The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 boasts a huge 15.6-inch HD screen has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. It has anti-glare features, which make it handy for everyday use.

In terms of build, the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 is rather sturdy. It has a protective, plastic casing with a shock-proof exterior.

We think that it’s a powerful budget laptop perfect for both work and play. It has a fast processor that shines in multitasking, whether you’re dealing with data-heavy Excel sheets or an XBox-quality game.

What we love about the IdeaPad is its graphics and display. Even without a graphics card, you can play games and stream 1080 pixel content without a hassle.

It is also compatible with Amazon’s Alexa and is equipped with Dolby Audio Technology.

What is lacking in the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 for gaming is battery life and overheat protection. Unplugged, the laptop battery lasts roughly 5 hours with light use––this is much less when being used for any kind of gaming.

It also makes a loud fan noise when you load a game on it for too long.

In the world of PC gaming and esports, MSI is a household name.

It’s a top brand for professionals everywhere, and fortunately for us, MSI has its own array of affordable gaming laptops that offer top-notch quality.

This comes with an Intel i5 6-core processor and NVIDIA GTX 1650 graphics card. This laptop also has a 60Hz refresh rate and IPS-level gaming, which certainly won’t disappoint.

Its 512 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM make it perfect for gamers, with more storage for save files and more multitasking capabilities.

For build, the MSI GF63 Thin is a sleek and slim gaming laptop that you can bring around anywhere! This bad boy features a thin bezel design and weighs less than 2 kilograms.

It’s counterintuitive to think that such a slim, portable laptop would be ideal for gaming. One might worry about how hot the unit would get in-game, or the crazy fan noises it might make.

What we love most about the GF63 Thin is that despite its size, it has an excellent built-in cooling system that prevents it from overheating.

The not-so-great thing about this laptop model is its battery life, as it’s only good for roughly 4 hours of heavy gaming unplugged.

While it comes as a good starter pack, getting this budget MSI laptop will make you very tempted to upgrade certain specs, such as the 8GB RAM, just to make it perform better.

If you’re a gamer in the market for a budget laptop for professional and personal use, you should definitely shortlist the Inspiron 15 3000.

It’s another 15-incher, with a full HD display and anti-glare screen.

The Inspiron model is made primarily of plastic. It’s thin and portable yet still surprisingly sturdy, making the Inspiron 15 have a pretty solid build.

This laptop from Dell comes with an 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. Its specifications are good enough for casual gamers with its AMD Ryzen processor.

Nonetheless, the things we love about the Inspiron 15 3000 are its fast SSD and its upgradability. If making upgrades is your thing, you’ll find it very easy to upgrade certain components of the laptop to make it run better.

There are, however, clear spots where the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 misses the mark. Its display resolution overall needs work. It looks dim, and its colors aren’t very vibrant or accurate in low light settings.

We also don’t like how the graphics become a bit laggy when gaming is heavy. Thus, we recommend purchasing this if you have a more casual attitude towards gaming.

By far the cheapest laptop we reviewed, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 is a versatile model for maximalists.

We call it versatile because it’s built with many options for ports and external connections.

The ThinkPad isn’t necessarily a gaming laptop, but it has the specifications and the horsepower to become one.

It has terrific battery life––an outlier among budget gaming laptops. Its CPU provides you with faster-than-usual performance, making it the perfect, all-around laptop to have for students and working professionals who also just happen to be casual gamers. 

Where it falls short is design. The ThinkPad T420 is boring as it is pragmatic: it’s bulky and old-fashioned, and really looks like a standard-issue company laptop.

While it has the most compatible ports compared to the other laptops in our review, it also lacks HDMI and USB 3.0, which are the more common connections people use at present.

Another slim but powerful laptop in our roster is the Acer Aspire 5.

It has a terrific, very sturdy build. It comes with three USB ports, one Type-C and two Type-A ones, as well as an HDMI output and Ethernet port. The other side has another USB-A port and a 3.5mm audio jack.

It uses Turbo Boost Technology which gives you up to 4.1 GHz for speed in running multiple applications at the same time.

It has Acer Color Intelligence that creates vivid images that will enhance your total gaming experience. It also doesn’t lack in sound quality, and has an enhanced voice technology software which makes it easier to use Amazon’s Alexa on your PC.

While the graphics are sharp, the laptop’s actual 1080p display is a little dark, which may be concerning to some users.

If you’re also particular about sound quality for gaming or streaming, we suggest using headphones or bluetooth speakers as its built-in system speakers are on the weaker end of the spectrum.