Let’s be real: Even cheap gaming laptops aren’t all that cheap. There’s a reason that our guide to the best gaming laptops under $1,000 has far fewer options than our other laptop roundups—even rock-bottom options usually go for $900 or so, with rare discounts to the $800 range or so. But today we’ve found an absolute doozy: Dell is clearing out the RTX 3050-powered G15 gaming laptop for just $649 after a huge $200 discount.
You’ll need to be judicial with your graphics settings—aim for Medium to High presets in most games, and don’t even think about ray tracing—but the Dell G15 should handle everything you throw at it, especially in games that support Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS technology. In addition to the aforementioned GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, the Dell G15 comes with a 12-core Intel Core i5-12500H processor, a 15.6-inch 120Hz 1080p screen, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD. You may want to consider picking up an external SSD to boost your overall storage capacity, but even with that factored in this is still significantly cheaper than the vast majority of gaming laptops.
This is a clearance sale, so there’s no telling how long the deal will last, and a similar model already sold out lightning fast. Don’t miss out. You don’t see RTX-powered gaming laptops going for this cheap very often.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to change the recommendation to a similar model after the original clearance deal sold out.
Author: Brad Chacos, Executive editor
Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and all manner of PC hardware.