It won't be long now until the summer break is over, and many hopeful young minds will be heading back to school. And we all know what that means—late night gaming sessions.

I kid. Well, sort of. I've rounded up a selection of gear that could reasonably be used for school-related duties, and will also come in handy for a bit of PC gaming in the evenings. Because as we all know, gaming can be good for your brain. No, seriously. There have been studies and everything.

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Prospective students will need a good mouse, of course. So why not a gaming model, like this Logitech G305 Lightspeed for $30 at Amazon? Or this Razer Naga V2 Hyperspeed for $60, with tons of extra buttons for... learning. Yes, that's it. Or a good mechanical keyboard. Or a monitor. Or even, if you've got really deep pockets, a proper gaming laptop for the same sort of money as many productivity-focussed machines.

Whether you're buying for a student who definitely needs both book-learning and some fun downtime, or you're hoping your parents might break open the bank account and put some money towards things you actually want, as well as need, there should be something here to suit. Come with me, as we learn together. All work and no play just isn't fun, y'know?

Back to school PC gaming deals

The moment you touch the new Framework 13 Pro laptop you know it's different to what's come before. Despite the bubblegum pink USB Type-C ports I've jammed in either side of the machine, this is a serious laptop for serious work. But it's also still instantly recognisable as one of the company's eminently upgradeable and repairable notebooks. This is the true beauty of Framework's new machine, a laptop that at once exists as the pinnacle of its hardware journey, but also steadfastly refuses to compromise on the core principles that has made it one of my favourite PC builders.

Though, it must be said, that refusal to compromise here comes at a hell of a cost because of the focus on ultra expensive LPCAMM2 memory.

This is a next-generation Framework laptop, but is still completely compatible with every Framework 13 device the company has shipped in the past five years or so. That is a hell of an achievement, meaning that you could have an ageing 13-inch laptop and pick and choose from the company's Marketplace store whichever parts of the new machine you wanted. If all you wanted was the beautiful new CNC aluminium chassis and input cover, go for it; if you just wanted the new touchscreen, be our guest.

But it's the full package here, with the Panther Lake-based Core Ultra Series 3 mainboard at its heart, that has made this hands down the best Framework machine you can buy or build. Every detail of the new laptop feels exquisite… bar one. And I know it's a familiar refrain from me now, but I wish there was a more premium display option. I've been spoiled by OLEDs and Retina displays, and if Framework wants to truly own its 'MacBook for Linux' tagline then that's the only place it falls down. And even then, only slightly.

Otherwise, I'm in love with what Panther Lake offers this device—almost silent operation, super-long battery life, and outstanding gaming performance—as well as how it feels, both in terms of that new chassis and this vastly improved keyboard and haptic touchpad. The Framework 13 Pro represents the idealistic young company all grown up, and it's a machine that's an absolute delight to use.

Framework 13 Pro features

From a pure performance and efficiency point of view, it's the Intel mainboard sitting inside the Framework 13 Pro which makes this such a powerful and usable laptop. The Core Ultra X7 358H chip baked into it comes with the magnificent Arc B390 integrated graphics core that has made the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ such an outstanding gaming handheld, and that gives the 13 Pro some impressive gaming chops, too.

One other interesting thing to note about the new mainboard is its use of LPCAMM2 modules. Interesting… and expensive. When the design choices were made—with the goal of maintaining high memory bandwidth and throughput for the Panther Lake CPU without soldering on LPDDR5X and losing upgradeability or repairability—Framework would have known it was a more expensive option, but the memory crisis has made that exponentially worse.

There is also a level of fear to dropping in a new memory module that I've not experienced before. When you add in the LPCAMM2 module you need to line it up on a whole load of pins. Pins which, like motherboard socket pins, are very much incompatible with an errant thumb brushed across them. Too casual installation will kill a new mainboard real quick.

That new Intel SoC has been wrapped in a new cooler, which along with the efficiency gains of the Panther Lake architecture, allows for regularly silent operation. Combine that efficiency with the increased battery capacity of 74 Whr (compared to 61 Whr in previous versions of the machine) and you're getting stellar battery life out of the machine.

To cope with that increased battery girth Framework has redesigned the CNC machined aluminium bottom cover to have less of a taper to the front of it. The actual thickness of the frame hasn't really changed, but it's more uniform now. Which is no bad thing, and really does give it that MacBook/Razer Blade feel to the chassis. Impressively though, it is still backwards compatible with all the other Framework 13 laptops the company has ever released in that you could order the chassis on its own and drop your existing system into it without an issue.

Also getting the CNC aluminium treatment is the top cover for the rear of the display and the input cover housing the keyboard and the new haptic touchpad, both of which are excellent. The increased travel on the keyboard makes it a joy to type on, and the responsive trackpad is a real improvement over the original, and was designed especially for Apple folk coming across the divide to a PC laptop. My only concern is that multi-finger gestures too easily actuate a press, which is difficult to configure on the Fedora distro I'm using at the moment.

Finally, the Framework 13 Pro comes with a new touchscreen panel. It's a 120 Hz display, with a 2880 x 1920 native resolution that runs impressively bright (up to 700 nits) if you want it to. What it isn't, however, is a responsive OLED display. It's not a gaming panel, as CEO Nirav Patel explains to me when I speak to him on the show floor at Computex, but there is still a level of ghosting to the display which doesn't feel as premium as everything else about the device.

Framework 13 Pro value

The concept of 'value' for the Framework 13 Pro is a tricky one. On the one hand you have the fact that the best version of this machine comes with the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, and they demand the fastest LPDDR5X memory you can give them. And, to ensure Framework sticks to its upgrade/repair ethos, it is using LPCAMM2 modules to deliver that fast LPDDR5X memory.

These are not common, and they are not cheap. There are few suppliers, and Framework recently admitted that its current supplier for these Micron modules has increased the cost by "more than double". You only have to look at the configurator on the Framework website for the 13 Pro to see what that means. A 16 GB LPCAMM2 module costs $239, while the 32 GB version adds another $800 onto the cost of the laptop. That makes the cost of the Framework 13 Pro rather prohibitive for most mere mortals.

Even a 16 GB 13 Pro config will run you well over $2,000. And even if you switch to AMD, the HX 370 Framework 13 Pro configs of the same spec costs just shy of $2,500.

The other side of this, however, is that Framework has been walking the walk on long-term upgradeability for its devices for many years over many different generations of PC hardware from different manufacturers. That means the initial premium outlay for a Framework system can be offset by the fact that you may not have to buy another whole laptop again for a very, very long time given the level of granular upgrades on offer.

I will grant you that this is a very high bar to get over, however. When the cost of an initial Framework 13 Pro purchase is this high you're going to have to keep hold of this thing, upgrading piece-by-piece for many generations, to even get close to breaking even with someone who just bought a new machine every time, and hang the ecological consequences.

Framework 13 Pro sound

When it comes to the actual audio experience, Framework has added new side-firing speakers to the design, rather than the original down-firing ones. They deliver impressive clarity and will go pretty loud, too, but they are still just laptop speakers. Basically, do not expect real room-filling audio with thumping bass.

But it's the other sound production side of the Framework 13 Pro that has me truly impressed, and that's the fan noise. It's long been an issue for me and Framework laptops; there's no way to control the fan levels unless you hack in some third-party tools made by the community, and they noise has often trended far too far to the unpleasant for my liking, especially when under serious load.

That was a concern for me as someone who wanted to use the B390 iGPU at the heart of the Core Ultra X7 CPU inside this machine for gaming. I shouldn't have been worried, however, as even when I'm pushing the Arc GPU the system is tuned to rein it back in a little (but not too much) and keep it running at a genuinely quiet level. There is fan noise, but it's slight at worst.

For most of the time I've been using the Framework 13 Pro outside of gaming, though, it's been all but silent. And often actually silent.

Framework 13 Pro performance

When I first started benchmarking the Framework 13 Pro, with its Intel Core Ultra X7 358H chip, I'd come off the back of testing the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ with the very similar Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor. And there was a slight level of disappointment at seeing the performance not quite hitting those levels or the levels of our initial Panther Lake performance tests when the architecture first came out.

But I've already mentioned just how quiet a device this 13 Pro machine is, and that's as true when doing CPU rendering as it is when I'm pushing it with Cyberpunk 2077. On a machine such as this I'll take a few missing frames per second in exchange for an actual experience that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the ears to get away from the sound.

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1080p gaming performance

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High)F1 24 (1080p Medium)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

29

22

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

33

16

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

22

18

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

27

19

010203040

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	29 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	33 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	22 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	27 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

49

38

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

51

33

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

33

25

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

33

20

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	49 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	51 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	33 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	33 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

49

31

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

61

32

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

42

28

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

58

16

020406080

Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	49 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	61 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	42 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	58 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

40

25

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

41

15

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

23

13

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

32

19

015304560

Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	40 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	41 Avg FPS, 15 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	23 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	32 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

93

39

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

107

64

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

72

41

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	93 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	107 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	72 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	N/A

For the most part, the Framework 13 Pro is able to keep up with the most powerful handheld gaming PC of today thanks to that Panther Lake iGPU.

1080p upscaling performance

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original)F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

44

28

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

50

28

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

33

27

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

38

25

015304560

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	44 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	50 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	38 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

64

48

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

73

50

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

44

30

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

36

24

020406080

Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	64 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	73 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	44 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	36 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

60

41

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

66

51

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

59

35

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

70

7

020406080

Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	60 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	66 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	59 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	70 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

104

43

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

124

88

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

83

58

037.575112.5150

F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	104 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	124 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	83 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	N/A

With the Quality upscaling preset you're getting very playable performance out of the Framework 13 Pro at 1080p.

Synthetic gaming performance

3DMark Time Spy3DMark StorageFFXIV Shadowbringers

Index score

GPU index score

CPU index score

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

5766

5275

12220

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

6499

6091

10487

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

3480

3114

10469

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

4366

3935

11534

03,7507,50011,25015,000

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	5766 Index score, 5275 GPU index score, 12220 CPU index score
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	6499 Index score, 6091 GPU index score, 10487 CPU index score
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	3480 Index score, 3114 GPU index score, 10469 CPU index score
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	4366 Index score, 3935 GPU index score, 11534 CPU index score

Index score

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (ųs)

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

2089

353.96

85

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

2152

366.66

83

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

2117

359.34

84

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

1900

323.75

94

07501,5002,2503,000

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	2089 Index score, 353.96 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 85 Access time (ųs)
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	2152 Index score, 366.66 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 83 Access time (ųs)
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	2117 Index score, 359.34 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 84 Access time (ųs)
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	1900 Index score, 323.75 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 94 Access time (ųs)

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

19.175

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

10.952

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

21.9

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

23.24

07.51522.530

Total load time (seconds)

FFXIV Shadowbringers Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	19.175
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	10.952
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	21.9
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	23.24

The synthetic gaming performance does highlight the power of the Panther Lake architecture, and the solid game loading speeds, too.

You can see in the CPU benchmarks that the chip is bouncing off 100 °C and thermally throttling, and it's the cooling limitations necessary to maintain the chilled experience which are slightly holding back the gaming frame rates, too.

System performance

Cinebench 20247-zipThermal performance

Single-core index score

Multi-core index score

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

114

893

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

111

794

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

115

988

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

151

1391

03757501,1251,500

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	114 Single-core index score, 893 Multi-core index score
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	111 Single-core index score, 794 Multi-core index score
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	115 Single-core index score, 988 Multi-core index score
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	151 Single-core index score, 1391 Multi-core index score

Compression (GIPS)

Decompression (GIPS)

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

95.053

78.763

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

92.318

78.753

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

109.33

115.42

Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90

113.69

108.62

037.575112.5150

7-zip Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	95.053 Compression (GIPS), 78.763 Decompression (GIPS)
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	92.318 Compression (GIPS), 78.753 Decompression (GIPS)
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	109.33 Compression (GIPS), 115.42 Decompression (GIPS)
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	113.69 Compression (GIPS), 108.62 Decompression (GIPS)

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max CPU package power (W)

Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390

100

43

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390

97

37

Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M

89

50

0255075100

Thermal performance Data

Product	Value
Framework 13 Pro | Core Ultra X7 358H | Arc B390	100 Max CPU temp (°C), 43 Max CPU package power (W)
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ | Arc G3 Extreme | Arc B390	97 Max CPU temp (°C), 37 Max CPU package power (W)
Framework 13 | Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | Radeon 890M	89 Max CPU temp (°C), 50 Max CPU package power (W)
Asus Zenbook A16 | Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | Adreno X2-90	N/A

As soon as you see the thermal performance of the X7 358H inside the Framework 13 Pro you can see why the 16-thread chip is only marginally ahead of the 14-core G3 Extreme version in multi-core performance.

Even if we are talking about a slight tempering of the performance of the Arc B390 iGPU compared with other devices sporting Intel's top integrated graphics, it's still the most powerful that you will find and places this machine head and shoulders above the best that AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 can muster.

And I was already pretty impressed with that.

Framework 13 Pro aesthetics

With its graphite black, CNC milled aluminium chassis the Framework 13 Pro is the most effortlessly stylish laptop the company has ever produced. It feels like the culmination of everything Framework has been working towards for these six years. The slightly chunkier styling, necessitated by the bigger batter sitting underneath the touchpad at the front of the device, makes it feel far more solid than before.

And actually makes it feel far more like the MacBook it's trying to ape, and the Razer Blade 14 that it's potentially going to replace as my daily driver.

It actually is more solid, too, as you can pick it up by the corner and the extra structural rigidity afforded by that new aluminium frame means there is zero give. The same is true of the keyboard as well which betrays no movement bar the extra travel of the keys Framework has deliberately introduced into this version.

But then you've also got all the other Framework touches that has made its 13-inch laptop such a pleasing device for years. You have your choice of coloured and translucent bezels as well as a plethora of colours for the USB Type-C input modules. For this layout I've gone for a pair of bubblegum pink ports and a translucent grey bezel for that extra techie feel. But that's my preference and you can make your own choices at the point of purchase yourself.

Framework 13 Pro software

There is no bloat, because there doesn't have to be any software included at all.

If you just want to stick a Linux distro onto your device the SSD will be shipped blank, likewise if you want to use your own copy of Windows rather than spend $200 on a needless Windows Pro license.

There is a driver bundle for Windows you can download from the Framework support site, and you will need Wi-Fi drivers in hand when you install Windows ('cos that's still a thing), but Linux support is largely there out of the box when you install your distribution of choice.

The slight downside of this, as I noted before, is that there is no system control software. That means there is no granular control over power options beyond the OS options, and there are no fan controls, either. The fan control issue isn't a thing for Panther Lake, however, thanks to its quiet operation straight off the bat, but I wish I could control the SoC's TDP as easily as you do on a gaming handheld, but that's a relatively minor gripe in a world that is often replete with too many different bits of control software fighting each other.

Framework 13 Pro battery life

Of course this is not a gaming laptop, but the level of gaming performance you can get out of this ostensibly productivity laptop is excellent. Development by day, gaming by night. Or on the go, because the battery life of the Framework 13 Pro is also very, very good.

Stick it on balanced mode in Windows and boot up a game and you'll find the battery drains in a little under two hours, but the latest Arc drivers include the same Endurance mode I loved so well in the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+. It doesn't quite get you the same five hours of gaming that handheld delivers, but you're still not getting far off a doubling of the gaming uptime of the standard mode.

That does try and stick you to 30 fps as a rule, but when you're trying to keep gaming as long as possible when you're on the move—or trying to make sure that when you're done playing you have some power left for some actual work—then it's a worthy compromise.

That, however, is a Windows thing, requiring the latest Intel Arc drivers and isn't necessarily something you can replicate within a Linux environment. Almost all of Framework's impressive 13 Pro battery life numbers are recorded from a Windows installation, with only its seven days of standby measured with Ubuntu.

That doesn't mean it's bad in Linux, not by a long shot. I'm using a Fedora Cosmic Atomic distribution at the moment, and have been running it all day long today, without it going into standby once, playing music, downloading games, and having video meetings, as well as writing this review, and I've only gone through half the battery capacity in six hours. It's all-day battery life for sure, though I think Panther Lake's optimisations are probably going to be felt more keenly in a Windows environment.

My favourite hardware news stories lately have all followed a similar line of logic: 'Why? Well, why not?' But when it comes to the laptop MSI just unveiled as part of its 40th anniversary, I can't move past 'But why though?'

The sticking point for me is the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition's ludicrous $7,000 price tag. Sure, you're getting an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU with a pretty face-melting 24 GB of GDDR7, plus an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. And, sure, some versions of the RTX 5090 will set you back a couple grand all on their own, but not usually the slimmer laptop kind. Anyway, 7,000 smackers is still a lot of money for the power.

I hate to say it but the oodles of SSD storage and the whopping 96 GB of DDR5 might have something to do with it (thanks, memory crisis). Hey, at least if you buy directly from MSI, you also get a free code for Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

This very pricey gaming laptop also enjoys an 18-inch MiniLED screen, which features a maximum resolution of 3840×2400. The refresh rate is a not too shabby 120 Hz, but at this price point I was kind of expecting something fast enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.

Joking aside, I'm struggling to understand who this gaming laptop is really for, beyond an MSI super fan (or a scaly fan with deep pockets and terrible taste in dragon art).

It's far from the only spenny anniversary hardware we've seen this year. For instance, the Asus' ROG sub-brand celebrated two decades, launching a shiny, aluminium-dressed-up-as-copper motherboard back in May. The Astral ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and a China-exclusive DRAM kit also got anniversary editions. Again, it's all a bit too rich for my blood, but I'll admit that those glistening gold designs are almost tasteful.

Nvidia's Arm-based processor for laptops was unveiled after much waiting at Computex back in June. RTX Spark is Nvidia's first proper go at a consumer chip, combining CPU and GPU, and while it is of course targeted at AI workloads, it's also targeted at gaming. Now, Nvidia has confirmed which will be the first brands of RTX Spark laptop to come to market this fall and which will follow those.

According to Nvidia, "RTX Spark systems will be available this fall from Asus, Dell Technologies, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with models from Acer and Gigabyte to follow."

The initial few aren't a big surprise given these are the exact companies that were announced as partners when RTX Spark was revealed. Of note is Acer and Gigabyte following the initial six, though.

As Chinese news site the Commercial Times points out (via VideoCardz), MSI and Asus will be the first Taiwanese companies to launch Spark lappies. But given it was the Surface Laptop Ultra that RTX Spark was most commonly shown running on at Computex, it'll be surprising if that's not the first one to market.

That being said, I'm looking forward to RTX Spark laptops other than the Surface. Back when it was announced, I reported just how much I liked the look of the thin MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+.

If laptops as thin as this can really pump out 100 fps at 1440p like Nvidia claims—and our Dave's hands-on experience gaming on RTX Spark certainly does make me hopeful—then getting that kind of power out of such a thin laptop is an exciting prospect. Though I guess that will depend on the TDPs and cooling in question, too.

The other big announcement from Nvidia at SIGGRAPH 2026, at least as far as we gamers are concerned, was a closer look at how DLSS 5 works. For now, the AI filter looks to be controllable with just a couple of sliders, though Nvidia says it's working on building more controls for devs. And I can't deny that cranking up the subsurface scattering on masked-off environmental objects looks pretty damn good to my eyes, even if the controls are limited.

That technology will launch this fall, too, so the end of 2026 might be an interesting time for PC gaming. Setting aside the usual affordability provisos given the current state of the market, of course.

When Qualcomm released its first batch of ARM-based Snapdragon X processors two years ago, they worked well enough, but failed to set the PC gaming world on fire. It's not really what they were meant for, and if decades of buying computer parts have taught me one thing, it's never to buy into the first generation of a new product. I still do it, of course, as the Oculus Rift sitting unloved in its box shows, but I'm always left with the feeling that I should know better.

The main downside of the OG Snapdragon, once software compatibility issues were smoothed out, was its GPU. The Adreno cores buried somewhere in the chipset felt underpowered for anything heavier than Stardew Valley, and while DirectX and Vulcan compatibility was high, and driver updates refined the process, some games just didn't work.

With the release of the Snapdragon X2, a few things have changed. The main one is that the CPU package now comes with a lot more processing cores—18 on the Elite Extreme model we've got here—but the GPU is also a lot better. It's now putting out the sort of benchmark results you'd expect from Intel iGPUs, and in some tests can even produce better results than Panther Lake.

The ASUS ZenBook A16 we're looking at here is one of the first Snapdragon X2 laptops on the market. It boasts the Elite Extreme version of the chip, a name that makes you wonder where they're going to go next if they release an even better one. Elite Extreme Pro Max Gold Caviar Truffle Edition, perhaps. This one has 18 cores, and according to CPU-Z 12 of those are Performance cores running at 4.4 GHz, with the other six being Efficient cores running at 3.6 GHz. That's a lot of cores, and with ARM chips' ability to produce exceptional single-core performance (as shown by Apple's M5 last year) I had high hopes for this one.

And I was right. The X2 doesn't hit the same Geekbench 6 heights as the M5, but it's close, and beats the desktop Core Ultra 7 265KF and mighty Ryzen 9 9955HX in the single-core test. It beats those chips in the Geekbench multi-core test too, along with the Core Ultra 9 275HX from the Alienware 16 Area 51, and roughly the same as the 14-core M4 Pro in a 16in MacBook Pro.

The elephant in the room here is Panther Lake, which is going to be appearing in new laptops at the same time as the X2. And in Geekbench, the X2 and Core X9 388H both score over 3,000 points in the single-core test, with the X2 marginally in front, but in multi-core the gap widens, probably because the Intel chip only has four of the full-fat performance cores and 16 in total. It scores 17,924. The X2: 22,785. That's a difference of almost 24%.

Moving over to the Cinebench single-core CPU rendering test, which has been known to bring laptops to their knees and in which 100 is a respectable score, the X2 scores 151. A laptop running the X9 388H scores 130 in this test, and the multi-core rendering workout goes the same way, with the X2's 1391 beating the Panther Lake chip's 1173.

All this is assuming, of course, that the same tests applied to different CPU architectures can be directly compared. Geekbench has been designed for this, though as more of a tool for plotting broad relationships rather than a perfect one-to-one comparison between PCs.

All that single-core performance makes the ZenBook A16 very responsive, and if Microsoft's new Low Latency Profile makes its way to Windows on ARM it should make things even better. The fact that Asus has paired Qualcomm's X2 with 48 GB of fast RAM certainly helps too.

Things are looking quite good for the ARM chip until you remember it still uses an integrated Adreno GPU, and we have yet to see one that's paired with a discrete graphics chip. Still, it's not bad for an iGPU, supporting DX12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4, and putting out enough frames to play games in 1080p as long as you don't mind medium to low settings. Cyberpunk 2077 looks surprisingly good on medium, and while there are some shimmering textures in Blackmyth: Wukong, it doesn't struggle too badly as long as you remember to switch FSR upscaling on. Older titles such as Horizon: Zero Dawn look like what they are: PS4 games (albeit ones running at nearly 60 fps in this case, rather than the locked 30 fps of the console version). But it's great to see the Adreno is capable enough to play them as they were originally meant to be seen.

There are still some issues with the occasional game—F1 2024, for example (and this might be a different story with a more up to date release), putting up a notice that it's not compatible with ARM processors. This could also be because it's a fairly new processor at the time of writing, and a few software patches and driver updates will sort it right out.

On the outside, this is an unassuming laptop, though as a 16-incher it has a presence that you just don't find in smaller models. It's a kind of beigy grey, which isn't utterly unpleasant but certainly stands out from all the black and silver casings out there, and is made from Asus' Ceraluminum material that's some sort of unholy amalgam of aluminium and ceramics. It has a matte feel, and makes the A16 extremely light, but it's also stiff enough to handle by the corner without the trackpad becoming non-functional.

That trackpad is a big one, too, smoother than the surrounding casing but the same colour, and a better experience than the keyboard, which doesn't have much travel and is the worst aspect of this particular package. The screen, however, might be one of the best. It's a 2.8k 16:10 OLED, not a touch-sensitive one, with a 120Hz refresh rate. It's sharp, bright (500 nits), colourful and all the things a laptop screen should be. Battery life is exceptional—at least it is if all you're doing is looping a video, at which it kept going for almost 17 hours. Make it work a bit harder and that's going to drop, and there's a fan to keep it cool when it's under load.

So once again, Qualcomm has released a capable chip with a bit of a weak GPU, though it's nowhere near as bad as last time. Asus has then put it into a laptop with an excellent screen, though it is a little bit expensive when you could pick up something with a low-end GeForce chip for less, and have a superior gaming experience.

I can't help thinking though, that if someone could teach the X2 to talk to an RTX card, even as an eGPU, then we could have something truly fearsome on our hands.

As post-Prime Day price tags find their way back up to pre-sales prices, I'm happy to see at least some deals that haven't scarpered. This is most definitely one of them, as you're getting a laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti (mobile) GPU for the eminently reasonable price of $1577 at Walmart.

For reference, that's about the price that we're seeing RTX 5070 laptops go for right now, even when on sale. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile is significantly faster, so it's no small thing to see this lappy in the same price bracket as RTX 5070 models.

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The 32 GB version was on sale last week for Prime Day, but here you're getting a cut-back 16 GB one, with only half of the storage (512 GB) to boot. It's therefore not as good of a deal as last week, but the good news is the SSD and RAM isn't soldered in. There are even two SSD slots, meaning you can upgrade whenever you feel like it. If it were me, I'd be whapping in another TB of storage, or at the very least another 512 GB, ASAP. The RAM can wait.

The main thing to keep in mind with the Vector 16 HX AI 16 is that it's a bit of a throwback to the old guard of laptops. It's bulky (see the image below), loud, and not as much of an amazing proposition when unplugged. Otherwise, it's very performant when plugged in. In other words, it's more of a desk-body than a modern pack-it-and-go machine.

In his review of the RTX 5080 version of this laptop, our Dave found it to be pretty noisy in its Extreme Performance mode, but he was impressed with its performance while in the much quieter Balanced mode. When it already beats a bunch of similarly specced laptops, dropping into a more efficient mode doesn't seem too bad of a proposition.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX in this laptop is an Arrow Lake chip, meaning it's not the most recent, but it should do just fine for gaming. Notably, you're still getting eight Performance cores, which is the same as higher-tier laptop chips of the same generation like the Core Ultra 9 275HX.

Dave found battery life to be far from amazing on the RTX 5080 version, and with the RTX 5070 Ti mobile not being substantially less power-hungry, battery life likely won't be amazing here, either. It's a pretty thick machine, too, in the style of more traditional gaming laptops and unlike many thin ones you see these days.

Both of those things mean you'll probably want to keep the laptop as a plugged-in, top-of-the-desk affair. Of course, it will still perform nicely and won't immediately die when unplugged, especially if you drop it into that Balanced mode.

It's also not the comfiest for typing over long periods thanks to its scratchy edges, though that's just one more thing lending favor to my characterization of this lappy as a bit of a throwback. If you know that's what you're in for, and you're okay with that, I doubt you'll be disappointed in what you're getting here for the price—especially if you're happy cracking the thing open and upgrading that SSD before long.

👉 Check out all of Walmart's gaming laptop deals 👈

You know I actually petitioned to write this piece. I was like "yeah, gimme them thermal paste deals". I'm a long-time proponent of thermal paste. In fact, I've been lobbying governments around the world to provide it with the same protected status that Mozarella di Bufala Campana enjoys.

After all, where would we be without the plucky stuff? Using toothpaste? Jelly? Gods forbid we'd be welding our CPU blocks on.

Ok, ok, yes, I'm being somewhat facetious here. But still, thermal paste is one of those things that until you run out of it, you don't really think about. It's a $10, $15, $20 purchase, that can make or break a build.

Now of course most coolers do come with some either pre-attached or included in a tube by default, but, it's often low quality, or there's little of it. If you accidentally reposition your CPU block a few times on the initial install, or have to do some troubleshooting, it'll easily smudge, smear, and leave you with uneven coverage and a toasty chip as a result.

And then of course, at the other end of the spectrum. If your machine is starting to get a little long in the tooth. Over time, cheap thermal paste can dry out and crack, producing even worse results for you. You'll see it in your performance first, as clock speeds fall, and then, as the temps climb up (a handy quick install of Hardware Monitor or HWInfo64 will flag if there's a real issue). Worst case scenario? You do nothing and severely damage your CPU, or even more catastrophic than that, which your GPU die because the paste holding that house-brick sized cooler to it has turned into dust.

So then, we all know its Prime Day/Week at this point, what are the best thermal paste dealios out there? These ones that's what:

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

The full details

The wild card alternative

*PC Gamer politely reminds you to never eat the thermal paste for goodness' sake.

I'm going to wade in here with a little extra tip. I've spent years benchmarking CPUs and building all manner of weird and wonderful machines. Even dabbled in delidding a slew of Intel chips once upon a time in the hunt for ever better cooling. And let me tell you, after doing all of that, and speaking to numerous competitive overclockers, system builders, and more, in terms of your thermal paste application, as long as it's a non-conductive paste, be generous with how much you put on your chip. Identify where the die is, where the complexes are (some chips benefit from a long line of paste in the middle, some just a blob), and put a big ol' slathering of the stuff there instead.

If it goes over the side, honestly, and again as long as it's not conductive, it's not the end of the world. You can clean it up if you need to later with some isopropyl alcohol spray (this stuff you get 16 fl oz and its 20% off, nice), and a good microfiber cloth.

The more the better, to be blunt, it won't dry out as fast, and you can guarantee coverage. Put too little on there, and you can end up with thermal hot-spots on your chip due to poor coverage, and ain't nobody got time for that.

There's always the odd surprise over the Prime Day sales period, and this machine definitely raised my eyebrows this morning. That's because it's the rarest of things: a budget gaming laptop with 32 GB of DDR5 and a hefty discount, right in the middle of the memory crisis.

Yes, this Acer Nitro V 16S offers a proper amount of system RAM tucked inside a slim chassis for $1,100 at Amazon. It's also a handsome-looking lappy, so what you're getting here is something rather svelte, all for a much lower price than many of the chonkier models I've been finding.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

As you'd expect for the price tag, it's not mega powerful. However, the 85 W-limited RTX 5060 here should still do just fine, as it's been paired with a very reasonable 1200p, 180 Hz display. It'll still need a bit of DLSS assistance in really demanding games, but I reckon it's got a well-weighted specs sheet for the money.

Particularly as it's rocking an eight core, 16-thread AMD CPU. It's not the fastest of AMD mobile chips, but it should still be plenty grunty for both gaming and productivity purposes.

Factor in the downright generous amount of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD for storage, and this laptop looks like it's ignoring the RAMpocalypse-induced price increases entirely. It's like a machine from a different era—not in terms of specs, but definitely in terms of value.

I'd happily snap up one of these little beasties for this sort of cash. Slim, sleek, decently specced, and stuffed full of memory modules. That'll do nicely, thank you very much.

👉Shop all of Amazon's Prime Day gaming laptop deals right here👈

The balance of price versus performance is something we're obsessed with here at PC Gamer, which is why we're big fans of MSI's Vector range of laptops. Our Dave reviewed the RTX 5080-equipped version of the MSI Vector 16 HX AI, and found it to deliver great frame rates for the cash.

However, while the RTX 5080 version is still well north of $2,000, I've found this MSI Vector 16 HX AI with an RTX 5070 Ti on board for $1,599 at Walmart. It's stacked full of speedy components, and for this sort of cash I simply can't beat its price/performance combo, even in the middle of the Amazon Prime Day sales.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

The RTX 5070 Ti mobile is a very capable gaming GPU, particularly when it's pushed to a 140 W power limit. Combine that with a 240 Hz, 1600p screen, and this lappy starts to make all the others around the same price look a bit under-specced.

Sure, it'd be nice if it was an OLED. But hey, we're talking value here, and most OLED machines are much more expensive. The rest of the specs sheet is pretty mega, too, with a 20-core Intel chip handling the CPU duties and... hang on a minute, is that 32 GB of DDR5?

Yep, even in the middle of the RAM crisis, this machine comes equipped with a generous amount of memory modules. 32 GB gaming laptop deals have become very rare in recent months, although I've been finding a few during this sales event regardless.

It's also got a 1 TB SSD, which should provide ample room for a few games. Again, I'd love to see a 2 TB here, but SSD prices are still pretty hefty at the moment, so I'll take this one for the money.

There are a few drawbacks to this lappy. For a start, it's very noisy at top whack, but you can set the fan profile to balanced mode and even things out without sacrificing too much performance.

It's also a bit... plastic fantastic, in terms of chassis design. Honestly, I've seen much worse—and it's not a huge deal when you get one in your hands. It's got fair amount of chonk, but it's not a bad-looking machine. In fact, we found it rather charming when it was passed it around the office.

And yes, the battery life is rubbish, so it's not particularly portable. Still, if you're looking for a gaming laptop with high specs for reasonable prices this Prime Day, I can't find anything that beats this. All hail the Vector 16 HX AI. King of the value-based castle once again.

👉Shop all the Walmart gaming laptop deals right here👈

Gaming laptops used to be massive. I don't mean in terms of popularity (although they still are), but more in terms of physical chassis size. That was a real problem when you wanted to put one in your backpack to take to work, or on your next flight.

However, there are now plenty of slim and light, game-ready machines to choose from, most of which won't look out of place in your next meeting. Take these little Asus ROG Zephyrus beauties, for example.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

I've found an RTX 5060-equipped Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for $1,450 at Best Buy. That's the perfect size for travel, and while the fans are a little noisy, I don't think that's too much to bear when the price is this reasonable.

Or, you could pick up the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 with an RTX 5070 mobile crammed inside for $1,575. It's more backpack-friendly than shoulder-bag ready, but it's a very tempting, very premium gaming laptop for mid-range money.

So, why don't either of these machines top our best gaming laptop guide? Well, that's because the Razer Blade 14 and Razer Blade 16 are slightly better overall in their respective classes, so they take the crown. However, both are very expensive at the moment, while these second-place contenders are down to much, much more affordable prices for the Prime Day sales.

Quick links

• Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 | 14-inch | RTX 5060 | $1,450 at Best Buy (save $850)
• Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | 16-inch | RTX 5070 | $1,575 at Best Buy (save $575)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 | RTX 5060

If an ultra-portable 14-inch gaming laptop is your goal, you'd usually have to pay through the nose for it. However, this ROG Zephyrus G14 is priced very attractively at the moment, coming in at $1,450.

As our Dave found in his review of the RTX 5070 Ti version, it's got a chassis design that's nothing short of delightful. The 120 Hz OLED display is a real highlight, too, which means it should make games, movies, and everything else you use your laptop for look downright lush.

The saw-toothed fan profile, though, can be a touch irritating. And the 90 W RTX 5060 will need plenty of DLSS help to make the most of its 1800p display. But otherwise, this is a 14-inch machine with very few peers—all for a very reasonable price.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5070

If you want a larger screen size and chonkier hardware than the 14-inch tiddler above, how about this RTX 5070-toting G16 for $1,575? It's got a full-fat 240 Hz OLED display, all in a screen size that makes the most of its fairly grunty graphics hardware.

Yes, a 105 W RTX 5070 in a slim, milled-aluminium chassis will still need a healthy dose of upscaling thanks to its 1800p panel. And the CPU performance is a little off the boil. But honestly, it's the combo of potent graphics hardware and a backpack-friendly design that really sells me on this particular machine for this sort of money.

The Razer Blade 16 is slimmer still, and has an even better display—with quieter fans, to boot. But have you seen the price of those recently? Nah, I'd absolutely save the cash and pick up one of these instead.

👉Shop all the Best Buy gaming laptop deals here👈

Honestly, finding good cooler deals this Amazon Prime Day seems to be, by and large, quite the challenge. I spent hours trying to collate the best of them into a single list like this. I don't know what it is, maybe all the ethanol's being used up in AI datacentres somehow, or big AIO is slowly creeping the prices up so they can secretly match their profit margins to the memory boys. It's a conspiracy I tell you.

Still, I've been cooling PCs since I was, but a wee boy, and overclocking them for just as long, and these are the sure-fire picks I'd be considering for my next machine (if I could afford the SSD). And, I mean, alright, I have taken a bit of liberty here as well; there's even a Razer laptop cooling pad with an air-tight pressure seal thrown in for if you're one of those portable people, but still good deals all around, even some notable mentions from our best of coolers list too.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

AIO Liquid Coolers

Yeah, let's be fair, I do love a good air tower as much as the next hardware enthusiast (particularly if it's beige and brown and rhymes with not you err), but the undisputed kings of convenience and performance are closed-loop liquid AIO liquid coolers, I know it, you know it, we all know it. Slightly finicky when things go wrong, but seriously easy to install, and in modern-times, remarkably dependable.

And I've found three stellar options, too, for you to peruse over. Corsair's Nautilus 360 RS it's simple, affordable, and remarkably robust. Then there's Phantek's Glacier One 360M25-LCD with its humongous 6-inch display, and Tryx's Panorama SE, complete with curved OLED. All 360mm all of the time.

The full details

Air Towers

Oh yes, finally, I get to talk about the good stuff. The unsung hero of the gaming PC that's lost the limelight thanks to its flashy liquid-filled cousins. Air towers. Love them, loathe them, the overall designs have come a long way in the last few years. If you're fed up of fiddling around with cruddy little metal clips, have I got news for you, because both my picks are super quick and super easy to install, no clips required.

There's three on display here, and I'll wax lyrical about all of them, because I've had hands-on time building with each, and testing them equally, and well, I can tell you right now Sudokoo's SK700V AM5 is a stellar little kit, and so is be quiet!'s Dark Rock Elite. Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Pro is based off a classic, and honestly, if you're on an Ultra 5 or a Ryzen 5 for that matter, it's a good shout.

The full details

Fans & The Misc List

I mean, theoretically, this is technically a sort of cornucopia of fans if nothing else, I mean, the third one does count. Sort of… Fans though they're a field that's seemingly got ridiculously expensive for no good reason. Like, the cost of a good modern RGB fan is just astounding, and it really shouldn't be.

Still, there's three options to toy with here. We've got Lian Li's Uni Fan SL-Inf Wireless. NZXT's F360 RGB Core (made famous with its refresh of the H7 Flow), and then, well, I've added a laptop cooler in for good measure, which is surprisingly interesting all things considered.

The full details

If really good GPU deals are slim pickings this Prime Day and decent RAM deals checked out about a year ago, do not despair. There is one class of PC component that's bucking the trend. Gaming monitors.

Our Jacob R commented earlier today just how "wild" the best of our affordable gaming monitor deals look this Prime Day. And he has a point. The spread goes from $99 through to $314 and includes everything from 1080p to OLED.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

27-inch 1440p proved the most popular form factor in our recent poll, while 4K and 34-inch ultrawide ranked highly, too. Well if you have a budget of around $250 to $300, you can cover all those bases and even tick the OLED box, too.

Doing 4K duty is the MSI MAG 275UPD. For a whisker under $250 you get an IPS panel and dual-mode capability. Remarkable. Representing 34-inch ultrawide is the LG UltraGear 34GP63A-B for not even $230. It's so much monitor for the money.

Then there's the Acer Predator X27U W1bmiiprx I covered earlier today. It slightly breaches the $300 barrier at $314. But it's a QD-OLED panel, for goodness sake.

Anyway, never have you had so many fantastic gaming monitor options for so little money. 2026 Prime Day really is all about bargain gaming panels.

Amazon Prime Day gaming monitor deals

The full details

The RAMpocalypse has made good 32 GB gaming laptop deals hard to find for most of this year, but Amazon Prime Day is delivering some seriously good prices on RAM-plentiful machines. If you've been holding out for a gaming laptop with, let's face it, the correct amount of RAM for a high-powered machine, now is one of the best times to pick one up for less.

I've found three I'd buy right now with my own cash, and you can't say fairer than that.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

There's the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI for $1,500 at B&H Photo, an RTX 5070-equipped lappy with a 24-core Intel chip and a 240 Hz display. Or the MSI Vector 16 HX AI with a full-fat RTX 5070 Ti under the hood, for $1,599 at Walmart. That's an astonishingly good deal given the performance on offer.

Or, if you're feeling particularly flush, how about our best high-performance gaming laptop pick? The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 is a monstrously powerful gaming machine, with a 175 W RTX 5080 practically bursting from its overbuilt chassis. It's a mega-powered laptop currently available for $2,449 at B&H. That might still be a lot of cash, but you won't beat its gaming grunt for less right now.

Amazon Prime Day 32 GB gaming laptop deals

I'm going to be honest, I did not expect to hit upon what might end up being the best Prime Day gaming laptop deal a day before Prime Day actually starts in earnest. Officially Prime Day doesn't start until tomorrow, June 23, but all the other retailers have stolen a march on big Jeff's big shop and have already launched their own sales.

And the pick of the bunch, for me, is this Acer Nitro V 16S with its RTX 5070 GPU for just $1,000. Actually, it's a penny under $1,000 which makes it the first time, probably since Black Friday last year, that we've seen an RTX 5070 system coming in below that figure.

Otherwise it's all pretty standard sales fare out there at the moment—there are some bad RTX 5060 laptop deals, some good RTX 5050 ones, but precious few really, really outstanding deals. With maybe the exception of the best performing machine in our best gaming laptop guide, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i with its RTX 5080 GPU at $2,549. That's expensive, but it's still nearly $1,000 cheaper than you'll find it direct from Lenovo itself.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

The first thing to say, however, is that because this is the slim version (hence the 'S') the chassis and cooling of the Acer Nitro V 16S means that the RTX 5070 inside is limited to 85 W. That's important because it will mean you're not quite getting the full performance that silicon is capable of in a chonkier machine. But it'll still deliver a decent frame rate on the native 2880 x 1620 screen so long as you're comfortable with DLSS and Frame Generation.

The AMD Ryzen 260 is a rebadged version of the Ryzen 7 8845H Hawk Point chip, a Zen 4 CPU with eight cores and 16 threads of processing power. So in productivity terms it's certainly no slouch, though obviously that 16 GB of DDR5 memory is going to be holding it back in seriously memory-intensive tasks.

You are also only getting a 512 GB SSD. That is sadly now the sort of storage capacity you can expect at the more affordable end of the gaming laptop market, now that the memory crisis has taken hold of RAM and SSDs, spiking their prices to unparalleled levels. It sucks, and will fill up quickly, but it is the world we now live in. Alongside the AI that is hoovering up all the memory.

I'm very much a penny-pinching sort, and I could swallow that low storage capacity, and that power limited RTX 5070, for the price Best Buy is charging here. I've not found an RTX 5060 gaming laptop that can match it for price, which makes this more powerful machine even more tempting. I reckon it'll be one of the best deals of Prime Day... if it stays in stock at this price anyways.

👉️Check out the Best Buy Prime Day gaming laptop deals👈️

While I only have eyes for my iBuyPower gaming desktop, the fans loudly announcing themselves whenever I boot up 007 First Light does make me ever-so nostalgic for my laptop gamer days. I don't exactly miss toasting myself with the underside of a hot gaming laptop, but there are plenty of deals ahead of Amazon's Prime Day sales tempting me back all the same.

B&H Photo have come out swinging with just such a deal, offering the Legion Pro 7i for only $2,549.

This 16-inch gaming laptop packs in a Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU alongside a delectable 32 GB of DDR5. It's getting rarer and rarer to see much more than 16 GB of RAM in a decently priced gaming laptop or desktop thanks to the memory supply crisis (or as our Jacob has dubbed it, the 'RAMpocalypse').

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

While that's the cheapest we've seen the Legion in 2026, we did see it for about 200 bucks less late last year. Due to the knock-on effects of the aforementioned memory-pocalypse, it will be some time before we see a return to more reasonable, circa-2025 prices.

For the time being, you're still getting one of the best gaming laptops for much less than $3,100…which is how much this particular model is going for on Amazon right now.

I'll stop bemoaning the state of tech for the moment. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i also features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, which is a 24-core hybrid chip that bolsters its gaming grunt with eight performance cores.

What really grabbed my attention though was the 16-inch OLED screen. Yes, I've got a 27-inch OLED monitor at home, but I'm always fascinated by laptops trying to squeeze in such a screen to even smaller dimensions.

Gaming performance

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1440p High)F1 24 (1440p Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)3DMark Port Royal3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

44

22

MSI Vector A18 HX

45

34

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

39

29

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	44 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	45 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	39 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

96

51

MSI Vector A18 HX

95

57

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

82

43

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	96 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	95 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	82 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

72

62

MSI Vector A18 HX

71

42

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

84

72

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1440p High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	72 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	71 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	84 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

78

37

MSI Vector A18 HX

80

38

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

75

46

020406080

F1 24 (1440p Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	78 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	80 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	75 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

102

67

MSI Vector A18 HX

100

20

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

89

44

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	102 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	100 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	89 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

14870

MSI Vector A18 HX

15168

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

13267

05,00010,00015,00020,000

Overall index score

3DMark Port Royal Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	14870
MSI Vector A18 HX	15168
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	13267

Overall index score

GPU index

CPU index

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

11318

11138

12459

MSI Vector A18 HX

11134

11004

11939

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

10468

10222

12123

03,7507,50011,25015,000

3DMark Time Spy Extreme Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	11318 Overall index score, 11138 GPU index, 12459 CPU index
MSI Vector A18 HX	11134 Overall index score, 11004 GPU index, 11939 CPU index
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	10468 Overall index score, 10222 GPU index, 12123 CPU index

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i's OLED is a 2560 x 1600 resolution panel that also enjoys a 240 Hz refresh rate. Whether you're diving into the deep blacks of throwback text parser game Cryptmaster, or you diving back into some FPS action in Marathon's nighttime-take on Dire Marsh, this laptop will have you covered.

On top of all of that, you're also getting a whopping 2 TB of onboard SSD storage for the price too. All that room will give your online shooter of choice and its many updates room to breathe, while also allowing you to keep your indie darlings close. Couple all of that storage with the 32 GB of RAM, it really is a cracking deal.

Were I a younger, more spry gamer often on the move, I'd definitely consider scooping up this RTX 5080 laptop. Alas, it's just as well I'm neither young nor do I have especially deep pockets, as I'm sure carrying around this chunky lappy around would throw my back out either way. Furthermore, I'm told the outer shell is a fingerprint magnet, so it's just as well this gaming laptop exists far away from my chip-dust-encrusted student years.

Ah well, some things are simply not meant to be.

👉Check out all of B&H's gaming laptop deals👈

32 GB gaming laptops used to be legion on our gaming laptop deals page, but with Amazon Prime Day just around the corner, I've spotted the return of a favorite. Bucking the trend, here comes the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI for $1,500—complete with a generous 32 GB of DDR5.

Not only that, but it's also got a 115 W variant of the RTX 5070 mobile, which has been paired with a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. That's a very capable GPU and an extremely powerful mobile CPU, all wrapped up in a good-looking chassis.

👉All of our hand-curated early Amazon Prime Day 2026 deals👈

That makes this Acer machine, as modern as it looks, feel like a blast from the past in terms of pricing. Most RTX 5070 gaming laptops with just 16 GB of RAM are currently sitting well above the $1,500 mark, and many of them have far lesser components than this one.

And just to put a cherry on top of the gaming laptop cake, it's also got a 1600p 240 Hz IPS display. All you could really want for extra here is an OLED panel, but given the rest of the specs on offer, I can't really fault it.

The question, however, is whether you should buy now or wait to see what happens with the upcoming Amazon Prime Day sales. I'm no clairvoyant, but I'd be surprised if we saw lots of 32 GB machines crop up with massive discounts this event, as stock has been depleted since the start of the year thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis.

I'm not saying we won't find a few, of course. Or that I can guarantee this lappy won't drop in price a bit further as the event goes on. All I can say is that the deal in front of me right now is darn good compared to the rest of the market, and having spent some time tapping around on Acer's Predator Helios lineup, I'd absolutely buy one with my own cash.

So, it's up to you whether you want to take a punt. Personally? I reckon you should give it some serious consideration. A laptop in the hand is sometimes worth two in the bush. Or something like that, anyway.

👉Shop all of the B&H Photo gaming laptop deals👈

Amazon Prime Day 2026 is nearly upon us, and I'm collecting early Prime Day gaming laptop deals in anticipation. There are already some great machines to be found for reasonable money, but this RTX 5070-equipped Acer Nitro V 16S for $1,200 at B&H Photo will take some beating.

Now, I can't guarantee this lappy won't drop in price during the upcoming sales event, which officially begins next week on June 23. However, sub-$1,500 RTX 5070 machines can be very difficult to find right now, so this particular model makes a great case for itself before Prime Day officially starts.

👉All of our hand-curated early Amazon Prime Day 2026 deals👈

It's also one of Acer's S-line models, which means it's skinnier than your average reasonably-priced gaming laptop. There is a caveat to be aware of, though, before you go dropping your hard-earned cash.

The GPU here has been power-limited to 85 W. Now, being an RTX 5070 mobile graphics chip, it should still be fairly punchy at this wattage. However, this Acer has a 1600p 165 Hz display—which means you'll likely be leaning on DLSS and Frame Generation in demanding games to keep your frame rates high.

Which wouldn't bother me much, personally, given how much I'd be saving. This Acer machine is cheaper than many RTX 5060 gaming laptops you'll find at the moment, and it's got much more graphical grunt.

Plus, with a 10-core (six Performance, eight Efficient) Intel chip, 16 GB of DDR5, and a properly-sized 1 TB SSD crammed inside, there aren't many other compromises to be made. Sure, I'd love 32 GB of RAM, but given the current memory crisis, it's probably a bit too much to ask.

With Prime Day just around the corner, I'm expecting lots of RTX 5070 gaming lappys to drop in price. That being said, I'll be surprised if lots of them drop much below £1,200, which makes this machine a great deal now, and likely a very competitive one if it sticks around over the next couple of weeks.

Me? I'd be sorely tempted to pick one up now for this sort of cash, and save myself some hassle. How about you?

👉Shop all of the B&H Photo gaming laptop deals👈

We managed to get hands-on experience with Framework's new "MacBook Pro for Linux users" just last week, and we were mighty impressed with it. If you, too, were impressed and placed your preorders for its June release, I have some bad news. It's now going to be released one month later.

In an email sent to PC Gamer and those who have preordered the device, Framework says it has discovered two issues that have made the company push back the release from late June to late July.

The first issue is with the haptic touchpad. Supposedly, Framework engineers spotted a bug with the touchpad where it would "rarely" reset itself after repeated clicking. An investigation discovered that this is partly caused by an electrical issue in the PCB, so now Framework are awaiting the testing period of the new PCB to make sure it is ready to ship en masse.

The second issue is with the display. Framework says that the 13.5-inch 2880x1920 custom display ran into a bug with the current panel, which took a firmware update to solve. Should you want to buy the display by itself, that has also been delayed until July.

One thing that hasn't been delayed is the 13 Pro Mainboard shipments. You can still buy both the Ultra Series 3 and Ryzen AI 300 variants, and if you already have a preorder, you can expect that to arrive by June. Unfortunately, though, Framework clarifies that press reviews of the laptop will go live in July, so those who have preordered mainboards won't be able to catch full reviews before it's in their hands.

The Framework 13 Pro can be selected from Framework with either Windows or Linux, is designed to give strong battery life, has a full CNC aluminium chassis, and has a "power-optimised" display with touch support. The haptic trackpad, as we were told last week, is supposedly a bridge gap for Mac users looking to make the swap. Our Dave said, "They [Mac users] want to be able to touch any part of the trackpad to actuate a click and that's exactly what the new trackpad enables."

Notably, the Linux pre-loaded version of the laptop was actually outselling the Windows configuration when we spoke to CEO Nirav Patel last week. On one hand, that's a good sign of how far Linux has come recently. On the other hand, Framework devices do tend to be a bit more involved due to their breadth of customisation options, so the ultra casual Windows users might not have the 'Framework MacBook Pro' on their wishlist.

We'll have to get even more hands-on time with the 13 Pro to see if the wait and cost are worth it, but we've certainly been pretty into what we've seen so far.

Prime Week might be over (it officially ran between 23-26 June this year), but many of the deals are still active. I'll continue to track the best prices on gaming laptops on our regular page, here:

👉Best deals on gaming laptops👈

Whether you're looking for a low price on an RTX 5050 or RTX 5060 budget machine, an RTX 5070 mid-ranger, or an RTX 5070 Ti/RTX 5080 games-crunching monster, there's still a fair amount to choose from, even as the listings begin to return to normal.

Where to buy the best Prime Day gaming laptop deals

• Amazon: All Amazon's best gaming laptop deals
• B&H Photo: RTX 5070 slim gaming laptop for $1,400
• Best Buy: Slim 240 Hz OLED RTX 5060 Acer machine for $1,430
• Walmart: Cheap RTX 5050 gaming laptop we'd actually buy for $885
• HP: Regular discounts on plenty of well-specced machines
• Acer: RTX 5050 cheap and cheerful Nitro machine for $885
• Asus: 16-core, 32-thread AMD CPU with RTX 5070 power for $1,738
• Newegg: Asus 18-inch mega-sized RTX 5070 gaming laptop for $1,500
• Razer: Some of the best gaming laptops around
• MSI: Huge selection of MSI gaming laptops at Newegg
• Lenovo: Legion gaming laptops aplenty
• Target: Acer gaming laptops from $800
• Dell: Up to $600 off Alienware laptops

💻 RTX 5050 - Acer Nitro V 16 | $885 @ Walmart
💻 RTX 5060 - Lenovo LOQ | $1,080 @ Walmart
💻 RTX 5070 - Acer Nitro V 16S | $1,400 @ B&H Photo
💻 RTX 5070 Ti - Asus ROG Strix G16 | $1,800 @ Best Buy
💻 RTX 5080 - MSI Vector 16 HX AI | $2,322 @ Walmart

Amazon Prime Day gaming laptop deals under $1,000

$1,000-$1,500

$1,500+

Handheld gaming PCs

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Amazon Prime Day UK gaming laptop deals

• Amazon: Big discounts on current gen and previous gen gaming laptops
• Currys: Regular deals on many gaming laptops from major brands
• Lenovo: Legion machines with regular discounts
• Laptops Direct: £100s off RTX 50-series gaming laptops
• Overclockers: Big savings on MSI gaming laptops
• Scan: Regular discounts on gaming laptops from major brands
• PC Specialist: Configurable RTX 50-series laptops
• Cyberpower: Up to £900 off gaming laptops

• RTX 5050: Medion Erazer Scout 15 | £800 (save £149)
• RTX 5060: Medion Erazer Deputy 15 | £950
• RTX 5070: Gigabyte Gaming A16 | £1,250 (save £50)
• RTX 5070 Ti: MSI Vector 16 HX AI | £1,500 (save £399)
• RTX 5080: MSI Vector 16 HX AI | £2,299

• Back to top ^

Computex is both a proving ground for newly released tech and an excuse for companies to throw stuff at the wall and hope enough people like it. As such, we tend to see a lot of weird tech (here's looking at you, ferrofluid case and GPU with Swarovski crystals in it). However, while laptops have been a little dry this year, MSI has somehow made my favourite and least favourite devices.

Starting with my favourite, I love the Prestige 14 Flip AI+, and its Vincent Van Gogh-themed look. One version is based on Starry Night, and the other is based on Starry Night Over the Rhône. They are more or less just the artwork put on the back of a laptop, with a similarly coloured keyboard, but that's good enough for me, as it's still gorgeous art that would look lovely any time it's pulled out of a backpack.

They also come with a themed mouse pad, box, Bluetooth mouse, and even an ID badge. It's a bit over the top, as one would expect from MSI's Prestige collection, but lovely nonetheless. You're getting Intel Core Ultra processors and no dedicated GPU, so it's not quite a fully-fledged gaming laptop, but it should still handle some games, and it's got an OLED display to back that all up.

It's definitely a bit much for watching YouTube or messing with Excel spreadsheets, but it'll be the nicest laptop in your local cafe. The last MSI artisan laptop (Ukiyo-e edition) was also gorgeous looking. We don't yet have a price, but the Ukiyo-e edition sits around the $1,500 to $2,000 mark.

If you are looking for a gaming laptop to stand out in… other ways, let me introduce you to the MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic (yes, that's its full legal name). It comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and an RTX 5090 mobile. MSI has truly thrown everything at it, with a 240 Hz Mini-LED display, Cherry MX mechanical keys, a dedicated vapour chamber cooler, and a premium box with limited edition coins, a mousepad, and a gaming mouse.

It's even got super speedy SSD storage, with a total of four M.2 slots that can be linked together as a SuperRAID 5 array, plus a 6-speaker surround sound system, and a wealth of ports (including Thunderbolt 5, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and C, plus an SD card reader).

Unfortunately, though, I simply don't like the chunky backplate or the RGB trackpad, and the dragon design is too much for my tastes. It looks impressive in a lot of ways, but I think I'd feel actively embarrassed for just a moment taking it out in a public space. In fairness, those specs imply a very high price point, so I don't think I'd ever feel comfortable taking it out of the house anyway.

I can see the level of artistry on show here, and perhaps if I were on the Computex show floor and saw it in person, my perspective would change. But I don't think I've ever longed for a big RGB-infested, dragon-displaying gaming laptop before, and I don't know if MSI could change my mind.

I caught up with Framework CEO, Nirav Patel at Computex this week, and got my hands on the new Framework 13 Pro for the first time. I've been eager to get hold of what it calls 'the MacBook Pro for Linux users' since it was first announced and, while we'll have to wait just a little longer for our review sample to arrive, my first impression is that it's everything you'd want a premium Framework 13 to be.

And everything about that Apple-baiting tagline makes even more sense now I've got to touch the device and talk about exactly what Patel means by it. Though I'm super-excited to get the 13 Pro in and start throwing some games at the Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 and its integrated B390 GPU core, obviously the target is not specifically gamers, it's software developers.

And, more precisely, the volume of software developers Framework has been talking to who are growing increasingly frustrated at the Mac operating system. Nirav Patel explains that the Linux operating system is the preferred platform for software developers, but the struggle has been that folk coming over from Apple hardware don't want to give up on the feel of that hardware.

Part of it is the premium chassis, and Framework has absolutely nailed that with the new black anodised aluminium surrounds it has created for the Framework 13 Pro. I've been using the standard 13-incher for years, and the laptop chassis is fine, but you wouldn't call it premium. The 13 Pro, however, feels incredibly solid, sturdy, and serious very much like a MacBook or the Razer Blade I'm typing on right now.

Framework hasn't given up any of the repairability, nor has it lost the compatibility, either. You could fit this shell around any Framework 13 device from the past five years or so.

But one of the key things for Patel has been the introduction of the haptic touchpad. He notes that while it might not be a huge thing for PC folk shifting over to the 13 Pro, for MacBook users he saw it as essential to making that shift as smooth as possible for those who want to move away from MacOS but don't want to change how their machines feel to use. They want to be able to touch any part of the trackpad to actuate a click and that's exactly what the new trackpad enables.

The Framework 13 Pro releases later this month, and already the preloaded Linux versions are outselling the Windows options in the pre-orders. "It's actually outselling the Windows configuration," Patel tells me, "which is crazy to see."

Gaming might only be the third pillar of the 'who is RTX Spark for?' foundations, but that doesn't mean it's been an afterthought. Especially not when Nvidia's developer relations team is going out and helping the likes of Remedy make a completely native version of Alan Wake 2—one of the most graphically intensive DX12 games out there—and making it run great on Nvidia's RTX Spark.

I've been playing this native Arm build of Alan Wake 2 on a pre-release version of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra and, while I'm under careful watch so I don't go digging around in the settings, the experience is smooth and the game looks great. And crucially I'm not seeing the telltale smearing of text, input lag, and fine detail screwiness that would tell me it's using a ton of multi frame gen just to get the game running at the 2560 x 1600 resolution I'm playing at. Though I'm confident it is running some level of frame gen in there to get this game running so smoothly on this machine.

Microsoft has been working on this laptop with Nvidia for about three years, Nvidia has been working with MediaTek for two and a half years to make the silicon. And that would suggest Remedy's had ample time to get working on the native Arm port for Nvidia hardware, but Nvidia currently won't be drawn on exactly how long it has taken to get this fully native version up and running.

But it looks damned good to my eyes, and plays well either on keyboard and mouse or with a controller plugged in. Obviously though, this is a tightly controlled demo, and I can't dig in to see what the specific settings are inside the game, but this is still a DirectX 12 game, with a native Arm port running smoothly on this thin-and-light gaming laptop without blowing a gale out the back.

During my time prodding and poking every single RTX Spark laptop and desktop that has made it up to Nvidia's demo floor—from Microsoft, to Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and MSI—I've also had a chance to play with emulated versions of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Pragmata. Not new beta versions, but simply downloaded from Steam and running on these 64 GB versions of the RTX Spark chip.

"What we're showcasing here is, if you're a developer and your game is running through an emulator, we're going to work with you to make sure it's a good experience," says Jo Vivoli, senior manager in Nvidia's tech marketing team. "If you want to make a native arm build, we're going to work with you to make sure it's a good experience."

And it's something a Microsoft engineer, who has been working on RTX Spark for the past three years echos as I step up to play Indiana Jones.

"It's running through emulation," he says, "and so we wanted to highlight the deep investment that Nvidia and Microsoft has made to make sure that gaming is truly an activity that you can participate on an RTX Spark, and it delivers the expected performance and visuals that you would get out of an RTX graphics card."

And it's all working. I also inexpertly bashed through Pragmata, though this is actually the first time playing the game so I had zero idea what the hell I was doing, why there was a little bot-girl on my back, and why this other robot-with-a-sword wanted to chop us into itty bitty bits. But the game ran super smoothly, even if my gaming skills did not.

Now, this is surely not going to be the universal experience for every game, no matter how commited to the experience either Microsoft or Nvidia are—there is simply too large a back catalogue of games in the PC's long library and there will surely be titles that do not play ball.

But it has been focused on at least what it sees as the biggest games. "We've been looking at the 200 largest, most used creative applications, most used games," another Microsoft representative tells me. "And we're on track to have those working in time for launch."

Maybe suspiciously, this is an Nvidia demo suite and there's no hint of Cyberpunk 2077. Will that work for launch? I'm told they think it does, but I guess we'll find out in the autumn.

Nvidia's first full SoC for the PC, RTX Spark, is finally here. But could it form the basis of a killer gaming handheld? Superficially, that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, what with Nvidia's dominance in gaming graphics. But comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang yesterday make that appear unlikely.

Speaking after his Computex keynote, Huang responded to a question about the possible use of RTX Spark in a handheld.

"If somebody wants to do it, you know, we'll work with them on it. But right now we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal, reinventing the PC after 40 years," Huang said.

He went on to explain what a "gigantic project" it is for Nvidia just to launch a PC chip. "Remember all of these applications in the Windows world, the x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically, and all the games they have to have anti cheat turned on. And so all of that stuff is really, really hard," Huang explained.

"It took us three years working with Microsoft and two and a half years working with MediaTek to get here, hundreds of people, that's how hard it is, and that's why everybody's so excited about it," Huang says of RTX Spark.

It's all part of his plan, it seems, to reinvent the PC in the age of AI. "Can we help reinvent the PC? And, boy, if you get a chance to reinvent the single most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity, what you and I grew up with defined just about everything about our lives, and we have an opportunity after 40 years to go reinvent it for the age of AI. Wow, we're not going to sit around, not let it get done," Huang said.

In that context, you can see how making a gaming handheld out of RTX Spark is a bit, well, tangential. Is it yet another indication that gaming is now a very low priority at Nvidia? Possibly.

Of course, the full RTX Spark Chip is probably not a goer for handhelds. It's got 20 Arm cores and a GPU with pretty much identical specs to a desktop RTX 5070 GPU. That's surely too big and too powerful for a handheld, even if Nvidia is claiming its battery life will be "much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."

As I understand it, however, there is a smaller version of RTX Spark coming with fewer CPU cores and a GPU less than half the size, codenamed N1 as opposed to N1x for the full-size RTX Spark chip. And that could be a much better candidate for a gaming handheld.

The thing is, if Nvidia was actively working with partners on an RTX Spark-based gaming handheld, you'd think Huang would have answered that question quite differently. As it is, he's clear that's not where Nvidia's "focus" is right now. Which probably shouldn't be a surprise, as gaming really doesn't seem to be a high priority at Nvidia of late.

So Nvidia has announced the RTX Spark chip, its first CPU—or should that be APU—for the PC. Except the chip is basically a rebadge of the GB10 superchip in the DGX Spark desktop AI box that it launched in October last year. And it uses pretty ancient CPU cores licensed from Arm. So when might we see a true Nvidia CPU in the PC?

Actually, it looks a lot like Nvidia answered that question in its Computex keynote. CEO Jensen Huang revealed a roadmap for RTX Spark stretching a further two generations and out to 2030. And here's the really important bit: Nvidia plans to launch an RTX Spark using Nvidia's Vera CPU in 2028.

As Nvidia has already announced, Vera is the company's first CPU with cores designed in-house. The CPU in the first generation RTX Spark has Nvidia's Grace chiplet, which was designed in a collaboration with Mediatek and has CPU cores licensed from ARM.

What's more, those CPU cores aren't even Arm's latest designs. Grace has two different Arm cores, one is a generation old, the other two generations old. But Vera is Nvidia's first in-house CPU design using its new Olympus cores and when Nvidia initially announced it as a processor for AI servers, we hoped and wondered if those Olympus cores would ever come to the PC.

Well, now this roadmap seems to indicate that they are and even when they're coming, in 2028. Exactly how good Vera's Olympus cores are isn't totally clear. We've only just had the first third-party benchmarks, albeit with workloads somewhat dictated by Nvidia.

One caveat here is that Nvidia hasn't explicitly called out "Olympus" cores for the Vera Rubin Spark chip. But it would certainly be odd if the company used the same "Vera" codename to describe two very different CPU architectures.

For what it's worth, in the Computex keynote, Huang said Vera's single-threaded performance "has to be world class, absolutely the best," which obviously bodes well. Where things get more complicated is software support.

Nvidia is unsurprisingly making lots of positive noises about game support on RTX Spark. But the problem is that the next-gen Vera CPU in 2028 will inevitably be very different from the Arm-licensed cores in the first-gen RTX Spark's Grace CPU. So, it's not clear that any work done for the first Grace-based RTX Spark making game ports or optimising Windows' Prism emulation layer for x86 applications running on Arm CPUs will automatically benefit the next-gen Vera CPU.

You could argue it's a little odd that Nvidia is launching the whole RTX Spark thing with the Grace Blackwell generation. In many ways, it would seem to make more sense to wait for the Vera Rubin generation in 2028 with Nvidia's own CPUs, which will presumably form the basis of future RTX Spark CPUs, including the Rosa Feyman generation which Huang also revealed is due in 2030.

As it is, RTX Spark is launching with some relatively ancient licensed CPU cores which will duly be dropped in favour of Nvidia's surely far superior cores in 2028. Perhaps all this generation of RTX Spark is supposed to do is get the ball rolling in terms of relationships with hardware vendors for laptops, with Microsoft regarding x86 emulation and with game devs for porting x86 titles.

But at least now we know when the first true Nvidia CPU for the PC is arriving. And it's 2028. Here's hoping those Olympus cores are still "absolutely the best" by then.

It's been a long time coming, but we finally have sight of Nvidia's very own Arm-based CPU. And as if to remind us it's not all a fever dream, we have sight of some actual laptops that will feature the chip, like the MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+.

The first thing you've probably noticed is that this thing looks thin. And that's kind of the point, here. There's no discrete RTX GPU to fatten it up, rather Nvidia's all-in-one N1X-based "superchip" called RTX Spark, which seems to want to meld the gaming and AI spheres together (from Nvidia? Who'd have thunk it).

That permits a gaming-capable laptop to have such things as a "16-inch UHD+ Tandem OLED display, 99.9Wh battery, MSI Nano Pen, MSI Action Touchpad, and a versatile flip form factor for mobile productivity and entertainment."

Make no mistake, though, it's a gaming PC. And with RTX Spark machines all signs point towards that meaning some actual gaming performance. We'd heard rumours of RTX 5070-level frame rates from an upcoming Nvidia processor for a very long time, and now Nvidia confirms that this was correct, although it will depend on the game.

That game-dependent caveat exists in large part because the RTX Spark isn't a standard x86 CPU. It's Arm-based, meaning it runs Windows-on-Arm and will have to emulate some apps through Microsoft's Prism layer. So you probably shouldn't expect a standard experience in all respects from this MSI machine. But thus is the penalty for progress.

It's certainly an exciting prospect now we can see just how thin an RTX 5070-level laptop can be. The two-in-one flip design we see here (use it as a tablet or laptop, or in between in 'tent' format) would certainly have seemed a stretch to combine with such gaming performance on more traditional hardware with a discrete GPU.

There's no mention of price, though, and on that front I can't imagine anything other than a sharp sting.

The new Nvidia RTX Spark is an Arm-powered system-on-chip (SoC) set to be the heart of new super thin-and-light gaming laptops and mini PCs. It comes packing up to 20 Grace CPU cores and up to 6188 CUDA cores in its GPU, alongside up to 128 GB unified LPDDR5x memory. And one of the most tantalising things of having an Arm chip powering a genuinely gaming-capable skinny laptop is the promise of unprecedented gaming battery life.

During our pre-Computex briefing on the introduction of the new "superchip" product marketing lead, Mark Aevermann was careful not to make any definitive promises of extreme battery life, despite calling it "the most efficient pc chip ever built". But he did note that we "should expect it to be much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."

Which is certainly promising. While we're expecting all-day battery life for standard non-gaming workloads, when you're really pushing gaming workloads it's going to stress the battery a whole lot more.

"Gaming battery life... it's going to vary on a whole lot of factors," says Aevermann. "Just like any laptop out there, literally any laptop, if you pull the maximum you can out of a battery you're only going to get 45 minutes to an hour. That's true of every laptop on the market. So it very much depends on if things like frame rate targets, the settings of an individual game, what the laptop's battery capacity is, so on and so forth."

But with frame rate targets and such, Intel's G3 Extreme handheld chips are getting up to five hours of gaming battery life in intense 3D gameworlds, and up to 11 hours in something less-intense, such as Team Fortress 2. Maybe we won't get up to that level with a super-thin RTX Spark gaming laptop, but maybe with the right settings we could get close.

One of the issues that gaming on Linux has right now, and one of the main reasons why Windows is still the dominant platform for gaming, is because there are still games that resolutely will not work on SteamOS or any other Linux-based distro. And one of the main reasons for that is a lack of support for some of the biggest anti-cheat software in use today, specifically the kernel-level ones.

That means you get no Fortnite, you get no Battlefield, you get no Valorant, you get no FC26 (okay, that one's just for me). Nvidia gets this and has been explicit in the announcement of the new Arm-powered RTX Spark "superchip" for Windows on Arm that is working hard with all the leading anti-cheat developers to ensure the software works out of the box on its systems.

Nvidia has told me that: "We are working closely with game developers to ensure all the top games run great. Our ongoing collaborations are bringing Fortnite, VALORANT, League of Legends, PUBG and more to run on RTX Spark.

"One of the biggest challenges is native ARM anti-cheat that online games rely on. We are working with developers to bring support for major anti cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others. We'll have even more game news to announce over the coming months."

Nvidia's also told us that devs are working on both Prism-optimised versions of their games as well as wholly native game versions for RTX Spark and Windows on Arm.

RTX Spark is its new family of Nvidia SoCs, targeted at creators, AI devs, and gamers, and the top chip has the same level of graphics power as an RTX 5070. Well, depending on whether you're talking about emulated games or native versions, so actual performance could be above, below, or the same as an RTX 5070. Though Nvidia has noted that GPU-bound games will likely be less impacted by Microsoft's Prism emulation layer, which is kinda promising at least.

We're expecting RTX Spark laptops and mini PCs in the autumn this year, though don't expect the full 20-core CPU, 6188 CUDA core GPU, with 128 GB of unified memory to be cheap. Though we've been told there will be smaller versions of the chips, potentially more gaming-focused versions, from 16 GB all the way up to the top 128 GB versions. Watch this space, I guess.

After a lot of leaks, a whole lot of rumours, and me boring the crap out of Nvidia's PRs about it many times over the years, the N1X CPU, now incorporated in the RTX Spark SoC, has finally been unveiled. It's been one of the most well-known secrets in the industry—that Nvidia would one day release a laptop SoC, pairing a MediaTek Arm chiplet with an Nvidia GPU core, to create its own notebook platform and here we are.

With the full RTX Spark "superchip", codenamed the N1X, users can expect up to 20 Grace CPU cores and 6144 RTX Blackwell GPU cores, alongside up to 128 GB of unified LPDDR5x memory. And I think the 'up to' parts of that statement are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because this isn't just a single laptop processor but a full lineup of notebook SoCs starting in the autumn of this year.

And that's welcome news, because in a RAMpocalypse world of ever-increasing hardware prices, a chip that's wedded to 128 GB of any kind of memory is going to be prohibitively expensive. But, while Mark Aevermann, consumer product marketing lead of RTX Spark, wouldn't be drawn on details of the different chips we might expect to see, he did note that "RTX Spark is going to be a family of products that are going to attack a lot of different price points" and that "across the entire family you'll see configurations from 16 GB all the way up to 128 GB."

Not that I expect a 16 GB RTX Spark laptop to be cheap but at least that will be a far more affordable SKU, and likely a more gaming-oriented chip, too. Though I wouldn't necessarily expect to see laptops using those lower-end chips at launch in the autumn, as right now Nvidia has only shown off six very premium machines from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and MSI.

"Over time," says Aevermann, "you can expect over 30 laptops and over ten or so desktops initially planned."

But with Nvidia promising wattage figures from up to 80 W down to the "low, low single digits" that does make me think about handhelds, especially after Intel's announcement of the G3 Extreme in the past week. Aevermann introduced the RTX Spark as "the most efficient PC chip ever built… a new type of SoC that is both built for the future of computers as agents, as well as a fantastic creation and gaming experience on a single device with exceptional portability." If that doesn't get jammed into a new Shield handheld my ghast will be utterly flabbered.

Though Nvidia was also very careful in the briefing ahead of today's announcement to note that it was not making any comments about handhelds.

Laptops are not the only form factor Nvidia has been talking about, though, as it's also said that mini PCs, along the same lines as the Linux-powered DGX Spark, will also be releasing in the autumn with the RTX Spark chip inside. The likes of Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Lenovo will have systems ready to roll, which could make for a real interesting comparison with the Steam Machine whenever that does arrive.

The biggest issue for the RTX Spark as a gaming SoC, however, is the fact that it's running a custom Arm and not an x86 CPU core. That means running Windows-on-Arm as the operating system, and that means leaning heavily on the Microsoft's Prism emulator. This is the layer which translates x86 code for WoA devices right now, such as those from Qualcomm, and Nvidia seems pretty confident that it's worked out a lot of the kinks.

Though Aevermann does also note that, while you can theoretically get RTX 5070-level performance out of the RTX Spark's GPU core, that is heavily dependent on the application. And I think you can translate that to mean it's completely dependent on how well a given application copes with that emulation layer.

Nvidia has a lot of skin in the game here, but also a lot of deep contacts with the gaming world, and it has noted that developers are running the gamut from purely optimising their games for Prism, to porting existing games to Arm, to coding entirely natively for the Arm ecosystem.

The company is also engaged with developers to ensure the ecosystem supports all the current anti-cheat software around, something that's been a struggle for Linux gaming.

"We are working closely with game developers to ensure all the top games run great," an Nvidia rep tells me. "Our ongoing collaborations are bringing Fortnite, VALORANT, League of Legends, PUBG and more to run on RTX Spark.

"One of the biggest challenges is native ARM anti-cheat that online games rely on. We are working with developers to bring support for major anti cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others. We'll have even more game news to announce over the coming months."

Here's hoping Nvidia's confidence in both the Prism emulation and the game developers proves warranted when the RTX Spark systems see the light of day towards the end of the year.

Hunting for fresh news of Nvidia's long-awaited, yet-to-be-announced N1 and N1X laptop chips is pretty difficult these days. Reports earlier this year suggested the new chips would be out by March, but here we are in May with not a lot to go on beyond rumour and speculation.

Other than a Lenovo login page mention, of course. That's new (via Videocardz). A dropdown menu on the Lenovo ADFS login page has two entries noting the fabled chip, one labelled "Nvidia N1X Portal PROD" and the other "Nvidia N1X Portal Test."

It's not the first time Lenovo has been linked to potential Nvidia-chipped laptop models. At the start of this year, the "Legion 7 12N1X11" appeared as a supported model for its Legion Space software, while a dataminer also found mention of several upcoming Lenovo models with N1 and N1X designations.

So as secrets go, it's not a particularly well kept one. And in all honesty, test portals being prepared for upcoming laptops using the chips is no great surprise.

But it's been a long time coming, and if the cadence of these leaks is anything to go by, we may be tantalisingly close to an official reveal. Computex 2026 kicks off next week, and if I were a betting man, I'd put good money on at least some mention of the near-mythical Nvidia laptop chip line being made then—if not a full-blown announcement.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has confirmed that the new offerings will be based on the GB10 "Superchip" found in the DGX Spark, although how that manifests in practice is yet to be officially revealed. Previous rumours have suggested the N1X is a 20-core CPU with a large Blackwell-based GPU, potentially with as many CUDA cores as the RTX 5070.

If that's even close to accurate, the Nvidia beasties may well be one of the biggest and most interesting hardware releases of the year—if the X86 emulation is all fine and dandy, of course. Or we could be left waiting once more. Tune in next week to find out?

Last month I reported on tech YouTubers Jakkuh and Zip Tie Tech modding an Apple MacBook Neo with external custom water loop cooling to achieve world record benchmark scores on the budget laptop. Now, YouTuber Salem Techsperts has outdone them in at least some benchmarks with the help of dual-sided chip cooling and a giant industrial air blower.

The previous record-holders said "come at me bro" with a 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme score of 1,450 and Salem Techsperts apparently beat that score the very next day, but only by one point. He then set out to break that record: "I am determined to have the fastest MacBook Neo in the world, and no one is going to beat it after today. (I really hope JayzTwoCents doesn't do a liquid nitrogen build.)"

The Apple MacBook Neo has garnered attention thanks to its cheap price tag in an increasingly inflated market. And while its six-core A18 Pro chip is little more than an iPhone processor, it runs surprisingly well, especially using Apple's optimised software. But there's always more headroom that can be cranked out of a chip with enough effort, as Salem Techsperts finds out.

He sets about achieving this with "PTM 7950, 30-degree air, an industrial air blower, a heat sink, a Peltier cooler... and Upsiren thermal putty."

The PTM 7950 is a phase change thermal pad, and the latter putty is designed to replace thermal pads, which is useful in the case of the MacBook Neo, because such a pad is exactly what is slapped on top of the chip by default. And finally, a Peltier cooler is a kind of thermoelectric cooler that uses an electric current to encourage heat transfer from one side to the other.

To begin, the YouTuber put the putty on top of the integrated circuits (ICs) on either side of the chip, laid the regular sticker on top, and had two copper shims sitting next to the chip with a heatsink on top of it, using a PTM 7950 thermal pad as the conductor between the two. However, he did eventually swap out the PTM 7950 for some Upsiren thermal putty to crank the score up as it ended up working better.

The final trick was to put the Peltier cooler underneath the chip to sandwich it, which involves disconnecting the logic board and removing the display. And then using the giant industrial air blower to churn a load of air from the window to cool the top-side of the chip down. The Peltier cooler underneath has to be blocked off from the flow of air, though, as that could interfere with the thermoelectric cooling process. The result is getting things down to a nice and chilly 10 °C at idle

After all this, the A18 Pro consistently hits 11 W of power consumption; by default it should max out at about 10 W and stay much lower than this over extended periods.

The chip managed to beat the previous-highest Cinebench scores, with a score of 2,076 in the multi-threaded test and 639 in the single-threaded one, which is only slightly below what an M4 Max chip scores. However, for some reason the chip in the modded setup wouldn't beat the 3DMark (ie, the GPU) score, hitting different scores between 1,400 and 1,450; apparently the score was higher before all the modding.

With the sandwich cooling method, the Neo achieved 50 fps in Cyberpunk, although that was at 1080p on low settings with resolution scaling and FSR 3.1 frame gen turned on.

Salem Techsperts even gets pretty decent results putting the chip and board back into the case with just the pads and putty mods, achieving 28% higher multi-core and 25% higher single-core score. So although he notes the keyboard does get a little warmer, that might be a mod that's worth actually trying at home, if you're feeling adventurous.

Let's get the obvious things out of the way first. To start with, this isn't the cheapest RTX 5080 gaming laptop you can buy—at $2,399 on Newegg, this MSI Vector undercuts it by quite a bit—and secondly, you're only getting 1 TB of storage, which is pretty miserly for such a high-end rig. But truth be told, that's pretty much it for the downsides; everything else about this Lenovo Legion 7i is superb, and for the $2,600 Best Buy is asking, it's well worth considering.

The star of the whole show has to be the display panel. It's big and beautiful to behold: 16 inches of OLED lusciousness, with a 16:10 aspect ratio, 1600p resolution, and a 240 Hz peak refresh rate. Such a lovely screen really needs a great graphics chip to get the best from it, and that's precisely what you're getting here.

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Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5080 mobile GPU is roughly equivalent to an RTX 5070 Ti desktop graphics card, and given that it's brilliant at 1440p and 4K gaming, you'll have no concerns over gaming performance with this laptop. The MSI Vector might seem to have the edge over the Lenovo in terms of raw frame rate, but the Legion is far more consistent, especially when it comes to minimum performance.

That's helped greatly by the fact that there's 32 GB of dual-channel DDR5-6400 and the processor is an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, a full-fat Arrow Lake chip with eight P-cores, 16 E-cores, and a peak boost clock of 5.4 GHz.

Gaming performance

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1440p High)F1 24 (1440p Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)3DMark Port Royal3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

44

22

MSI Vector A18 HX

45

34

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

39

29

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	44 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	45 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	39 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

96

51

MSI Vector A18 HX

95

57

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

82

43

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	96 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	95 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	82 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

72

62

MSI Vector A18 HX

71

42

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

84

72

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1440p High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	72 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	71 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	84 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

78

37

MSI Vector A18 HX

80

38

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

75

46

020406080

F1 24 (1440p Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	78 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	80 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	75 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

102

67

MSI Vector A18 HX

100

20

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

89

44

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	102 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
MSI Vector A18 HX	100 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	89 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

14870

MSI Vector A18 HX

15168

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

13267

05,00010,00015,00020,000

Overall index score

3DMark Port Royal Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	14870
MSI Vector A18 HX	15168
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	13267

Overall index score

GPU index

CPU index

Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10

11318

11138

12459

MSI Vector A18 HX

11134

11004

11939

Gigabyte Aorus Master 16

10468

10222

12123

03,7507,50011,25015,000

3DMark Time Spy Extreme Data

Product	Value
Lenovo Legion 7i Pro Gen10	11318 Overall index score, 11138 GPU index, 12459 CPU index
MSI Vector A18 HX	11134 Overall index score, 11004 GPU index, 11939 CPU index
Gigabyte Aorus Master 16	10468 Overall index score, 10222 GPU index, 12123 CPU index

Naturally, being such a powerful laptop with a huge OLED screen, it doesn't have the best of battery lifespans—it barely cracks 70 minutes in the PCMark gaming test—and it's not something that you can easily slip into a backpack and carry around with you. Oh, and it's an absolute magnet for fingerprints, though that just gives you the perfect excuse to endlessly clean it and make oochy-coochy noises at your beloved new purchase.

As for the disappointing amount of storage, the good news there is that the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro has a spare M.2 slot inside, so funds permitting, it's very easy to throw another 1 or 2 TB NVMe drive in there, purely to house games.

If you're going to spend a whole heap of cash on a new RTX 5080 gaming laptop, you can do far worse than this one. In fact, it's actually very hard to beat the Lenovo. Certainly on price, but in every other area that matters, the Legion 7i Pro is absolutely top-notch.

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While there's no chance that it was developed because Apple had chosen to do something similar, one can't help but draw parallels to the MacBook Neo. The newly announced Googlebook has your phone and AI at the heart of it all, and will supposedly bring "the best of Android…and ChromeOS", utilising hardware from Intel under the hood.

That's pretty much it as far as details go, other than some swooping imagery of glossy-looking laptops, a short tweet from Intel on the collaboration, and a statement about "working with industry leading partners like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo."

Naturally, Gemini AI is going to be at the forefront of what the Googlebook can do, but if you have an Android phone, you'll be able to cast apps and access files directly from the phone without having to wire things up or install them. How well all this will work in reality is anyone's guess at this stage, but if it works as seamlessly as suggested, a Googlebook might be a good choice of laptop for work-on-the-go.

The real question of importance, however, is precisely what hardware is going to be underneath the hood. Since Intel is involved, the most obvious pick is either a small Panther Lake chip or even smaller Wildcat Lake. Both options are going to be very nice to have, though they really need fast LPDDR5 memory to shine.

Given how expensive DRAM is at the moment, if Google takes a leaf from Apple's MacBook Neo and goes with something like 8 or 12 GB, then it's unlikely that you're going to see any Googlebook topping a benchmark chart. That said, Wildcat Lake is light on power demand but strong on single-core performance, so you never know.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Googlebook is the legacy of Chromebooks. These have been around for many years now, and while generally very cheap, they've accrued a reputation for being slow and of limited capability. Google's new devices are unlikely to be at the bottom end of the price scale, but the spectre of the Chromebook is going to be hard to exorcise.

We'll know for sure when the first models appear later this autumn.

We got our first look at Alienware's first budget gaming laptop at CES earlier this year, and now, nearly half a year later, the Alienware 15 is here, and you can go buy it over at Dell.com right now.

But before you go rushing off to throw your money at one, there are some things you ought to know about. I'm not necessarily blaming Dell here, but the specifics of this new machine tell you all you need to know about the PC gaming hardware market. In short, it's in real trouble.

For a start, the Alienware 15 is not a new mega value proposition in the same way the new Alienware AW2726DM OLED gaming monitor is. That's a brand new OLED gaming monitor, using a quality Samsung panel that is still very competitive with the current generation of OLED gaming displays, but for an affordable price brand new that you'll only otherwise see from OLEDs on special offer.

That's not the case with the Alienware 15 laptop. This is a brand new gaming laptop that Dell is determined to point out is still sporting the Alienware DNA and build quality, just with some judicious cuts here and there, and a potentially dubious specs sheet.

One thing to note is maybe a little trite, but this looks far more like a Dell Gaming laptop (a brand now seemingly defunct) than anything with the traditional style and aesthetic of an Alienware machine. It sure does look like a corporate slab. But that's not necessarily a terrible thing.

What kinda might be is that it's 2026 and this is a gaming laptop that is launching with an RTX 3050 configuration from the off. Now, that config is not available in every territory—in the US, the bottom rung will be the RTX 4050, and only RTX 5050 and RTX 5060 options are available today—but in the UK, we're treated to the full last-last-gen horrors. It's not even that cheap; the RTX 3050 system is still £979 😱

It's also restricting its GPUs to a total graphics power (TGP) of 85 W, which is going to hold back your new RTX Blackwell graphics chips if you can stretch your wallet that far. Given the impressively thin chassis, that's maybe okay, and the same as the Alienware 16 Aurora machines.

What I struggle with a little more is the way Dell is resolutely going with single channel memory across the board for its new machine. I predicted we'd see more vendors doing this very thing with the RAMpocalypse forcing manufacturers' hands in terms of dealing with ludicrous memory pricing, and lo, it has come to pass.

But it's not just at the bottom end of the configuration scale, because despite having a pair of SODIMM slots in the back of the Alienware 15, the 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB configurations include just one single stick of RAM. Alienware said "we're doing our best to hold to" its pricing in the face of memory volatility, and that meant that "out of the box it was best for us to go with single channel."

Sure, you're getting the same raw capacity, but going with single channel over standard dual channel memory (basically using two discrete sticks) means you are halving your memory bandwidth. I will say, that doesn't make a whole lot of difference in most games—Alienware estimates about a 5% performance hit—but in general use, it does affect what you can do with your system.

None of this would be that painful if it weren't for the price. I will say again, this is not a cheap laptop, even if Dell wants to call this an entry-level Alienware machine. The RTX 4050 version in the US, with an AMD CPU, is going to start at $1,300, and right now, you're looking at $1,500 for the RTX 5050 system with 16 GB single channel memory and a 512 GB SSD. Worse still, you cannot configure an Alienware 15 with an RTX 5060 for less than $2,290, with 32 GB of single channel memory and a 1 TB SSD.

For comparison, you can buy an RTX 5050 version of the Alienware 16 Aurora for $1,200 with 16 GB of dual channel DDR5 memory and a 512 GB SSD. Or, y'know, you could buy an actual budget gaming laptop with an RTX 5050 inside it for $799 instead.

It's not all bad, because the Alienware 15 will be a genuinely good machine, just not a budget option. At least not until the sales really bite into it. The rounded chassis looks good, it has ditched the big bum of the Area-51 machines, and it comes with a full numpad. Dell has also ensured that its 15-inch screen is still a 16:10, 1200p option, not the more traditional 15-inch 16:9 panel.

So, it'll be a quality machine, though it's not really the super-affordable, entry-level Alienware you might have hoped for post-MacBook Neo.

Modular laptop company Framework has some good news and some bad news. The good news is that memory costs from suppliers have reportedly remained steady over the past few months. The bad news is that it's all outta storage and has to buy new stuff at inflated prices.

"We’ve seen memory costs on DDR5 suppliers remain fairly stable over the last few months," Framework says in a regular blog post on the memory crisis. "We consumed the inventory of 8GB that we had brought in earlier at lower cost, and have had to adjust the pricing upwards to reflect the costs of newly sourced modules.

"As we have been through this memory crunch, we are only adjusting the pricing as much as is needed to cover increases in cost. For the other memory capacities, we’ve been able to hold the prices the same as last month."

Unfortunately, this has been countered by an increase in storage costs. The company says it has now nearly fully consumed its older inventory for most capacities and is in the process of buying new stock. Since this new stock is sold at a higher price by suppliers, thanks to the memory crisis and heaps more demand, it's looking to raise costs.

"On SSDs, the pricing story is unfortunately not as positive," Framework says. "Over the last few months, we’ve been able to keep our storage prices pretty substantially below market by selling modules we had in inventory from 2025. We’ve now consumed much of that inventory across a number of different module capacities and are starting to bring in new inventory at costs that are multiples of times higher."

Today, this means prices are a weighted average of both the new and old inventory—so a smaller increase—but Framework says next month it expects to have to increase them by the full margin.

Framework used to sell a DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM kit for $80. This is now $320.

The company is also sourcing SSDs from further afield. It used to rely solely on Sandisk, which makes some of the best SSDs for gaming in our estimations, but it's now buying from Adata and Phison as well. It says these are run through "extensive validation" to ensure they meet performance but there is sure to be some variance between controllers and NAND chips, depending on the models.

You've probably heard or been affected by the memory crisis now: increasing costs for memory and storage as a large quantity of these all-important chips are gobbled into the open maw of AI datacentres. For us gamers, that means higher prices at the checkout as anyone downstream of memory manufacturers wrestles with securing stock and paying more for it.

A 32 GB DDR5 kit can be anywhere from $300-$400 at the moment, marking a huge increase over where they were just six months ago. Then, you could pick up a kit for under $100 and not worry too much about the timings. Though we have also seen a slight levelling off in prices since the explosion at the end of last year: this Corsair Vengeance 32 GB DDR5 kit is pretty spiky and hasn't dropped in price but, similarly, has not increased much beyond the rapid four-fold increase we saw heading into the year. That's not much of a mercy, admittedly.

For memory companies, it's a huge win. Sandisk's share price is currently up 500% since the start of the year. SK hynix's has increased 191%. Micron's has shot up 143%. Unless something drastic happens with AI demand or otherwise reducing memory demand, we may see this continue for a long time. A sorry state of affairs.

Finding good gaming laptop deals right now can feel like an exercise in absolute frustration. I know this for a fact, as I do it every week. But one laptop manufacturer keeps cropping up in my searches with very reasonably priced, desirable machines, and it's high time it got some praise.

Yes, many Acer gaming laptops are still on discount amid the current memory crisis. Each has a tendency to dip in and out of the listings each week, but I've thrown my hands up in salvation more than once at the discovery of yet another Acer gaming lappy for reasonable cash.

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Below, I've rounded up three from our gaming laptop deals page that will do you proud. I'm never tied to one manufacturer when it comes to buying tech—but at these prices, it's very difficult to argue with Acer's offerings right now.

Quick Links

• Acer Nitro V 16S | RTX 5070 | $1,200 (save $200)
• Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI | RTX 5060 | $1,225 (save $375)
• Acer Nitro V 16 | RTX 5070 | $1,400 (save $100)

Acer Nitro V 16S | RTX 5070 | $1,200

This machine is absolutely the cheapest RTX 5070 gaming laptop I'd buy with my own cash at the moment. While most lappys of this calibre range into $1,500+ territory, this one keeps cropping up for $1,200 at B&H Photo, and it represents huge value for money.

Sure, the RTX 5070 mobile here has had its wings clipped a little in the power department, being an 85 W model rather than the full 115 W spec. And yes, the CPU is a little on the budget side, being a 10-core (six Performant, four Efficient) Intel chip. But those are still good specs for a mobile gaming machine in 2026, and for this price, I can absolutely wear it.

Plus, being a V 16S model, it's slimmer than your average lappy. Acer's chassis designs have come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and this is a gaming laptop I'd be happy to pull out of my backpack and display to the world. Although the one below is awfully tempting...

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI | RTX 5060 | $1,225

If you want a super portable machine in a 16-inch form factor, I can think of few better than this Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI for $1,225 at Best Buy. It's got an RTX 5060 mobile, which will need a fair bit of DLSS help to make the most of its 1600p panel—but what a panel it is.

This is an OLED machine, and that's a very good thing indeed. OLED screen tech is pretty much the pinnacle of the form at the moment, and is capable of delivering near-infinite contrast and vibrant colors directly to your eyeballs at a massive turn of speed. 240 Hz, to be precise, which is all the more impressive given this machine's very reasonable price.

The CPU is a corker, too, being a 24-core Intel chip with huge amounts of grunt. This laptop's fans are likely to be pretty noisy if you push it to the limits, given its slim chassis design, but you're always going to have to make compromises somewhere.

And for the price, this Acer machine has very few. Put two in your cart, please. If you're feeling generous, that is.

Acer Nitro V 16 | RTX 5070 | $1,400

And finally, we come to that rarest of things: a well-priced gaming laptop with 32 GB of RAM. The ongoing memory crisis is primarily to blame for the current price increases of most machines, but this one's got a proper RAM loadout for less than many 16 GB lappys I'm finding right now.

Like the Acer V16S above, it's got a power-limited RTX 5070 mobile at its heart. But, as it's paired with a 1200p screen, it should still slice through most games with relative ease. And there's always DLSS and frame gen to help out in the super-demanding stuff.

The CPU is powerful, the RAM is plentiful, and the SSD is of a reasonable size. All of this is becoming very rare below $1,500 these days, which makes this machine for $1,400 at Amazon a very good deal indeed. It's a little on the chonky side, but there's something charming about a full-fat gaming laptop in a full-fat chassis, don't you think?

👉Take a look at all the B&H gaming laptop deals here👈

👉Shop all the Best Buy gaming laptop deals here👈

👉Peruse the Amazon gaming laptop deals here👈

Once upon a time, I was an Acer gaming laptop girlie. As a uni student, having that sort of hardware power at my fingertips and on the go was pretty essential—the fact it could also play The Sims 4 on reasonably high settings was revolutionary for me at the time. As an ageing gamer, I've settled into that desktop life, but gaming laptops certainly haven't lost their appeal.

As such, I have not one but two gaming laptop deals for you today.

Quick list

• Acer Nitro V 16 | RTX 5070 (85 W) | $1,400 (save $100)
• Lenovo Legion 5i | RTX 5070 (115 W) | $1,500 (save $501)

Gaming laptop deals

I'm going to start with the Acer Nitro V 16 Gaming Laptop for more reasons beyond simple nostalgia. The headline here is that this is an RTX 5070 gaming laptop with a tasty 32 GB of DDR5 RAM. With the still very much raging memory supply crisis, that's steadily becoming a rarer sight these days, so if you have the budget you may want to scoop this gaming laptop up for $1,400 from Amazon.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

If you need something to handle both notes, meeting, and more alongside many midnight Marathon matches, you're in good hands with the Acer Nitro V 16. It's worth noting that, though very similar to the Acer Nitro V 16 AI our Zak rated, this deal actually concerns a slightly different model number that isn't strictly speaking a Copilot+ AI PC. Along similar lines, the subject of this deal enjoys an Intel Core 9 270H CPU rather than any hardware from team red.

Furthermore, poking around the specs sheet reveals that this model only enjoys a 'maximum graphics power' of 85 Watts.

If that's a whole lot less juice than you'd like your GPU to be slurping up, I do have another suggestion. You can also get the Lenovo Legion 5i gaming laptop, with a 115 W TGP version of the RTX 5070, for $1,500 from B&H Photo.

You're getting 32 GB of DDR5 RAM here too, but that's coupled with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX CPU. The screen is a smidge smaller here at 15.1-inches—but it is also a shiny, shiny 165 Hz OLED. Alongside the comparatively juiced up RTX 5070, you'll likely make the most of the 2560 x 1600 resolution display here.

For comparison's sake, the Acer Nitro V 16 features a 16-inch, 1920 x 1200 IPS display with a slightly higher refresh rate of 180 Hz. It's not an OLED, no, but it will be nice enough for most splashing that kind of cash. Though, with a 76 Wh battery though, I'd keep it plugged in during gaming sessions you expect to breeze past the two-hour mark. The Lenovo Legion 5i fares only slightly better with a 80 Wh battery, though how much time you'll get out of that can vary significantly depending on what you're doing. Alas, the scourge of a swiftly dwindling battery is the price all portable gamers must pay.

As is my wont, I've spent the morning checking through the best deals on gaming laptops, which is about as tough going as you might expect in these, the days of the RAMpocalypse. But though prices have absolutely gone up, and you'll be lucky to find a worthy RTX 5060 gaming laptop for under $1,000, there are some good machines out there for prices that don't immediately make me sick up a little in my mouth.

Where the acid tang of bile does dance across the tongue, however, is when it comes to trying to pin down exactly what level of performance I might be given to expect from a certain model of gaming laptop and its graphics chip. And I am beyond infuriated at laptop manufacturers arbitrarily hiding the absolutely vital information.

You might have thought it was as straightforward as simply, 'ah look, here's an RTX 5060, that's better than an RTX 5050, job done.' Except no, life and laptops are never that simple. The issue is that that where desktop GPUs have a fixed total graphics power (TGP), mobile graphics cards don't have that luxury. The power limits imposed on a given laptop GPU are entirely driven by the level of power and cooling they have at their disposal and that can change model-by-model.

The current Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs have a range of overlapping TGPs, and that can have a huge impact on the sort of performance you can expect. An RTX 5050 machine running at peak 100 W (plus dynamic boost power) will regularly best an RTX 5060 running at just 55 W in pretty much any game. But manufacturers never make it easy to find out what the laptop you're looking at has inside it.

It's something we always note in our gaming laptop reviews and in the end it often comes to reviews being the only way to reliably find what TGP you might expect to find in a machine. But then you have to rely on the fact that someone, somewhere has had a chance to take a look at the very SKU you're eyeballing in retail.

Which is absolutely maddening, especially as it's the most vital specification when it comes to choosing between otherwise similarly specced machines. And there's only one reason why they would hide the data, and it's not a good one.

If you're looking for the most affordable RTX 5060-powered gaming laptop, it's not unreasonable that you would land upon either of these MSI Cyborg SKUs. One has an Intel Core 7 240H and the other has an Intel Core 5 210H, but both have an RTX 5060 GPU. And I defy you to look at either of those listing pages and be able to tell me what the TGP ratings are. Thankfully, MSI is one of the few manufacturers that does tell you in its product pages what the peak power limits are—in this case 55 W.

But this Asus V16 with another RTX 5060? Nowhere, either in the product listing or the retailer listing does it tell you that it's running a 65 W power limit. How would I know that, rather than pick the Asus machine, I should actually go for either the cheaper HP Victus or preferably the Lenovo LOQ system?

Lenovo at least does give out the info, though you have to go through an opaque Lenovo parts site to get there, and with HP I had to talk to customer services, and I'm still not entirely sure they weren't grifting me. I did complain to the customer services technician that it was joke that manufacturers didn't make the information clear and they tried to blame Nvidia for witholding the information from public consumption, before sending me a link to the ratings for RTX 30- and 40-series HP laptops, waving the RTX 50-series TGPs aside as the same.

Still, both of these machines have higher TGP ratings for what is effectively the exact same graphics silicon as the MSI Cyborg and Asus V16 gaming laptops, and will deliver higher, smoother, more reliable gaming performance for around the same sort of cash.

But, damn it, it should be easy to find that vital info and I'm just mad as hell that it's not [rant over].

The MacBook Neo is an impressive machine in many respects. Beyond the fact that it starts at $599 and makes for a very good productivity laptop (although not so much for gaming), the cheap-but-cheerful machine's popularity appears to have taken even Apple by surprise.

In the Q&A section of the company's recent Q2 2026 earnings call, in which the company reported 17% revenue growth year-over-year, CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the Neo is currently supply-constrained. "We were very bullish on the product before announcing it," said Cook. "But we undercalled the level of enthusiasm."

The outgoing Apple chief highlighted that the device's aim was "focused on getting the Mac to even more people than we were reaching before," which certainly explains the very competitive price tag. "We're very focused on customers new to the Mac and customers that have been holding on to their Mac of a very long period of time."

Beyond regular consumer uptake, Cook said the company was also "seeing school systems like the Kansas City Public Schools" switching from ageing Chromebooks and Windows PCs to the new Neo.

"I'm hearing anecdotally more and more of those kind of stories, both happening at the school system level and at the individual consumer level. And so we could not be happier with how things are going at the moment."

Still, supply constraints appear to be a fly in what is otherwise an excellent-looking ointment for the Cupertino-based giant.

Although reports say the company now aims to produce 10 million units of the affordably-priced machine, Cook's later comments suggest Apple is not entirely immune from the memory crisis affecting the rest of the industry—despite its Unified Memory Architecture tech making the most of smaller RAM amounts.

"In the December quarter, we really had a minimal impact due to memory, and you can kind of see that in the gross margin results," said Cook.

"We said it would be a bit more in the March quarter, and we did see higher memory costs... and they were partially offset by benefits from carry-in inventory that we had," he continued. "For the June quarter... we expect significantly higher memory costs. They are also partly offset by the benefit of carry-in inventory.

"I can tell you that beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business. And we'll continue to evaluate this," the Apple CEO concluded.

So, despite the very strong financial figures overall and huge demand for its new budget laptop darling, Apple is still managing supply issues like the rest of its competitors. In the meantime, though, it's looking like a bit of a red letter day for the company.

And while it's too early to get the precise sales figures of the newly-launched Neo, they sound like they're going to be very impressive—providing supply can catch up with demand.

The best gaming laptop is a modern technology flex. No longer are we exclusively talking about hot, heavy, and loud beasties. Instead, we're finally in the realms of thin and light machines with genuine gaming chops as well as the ability to deliver stellar frame rates even on battery power.

This is why the 2025 version Razer Blade 16 is still my pick as the best gaming laptop of the lot. Its slimmer chassis, RTX 50-series GPU with the BatteryBoost tech, and improved cooling make it an all-round great notebook. We'll be taking a look at the updated 2026 version soon, so perhaps we'll see a new machine don the 'best overall' crown soon.

But that's not to say that more traditional machines don't still have a place. While I love the latest Razer Blades, MSI's Vector 16 HX is still a delightfully anachronistic thing. It does have a large, old school chassis, and it does sound loud if you ramp it up. But it also delivers a great experience on a balanced setting, and does so for a great price, making it my favorite mid-range machine.

If you're looking to save some cash, though, Lenovo's LOQ range has matured to the point now where it's my pick as the best budget gaming laptop you can buy today. It's stylish, well-built, and regularly discounted. In these memory supply crisis times, having only 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of onboard SSD storage isn't such a bad thing for your wallet.

Quick list

The best gaming laptop

We tested: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 | RTX 5090 | 32 GB | 2 TB SSD

Previous

1 / 3

Next

1080p gaming performance

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High)F1 24 (1080p Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

63

34

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

50

44

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

65

47

020406080

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	63 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	50 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	65 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

62

28

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

69

41

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

79

42

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	62 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	69 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	79 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

114

76

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

88

64

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

91

67

037.575112.5150

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	114 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	88 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	91 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

117

57

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

93

60

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

113

52

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (1080p Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	117 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	93 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	113 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

117

64

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

94

50

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

124

52

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	117 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	94 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	124 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS

You can see in the performance data the chassis is holding the RTX 5090 of the Blade 16 back, but the overall experience is key rather than the raw frame rates here.

Native (1600p) gaming performance

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra + upscaling (quality), 2x FG)Baldur's Gate 3 (Native res. Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High + upscaling (quality, 67%))F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High)F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High + upscaling (quality), 2x FG)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (Native res. Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

39

29

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

28

21

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

37

22

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	39 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	28 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	37 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

104

73

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

85

48

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

115

76

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (Native res. RT Ultra + upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	104 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	85 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	115 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

61

33

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

66

36

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

77

38

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 (Native res. Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	61 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	66 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	77 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

97

82

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

76

55

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

105

67

037.575112.5150

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	97 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	76 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	105 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

97

82

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

76

55

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

105

67

037.575112.5150

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (Native res. High + upscaling (quality, 67%)) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	97 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	76 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	105 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

77

46

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

57

44

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

70

52

020406080

F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	77 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	57 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	70 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

169

100

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

130

66

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

168

94

050100150200

F1 24 (Native res. Ultra High + upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	169 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	130 Avg FPS, 66 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	168 Avg FPS, 94 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W

90

58

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W

68

41

Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W

86

34

0255075100

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (Native res. Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16 | RTX 5090 175 W	90 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 5080 120 W	68 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Alienware 16 Area-51 | RTX 5080 175 W	86 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS

You can see in the performance data the chassis is holding the RTX 5090 of the Blade 16 back, but the overall experience is key rather than the raw frame rates here.

System performance

Battery life (PC Mark 10 gaming test)GPU statsGaming temperatures

Razer Blade 16

135

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16

112

Alienware 16 Area-51

73

037.575112.5150

Battery life (PC Mark 10 gaming test) Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16	135
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16	112
Alienware 16 Area-51	73

Avg GPU freq. (MHz)

Avg GPU power (W)

Razer Blade 16

1874

106

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16

1670

98

Alienware 16 Area-51

2297

124

07501,5002,2503,000

GPU stats Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16	1874 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 106 Avg GPU power (W)
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16	1670 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 98 Avg GPU power (W)
Alienware 16 Area-51	2297 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 124 Avg GPU power (W)

Avg CPU (°C)

Max CPU (°C)

Avg GPU (°C)

Max GPU (°C)

Razer Blade 16

86

95

82

86

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16

74

81

68

72

Alienware 16 Area-51

84

105

78

80

037.575112.5150

Gaming temperatures Data

Product	Value
Razer Blade 16	86 Avg CPU (°C), 95 Max CPU (°C), 82 Avg GPU (°C), 86 Max GPU (°C)
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16	74 Avg CPU (°C), 81 Max CPU (°C), 68 Avg GPU (°C), 72 Max GPU (°C)
Alienware 16 Area-51	84 Avg CPU (°C), 105 Max CPU (°C), 78 Avg GPU (°C), 80 Max GPU (°C)

The battery life of the Blade 16 puts it head and shoulders above the competition, though you can also see where the chassis is holding back the GPU and CPU at its heart.

I'll say it again, the new Razer Blade 16 is the best gaming laptop I've ever used, and I've been messing around with them professionally for the best part of 20 years now. But it's not about the fact I've been using an RTX 5090-powered version, with some pleasing gaming grunt behind it. Because it's not. The real kicker, the real reason why this is the best gaming laptop is because the experience of actually using the device itself is a genuine pleasure—whether that's gaming, productivity, or just general laptopery.

The Blade 16 is the antithesis to practically all the failings of modern gaming laptops; historically chonky machines, with atrocious battery life, and horribly loud fans. Its smart "thermal hood" and improved overall thermal design, means the Blade 16, even at full volume, doesn't get its fan noise up to the same level as something like the Asus Zephyrus G16 or the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 I've also checked out. It is still noticeable, and you're not going to want to sit in a library with the fans on full, but it has none of the turbine whoosh of the Gigabyte or the whine of the Asus.

The other thing that has got me about the Blade is that it's actually a capable gaming laptop just on the battery alone. Some of that is Razer's design, but there is also the RTX Blackwell GPU architecture's ability to quickly shift gears in terms of the frequency and power draw, within the timing of a single frame, even. That efficiency delivers a huge difference in gaming away from the plug, and Nvidia's new BatteryBoost tech helps, too. Now, it will crush the in-game settings if you allow it to optimise them on its own, but it also comes with a context-aware algorithm that will drop the frame rate to 30 fps when it sees there's limited action on screen.

And then there's that screen. We've had other 1600p OLED panels side-by-side with it and the Blade's is absolutely best—and there aren't a ton of actual OLED panel manufacturers so there must be something to Razer's tuning and electronics going on here. All told, the Blade 16 is the do-anything gaming laptop I've always wanted. It can game like a champ on the latest games at high resolution and frame rates, it can even do it on battery, and will do it quietly, too.

The best budget gaming laptop

We tested: Ryzen 7 250 | RTX 5060 (115 W) | 16 GB DDR5-5600 | 512 GB SSD

Previous

1 / 2

Next

1080p gaming performance

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra)Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High)F1 24 (1080p Ultra High)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W

36

24

Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W

29

14

Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W

32

20

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W	36 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W	29 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W	32 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W

60

27

Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W

48

20

Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W

69

38

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W	60 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W	48 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W	69 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W

57

39

Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W

64

31

Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W

49

41

020406080

Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W	57 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W	64 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W	49 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W

65

34

Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W

52

18

Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W

54

25

020406080

F1 24 (1080p Ultra High) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W	65 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W	52 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W	54 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W

63

46

Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W

58

19

Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W

61

20

020406080

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 | RTX 5060 | 115 W	63 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
Acer Nitro V15 | RTX 5060 | 85 W	58 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
Asus TUF Gaming A16 | RTX 5050 115 W	61 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS

Despite the single channel memory of the LOQ, the actual gaming performance is impressive across the board, thanks to its high-wattage GPU

System performance

Battery life (PC Mark 10 gaming test)GPU statsGaming temperatures

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10

89

Acer Nitro V15

123

Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025

74

037.575112.5150

Battery life (PC Mark 10 gaming test) Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10	89
Acer Nitro V15	123
Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025	74

Avg GPU freq. (MHz)

Avg GPU power (W)

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10

2473

71

Acer Nitro V15

2256

57

Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025

2718

42

07501,5002,2503,000

GPU stats Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10	2473 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 71 Avg GPU power (W)
Acer Nitro V15	2256 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 57 Avg GPU power (W)
Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025	2718 Avg GPU freq. (MHz), 42 Avg GPU power (W)

Avg CPU (°C)

Max CPU (°C)

Avg GPU (°C)

Max GPU (°C)

Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10

58

71

59

72

Acer Nitro V15

81

100

79

85

Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025

75

81

69

74

0255075100

Gaming temperatures Data

Product	Value
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10	58 Avg CPU (°C), 71 Max CPU (°C), 59 Avg GPU (°C), 72 Max GPU (°C)
Acer Nitro V15	81 Avg CPU (°C), 100 Max CPU (°C), 79 Avg GPU (°C), 85 Max GPU (°C)
Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025	75 Avg CPU (°C), 81 Max CPU (°C), 69 Avg GPU (°C), 74 Max GPU (°C)

The LOQ's battery life is classically poor Lenovo fare,