Five of the Most Powerful Gaming Laptops You Can Buy Today

Acer just announced its most powerful gaming laptop ever, the Predator Triton 17 X. It sports the latest in CPU, GPU, and display technology and starts out at a whopping $3,800. But it’s not alone.

Here are a few other examples of the most powerful gaming machines available today.

Acer Predator Triton 17 X

It’s not just us calling the Predator Triton 17 X, to be available in May, Acer’s most powerful gaming laptop ever. That comes straight from Acer, and it’s no surprise. The machine is powered by the 55-watt Intel Core i9-13900HX, a 24-core, 32-thread CPU with eight Performance cores running at up to 5.4GHz and 16 Efficient cores running at up to 3.9GHz. It can ramp up to 157 watts on demand, making it an incredibly fast CPU.

The Predator Triton 17 X can also equip Nvidia’s most powerful GPU, the GeForce RTX 4090 that utilizes the latest Ada Lovelace technology that includes advanced Shader Execution Reordering (SER), Nvidia’s third-generation ray tracing, and DLSS 3 that uses AI to provide better quality and even greater frame rate performance improvement.

The machine toes the line between a conservative laptop and a gaming machine, with aggressive venting and per-key RGB lighting but without the ostentatious case design of some gaming laptops. And it’s built around a QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) IPS display running at 240Hz and providing up to 500 nits of brightness. RAM can be configured up to 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz chips and up to a 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD. It’s a fast and attractive laptop that’s well worth its high price.

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Razer Blade 16

Razer gaming laptops have one of the most iconic aesthetics, with the same black chassis that enjoys the same kind of elegant lines as Apple’s MacBook Pro. It’s a look that works anywhere, and the new Razer Blade 16 ups the screen size just slightly with a new dual mode 16:10 UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400) mini-LED display that runs at up to 120Hz at its full resolution and 240Hz at Full HD+ (1,920 x 1,200). It provides the best of both worlds when it comes to visual performance.

Inside you’ll find up to the slightly faster Core i9-13950HX CPU and the RTX 4090, at a hefty price of $4,300. Drop down to an RTX 4060 and a QHD+ IPS display and you can spend $2,700. Either way, it’s an expensive laptop.

The per-key RGB keyboard is excellent, as is the spacious touchpad. Performance is excellent and the look and feel are unparalleled among gaming laptops. The Razer Blade 16 offers an elegance that most gaming machines lacks, along with all the performance.

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Alienware X16

Dell’s Alienware lineup is another iconic brand that melds unique aesthetics with high performance. The Alienware X16 is a prime example, with a thin and light chassis that sports a sleek and modern look. Packed inside is the Core i9-13900HK, a 14-core, 20-thread CPU that’s slower than the HX model in the other machines here but still fast enough for modern titles.

You can equip up to the RTX 4090, with 32GB of LPDDR5-6000MHz RAM and 4TB of storage in RAID 0 thanks to two 2TB drives. Two QHD+ IPS panels are available, one running at 165Hz and the other at 240Hz. The Alienware X16 aims more for a sleek chassis than the utmost in gaming performance, and that meets the needs of a sizeable market.

It’s not an inexpensive laptop, though, starting at $3,050 and maxing out at $4,000. But if you want a full-size laptop you can more easily carry around, then the Alienware X16 is a solid option.

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Asus Zephyrus G14

You can’t build a list of powerful gaming laptops without including AMD. The company’s latest Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs offer excellent gaming performance, and the Asus Zephyrus G14 is a more portable machine that still packs in tons of power.

First there’s the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, an 8-core/16-thread CPU running at up to a 5.2GHz max boost rate. It’s mated with up to 32GB of fast DDR5-4800 RAM and up to a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. You can also choose up to the RTX 4090, meaning that you’ll get the fastest graphics performance available in a laptop today.

And you’ll also enjoy a smaller laptop that’s 0.81 inches at its thickest point and weighs just 3.79 pounds. And its chassis, while not overtly gamer-oriented, features the Asus AniMe Matrix LED panel on the lid that can display text, animations, and more.

The Asus ROG Nebula HDR display, a 16:10 mini-LED panel at a QHD+ resolution and offering up to a 165Hz refresh rate. The Zephyrus G14 offers a supremely powerful gaming laptop in a much more portable form factor. We don’t have pricing yet for the most powerful configurations, but it starts at around $1,800 for the AMD CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an RTX 4070. So, it’s likely to be less expensive at the high end than some other options on this list.

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Lenovo Legion Pro 7i

Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i is notable for its attractive pricing, offering a configuration with a Core i9-13900HX CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and RTX 4080 for $2,680. It’s pricier at $3,600 when fully configured with an RTX 4090 and 32GB of RAM, but it performs extremely well at the $2,680 price point.

According to at least one review, the Legion Pro 7i punches well above its weight class, providing both creative and gaming performance that competes with machines equipping the faster RTX 4090. And the design is conservative enough to be used in all kinds of environments, including the professional locales where its creative performance can shine. It does have per-key RGB lighting and an RGB “U” light up front to add some panache.

The Legion Pro 7i doesn’t offer a mini-LED display as do some other top machines, but its IPS panel is QHD+ at up to 240Hz. It has enough brightness and good enough colors that it can serve as both a gaming and productivity machine. The Legion Pro 7i deserves a place on this list mainly because it can be purchased for a lot less money while still providing great performance.

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This is just the beginning

There are plenty of other great gaming laptops coming out in 2023, and so this is just a sampling. As the year progresses, we’ll see machines that are just as fast and offer both OLED and mini-LED displays that provide enhanced gaming experiences. And that’s a great place to be if you’re looking for a new gaming machine.