Best Ryzen laptop under $500

Things to Consider When Buying A Gaming Laptop Under $500

Each of the below considerations should be taken into account when shopping for a gaming laptop under $500 specifically. If you are looking for a more general list of considerations that apply to gaming laptops of any budget, take a look at the Things To Consider section of our best gaming laptops page.

Realistic Expectations Of Gaming Performance

The unfortunate reality is that when you reach budgets of $500 for a gaming laptop, you are unlikely to get good FPS performance on even moderately demanding games. Most gaming laptops under $500 will come with integrated graphics [i.e. part of the CPU] instead of a separate, dedicated GPU, so you cant expect the same level of performance.

Older games may run on decent Frames Per Second on medium-high settings, but for anything new, unless it has low requirements [e.g. map-based strategy games like Crusader Kings III], you will generally need to fork out more money. Our best gaming laptops for under $1,000 guide may be your best port of call. Alternatively, if mobility isnt that big a priority for you, wed suggest looking at desktop machines such as our $700 self-build gaming PC, or pre-build gaming PC for under $800. Ultimately you will nearly always get at least 50% more performance out of a desktop machine for the same price as you would from a laptop, as the power and cooling restrictions of the laptop chassis limit performance substantially.

Consider A Refurbished Laptop

Typically, we do not actually recommend refurbished products on WePC: although theyre usually worth considering, there is a general assumption you will almost always be able to get any product we recommend in a refurbished state for less money [unless its brand new of course] so to list them all would be redundant. We review products brand new we leave it up to you to decide if you want to get them second-hand or not!

Nevertheless, as below budgets of $500 the FPS performing of laptops is severely restricted, we think it is occasionally worth suggesting the odd refurbished model for under $500 [that would retail for brand new above this price range], just to illustrate the fact it may be the better option here.

We would also advise looking at our Best Gaming Laptops under $600, $700, and $800 guides and seeing if you can find some of the options listed there at refurbished prices. Bear in mind that a refurbished gaming laptop will rarely come with a warranty or the other such benefits you would get with a brand new model.

Maximum Refresh Rate

At the time of writing, 120Hz gaming laptops are non-existent at budgets below $500 [unless you go refurbished of course]. 60Hz is the norm at this price range, capping you at an effective 60 FPS performance in games. At such low Frames Per Second we could not recommend such laptops for competitive gaming use, though for slower-paced RPGs, strategy games, and adventure games where reaction time isnt a problem then you will be OK, though you will find the overall experience a bit more janky and less immersive. If this isnt for you then youll need to spend more money unfortunately [or buy a second-hand laptop].

Resolution

At $500 or less, you are going to be capped at 1920 x 1080 resolution for whichever gaming laptop you decide to go with. If you want 1440p or above you will have to spend at least $1,000, and likely more. Nevertheless, for many this wont be a particularly major drawback 1080p is still the ideal resolution for competitive gamers, and if your gaming laptop is 15 inch or smaller in size then its debatable as to whether a higher resolution screen is even worth the money [unless youre also using it for visual workstation uses perhaps].

Hard Drive And RAM

You are unlikely to get a gaming laptop for under $500 with an HDD or SSD larger than 256GB, though the odd 512GB SSD model may occasionally appear on this page. At WePC we consider 256GB to be too small to be practical for the majority of gamers, with many new PC games needing over 50GB of disk space, not to mention the space taken up by the OS and other bits of software applications the average laptop user needs. Wed always suggest, where possible, to upgrade any 256GB SSD to 512GB or above, or to supplement it with an additional internal or external SSD or HDD.

Similarly for memory: you will not find RAM specs above 8GB in this price range as standard and we almost always recommend upgrading this to at least 16GB where possible.

Color Replication

Even at budgets of $500 you can still get a sufficiently good color gamut if youre only playing games. If youre looking to do some light design work alongside your gaming, however, youre unlikely to find 100% sRGB replication in laptop displays in this price range, and color accuracy wont be up to scratch either. If you want a gaming laptop capable of such dual-use, youll have to spend considerably more money to get a suitable display.

Some of our other gaming laptop articles

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• Razer Blade Pro 17 1080p 360Hz [2021] Review
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• XMG Neo 15 E21 / Eluktronics MECH-15 G3 [2021]

Best of brand guides

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Best of price guides

• The best gaming laptops
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• The best gaming laptops under $2,500

FAQs

What Is The Best Gaming Laptop Under $500?

The HP Pavilion 15-ec0000na is the best overall gaming laptop at the present time for those operating on a $500 budget in our opinion, though every selection on our list has its positives and negatives, depending on your specific priorities, needs and budgets.

How Good Is A $500 Gaming Laptop?

The reality is that for $500 the quality of the gaming laptop you are likely to get is going to be fairly sub-par. You cannot expect to be able to play any of the latest games at anything other than the lowest graphical settings, and even then, if the game is particularly demanding, a laptop at this price will likely struggle. Our advice would be to save up and buy a gaming laptop for at least $1,000 or, if portability is not your main priority, pick up a prebuilt desktop gaming PC for $500 or $800.

What Is A Good Budget Laptop For Gaming?

What constitutes a budget laptop is not a clear-cut definition, though generally wed say anything below $1,000 fits the bill. See our guides on the best gaming laptops under $800, $700, $600 and $500 to see which laptops we currently recommend within these respective prices ranges.

What Is The Cheapest Gaming Laptop?

Gaming laptops for less than $500 exist and are marketed as such, though it is debatable how suitable for gaming they actually are. Ultimately it depends on what games you want to play and at what level of graphical settings. If you want to play the latest AAA FPS games on medium settings at decent FPS then you will need to pay $1,000 at the very least. If you are interested in older titles, or in less graphically demanding games [indie and/or strategy games for example], then you may be able to get away with paying as little as $500, $600, or $700.