I've found an RTX 5070 Acer gaming laptop for $1,250, and thanks to a much-improved chassis design it's a whole lot nicer than you might expect

An Acer Nitro V16S gaming laptop on a pink and white background with "deals" text running vertically down the right hand side — (Image credit: Acer)

This is one of Acer's S-line Nitro laptops, which means it's slimmer (and better built) than you might expect for a budget gaming machine. The Nitro chassis designs have improved a lot in recent years, and this one's a good example of that. It's also pretty much the cheapest RTX 5070 gaming laptop you can find right now, from a major manufacturer with a good supporting specs sheet. It's a shame about the 85 W GPU power limit, but with some DLSS help it should still kick fairly hard against that 1600p screen.

Key specs: RTX 5070 | Ryzen 7 260 | 16-inch | 16-inch | 1600p | 180 Hz | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD

I've come across quite a few Acer Nitro gaming laptops on my travels, and the chassis designs used to be... I'll be honest, not great. However, I got a brief chance to get hands on with Acer's Nitro S-line of slimmer, budget machines earlier this year, and came away pretty impressed.

For budget gaming laptops, they really do feel (and look) very nice indeed, and the svelte chassis design makes for a more premium-feeling, more portable experience. To put a cherry on top, I've just found this particular model for $1,250 at Newegg—and that makes it the cheapest RTX 5070 gaming laptop I can find right now by some margin.

One you'd want to buy from a major manufacturer, anyway. Newegg has this listed as a regular V 16, but the specs sheet, photos, and model number say otherwise. It's also got a 1 TB SSD, which is something I wasn't expecting to see in a budget RTX 5070 machine at this stage of the RAMpocalypse.

The main caveat to be aware of here is the wattage limit of this particular Nvidia graphics chip, as it tops out at 85 W with Dynamic Boost. That's far from awful, but it does mean it's a little power limited when paired with a 1600p screen. Still, given just how much money you're saving over similarly specced lappys right now, I think cranking up DLSS to compensate is fair game.

It's a 180 Hz panel, too, which is surprisingly speedy for the cash. The memory is your bog standard 16 GB, but as our Nick found quite recently, that's still plenty for gaming in 2026 as long as you keep an eye on your other apps.

The processor is an eight-core, 16-thread AMD chip which should provide plenty of push towards those other components, and you also get three months of Xbox PC Game Pass pre-installed to test out your new hardware.

We haven't had a chance to fully test a V 16S for ourselves, but we did review the chonkier, non-slim variant earlier this year, and its a bit of a peach. This one crams similar components into a thinner chassis, and while I'd imagine that cranks up the fan noise considerably, for the money I think it's a price worth paying.

Best gaming laptop 2026

1. Best overall:
Razer Blade 16 (2025)

2. Best budget:
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen 10

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 18-inch:
Alienware 18 Area-51

👉Check out our full gaming laptop guide👈

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Andy built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 12, when IDE cables were a thing and high resolution wasn't—and he hasn't stopped since. Now working as a hardware writer for PC Gamer, Andy spends his time jumping around the world attending product launches and trade shows, all the while reviewing every bit of PC gaming hardware he can get his hands on. You name it, if it's interesting hardware he'll write words about it, with opinions and everything.

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