The 5 best Prime Day gaming laptops under $1,000

Two gaming laptop deals on a blue background
(Image credit: Future)
MSI Cyborg | Nvidia RTX 4050 | Intel Core i5 12450H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB DDR4 | 512GB SSD | $999.99 $699.99 at Best Buy (save $300)

MSI Cyborg | Nvidia RTX 4050 | Intel Core i5 12450H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB DDR4 | 512GB SSD | $999.99 $699.99 at Best Buy (save $300)
This might be one of the first RTX 40-series gaming laptops for under $1,000 we've seen so far. The MSI Cyborg is a nice little budget 1080p gaming laptop that should get a decent fps boost thanks to the magic of Nvidia's DLSS Frame Generation tech. It outperforms anything more expensive systems with an RTX 3050 GPU pretty soundly. But we don't love the 8GB of RAM.

Price check: Newegg $899.99

Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 | Nvidia RTX 3060 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS | 14-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,399.99 $799.99 at Best Buy (save $600)Price check: 
was $1,399.99 now $999.99 at bestbuy.com

Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 | Nvidia RTX 3060 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS | 14-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,399.99 $799.99 at Best Buy (save $600)
If you don't want a hulking gaming laptop, let me introduce the Zephyrus 14 (see our review): a 14-incher that can game without busting your bank balance or your shoulder when lugging it around. No-nonsense specs in a delightful package. While a bit older now versus the RTX 40-series GPUs, this is a very smart package for a low fee.

Price check: Amazon $1,039.99 | Newegg $1,019.99

I get a real satisfaction from finally seeing proper gaming laptops for under $1,000, especially as they're now coming in with RTX 40-series GPUs at that price. There was a moment there where it was hard to imagine the price of Nvidia's current-gen graphics evening out against the previous generation, but it's happening. And there are now even better deals around on last-gen laptops.

What I will say is that, despite there being some cracking Prime Day gaming laptop deals around this year for less than a grand, you'll likely have to compromise on a little something to get them. Whether that be a lack of RAM like the MSI Cyborg above with its 8GB of memory, or an older RTX 30-series GPU like that of the Asus ROG X13 Flow below.

Asus ROG X13 Flow | RTX 3050 Ti | Ryzen 9 6800HS | 13.4-inch | 1200p | 120Hz | 16GB | 1TB NVMe SSD | $1,499.99 $849.99 at Best Buy (save $750)

Asus ROG X13 Flow | RTX 3050 Ti | Ryzen 9 6800HS | 13.4-inch | 1200p | 120Hz | 16GB | 1TB NVMe SSD | $1,499.99 $849.99 at Best Buy (save $750)
This isn't a pure gaming laptop. Instead, it's a very high quality compact 13.4-inch portable with a fabulous 120Hz 16:10 display, a powerful eight-core AMD CPU, great build quality and decent entry level gaming chops. And it's nearly half its original price. Get in.

Gigabyte G5 KF | Nvidia RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 12500H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB DDR4 | 512GB SSD | $1,099 $899 at Newegg (save $200 with coupon)

Gigabyte G5 KF | Nvidia RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 12500H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB DDR4 | 512GB SSD | $1,099 $899 at Newegg (save $200 with coupon)
The Gigabyte G5 (see our review) is our favorite affordable gaming laptop around right now, packing the RTX 4060 GPU for some serious 1080p gaming performance in a budget package. It's a smart spec that essentially uses an otherwise older specification with the simple addition of just the new Nvidia RTX 40-series graphics chip. The 512GB SSD is a bit miserly, but that is upgradeable, but the 8GB of DDR4 memory is the tougher issue. Again, the memory is upgradeable, but it's still a bit frustrating—still, a great gaming laptop for the money.

Price check: Best Buy $950 | Walmart $999

That's not to say you couldn't do a little upgrade if the RAM or storage isn't quite hitting the mark for you. A little DIY doesn't hurt, and it's even easier with all that money you're saving, too.

And while little things are easy enough to rectify, you shouldn't have to be concerned when it comes to the processing power. All of the laptops I'm suggesting here have smashing last-gen CPUs to back up their graphics and keep you going on the right side of productivity.

MSI Katana 15 | 15-inch | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 12450H | 16GB DDR5 | 1TB SSD | $1,199$999 at Newegg (save $200)Price check:

MSI Katana 15 | 15-inch | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 12450H | 16GB DDR5 | 1TB SSD | $1,199 $999 at Newegg (save $200)
This is the RTX 4060 laptop to buy right now. For a little over $1,000, you can score a brand new RTX 4060 in a laptop that's not massively underpowered in some other way. Usually, we'd see manufacturers skimp on the SSD or RAM to get the cost down to this level, but here you're looking at a healthy 16GB of DDR5 and a 1TB NVMe drive. Lovely.

Price check: Best Buy $1,099.99 | Amazon $1,299.99

The Katana is the real star here, because there's hardly a compromise to speak of for your money. MSI aced the storage size, jammed the perfect amount of high-speed RAM in there, and added a great core spec to back it all up. What more could you ask for?

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

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