Performance on both the keyboard and trackpad is respectable for the price. The colors, brightness and contrast of the display won’t set the world on fire, but they’re good enough for gaming, and the 144Hz max refresh rate is ideal for components of this power. The memory support is also for DDR5, which gives it a bit more future proofing relative to the DDR4 laptops listed here. You can however easily do this yourself (see our how to upgrade RAM on laptops guide) and the laptop has two RAM slots, which can be used to bring the machine up to 16GB or even 32GB RAM. Although 8GB will run a lot of games, typically we’d advise upgrading to 16GB for both gaming and general usage (web browsers soak up that RAM like a mutha). The main drawback is that we’ve typically only seen this particular unit for sale at this price with 8GB of RAM. The Intel 12th gen laptop CPU it’s paired with (the Intel Core i7-12650H) does the job, and again is the most powerful you’ll find on this list. Although at the time of writing it’s an additional $100 above the price range of this guide, it’s definitely worth stretching that bit extra, as the in-game performance this graphics card will give you is definitely above those of other laptop GPUs in this price range, even if by the standards of other RTX 4060 laptops it’s relatively underpowered. Ultimately the biggest draw for us, and the reason it’s the top pick on this list, is that it’s the cheapest RTX 4060 laptop (assuming you pick this loadout) that we’ve seen so far.

It might seem a bit of a wasted effort to put such a design where you’re least likely to see it, however if you’re a fan of little details on your products, then this may tickle your fancy. It also comes with blue sci-fi styling on the keyboard and an unusual translucent finish underneath and on the sides of the laptop, with the words ‘MSI True Gaming’ etched in. This aims to be an affordable machine to take on the likes of the Acer Nitro 5 and the ASUS TUF A15 in the budget gaming laptop space. The MSI Cyborg is a new addition to the MSI gaming laptop roster in 2023.

no Thunderbolt support or SD card reader.

Asus tuf 17 gaming laptop