Most gamers will scoff at the idea of a mid-range machine, but wait before you do because these bring some serious horsepower that you would expect to see in professional portable gaming setups to a really good price point.
Best gaming laptops in 2021Best cheap gaming laptops in 2021
You can get a laptop armed with Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX 30 series GPU for under $1,000. Let that sink in for a second!
Gigabyte A5 X1, A5 K1 and A7 K1: the AMD flavor of the day
AMD’s Zen 3 architecture leads to an almost zen-like state of peak gaming performance across the A5 X1, A5 K1 and A7 K1 models in Gigabyte’s new G-Series line. We have no idea what the “X” or “K” mean in their names, so we’ll fill in the gap and guess the former stands for “Xtreme” (so insane it ignores correct spelling) because it sports the crazy good Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 memory and the top-of-the-line AMD Ryzen 7-5800H CPU. The K1s are no slouches either, with either the above Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 5-5600H processors and GeForce RTX 3060 graphics — with either 6GB GDDR6 for the A5 or 8GB for the A7. You can fit all of these models with up to 64GB RAM and a whole lot of speedy storage, courtesy of a 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, SATA socket and 2x M.2 NVMe SSD sockets. And all of this is kept cool with their unique Windforce technology, a cooling solution with anti-turbulence inclined fans that run ultra-quiet with a pure copper heat pipe. Simply put, you can fit a lot of games onto these machines, which will run great and the laptop won’t sound like it’s about to take off! The A5 starts from $999 (under a thousand bucks for a 30 series GPU-armed laptop), and the A7 kicks off at $1399 for the base configuration. You can pre-order right now.
G5-7 KC: Intel feelin’ so fly like a GeForce
And on the other side of the CPU wars, Gigabyte is also offering Intel versions of these laptops — with either 10th Gen Core i7-10870H or i5-10500H processors. These options come complete with the RTX 3060 GPU, up to 64GB DDR4 RAM (no 3070), all the same I/O, wireless options, patented Windforce cooling system and an identical 49Wh battery. Plus, they share the same 1080p matte-surface panel with 240Hz refresh rate with Nahimic 3 surround sound as their AMD brethren. In fact, the only real difference beyond the engine under the hood is they are a couple of millimeters thinner. The G5 base model starts the pricing at $1099 and the G7 will not be available in North America. Pre-orders are up now. For more CES news, keep your eyes locked on our CES 2021 hub.
