This $798 Acer Nitro is still the cheapest RTX 3060 gaming laptop we've seen for Cyber Monday

Acer Nitro Cyber Monday deal
(Image credit: Acer)
Acer Nitro 5 | Nvidia RTX 3060 | AMD Ryzen 5 5600H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $798 at Walmart

Acer Nitro 5 | Nvidia RTX 3060 | AMD Ryzen 5 5600H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB RAM | 512GB SSD | <a href="https://goto.walmart.com/c/1943169/565706/9383?subId1=hawk-custom-tracking&sharedId=hawk&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.walmart.com%2Fip%2FAcer-Nitro-5-15-6-144Hz-FHD-Gaming-Laptop-AMD-Ryzen-5-5600H-Nvidia-GeForce-RTX-3060-8GB-DDR4-512GB-NVMe-SSD-Windows-11-AN515-45-R6XD%2F836840444" data-link-merchant="walmart.com"" target="_blank">$798 at Walmart
So far the cheapest RTX 3060-based gaming laptop we've found. For this price you're usually looking at a GTX 1650 Ti based machine, at best. But here, you get a genuine 1080p gaming GPU and a quality AMD Ryzen CPU, too. The 8GB of RAM is a bit weak, but the 144Hz screen and 512GB SSD go some way to make up for that slight shortfall.

Not long ago it was unthinkable you'd be able to get a gaming laptop for anything under $800. Now you can get a capable gaming laptop for $798, with a real GPU in it—like the entry-level GTX 1650, right? Well, this deal defies that expectation, too: the Acer Nitro 5 has a proper RTX 3060, which means ray tracing and legitimate gaming power on the go. Unsurprisingly, it's high on our list for Cyber Monday gaming laptop deals.

Although this was discounted on Black Friday to under $600, it's now bounced back to its original price yet, it's still the cheapest gaming laptop we've been able to find for Cyber Monday as the specs for this system are good for the price. There's a 6-core Ryzen 5 5600H processor that can turbo up to 4.2GHz, which is going to handle most games with ease. There's a 144Hz 1080p panel, a good match for the RTX 3060, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. It'll be fast, and big enough, as long as you aren't trying to play too many games the size of Call of Duty Warzone.

The 8GB of RAM are a bit of a drawback, but it's also user-upgradeable. If you take out a few screws and pop off the bottom, you can get at the DDR4 slots and plop in another 8GB stick for cheap. Then you've got a heck of a gaming laptop for $800.

There's even another M.2 slot on the Nitro 5's motherboard, so if you aren't satisfied with 512GB of storage, you can plop another terabyte or so in there by snagging a Black Friday SSD deal. Here's a handy video walkthrough for upgrading both the RAM and SSD. All you'll need is a screwdriver.

Don't expect the Nitro 5 to feel like a premium laptop; the body is plastic, it's going to be a bit bulkier than something like a Razer Blade, and the RTX 3060 isn't going to let you go wild with ray tracing and max settings on games like Cyberpunk 2077. But heck, this is an entire computer for about the price of a desktop RTX 3070. If you're looking for a budget avenue into portable PC gaming, this is it.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

With contributions from