Best Gaming Laptop Under 500 Dollars In 2020 – Cheapest Gaming Laptop Reviews
The experts at budget laptops are going to list the best gaming laptop under 500 dollars so that you are able to save maximum in these hard times. If you are in the market for top of the line machines you will have to spend a lot but if you can compromise a bit you can get a gaming laptop with decent FPS without breaking the bank.
All the best gaming laptops under 500 dollars of 2020 enlisted below are solid performers and from reputed computer manufactures. With this cheap gaming laptops you cannot go wrong unless you are into over intensive gaming.
Gaming Laptop Under 500: The Checklist
Powerful graphics card: When you are in hunt for the best laptop for gaming under 500 dollars, your main goal should be looking out for the one with powerful graphics card. This is because unlike the top ultrabook laptops where focus is on processor, here, our focus is on graphics card. All graphic rendering is done by graphics card so it makes sense to go for powerful GPU. Processor is still important to ensure smooth processing but dedicated graphics card is heart in gaming laptops.
Big Storage: It is clear that laptops with SSD drives are the future but unless you are able to find one with atleast 256GB SSD storage under 500 dollars, you will be better off with a 1000GB hard disk. Games are quite heavy in size and you will need a lot of free space to store them. The laptops with SSD are most recommended when you’re only doing casual computing and non-gaming stuff. Laptops for gaming can go around 1000 dollars if you want something with 512GB SSD.
Lots of RAM: An ideal gaming laptop under 500 or 400 dollars should come with atleast 8GB RAM. You should also check if it is possible to upgrade the RAM for future upgrades. With 8GB RAM, you will be able to run all modern games without hiccups.
Big screen size: Serious gamers should for 15.6 inch ultrabooks or laptops. Going for smaller screen sizes found in mini laptops or netbooks would only put strain on your eye and won’t let you enjoy the games so much. 17.3 inch gaming laptops under 500 are there as well and we have included a few in this list. So even if you are getting a top class best mini laptop with GPU, do not buy it and stay focused on large screen laptops.
In fact, one can easily find some excellent cheap windows 10 400 dollar laptops in 2020 but we are talking about powerful machines here so you will have to spend a bit more for that extra performance. So we have made a list of cheap gaming laptops under 500 dollars.
Best gaming laptops under 500 dollars 2020
Lenovo IdeaPad 3
Lenovo IdeaPad 3 is an affordable gaming laptop under 500 packing most powerful AMD Ryzen 5 quad core processor that also brings the very capable AMD Radeon Vega 8 graphics card. This GPU can help you play any modern game at decent framerates. There is ample of storage, 256GB SSD and lots of RAM which is 8GB to be exact. You can increase it to 16GB later if you want but 8GB is more than enough for any 2020 gaming titles. It has big spacious keyboard that is great for gaming and typing long documents.
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U Mobile Processors with Radeon Graphics deliver powerful performance for everyday tasks
Dolby Audio delivers crystal-clear sound, while the 14-inch FHD screen and narrow side bezels give you more viewing area and less clutter
Quick and quiet with Q-control – Effortlessly swap between fast & powerful performance and quiet battery saving mode
Connect with ease using Bluetooth 4.1, up to 2×2 Wi-Fi 5, three USB ports, and HDMI
Keep your privacy intact with a physical shutter for your webcam. You’ll enjoy privacy right at your fingertips
System RAM Type: DDR4 SDRAM
ASUS VivoBook 15
ASUS VivoBook 15 packs AMD’s top-of-the-line Ryzen 5 quad core processor packing more than enough power to run practically any game out there. It comes with mammoth 8GB RAM and 256GB PCIe SSD making it the best gaming laptop under 500 dollars. It has practically everything that one expects from a cheap gaming laptop – powerful AMD Vega 8 GPU, capable CPU, big screen, lots of ports, storage and RAM.
Powerful AMD Quad Core r5-3500u Processor (2M Cache, upto 3. 6 GHz)
14.1 inch wide, 0.7 inch thin and portable footprint with a Nano Edge bezel for a stunning 88% screen-to-body ratio
15.6 inch anti-glare full HD Wide view display with Asus splendid software enhancement
8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB SSD; Windows 10 Home. Battery: 37WHrs, 2S1P, 2-cell Li-ion
Ergonomic backlit chiclet keyboard with fingerprint reader
Comprehensive connections including USB 3. 1 Type-C (Gen1), USB 3. 0, USB 2. 0, and HDMI; Lightning-fast Wi-Fi 5 (802. 11AC) keeps you connected through any congestion or interference
So that was the list of best gaming laptops under 500 dollars. As said earlier, you will be able to play most modern games on them with some or no tweaking. You also must have noticed that a lot of these laptops are powered by AMD processors. That is because it is accompanied by Radeon graphics that is very capable. You just have to make sure you are getting atleast Radeon R5 because we consider that as the bare minimum for playing any game. We should mention that any laptop with Radeon R7 GPU plays most games quite nicely.
Also, you need to keep your expectation low because these laptops are not powered by super-powerful Nvidia Pascal graphics card. These graphics processing units can deliver power of a desktop gaming machine in a laptop and prices of these have come down considerably in past few months. You can now bag an Nvidia pascal laptop for under a grand which is incredible because earlier one had to cough out 2000-3000 dollars for similar performance.
Another extremely cost effective way to enjoy high end gaming is by buying one of the best mini PCs given here. Some of them come with latest Nvidia graphics card or Intel Iris graphics card which give excellent gaming experience. There are some barebone mini PC from Intel that come with top end i7 processor and Iris graphics which one should definitely check out.