For a more thorough look at what to think about when shopping for a gaming laptop generally, have a quick scan of this same section on our Best gaming laptop page. Below is a quick summary of things to consider when shopping to a $800 budget specifically.
Realistic Expectations Of Gaming Performance
The portability advantages of laptops, coupled with the engineering challenges of putting powerful components into a laptop’s chassis and effectively cooling them, means you typically pay at least 50% more on a laptop compared to a desktop computer for the same Frames Per Second (FPS) in game.
Limiting your budget to $800 unfortunately means you cannot expect to be able to play the newest releases on high settings and get a good FPS. At this level, even medium graphical settings on demanding may be a stretch, though certainly low settings will be feasible. At this price point and lower if you want decent FPS on high settings you will need to stick to somewhat older games, or at least newer ones that have less graphical demands. Broadly speaking, you could probably expect to get around 70-90 FPS on GTA V on high settings on most of the laptops listed below. If you want more than this then we would advise you either consider spending more and have a look at our best gaming laptops for under $1,500 page, or alternatively consider a desktop PC you can build yourself or a prebuilt computer, for under $800.
Maximum Refresh Rate
At around the $800 mark, 144Hz screens become uncommon, and the typical maximum is 120Hz. Having said that, 144Hz do occasionally crop up on this budget, though usually, they sacrifice some other aspect.
Resolution
Under $800 the best native resolution you can hope for in a gaming laptop is 1920 x 1080. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as 1080p is the resolution many competitive gamers who play fast-paced online shooters would use anyway, no matter their budget. On top of that, unless you are looking for a screen side above 15 inches its debatable how much you’d get out of higher resolution screens anyway.
Hard Drive & RAM
Typically we’d say 256GB for an SSD in a laptop or desktop PC is too small a size to be practical. Many of today’s games can reach 50GB plus, and once you’ve installed the operating system this doesn’t leave a lot of room. Unfortunately at under $800, 256GB becomes much more common. If the laptop you have your heart set on only has 256GB then we’d advise upgrading the SSD to a larger one or adding an additional SSD or HDD. Similarly, 8GB RAM becomes common in laptops at around $800. We’d strongly advise upgrading this to 16GB where possible.
Color Replication
At this price point, screens with a wide color gamut become hard to find. 100% sRGB replication is unlikely, as good color accuracy, although there may be at least one example on this page which has this in its favor.
Ports & Connectivity
Ports and sockets are usually at the bottom of a customer’s priorities, hence manufacturers of budget laptops tend to sacrifice them first before other components. Hence, you’re unlikely to find SD card readers or Thunderbolt support in laptops under $800, and the amount of USB coverage may not be as extensive.
