Save $500 on PC Gamer's pick for best gaming laptop this Cyber Monday

Laptops make the world go round: or, at least, are much more a part of my PC life than they used to be. I got my very first laptop in the early 2000s and, while it was fine for writing and internet-ing, the idea of a gaming laptop just didn't exist in the same way it does now.

If I'm buying a Black Friday gaming laptop, my personal choice, simply because it's the machine I use, is always going to be some configuration of the Razer Blade. PCG's hardware team reckons the latest model, the Razer Blade 15, is the single best gaming laptop you can get right now: my model's a few years older than that, but I well believe it.

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The Blade line packs enormous power into a slimline and (for Razer) surprisingly tasteful chassis, and the performance is simply spectacular: to the extent I often pass over my powerful desktop machine and play games on the Blade in bed. 

The downside with the Razer Blade is, of course, the price. Even with a big discount like this, these machines may be worth it but they cost an absolute packet. If you want a laptop that's going to give peak gaming performance you're going to have to shell out a decent amount, but there are alternatives with comparable specs for less.

Another alternative is the Asus G14, one of the only laptops that has ever threatened my love of the Razer Blade. This configuration comes in at an even lower price than both the above options, and the AMD RX 6800S card is roughly equivalent to an RTX 3070.