Best Gaming Laptops Under $500 In 2023

If gaming is your life but you can’t afford it just because laptops that are meant for gaming are usually too costly.  Because of their powerful processor, high graphics and all. So to solve that problem we would be providing you with list of best gaming laptops under 500 dollars.

Usually. a gaming laptop with powerful machine can cost you $2500 to $3000. In this price range, you can found very attractive laptops with high performance rate. But in the range of $500 it becomes a little difficult task. So, you need to compromise on some specifications like good graphic games; performance rate will not be like the above range laptops. There might be chances of low quality of loudspeakers.

If you want to have all these qualities, you must go for at least $1000. But if you don’t have this much budget and you want to purchase gaming laptop in this range of $ 500 than okay. I will try to suggest you best out of this range so, that you don’t have to compromise very much and you will get best laptop in this range as well.

Gaming Laptops Under $500

Gaming laptops are one of the tough sells. So, people think what gaming laptop I should buy. To provide power so that to play the games at one decent setting, they actually sacrifice the portability, battery life as well as value compared that to non-gaming laptops. If we talk about others, then at the same time $2000 gaming laptops are less powerful and upgradeable than the laptop worth $1200 desktop gaming PC.

Gaming laptops are most popular with the gamers, deployed soldiers and even the road warriors. But today we will share some best gaming laptops under $500 with features and specifications. Here, I’m going to tell you about software and hardware specifications of laptops so, that when you go to purchase a gaming laptop, it will be easy for you to take the right decision.

• Try to focus on good processor which has good cache stuff. I.e. your processor speed should not slow down, it should run fast. Your focus should be  > 2.5 GHz.
• Other thing you should need to keep in mind is good Graphic Unit Processor i.e. GPU. If the laptop does not have good GPU than you should definitely avoid that laptop for gaming purpose.
• Screen resolution must be good.
• Laptop should contain good and soothing Sound Cards and speakers as if it does not have soothing sound it will irritate you. You will not connect to your game or unable to focus on game.
• SSD (Solid State Drive) is also an important specification; do check that it has large space. If not then it can affect your performance of the laptop.
• Your laptop should contain cooling system. As these kinds of laptops are used for long time and if they generate heat then you can’t take them on your lap and it affects speed of laptop also.

These are some necessary specifications you should need to be keeping in mind. After this, there comes pricing. Most people used to say that precious things are better than a cheaper one. But not in case of gaming laptops you can find more affordable laptops with quality also.

Top 5 Best Gaming Laptops Under 500

By now you have probably thought of what few feature you would be needing so while buying go through the reviews carefully as you are spending 500 bucks and that’s not less. While buying first you must consider your budget. Look at all the things carefully keyboard, screen, and battery life and especially at guaranties and warranties also at some place you might get good deal with little more of these.

#1 ASUS VivoBook F510UA 15.6 Full HD Nanoedge Laptop

ASUS is one of the best tech company in the world. So, ASUS gaming laptops are considered as best laptops. Within under $500 budget, ASUS VivoBook F510UA will the best choice. ASUS VivoBook F510UA has compelling specifications along with attractive looks. It is lightweight so, easy to carry also. Hardware specifications are also good quality which makes it perfect gaming laptop pack for game lovers, which do not want to compromise with the quality and performance of the gaming laptops.

ASUS VivoBook F510UA laptop comes with a powerful 8th Generation Intel Core i5-8250U 1.6GHz processor and 8 GB DDR3 RAM. So, you will get high performance and faster speed for gaming. It’s not completely a gaming machine but it can give you that experience as a budget gaming laptop $500.

The fingerprint sensor is another great feature on this laptop. Its display has decent contrast with 1366×768 led and along with ASUS SonicMaster sound gives you a great multimedia experience. Though it provides a lot of storage space. So you can store games, photos, videos, movies, music, and more on this laptop as it consists of 1TB of space.

Specs at Glance:

#2 Dell Inspiron 15 5000 15.6 inch

If you are looking for a good gaming laptop under $500, then Dell Inspiron Dell Inspiron 15 laptop will be the best choice. Dell comes up with a budget gaming laptop that is powered by Intel Core i5-8250U processor, as it is i3 it might make you feel that this is an old processor, but here it has skyline series which offers you more clock speed and similar performance than some of the Intel 4th and 5th generations.

Also, the laptop has 8GB DDR4 RAM  and Intel HD Graphics 620 which perform similar to Nvidia’s Geforce 820M. Here you can easily play the classic games with high setting and no compromise on frame rate and also for the new games you need not compromise on frame rate if you play on low and medium setting. It also features touch Screen which gives you a great experience while surfing on the web and doing casual work is on your tip of the fingers.

Dell Inspiron comes with multi-gesture, and sleek which gives it a more professional look. It has 15.6 LED-Backlit full HD with 1920 x 1080 display. So you can still watch movies with good experience and play games. It made such that classic games would run smoothly and the newer ones might have to play on the medium resolution so that you don’t have to compromise on your frame rate. If you want some improvement in the performance, you can uninstall the heavy software that is not required.

Specs at Glance:

#3 Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-53VG 15.6-inch

Acer Aspire E 15 is one of the best gaming laptops under $500 in our list. Although the prices a bit higher still it is value for money that’s why it has come to the top among other laptops. The laptop has Intel Core i5 processor and 8 GB DDR4 RAM. So, you will get excellent performance. Aspire E 15 comes with the GeForce 940MX graphic card which gives 20% better performance than 940M. So it will allow you to play most of the modern game at low and medium setting without compromising Frame rate.

The laptop has a fantastic battery life with 12 hours and a USB port with Type-C. Storage space is 256 GB SSD  which could be less but could upgrade it to 512 GB or 1 TB for a better experience. For an SSD hard drive, the laptop will be faster. Also, you need to compromise with the looks as it has a simple look but look at the bright side that is performed as for gaming performance matter than the looks.

Specs at Glance:

#4 HP Notebook 15-ay011nr 15.6-Inch Laptop

HP laptop can be a good gaming laptops under $500 as it can help you in day to day life and some casual gaming, it comes with Skylake Intel core i5-6200U processor with hyper threading and 8 GB RAM which can be upgraded to 12GB for better performance. It has a graphics that is helpful in gaming with newer and more powerful Intel HD Graphics 520 chipset which is more powerful than NVIDIA GeForce 820M, but with shared memory.

HP Notebook 15-ay011nr is one of the light gaming laptops with good specifications in the range of $500. Its specifications attract you to purchase this laptop. It has all the attractive features which make it powerful competition in the race of best gaming laptops. So, It is highly recommended gaming laptop within the range of $500. This laptop has decent battery life with 6 hours.

Specs at Glance:

#5 Lenovo Ideapad 15.6″ HD High Performance Laptop

If you love Lenovo brand and need a gaming laptop, here comes Lenovo Ideapad 15.6 laptop. This laptop has AMD A12-9720P Quad-core processor 2.7GHz and 8 GB of DDR4L RAM. So, you will get high performance for gaming and the web. It got a large display (15.6″ HD display with 1366 x 768 resolution). So, It gives you great comfort while playing games and also along with 100×900 display you can enjoy your 720p movies.

It has AMD Radeon graphics so that you can play classic and modern games smoothly. You can also play some of 2018 release like Overwatch but that need to be played at low or medium setting. You can even think about 2018 Newest Lenovo Ideapad. It is the latest version of this model. So you will get more performance than the old one.

Lenovo Ideapad 15.6 Laptop comes with the 1TB hard drive that is enough space with a bit slower 5400rpm mechanical. But along with gaming purpose, it is a good laptop for daily usage that why it could be one of the best game laptops under 500 dollars.

Specs at Glance:

Factors to Think for Buying a Gaming Laptop Under $500

So here we will be first discussing some basic things that you need take a look at before buying any gaming laptop and then we will be taking you to those laptop that can achieve these feature so that finally you will be with a featured and cheap gaming laptop.

Processor

Now processor is the first thing that you would be looking at if you are looking for any laptop as it is the heart of the device. As you are looking for an affordable gaming laptop under 500, it is not possible to get the best processor. So first you need to look at for what type of games you would be using the laptop and accordingly you need to look at the requirement and then search for that.

For processor you have two option one is Intel and other is AMD. So Intel provides you with speed, but it runs on a fewer laptop. On the other hand, AMD comes with support for multiple cores and, but it runs at a lower speed. So get laptop gaming under $500 you need to select wisely and according to your needs.

Memory

Another important thing that you need to look at is a memory that is RAM. Currently, games are such that usually require 8 GB of ram, but some of the older games can run at 4GB RAM. But the thing is the RAM requirement would usually increase but how much time it would take for that there no number, but the sure thing is that it won’t be decreasing.

So to get a laptop under $500 don’t make the mistake of buying a laptop with 4GB RAM, it should be at least of 8GB. One reason for that could be if you 4GB doesn’t suit you that changing only RAM would lead to way higher cost than buying it with the whole System.

Graphics Card:

For gaming laptops, you must need a high power graphics card. Most of the laptops are using the cards from that the previous generation GTX 900 series and these are still available for purchase for the customers and their supplies will get run out within the next few months. The chief rival of Nvidia, i.e., AMD have still not still released a mobile version of one of its Polaris GPU’s so the laptops that are based on the AMD graphics are currently using the older technology which is destined to get replaced in the near coming future.

Display:

Talking about the larger displays, they are very much capable of providing you high resolution. But here also you need to make your choice wisely as QHD+ (3200-by-1800) resolution. It will actually boost the final cost of the laptop to twice, separately speaking first one for the panel and second for the high-quality graphics card that is particularly needed to drive it. Because they usually require the dual GPUs for smooth gameplay at the native resolution, 4K (3849 by 2160) gaming laptops are nowadays becoming more common of all, but still, their cost is high, and they are expensive enough to buy.

Also what you keep in mind for a gaming laptop is that because only the most powerful graphics cards can render the complex animation at the playable frame rates for the full screen at the 4K. So for a 1080p screen, it may be a better use of the money if you all do with that is gaming, as it has all gaming features and you can utilize them all.

Storage:

Storages or hard drive is one of the essential factors for gaming laptops. So with storage what you basically need to see is a system with SSD, but you also need to make sure that you configure it accurately. A small SSD storage device with the large spinning hard drives is one to have the excellent start if you actually even download the occasional video from the internet. Even bigger SSDs are also available, but it will also increase the cost of your gaming device.

Others

Now that you have sorted Memory and processor there are few other features you need to look at. While buying good gaming laptops under $500 see that the processor that you are buying is latest or at least not too old because it’s obvious for most of the time that newer processor is better than the older one, for example, Intel Corei5 is better than any of i7laptops.

Another thing that you should not miss out is preparing rate in gigahertz. Because nowadays most of the games are in 3D and not 2D what it used to be that why you need to look at price at which your RAM works. So you need not miss this for making your laptop under budget.

Final Words

That is the list of some best gaming laptops under 500 dollars as per your range of budget and specifications of the laptops. Now, it is totally up to you which laptop you want to purchase. And if you find any other laptop better than the list of gaming laptops I have listed above you can tell me without any hesitation. I will try to search on that laptop specifications and budget also and will try to on the particular laptop in this list.

No machine that you will buy would be perfect so according to the need look at these things and compromise things that you need to and get the best of what you require. For example, you might have some favorite brand but for understanding that you may land up at buying not what you need or would have to buy for more. So consider all the option that’s why we have covered all the brands.