Ben grew up on a healthy diet of Nintendo, Xbox, and PC Games. He founded High Ground Gaming in 2014.
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
A gaming laptop for under $500? For real? Counter to conventional thought, a reliable laptop that can play most games for under $500 is a reality these days. Technology is one industry where innovation has continued to push boundaries and laptops are no exception. Furthermore, efficiency gains have resulted in component prices dropping, leading to lower laptop price tags.
Don’t get your hopes up to high, you aren’t going to be playing Far Cry Primal or Battlefield 1 at max settings with these laptops. Try that and your laptop may overheat and turn into a fireball. Nevertheless, mobile gaming is possible on lower graphics settings. Indie titles and older games in particular will run just fine.
3 Best Laptops Under $500
Here are the best cheap gaming laptops under 500 bucks.
1. Dell Inspiron 15 i5558-5718SLV Signature Edition 15.6-Inch Laptop
For exactly $500.00, it doesn’t get much better than this. This new Dell Laptop is an excellent value proposition for budget minded gamers. A 15.6 full HD LED-backlit display with a 1920 x 1080p resolution will make you start wondering how on earth they are selling it for 500 bucks. On top of that the screen has touch enabled with up to 10 finger multi touch support.
1 TB of storage, the Dell standard Audio Waves MaxxAudio for rich sound, and Windows 10 provides an immersive multimedia experience for the price. Understandably, you can’t get it all at this price, and this machine has an Intel HD Graphics 4400 chipset as well as a Core-i5 1.70 GHz processor. You can run most games on lower settings but it will struggle with anything more than that. But with Windows 10, a 15 inch screen, 1080p resolution, and touch screen capability this is a great system for the money.
2. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E455 14-Inch Laptop
Computer Upgrade King has optimized the heck out of this Lenovo laptop and backs it with a full 1 year warranty showing their confidence in the product. They swapped out the 350GB standard hard disk rive for a super fast 250GB SSD which to Computer Upgrade King’s credit is an excellent trade off.
The laptop sports an AMD A6-700 2.2 GHz processor with 16 GB of DDR3 RAM and AMD Radeon R4 Shared graphics. This enables you to run most games on low to mid range graphics settings without a hitch. The 1366 x 768 is no 1080p screen but it is a quality display that is clear and bright. For the casual gamer that doesn’t feel the need for full HD gaming, this is an ideal laptop. Some people will also enjoy the fact that it comes with Windows 7, a clear favorite among the Windows OS product line.
3. ASUS X550ZA-WH11 15.6-Inch Laptop
At 2.5GHz, this laptop features one of the fastest processors in the sub 500 gaming laptop category. It is an AMD Quad Core A-10-7400P processor with an option to crank it up to turbo 3.4GHz. The AMD Radeon R6 GPU is nothing to sneeze at either, allowing gamers to run most games at acceptable frame rates at lower settings.
The 15.6 inch screen is nice with solid color representation and the ASUS SonicMaster sound is fantastic. The big downside to this model is the 4-5 hour of battery life. Nonetheless, the laptop is stylish, with a keyboard that feels great and an LED screen that performs well.
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