The best thin and light gaming laptops 2023
The best thin and light gaming laptop – sometimes referred to as gaming ultrabooks – should be three things: powerful, portable, and good value for money. They’re typically made from lightweight materials such as plastic and aluminum, which helps keep both the weight and price down, and are made as slender as possible through thin and light internal components and ventilation systems.
Now, power and pricing for laptops like this can vary a great deal. Some of the thin and light gaming laptops in this list have the specs to go toe-to-toe with the best gaming laptops around, while others can be as affordable as some of the best budget gaming laptops.
Of course, some of these compact gaming laptops may overlap with other notable products within their own brands, so if you’ve got a preferred brand in mind, you might want to check out the best Asus gaming laptops or the best MSI gaming laptops.
We carefully test every thin and light gaming laptop we review in order to sort the wheat from the chaff and single out the very best gaming ultrabooks on the market. Our testing process is in-depth and takes into account factors such as performance, value, and durability, so you can rest assured that you’re getting a great device if you decide to buy one of the laptops on this list.
If you’re hunting for a cheap laptop, we very much recommend the MSI GF63 Thin – alternatively, you can check out our live list of the best gaming laptop deals if you want to snap up a discount laptop today.
Today’s best pre-Black Friday gaming laptops deals
If you can’t find a thin and light gaming laptop that’s on sale, consider one of these gaming laptop deals we found below – well before Black Friday 2023. Here’s our pick, and head to our best gaming laptop deals page for more.
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The quick list
Want to cut to the chase and find out what the best thin and light gaming laptops are? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices, and you can jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
Best overall
The best overall
A beast of a gaming laptop, it delivers amazing performance, best-in-class battery life, and a fast display in an lightweight, ultrathin design.
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Best budget
The best budget
An excellent cheap option that doesn’t sacrifice performance, it has a fast display, a great port selection, and a thin, lightweight chassis.
Read more below
Best for creators
The best for creators
This stylish yet robust laptop offers impressive QHD+ performance and boasts a fast and accurate display for creative workloads.
Read more below
Best 1440p
4. MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS
The best for 1440p gaming
A premium gaming laptop with a great display and a decent battery life, this comes with powerful specs to handle excellent 1440p gaming at 240fps.
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Best 17-inch
The best 17-inch option
While staying portable and stylish, this powerful, long-lasting, large-screen laptop will see you through gaming and creative workloads.
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Best 240Hz
The best with 240Hz display
This stunning gaming laptop delivers top-tier performance and a well-balanced chassis. The best part: it offers a fast display offering a 240Hz refresh rate.
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Best AMD
The best AMD thin and light
Pairing performance with a competitive price, thanks to is AMD components, this 16-inch option also comes with a fast 240Hz refresh rate.
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Super-thin
The thinnest gaming laptop
With its particularly slender form factor, this belies some top-notch specs while weighing less and being thinner than the rest of the options here.
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Below you’ll find full write-ups for each of the best Windows laptop in our list. We’ve tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best thin and light gaming laptop overall
(Image credit: Future)
The best thin and light gaming laptop overall
Specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS – 9 4900HS
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
RAM: Up to 32GB
Screen: 14-inch Non-glare Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS-level panel, 120Hz – 14-inch Non-glare WQHD (2560 x 1440) IPS-level panel, 60Hz
Storage: 512GB / 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0
Reasons to buy+
Best battery life in a gaming laptop
+
Excellent performance
+
Thin and light
Reasons to avoid-
No webcam
–
Fans can get loud
Buy it if:
✅ You want good battery life: If you’ve been waiting for a gaming laptop with battery life that can keep up with an Ultrabook, it’s finally here.
✅ You want a lightweight gaming laptop: At just 0.7 inches thick and weighing just 3.5 lb, this is a laptop you can easily carry around wherever you go.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You need Thunderbolt 3: While it isn’t as big a deal as it was maybe a couple of years ago, there is no Thunderbolt 3 on the Asus Zephyrus G14.
❌ You need a webcam: For many, the lack of a webcam probably isn’t that big of a deal, especially if you’re just after a bang-for-the-buck gaming laptop.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 may be missing a webcam and a Thunderbolt 3 port, but it’s damn near close to perfection, garnering our coveted yet rarely given five-star rating. This is an absolute beast of a gaming laptop, delivering an incredible performance with its AMD Ryzen 4000 processors and Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card while touting best-in-class battery life that will last you all day long, a fast display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and a lightweight, ultrathin design.
During testing, this thin and light gaming laptop absolutely smashed its rivals in all of our CPU-heavy testing workloads thanks to the AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS inside our test unit. In Geekbench 4, it won the multi-core contest with 29,907 points, beating the i9-9980HK-powered Alienware m17.
This is definitely the best thin and light gaming laptop in 2022. For a laptop this impressive, we’re surprised Asus isn’t asking for more money.
Read the full Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review
The best budget thin and light gaming laptop
(Image credit: Future)
The best budget thin and light gaming laptop
Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i5-10500H – i7-11800H
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 – RTX 3050 Ti
RAM: Up to 32GB DDR4 RAM
Screen: 15.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS-level, 144Hz
Storage: Up to 1TB PCIe SSD
Reasons to buy+
Excellent performance given the price
+
Solid build quality
+
Good range of ports
Reasons to avoid-
Average battery life
–
Some annoying bloatware
–
Charge cable can block a USB port
Buy it if:
✅ You want to game on a budget: Let’s face it: gaming laptops can be bloody expensive, but if you cheap out, you’ll likely be stuck with low frame rates or poor graphics. The MSI GF63 Thin walks the line between value and performance expertly.
✅ You need a multi-purpose laptop: Decent performance in just about every area and a reserved design means that the GF63 Thin can happily double as a laptop for work or study, as well as be a solid PC gaming device.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want ray tracing: While it’s technically capable, the RTX 3050 Ti just isn’t really able to run games with ray-tracing settings turned on.
❌ You need good battery life: The battery life on offer here is far from dismal, but it’s not what we’d call impressive, if you want to keep the brightness at maximum, you’ll need to plug in.
Budget gaming laptops that still deliver on performance are hard to find, which makes the MSI GF63 Thin (2022) an excellent choice for those wanting to save without having to sacrifice too much in specs in return. The starting price is one that most gaming laptops can’t hope to match in this generation of performance behemoths, especially one that’s also so thin and lightweight. Its battery life is average, but that’s what you’d expect from a gaming laptop in the first place.
Its specs include up to an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, though the Core i5 version is more prominent, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. For the latter, you can also get the GeForce GTX 1650 GPU version for a cheaper price point, which still can handle most games just fine, but we found after testing that it’s best to pay a bit more for the 3050 Ti, as the gaming performance is more than worth it.
The display is also 1080p HD and we found that when combined with its 144Hz refresh made for a smooth gameplay experience and a clear vibrant picture quality. However, it’s not well-suited for high demand tasks, like 4K video editing and running number-crunching scientific programs. The port selection is excellent as well, with every type you need. In fact, in comparison to many other current-gen gaming laptops we’ve tested, it surpasses them all. It does have issues with bloatware, and sometimes the charging cable can block those many ports too.
Read the full MSI GF63 Thin (2022) review
The best thin and light gaming laptop for creators
(Image credit: Future)
The best thin and light gaming laptop for creators
Specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
RAM: 16GB – 32GB DDR5
Screen: 14-inch, QHD+ (2560×1600), 240Hz
Storage: 1TB SSD
Reasons to buy+
Excellent gaming performance
+
Thin and light
+
Great audio system
Reasons to avoid-
Expensive
–
Poor battery life
Buy it if:
✅ You want a thin and light gaming laptop: Just as Razer is known for, this laptop weighs surprisingly little for its specs and can fit into most bags and be carried around with ease.
✅ You want top performance: For its size, the performance is great, scoring high on every benchmark as well as offering solid frame rates at even the highest settings.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You’re on a budget: Razer laptops are not meant for those without excess cash flow and this model is no exception. If you’re looking to stick to a tight budget, you might want to look elsewhere.
❌ You want a better battery life: For gaming purposes, the battery life is not good in the slightest – keep this laptop plugged in unless you’re doing office work, and don’t expect to be gaming on the go.
The Razer Blade 14 is back, this time fitting in current-generation specs in its legendary thin and light chassis – just the ticket for content creators who need a Windows laptop that doesn’t compromise on performance or portability. It even comes in white, in case you don’t enjoy staring at a laptop teeming with fingerprints.
Its overall performance is simply impressive. It’s a powerful laptop, no doubt about that, but it does beautifully under duress as well. This laptop tends to get hot, yes; but it never once stuttered, slowed down or froze during our time with it. And it lasted about eight hours when we did general productivity work on it, which means that you won’t have to bring that charger on light work days.
Bear in mind though that when performing the more intensive tasks, that battery life will cut down to just around four hours – but that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker as we all know gaming on a laptop is a massive battery drain. The only drawback we see here is its price tag, which is pretty steep.
Read the full Razer Blade 14 (2023)
The best thin and light for 1440p gaming
(Image credit: Future)
The best thin and light for 1440p gaming
Specifications
CPU: Up to Intel Core i9-12900H
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
RAM: Up to 64GB
Screen: 15.6″ QHD (2560×1440) at 240Hz, FHD (1920×1080) at 360Hz, 15.6″ UHD (3840×2160) at 120Hz
Storage: 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4
Reasons to buy+
Strong gaming performance
+
Ergonomic design
+
Comfortable to use
+
High-spec hardware
Reasons to avoid-
Extremely noisy fans
–
The battery takes ages to charge
–
Expensive, even for a gaming laptop
Buy it if:
✅ Strong battery life: You’ll need some time to charge it, but once it’s at 100%, It’ll be a good few hours before you need to plug it in again, perfect when travelling about.
✅ Ergonomic design: Despite the high-end specs, MSI’s latest felt refined in its design. It’s not bulky, can easily be carried around, and feels adaptable.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want a quieter machine: Given its specs, the MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS is an unsurprisingly loud laptop. Even when doing general tasks, it can occasionally sound like a plane taking off.
❌ You need a more affordable laptop: You’ll only need a gaming laptop like this if nothing but the portable best will do. Such high performance is extremely costly – you can get away with cheaper options
If you’re looking for a premium gaming laptop that not only has excellent specs, a great display, and can game at 1440p, all while maintaining a lightweight form factor with an ergonomic and comfortable design made for long sessions, the MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS is the perfect choice.
Packing up to an Intel Core i9-12900H CPU with a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU we found that, after extensive benchmarking, it tackles any of the best PC games at high settings with ease. We pushed this laptop to its limits and the resulting performance with games like Dirt 5 and Cyberpunk 2077 were truly excellent.
The battery does take ages to charge, but since it’s a gaming machine there’s no reason to remove it from power in the first place. It does pay for that performance with some noisy fans and a high price, but if you don’t mind either it’s a great investment.
Read the full MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS review
The best 17-inch thin and light gaming laptop
(Image credit: Future)
The best 17-inch thin and light gaming laptop
Specifications
CPU: Up to 12th Generation Intel Core i9-12900K
Graphics: Up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6
RAM: Up to 64GB DDR4-3200MHz
Screen: 17.0″ UHD+ (1920 x 1200) InfinityEdge Non-Touch Anti-Glare 500-Nit – 17.0″ UHD+ (3840 x 2400) InfinityEdge Touch Anti-Reflective 500-Nit
Storage: Up to 4TB M.2 PCIe NVMe
Reasons to buy+
Gorgeous design and build quality
+
Remarkably good battery life
Reasons to avoid-
Not exactly cheap
–
Not the most portable laptop around
Buy it if:
✅ You love great design: This is a gorgeous machine, the design may be a couple of years old, but with uber-slim bezels it’s still bang up to date and very slick.
✅ You need decent battery life: Despite the large 17-inch screen a beefy CPU performance, the Dell XPS 17 still delivers over 10 hours of battery life away from the mains making for impressive all-day longevity.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want maximum bang for your buck: The Dell XPS 17 is a great performer, but it will cost you.
❌ You want a true gaming laptop: Serious gamers can get better performance at this price point.
The Dell XPS 17 (2022) is the best laptop for people who are looking for a large screen but also want a slick and stylish device that can be comfortably carried around. This impressive thin and light laptop comes with Intel’s latest 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs and can even be kitted out with a graphics card.
While we wouldn’t suggest making this as your primary gaming laptop, it is excellent for some 1080p gaming on the go thanks to that RTX 3050 or 3060 under the hood. It’s also excellent for graphic-intensive tasks like photo editing. It tore through everything from video encodes to 3D renders with ease during our testing.
Couple that with its gorgeous display and outstanding design, and you’ve got a laptop to show off while at the office, at the coffee shop, or on the long haul flight if you travel for work. It’s got a fantastic battery life that will let you keep working for hours.
Read the full Dell XPS 17 (2022) review
The best thin and light with 240Hz display
(Image credit: Future)
The best thin and light with 240Hz display
Specifications
CPU: Up to 12th Gen Intel Core i9
Graphics: Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
RAM: Up to 32 GB LPDDR5
Screen: Up to 15.6-inch QHD 2560×1440 240H non-touch display
Storage: Up to 4TB RAID 0 (2 x 2 TB) M.2 PCIe NVMe, SSD
Reasons to buy+
High performance
+
Thin chassis and lightweight
+
Stunning and unique aesthetics
+
Can overclock
Reasons to avoid-
Terrible battery life
–
Runs hot unless you adjust fan settings
–
Awful webcam with no privacy shutter
Buy it if:
✅ You want a stunning and distinctive design: If you want a gaming laptop that has one of the most jaw-dropping designs out there, this is a choice pick with its white chassis and beautiful RGB lighting.
✅ You need something thin and portable: Somehow Dell managed to pack some of the best specs out there in an impossibly thin chassis that doesn’t feel any of its five pounds due to a balanced design.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars: This is a premium gaming laptop in every way and you can bet Dell is making you pay for that honor with the price, at minimum, of $2000.
❌ You need an ethernet port: The fact that such an otherwise excellent and expensive gaming laptop doesn’t come with an ethernet port is an absolute crime.
Alienware laptops and PCs are well known for their quality, unique designs, and performance, and the Alienware x15 R2 is no slouch in any of these factors. Featuring a stunning design combined with beautiful white color and RGB lighting in the back, it’s a laptop that’s guaranteed to turn heads. This is coupled with its thin chassis that feels incredibly lightweight despite it being five pounds, due to how well-balanced the laptop is.
Its performance is also top-tier, as it scored well in every benchmark we ran the CPU and GPU through, as well as general stress testing with a variety of high-end PC games. In fact, we found that after testing it thoroughly it beat out most other laptops sporting similar specs and sizes.
Unfortunately, it does have a few caveats. Its terrible webcam is technically 1080p though it doesn’t look that way when we tested it out during a conference call and found the framerate and visuals lacking. The battery lasts at most about three hours, so prepare to keep this bad boy plugged in. And its thin chassis comes at an overheating cost, though the excellent software can mitigate that through its fan settings.
Read our full Alienware x15 R2 review
The best AMD thin and light gaming laptop
(Image credit: Future)
The best AMD-powered thin and light
Specifications
CPU: Up to 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900H or AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS
Graphics: Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
RAM: Up to 32GB 5600Mhz DDR5
Screen: 16″ WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS
Storage: Up to 512GB / 1TB PCIe SSD (Gen4)
Reasons to buy+
Great display
+
Great specs
+
Solid keyboard
Buy it if:
✅ You’re after some impressive specs: This laptop is packed to the brim with high-end components, so you won’t be left wanting for computing power.
✅ Comfortable keyboard: The keyboards have a great clicky tactile feel and satisfying feedback.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ Aesthetics are important to you: The design of the laptop is pretty uninspired and basic, so if you want something that stands out, perhaps look elsewhere.
Lenovo is well-known for its quality and practical laptops, though they tend to be lacking in thinner form factors and attractive aesthetics. The Lenovo Legion Slim 7 hopes to change that, combining performance and looks at a hopefully more competitive price. And based on our hands-on with the laptop, it absolutely knocks it out of the park in terms of a lightweight and thin form factor. Weighing in at about four and a half pounds, it doesn’t any of that, most likely due to a well-balanced chassis similar to the Alienware x15 R2.
In terms of specs, while it has plenty of variation it maxes out at an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 mobile GPU and either an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS GPU or a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900H CPU. Judging by other similar laptops we’ve tested so far this generation, we should be seeing some impressive benchmark scores, especially in the gaming performance and framerate sections. And since it’s packing a 4070 GPU, there shouldn’t be too much of a CPU throttle issue that stronger GPUs have caused.
The 16-inch display is excellent quality, sporting a WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS with up to an incredibly fast 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. Based on laptops we tested with similar specs, this will make for some impressively fast and smooth gaming that even competitive players should benefit from. And that 500 nits of brightness means you can see the screen clearly even in bright sunlight. Finally, thanks to the 100% sRGB or DCl-P3 depending on the model, it’s ideal for creative work as well.
Read our hands-on Lenovo Legion Slim 7 review
The thinnest gaming laptop
(Image credit: Future)
Thinnest gaming laptop with solid performance
Specifications
CPU: Up to 12th Gen Intel Core i7
Graphics: Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060
RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5
Screen: 14-inch FHD 1920×1080 144Hz Non-Touch
Storage: 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Reasons to buy+
Gorgeous design
+
Extremely lightweight and very thin
+
Solid performance
Reasons to avoid-
Short battery life
–
Subpar webcam
Buy it if:
✅ You want something thin and light: The Alienware X14 is just over 0.5 inches thick and weighs just under 4lb, making it easy to slip into your backpack and carry anywhere.
✅ You want a premium gaming laptop: This really is a beautiful laptop, and one of the only gaming laptops on the market that you won’t want to hide away in shame.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You need long battery life: If you’re just looking for a laptop with strong performance and long battery life, we’d actually recommend an XPS 15 or a MacBook Pro instead.
❌ You’re on a budget: Just like any Alienware laptop, the Alienware X14 is an expensive piece of hardware
Among thin and lightweight laptops, the Alienware X14 (2022) has a particularly slender form factor, which belies some top-notch specs. Equipped with an RTX 3060 GPU and a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU we found that, during our performance testing, it was able to handle high-end PC games at high settings with no issues. Normally you would have to pay for the honor of great specs wrapped in such a small and gorgeous chassis, but Dell is currently selling it for a much-reduced price point.
The lightweight is especially impressive for a gaming laptop, and even more so because we compared it to the Razer Blade 14 and found the X14 weighs less and is thinner to boot. And despite the thin size, it still manages to cram in a diverse port selection with nearly any slot and port that a buyer could possibly want.
The 14-inch display is no slouch as well, packing in a 1080p LED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate and 7ms response time that’s more than responsive and smooth enough for most gamers on the go, and certainly enough to impress us when we tested it using the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Dirt 5, and other demanding games. However, you’ll have to contend with a less-than-stellar battery life that lasts at most a little over six hours, and a subpar HD webcam.
Read our in-depth Alienware X14 (2022) review
How to choose: best thin and light gaming laptop
There’s very thin line between portability and power when it comes to gaming laptops. That’s because you need a bit more power than what integrated graphics can offer to have that smooth and immersive gaming experience, and more robust internals like discrete graphics require a proper cooling system and ventilation, especially when being pushed, to perform well. Otherwise, you end up with throttling issues, which will ruin your gaming experience.
So, when choosing the best thin and light gaming laptop for you, that’s the most important thing to focus on: that whatever GPU is powering the laptop you’re eyeing is staying cool under pressure.
Expect also to pay a little more than you would a regular gaming laptop. If you take a look at our list above, while there’s a couple of affordable, under $1,000/£1,000 options on this list, you may have to stretch your budget a little. It’s not, after all, cheap to make such thin and light laptops that can deliver as much power as they do.
Pay close attention to the battery life as well. A curse of gaming laptops is the terrible battery life, but if you want something that can get you through a couple of hours’ of gaming on a train, you’ll certainly find a handful of options on hand. So don’t give up on that dream.
How we tested these thin and light gaming laptops
Much like our regular laptop reviews, we have a standard process of judging the price, design, performance, and battery life of gaming laptops. In this case performance is not only in reference to how well they perform standard benchmark tests, but also noting how fast it loads up the best PC games and how smoothly they run.
When it comes to thin and light gaming laptops, we made sure the laptops truly deliver on their promise of being slim and easy to transport. We also run the laptops all day to test their battery life to make sure you really can game throughout the day without issue. Price will vary per gaming laptop, but we don’t hesitate to let you know if an item is more expensive than its competition.
Today’s best thin and light gaming laptop deals
Round up of today’s best deals
