The holiday season is in full swing, but there’s still time to buy that perfect gift for the gamer in your life. Or even for yourself, after all, you deserve it! You might have thought a good gaming laptop was a little out of reach, but if you’re quick, this Acer Nitro 5 is $300 off. That makes it both pretty cheap and pretty powerful.
Gamer Gifts: Our favorite picks
Latest generation NVIDIA RTX graphics, last-generation price
There’s no shortage of gaming laptops to choose from, but for most people, the sweet spot is actually the lower and mid-tiers. I’ve actually spoken to one laptop manufacturer recently that called that out specifically, that what people really want from their own data are gaming laptops with RTX 4050, 4060 and 4070 graphics.
Despite being the entry-level, the RTX 4050 is very capable. High detail and ray-tracing shouldn’t be much of a consideration, but for most games you’ll be able to play at a balance of good detail settings and a decent frame rate at 1080p.
The only real compromise is that the CPU is a 12th Gen Intel rather than a 13th Gen, but that doesn’t make it bad. What it actually means is that you’re getting something a little cheaper, but for gaming it’s still excellent. And it’s paired with the latest DDR5 memory and PCIe SSD storage, so it’s a laptop that flies.
This whole package gives you latest generation performance but at a last-generation price. Typically, you’d be expecting old stock to go on sale for prices like this, so when you can jump on an RTX 40-series laptop for $700, it’s well worth your time.
