Upgrading your gaming laptop can be an expensive proposition. With a gaming PC, you have save money by going the DIY route or you can just upgrade specific components instead of replacing the entire desktop. Also, since the monitor is not a part of the system, you can keep using it for future builds. You can't afford such luxuries with a laptop. You'd essentially have to buy an entirely new system every time. Fortunately, laptop prices have dropped tremendously over the years, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't save even more.
Fortunately, Black Friday is here and there is no better time to invest in a gaming laptop. Although we're still a few days away from November 29, several retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Dell, Amazon, HP, and Lenovo have already launched their official Black Friday sales. As more great laptop deals go live, I'll be sure to update this article.
Looking for gaming PCs instead? Check out the best Black Friday gaming PC deals.
The Alienware x16 R2 is one of the thinnest gaming laptops on the market. It boasts exceptional build quality; the chassis is magnesium alloy, the lid is aluminum, the base is stainless steel, and the trackpad is glass. The RTX 4090 is still the most powerful mobile GPU, and by a very substantial margin. It's roughly equivalent to a desktop RTX 3090 GPU. It has more than enough power to run any game at high framerates on your choice of the 1900x1200 or 2560x1600 display (the default choice is 1900x1200, but you can change it to 2560x1600 without adding to the cost).
More Alienware Gaming Laptop Deals
The Alienware Black Friday Sale is already well underway with some hefty discounts on Alienware m-series and x-series gaming laptops. The m-series is Alienware's best-selling gaming laptop; it boasts excellent build quality and powerful gaming components for a very reasonable price. The Alienware x-series is a more recent model that boasts a slimmer and lighter redesign. It's the thinnest Alienware laptop ever and compares to other ultra-thin laptops like the Razer Blade.
The Walmart Black Friday Sale brings with it this excellent gaming laptop deal. Walmart is offering a Lenovo LOQ RTX 4070 gaming laptop for only $879.99. Yes you read that right. The LOQ is Lenovo's lineup of budget-oriented gaming laptops. This system features a 15" 1080p display, a low-voltage AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS CPU, GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The RTX 4070 GPU is a fully powered (115W TGP) model, not a throttled one like on some other budget laptops. Despite its low cost, this laptop will perform almost as well as the best RTX 4070 gaming laptops. You should be able to play any game comfortably on the 1080p display.
Here's another excellent gaming laptop deal from Walmart. The Asus ROG Strix G17 gaming laptop, which is equipped with a 17" FHD display, AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX CPU, RTX 4070 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, is down to $1199 shipped. That's an excellent price for an RTX 4070 equipped gaming laptop, even better for a laptop with a larger 17" display. Like the Lenovo above, the G17 is equipped with a 115W TGP RTX 4070 GPU that should be able to handle any game comfortably on the 1080p display. It's paired with a powerful, high-end Ryzen 9 CPU that effectively turns it into a mobile desktop replacement for all your workstation tasks.
Best Buy is offering this Alienware m16 RTX 4070 gaming laptop for only $1299.99. As a comparison, Alienware's own Black Friday Sale has the identical laptop marked down to $1499.99. The Alienware m16 is an extremely well-built laptop and it consistently performs at the top of the heap compared to other laptops in its class. The RTX 4070 mobile GPU has a 115W TGP rating (which is the maximum for an RTX 4070 mobile). It can generates a lot of heat under load, but the m16 is well-equipped to exhaust all that hot air out of the case.
More Best Buy Gaming Laptop Deals
Best Buy has some great deals going on as part of its Black Friday Sale and that extends to gaming laptops as well. Once again, a Lenovo LOQ model is one of the best deals: you can pick up an RTX 4060 gaming laptop for only $699.99. On the other end of the spectrum, the Acer Predator Helios 18 gaming laptop, equipped with a powerful Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU and RTX 4090 GPU, is now available for $2399.99. This laptop is more powerful than most gaming PCs.
HP is offering a great deal on its workhorse HP Omen 16" gaming laptop. You can get it equipped with an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor (Intel's best mobile CPU) and an RTX 4070 GPU for only $1399.99 after a $620 off instant discount. Even better than that, you can upgrade the GPU to an RTX 4080 in the customization page for an extra $400, bringing the total to $1,799.99. That would be the lowest price for Black Friday for an RTX 4080 equipped gaming laptop.
More HP Gaming Laptop Deals
HP has kicked off its Black Friday Sale with some great deals on their Omen and Omen Transcend gaming laptops. The Omen is HP's most popular gaming laptop and is generally more attractively priced than Alienware or Lenovo Legion. The Omen Transcend is a new 2024 lighter and thinner version of the Omen and features better materials like a premium aluminum chassis instead of plastic. The Transcend also has the option to upgrade the display to OLED. It's an excellent choice for anyone who wants a slim and easily portable laptop while still being able to play games.
Note: Some configurations below will require you to manually select the upgrades on the product page.
Lenovo hasn't kicked off any official Black Friday Sale just yet. However they do have one good laptop deal worth mentioning. You can get a Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 9 16" Ryzen Edition RTX 4070 gaming laptop for $1,121.99 shipped. The Legion Slim model is thinner than your typical gaming laptop, and yet is still equipped with a GPU that has the same high-wattage TGP as the full-sized Legion Pro. It weighs in at only 4.63lbs and measures 0.78" at its thinnest point. RTX 4070 mobile GPU performs on par with the RTX 3080 and you'll want this kind of power to run games comfortably on the laptop's beefed up 2560x1600 QHD+ display.
Not All Laptop GPUs Are the Same
There are two important tidbits that deserve mention concerning graphics cards found in laptops. First, mobile GPU variants are not as powerful as their desktop counterparts. For example, a mobile RTX 4060 doesn't perform as well as a desktop RTX 4060. The mobile versions are generally about one to two tiers lower in performance. Using the same example, the mobile RTX 4060 performs more similarly to a desktop RTX 4050.
Second, not all laptops feature the same performance out of the same GPU. Two laptops equipped with the same RTX 4060 GPU, for example, might perform very different in gaming. In order to roughly tell how good a GPU will be, you can look at the TGP rating. That's basically the amount of power supplied to the GPU. A higher TGP rating means more power will be delivered, equating to stronger performance, however the wattage consumption and heat generated will be higher. Here are the maximum TGP rates for the RTX 40 series graphics cards:
- Mobile RTX 4050: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4060: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4070: 115W
- Mobile RTX 4080: 150W
- Mobile RTX 4090: 150W
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
