Don't be tempted by a cheap Back to School offer when spending a little bit more will bag you a far better entry-level gaming laptop

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Acer Nitro V 16 AI | RTX 5050: was $899 now $629 at Walmart

This is a pretty appealing price for a capable 16-inch gaming laptop with a modern GPU. Sure, it's an RTX 5050, which needs to be affordable to be worthwhile, but this Acer Nitro V 16 AI is certainly that. It has a good screen for the money, too: 180 Hz, 1200p IPS. Oh, and while the storage capacity isn't great, there's space for another drive under the hood.

Key specs: RTX 5050 | Ryzen 5 240 | 16-inch | 1200p | 180 Hz | 16 GB DDR5 | 512 GB SSD

Price check: Newegg $878.99

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It's that time of year when retailers try to prise money out of your wallets by targeting students and parents with 'Back to School' laptop deals. Well, it's been that time of year since August for some reason, but I guess sales are a never-ending thing these days.

Anyway, the gaming laptops on offer are typically last-gen models, and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, the sales also tend to include laptops that the retailer has struggled to shift. Take this Lenovo LOQ offer, currently $580 at Best Buy, as an example.

At first glance, it might seem like a half-decent deal, as it has a big screen, with a nice refresh rate, and a very low price. But as the saying goes, the Devil's in the details, and horned problems in this case are the Ryzen 5 7235HS and the amount of RAM.

That AMD processor has just four cores (and eight threads), which is fine for a Steam Deck, but not for a gaming laptop. It also only has 12 GB of system memory. Yes, 12—not eight, not 16. Eww.

Fortunately, you don't have to spend much more money to get a current-gen gaming laptop with far nicer specifications. Specifically, just 8% more, because Acer's Nitro V 16 RTX 5050 can be bagged for a mere $629 at Walmart.

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The CPU in this laptop is a six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 240, and while that might not sound like a huge improvement, it'll cope far better in today's games than that 7235HS. The architecture is a lot newer, plus it has considerably more L3 cache to keep threads popping along.

You get more system RAM in the Acer, too, with 16 GB of DDR5, though its speed isn't listed anywhere. While we're on the subject of memory, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5050 is a much nicer affair than its last-gen RTX 4050. I have nothing against that little old laptop GPU, as it's surprisingly good for what it is, but it only has 6 GB of VRAM, and that just doesn't cut the mustard in an awful lot of games.

The RTX 5050 sports 8 GB of VRAM, plus Acer has given it a 95 W power limit, so it's not being limited in any way. Both GPUs have 2,560 shaders, but the newer model has 44% higher clock speeds, and along with the full DLSS 4 gamut of upscaling and multi-frame generation, it's the best entry-level laptop GPU around.

So, by spending just 8% more cash, you're getting 50% more CPU cores (which are also newer and faster), 33% more system RAM, 33% more VRAM, and a GeForce RTX GPU that's up to 44% faster. You don't need to go back to school for math lessons to understand why it's such a good deal.

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Best gaming laptop 2025

1. Best overall:
Razer Blade 16 (2025)

2. Best budget:
Gigabyte G6X

3. Best 14-inch:
Razer Blade 14 (2025)

4. Best mid-range:
MSI Vector 16 HX AI

5. Best high-performance:
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

6. Best 17-inch:
Gigabyte Aorus 17X

👉Check out our full guide👈