This sleek RTX 3050-powered laptop's great for work or play, and under $700
There's certainly sneaky gaming session peeking out from under the hood of this rather reserved chassis.
Here come the Memorial Day PC gaming deals, as if there weren't enough reasons to splash out at this time of year already. Now we're being tempted with tech, too.
For anyone on the lookout for a sleek, business-look laptop that you can do a sneaky bit of gaming outside of work, this the one for you. It's a Gateway laptop, which are only available online through Walmart right now, and this one's an absolute steal at $699.
That's down from $1,169, saving you a ridiculous $470 on a pretty versatile laptop. Here, you're not just getting an 11th Gen Intel chip, you'll be running games off that current-gen RTX 3050, too. Sure that comes in at the lower end for modern games, but some graphical tweaks will have you screaming through those frame rates.
Gateway | Nvidia RTX 3050 | Intel Core i5 11400H | 15.6in | 1080p | 120Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB NVMe SSD | $1,169 $699 at Walmart (save $470)
Now Gateway is back in the game, you can bet you'll be finding deals like this pop up from time to time. This one's on the lower end of Intel's 11th Gen, but it's still a nifty mobile CPU. That, coupled with the RTX 3050 and not-so-sluggish 120Hz monitor, should deliver some great gaming sessions at entry-level. It even comes with a camera, and could easily pass as a work laptop on the weekdays... just sayin.
Thanks to the 1080p resolution, this little machine won't have to work as hard to make the most of its 120Hz refresh rate. And 16GB of memory will see you right for a bit of multitasking, if you need to get a few jobs underway at once.
The metallic chassis is much more conservative than a lot of gaming laptops out there. You even get a camera that's not in a stupid position, i.e. aiming at your doble chin. With a laptop like this you can take it to work (and have a casual game on your lunch break) without getting funny looks. Of course, if I brought it into work, people would ask why I went for a laptop with only an RTX 3050. And to be fair, it isn't the most powerful, particularly in mobile form. But gloating about getting it for a thrifty $700 would shut them up pretty swiftly—that's an immense price drop that's really not worth ignoring.
Sure there's a smaller SSD than some would like, but if you're just going to be playing older games, you might not need to worry too much. Then again, you could always upgrade the NVMe SSD at a later date; just check out out best NVMe SSD guide if you're on the prowl for more storage.
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Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.