Top 10 Best Gaming Laptops Under 800 Dollars – Buying Guide (2021)

Last Updated on March 24, 2021 by Ariana

Updated: January 18, 2021

If the performance is what you were looking forward than a gaming laptop under 800 dollars probably does your desired job. There are hundreds of laptops under $800 price tag, but not all fall under the category of gaming laptops.

It is quite possible that a catchy look of a machine impresses you and you buy a shitty machine at the end. Even for a techie, it would be hard to pin a particular model under the 800 dollar. And if you are not a tech geek it would be extremely hard for you to pin down the latest GPU and CPU release.

As our budget is limited and we cannot have all the features in one gaming laptop. Like a good battery backup, Dedicated graphics card, IPS display, Audio quality and Solid gaming performance. So we will look at all these specs and pick up the ones which have the maximum features available.

I read hundreds of reviews as well check their ratings and crafted a list of top gaming laptops under $800. The mentioned laptops are the best in the $800 budget and not only provide you the maximum gaming experience but also can be used for daily tasks as well.

Here are the Best Gaming Laptops Under $800 in 2021:

1. Lenovo L340
2. Asus TUF FX505DT
3. Acer Nitro 5
4. MSI GL63
5. HP Pavilion 15
6. MSI GF63 Thin
7. Dell G5
8. HP Omen 15
9. Dell G3
10. Asus Vivobook S15

Best Gaming Laptops Under $800

1. Lenovo IdeaPad L340

Lenovo IdeaPad L340 comes with all bells and whistles require in gaming or help boost your gaming. The laptop, if you look closely at the specification, seems a downright steal at the price.

Not only for gaming, but the beast outperforms others in regular computing chores, enduring heavy apps, video editing and more taken as a multi-purpose laptop. The laptop houses a 15.6 inches FHD screen with anti-glaring panels and wide viewing angles onboard to provide better gaze at the screen while playing or watching movies.

The gaming laptop boasts an Intel 9th generation core i5-9300h processor and is backed with 8GB RAM. You enjoy your gaming without any delaying in processing or visual distortion. You get an amazing storage option to believe me. With 512GB SSD you can store as many games as you want without letting down the system speed as because of SSD drive.

The visual section is managed by the latest NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card with dedicated memory of 4GB. The graphics card keeps your visual processing ensured, without any delay.

Lenovo has adorned the beast with its special Lenovo Vantage Eye Care mode which reduces the blue light emission from the screen and protects your eyesight from any side effects. You will enjoy your extended gaming session from the core, without any damage to your eyesight. The laptop’s battery backup is amazing; it runs for 9-hours in single charging for casual tasks.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

2. Asus Tuf FX505DT

ASUS gaming series has been held back owing to its bulky design and poor touchscreen performances. Now, the franchise has revamped its design into Thin and Light and comes with a splendid looking ASUS Tuf FX505DT Thin & Light.

The ASUS series has always been one of the best gaming experience holders, and the brand has been quite successful in placing itself in the gaming market. ASUS Tuf FX505 is the midrange thin and light 800 dollar gaming laptop with extended lifespan and immersive gaming experience.

The laptop is powered by AMD Ryzen 5 R5-3550H processor and Geforce GTX 1650 for smooth gaming experience and multitasking. The processor can bear the heavy tasks easily and you can throw as many heavy apps in a row that’s why is name is tuf.

Asus Tuf is equipped with an 8GB of DDR4 RAM to take care of multitasking, along with 256GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD drive. Not discussing the Keyboard of the AUSU franchise would be nearly equal to the crime. Its clean, typing experience and key travel distance are good. The backlit Keyboard helps you to play your favorite games in low-light conditions.

The battery section of this creature is also good, you get 3-4 hours battery backup in extreme gaming sessions. Once you see a whole package, it would be hard to accept this laptop can be purchased under $800 cost. It looks and feels more like a premium than what actually it is.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

3. Acer Nitro 5  (New Model)

Everyone wants to spend money wisely; whenever we buy any kind of laptop, we look upon what value that laptop offering us. In my opinion, Acer Nitro 5 offers much more than any other $800 gaming laptop offers. The laptop is a beautiful combination of good looking aesthetics, superb performances and above all splendid functionality.

Acer Nitro 5 is a great return of your hard-earned money, equipped with NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 Graphics card, 9th generation Intel Core i5-9300H and 4GB dedicated memory.

The lack of storage in the previous model is handled quite impressive and now the laptop is equipped with 256 SSD + 1TB HDD. You get plenty of storage to store your favorites games and programs. You get 8GB Ram with 2 slots in case if you want to add another.

The cooling technology installed in this laptop ensures that in your extended gaming hours, the laptop does not catch too much heat and no internal damage could happen. This laptop can play all of today’s modern high-ended games like PUBG, Fortnite on their top settings.

It can offer you 3 to 5 hours of battery backup without getting too hot. The speaker of this laptop shows some issues, but if you are using it with a headphone, you are going to get a rock-solid voice, and you would not notice any problem at all.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

4. MSI GL63

 

MSI is one of the most prominent brands in the world of gaming. This new laptop MSI GL63 went one step ahead in making this franchise world popular. The laptop bolsters with a muscular exterior, and comes in all black with red lashes, making them look exceptional.

MSI gaming laptops always featured with the most potent range of GPU and CPU to deliver the best possible results to the pro-gamers. MSI GL63 is their latest released models, equipped with state of the art GPU.

MSI GL63 featured 8th generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor and latest GTX 1650 graphics card. I must say this laptop is one of the most powerful gaming laptops under 800 dollars on our list.

You might not have noticed the GTX 1650 graphics card, most of 800 dollar gaming laptops features in our list are equipped with standard GTX 1050 or1050 Ti but 1650 is one step ahead into the feature.

It offers some extra superior results and offers a gaming user faster and smoother frame rates compared to the standard 1050 series. So, if visuals are your primary concerns in a video game, then MSI GL63 is the only available affordable gaming laptop under $800.

What else this machine has to offer, the 8GB DDR4 RAM, with 256GB NVMe SSD drive to store as much data as you want. You would love to see the cooler booster technology of this laptop, which prevents getting too much heat in extended gaming hours.

Installed with Hahimic 3 Audio system, it would be near to crime not mentioning the Audio system. The battery backup is a little shorter, in normal hours it can go out at around 4 hours, a strong machine with an abundance of advantage in simplest words.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

5. HP Pavilion 15

If you were looking 800 dollar laptop for pure gaming, then HP Pavilion 15 would be a one-stop-shop. The laptop just like its predecessor offers a great value of money to the users.

The laptop looks diligent in black and green combination and the backlit keyboard excels the performance for better gaming handling. The laptop is quite thin and you can bring this to a coffee shop while editing your files, Game on it one the same time because of its portability.

You get a 15-inch IPS display with 1080p resolution color accurate and it looks great while on gaming. The Laptop features the 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9300H processor paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM to boost up the gaming performance.

For serious gamers, the graphics card is the aspect to look upon while purchasing a new laptop. This laptop is equipped with the latest NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 dedicated graphics card. This graphics card ensures faster FPS rates and makes you play any latest released video game on the palm of your hands.

If you are really concerned about the storage of this machine, this has got 256GB of M.2 SSD to store and transfer higher-ended games. The SSD helps you to loading games and copying data up to 4.7 xs faster than normal HDD drives.

The battery backup lasts up to 8-10 hours in casual use. HP Pavilion offers you extended hours while playing high-ended latest released games without any difficulty. All different specs of the machines come together and bring splendid results and smooth performances especially for a pro-gamer.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

6. MSI GF63 Thin

MSI is one of the renowned brands in the gaming world. Any gaming laptop list can never be compiled without inclusion MSI laptops. Our list of the top gaming laptops under $800 is not going to complete with the MSI GF63 thin laptop.

The laptop showcases a pure gaming look and comes with all necessary hardware configurations that make it a powerful gaming option under the price added.

It comes with a 15.6 inches FHD screen, integrated IPS panels and wide viewing angles which irritates the users in continuous usage. The premium gaming laptop renders (1920*1080) pixel resolution, without zero color skipping.

The powerhouse of gaming is adorned with intel 9th generation Core i5-9300H processor which reaches up to 4.1Ghz clock speed. The system is further powered by 8GB DDR4 RAM which keeps your multitasking smooth and turbulence-free. You will not witness any freezing, open as many tabs as you want and enjoy your gaming.

As per the storage is concerned, you will have a 512GB SSD drive. The system offers a good range of storage options, which is good enough to store your games.

The system is further provided with 4GB NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card which is good enough to handle any game you throw at it. You will see the laptop outperforming others in visual processing without any delay. The laptop’s keyboard is backlit supported; you will not have to put off your gaming in low light conditions.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

7. Dell G5

Dell G5 laptop is one of the top gaming laptop contenders to go through any high-ended game you throw at it. The laptop comes in hands under $800 and features an amazing range of specifications to boost your gaming performance.

The powerhouse laptop is powered with Intel 8th generation Intel Core i5-8300H processor with 8M cache and reaches up to 4 GHz clock speed. The processing power is more than required; at least the processor will not let you down with the processing.

The laptop further is paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM for quick, faster and smooth performance for gaming as well as other heavy computing chores a user comes across to.

The visual department has been adorned with abundant 4GB NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 TI graphics card which surely going to meet your expectations. Do not mix GTX 1050 with GTX 1050 TI, the Ti latter is the advanced version and way better than former.

The storage department is featured with a 1TB HDD and 128GB SSD hard disk speed up your tasks as well as provides you enough space to store the stuff you want. The laptop runs Windows 10 OS, ideal for gaming indeed.

The laptop sports a 15.6 inches FHD screen with wide viewing angles and IPS panel’s on0board and renders display with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. As long as the audio is concerned, the laptop is perfectly tuned to render the optimum audio to match your needs and usage. You can watch movies, play games, and enjoy music without any interruptions.

The laptop houses a good-sized battery which will hold up the power for many hours without any interruption, obviously, while playing games, the juice lowers down quickly. In our tests battery withstand 5 hours continuous usage of watching movies, running heavy apps and doing other stuff.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

8. Dell G3

 

If you come to compare Dell for a gaming laptop, you cannot compare any other model at this price range with Dell G3 gaming laptop. A perfect combination of aesthetic look and performance, this laptop has all hardware configurations which can make you play any game without any compromise on a laptop.

This machine has the outer body of black metal finished under the blue Dell logo. The 15.6-inch LED with backlit display offers you sharp visuals from a wide-viewing angle. The laptop bolstered with Anti-glare technology which eliminates the sun and other lights from the screen to give you perfect display even in sunlight.

Dell G3 features the latest 8th generation Intel Core i5-8300H processor. The laptop equipped with 8GB of DDR4 RAM to handle the multi-tasking elegantly, with an additional slot to expand the RAM up to 32GB.

This budget gaming laptop comes 4GB NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 dedicated graphics card to offer smooth sailing in silent waters. This abundance of the graphics card can handle any visual without any delay FPS.

The dual-storage make this laptop more superior than others, it comes with 1TB of HDD Hard and 128GB SSD Hard storage. This laptop installed with dual fans, rare features you can under $800 price range which prevents this laptop from catching the heat and causing damage to internal organs.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

9. Asus Vivobook S15

From the first look, as a gamer, you might not get impressed with the look it showcases. But, when you get your hands onto it and start playing games, by all means, it is a gaming laptop. The sliver chassis of the laptop houses every possible feature that a gamer may need while playing high-ended video games.

The laptop is powered with 8th generation Intel Core i5-8265u Processor with 6M cache and reaches up to 3.9 GHz CLOCK SPEED. The standout feature of the ASUS VivoBook S15 is its graphics card.

The laptop is provided with a 2GB NVidia GeForce MX250 graphics card, enough to run all the latest games without any delay or freezing. You will enjoy your favorite game at good frame rates, a smooth performance indeed. The laptop is backed by an 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD storage to outshine your gaming experience with it.

The Vivobook S15 sports a 15.6 inches FHD screen with NanoEdge bezel Display and an incredible 87% screen to body ration. The laptop further sports a Chiclet keyboard with enabled backlit and fingerprint sensor activated. You get an exclusive Ergo Life design with an improved typing position, amazing for typing without any delay.

The laptop is surely an amazing option to go with, its backlit enabled keyboard, lightweight body, all connectivity ports integration, and hands-down graphics card integration are what makes it the beast to have any game run over there.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

Recommended Hardware Guide Under $800

Gaming laptops are dime a dozen, you need to sharpen your glance eyes, open your mind and widen your thinking before stepping out to purchase a gaming laptop around 800 dollars. This is quite a money and you cannot expect a low power gaming machine.

Yes, that is an ideal amount of money and you can expect premium performance from your laptop. You can play the latest release games Fortnite, PUBG, DOTA 2 and Overwatch. A lot of this range of laptops should be capable of running high-intensity games; the high-graphics application should bear the workload.

As you are spending the right money, hence the product should be as per your expectations. And this can only be garnered if you put an extra force in analyzing the features and hunting down in depriving a superb performance machine.

GPU

GPU plays a vital role when it comes to playing video games or visuals. This only feature determines whether you will be playing video games without any turbulence or not. When you are spending $800, you would be expecting to play the latest AAA series games which can only be run if you have a good graphics card.

You need to have at least Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card in this price to run latest video games, this graphics card is quite popular and has healthiest frames rates.

CPU

CPU is the brain of the computer, and you cannot run a body without a brain. CPU of a machine collaborates with GPU to offers greater quality visuals. Though CPU can alone process the videos but it lowers the speed of the computer, and other aspects remain unsolved.

So, the graphics card takes care of the visual department and you get a smooth video playing experience. If you are spending this amount of money, you need to have eyes on at least Intel Core i5, or i7 seventh or eighth-generation processor.

RAM

Of course, a good-sized RAM is compulsory when it comes to playing AAA series video games. And in the range of 800 bucks, you must amass at least 8GB RAM, and if the size goes to 16GB that would be an ideal machine.

The RAM allows a machine to perform complicated tasks collectivity, without eating up its performance. And if you need to perform more than one task at one time, you must have a good-sized RAM.

Screen Size

Screen size though does not matter for a normal laptop that performs the day to day tasks. But, for a gaming machine, its the most important aspect and pro gamers always pay extra bucks to grab a good-sized screen.

For an ideal gaming laptop, which we are hoping to grab, as we are spending an ideal amount, a screen size of 15.6 would be perfect. And if you are rolling your hands on a 17.3 inch Screen, you are going to get some extra amusement for sure, and you must experience this. So, not expect lesser than a 15.6-inch screen from a machine costing your arms and legs.

What Games Can I Play On A Laptop Under $800?

A laptop of this range should play PUBG, Dota 2, Fortnite, Red dead redemption 2, GOD of wars and others. You might face a heating issue which until now cannot be resolved.

A premium laptop even would face this issue, this problem though fluctuates with a machine to machine and you need to read the reviews of a gaming laptop before actually purchasing it. This issue only falls when extended gaming hours confront, and you spend hours playing high-ended games on your gaming machine.

Guru’s Verdict

I am not just by desire writing down these gaming laptops. After days of research, reading reviews, searching customer points of view, getting to know the gaming desires, I come up with the names. These are the best gaming laptops in the range of 800 dollars, and you can expect a higher level of gaming experience from these machines.