifications you’ll want to aim for in premium devices, our recommendations for the specs that strike the best balance between performance and cost, and the bare minimum specifications you should aim for in a laptop that will still deliver a good gaming experience if you’re on a tighter budget.