Best gaming laptop 2024

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is as impressive as 14-inch gaming laptops get, deftly balancing performance and portability in a premium package. It falls just shy of perfection, owing to minor flaws, but they’re quickly forgiven or forgotten once you start playing.

Unique to the Zephyrus G14 is a gorgeous, glossy OLED panel that supports Nvidia G-Sync, making for a sublime viewing experience. While all content on this screen benefits from its fantastic color reproduction and contrast, games in particular shine thanks to the display’s excellent response times, made all the better by the lack of screen tearing.

While its native 1800p resolution is supremely sharp, with 243 pixels per inch, it can be fiddly to manage given the capabilities of its GeForce RTX 4060 and 4070 graphics. While this is easily solved with a few clicks, via downscaling or DLSS upscaling, it does hurt the premium, design-first feel of the Zephyrus G14, albeit slightly.

Soldered RAM proves the biggest flaw of the Zephyrus G14, making it almost necessary to get the 32GB model for longevity. If you can stretch your budgets further, you’ll find your cash well spent.

Read our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review.

If you want the very best and are prepared to pay for it, the latest Razer Blade 16 is as classy as it gets. Its build quality is superb, and its aluminum chassis looks and feels like a premium product when you pick it up. You really see what you’ve paid for when you open it up and see the OLED screen, though. The display is fantastic, with deep blacks, high contrast, and vivid colors.

You get some seriously powerful specs too, with a 24-core Intel Core i9 14900HX CPU under the hood. This processor is arguably overkill for gaming, but it means you can do practically anything with this machine, including heavily multi-threaded work such as video encoding. There’s a choice of GPUs as well, and the GeForce RTX 4070 model held up well in our testing, even managing to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 74fps with the Ultra ray tracing preset at 2,560 x 1,600, thanks to some help from Nvidia’s DLSS 3 frame generation tech.

However, you pay a high price – even higher than the Blade 16 (2023). The base spec will set you back $2,999 and only comes with a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM. We also found that the Blade 16’s screen can be overly reflective under bright light, making lots of fan noise when working hard. If that’s not an issue and you have the money, this is the most stylish and powerful gaming laptop on the list.

Read our Razer Blade 16 (2024) review.

You don’t need to bend backward to meet the prices of powerful gaming laptops to have a solid gaming experience, and the HP Omen 16 is proof of that. Costing just over $1,000 / £1,000 for its base spec, the value it offers budget-conscious gamers is stark.

To hit this price point, HP has smartly focussed on what matters most about a laptop (its performance) but this does mean that the device isn’t the flashiest around. While its cooling solution is admirably sufficient, it can get loud and hot if you push it hard enough.

Iit doesn’t skimp on connectivity or battery life, making it an ideal machine for gaming and lightweight tasks such as office work or study.

Read our HP Omen 16 review.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a great example of fine craftsmanship and design in a gaming laptop. Its CNC-machined aluminum chassis looks and feels luxurious, and its 16-inch OLED screen offers amazing contrast and HDR reproduction, supporting Nvidia G-Sync, which eliminates tearing artifacts in games.

The price is also surprisingly generous for the spec and build quality you get. All versions of this laptop feature the same fantastic OLED screen and Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU, which has six of Intel’s latest Meteor Lake P-Cores, and eight E-Cores, with a peak 5.1GHz boost clock.

We recommend going for the cheaper RTX 4080 or 4070 version of this laptop, as the RTX 4090 in our test sample was restricted to 115W, which meant you didn’t get much of a performance advantage. Both GPUs support Nvidia’s latest DLSS 3 suite of technologies, including AI frame generation to boost performance.

The one main downer is that the ROG Zephyrus G16 uses soldered memory, rather than replaceable modules, which means you’re stuck with the configuration you buy. For this reason, opt for a 32GB configuration if you can afford it, to buy you as much future-proofing time as possible. Otherwise, this is a deliciously premium laptop with loads of gaming performance in the bank, and with great value.

Read our Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 review.

Bigger doesn’t always mean better, but the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 makes a strong case in favor of 18-inch laptops. Serving up top-tier specs, including a Core i9 14900HX processor and up to GeForce RTX 4090 graphics, portable gaming doesn’t get much faster than this. But it does come at a substantial cost.

The Strix Scar 18 features a newly improved display. Replacing the aged IPS screen from last year’s laptop, this new Mini LED panel is beautiful, responsive, sharp, and makes for an excellent HDR experience. Its chassis, despite its admittedly cool semi-transparent finish, is less easy on the eyes though, adopting a typical ‘gamer’ aesthetic.

The ROG Strix Scar 18 won’t break your back or bank, either (relatively speaking), as it’s one of the more affordable and lighter 18-inch gaming laptops available. The only downer is the sound quality from the speakers, which we found weak and tinny.

In our testing, the Strix Scar 18 turned in strong performance across our testing suite, with frame rates comparable to a desktop GeForce RTX 4070 Super, showcasing the full power of a GeForce RTX 4090 mobile GPU running at 175W. It also turns in great CPU performance, with the Core i9 14900HX clocking in similarly to a Core i5 14600K. Suffice it to say, this machine will handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

Read our Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 review.