4K might be what all the marketing blurbs shout about these days, but 1440p is still the sweet spot when it comes to gaming on a monitor. It's the Goldilocks zone: Crisp and sharp, but you'll still achieve framerates north of 60fps even if you're not using some power-guzzling, heat-spewing GPU.
That's doubly so for gaming laptops, whose smaller screens and slimmer frames mean 4K is less noticeable and cooling is extra important. That's why I've gone and picked out a few of my favourite 1440p portables for your perusal.
- We're curating all the best Cyber Monday PC gaming deals right here.
At $1,099.99, the Asus ROG Strix G15 has gotta be one of the best gaming laptop deals floating around this Cyber Monday. This little titan packs a Ryzen 5980HX CPU and a Radeon RX 6800M GPU to create a souped-up AMD fighter that's as powerful as it is powerfully on-brand.
Those specs are hooked up to a 1440p, 165Hz screen that you should—with a graphics card like that—be able to squeeze every last frame out. The base storage leaves something to be desired at 512GB, but you can always use the secondary PCIe slot to upgrade.
But if you're an Nvidia loyalist, there's always the Asus Zephyrus G15, which pairs a Ryzen 9 5900HS with an RTX 3080. You'll be paying an extra chunk of change over the ROG Strix G15—the Zephyrus comes in at $1,699.99—but you do get a fair bit more for your money. The Zephyrus is equipped with a 240Hz screen, allowing you to achieve Chuck Yeager-style framerates in your games of choice. Plus you get a full terabyte of storage for your trouble, too.
And no list of 1440p gaming laptops could call itself complete without a look-in from the Razer Blade 14. If you took a snap poll of the PCG staff's favourite gaming laptop, the Razer Blade would probably win it, and for good reason. It's beautiful, well-built, has a powerful RTX 3070 Ti, and this one comes in pink. The drawback? Ah, well, it does come in at $2,199.99 even on sale. Premium laptop, premium price.
And, look, fine, if you're determined to fly too close to the high-res sun, you should probably also check out the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. It's a 1600p machine equipped with a Ryzen 5800H CPU and an RTX 3070, and you can get it for a very reasonable $1,399.99 right now. You won't be hanging out with the cool kids in the resolution Goldilocks zone, though!
