Prices on gaming laptops are out of control. The ongoing memory shortage has made laptops more expensive across the board, but it's hit gaming laptops especially hard. Some manufacturers have even resorted to launching “new" gaming laptops in 2026 with the RTX 4050 as the starting configuration—and that graphics card is more than three years old.
Given this landscape, there's really only one gaming laptop under $1,500 that I feel comfortable recommending. That's the Lenovo LOQ 15. It's not the thinnest or most powerful gaming laptop in the world, but for this price, there's nothing else like it.
