Top 6 Gaming Laptops Compared

Other Gaming Laptops to Consider

Alienware 16X Aurora for $1,970: Alienware has lost some focus with its gaming laptops recently, but its latest refresh feels like a return to form. The Alienware 16X Aurora (7/10, WIRED Recommends) sits in the middle of the lineup, attempting to offer the right balance of performance, premium features, and price. At its current price, it nails that walk across the tightrope. Though it isn’t flashy, the design is understated yet refined. And while there are cheaper ways to get RTX 5060-level performance, the bright, color-accurate IPS display is a great upgrade, as is the premium touchpad. All in all, the Alienware 16X Aurora ended up being my favorite Alienware gaming laptop in years. It’s too expensive at retail price, so wait for a discount on this one.

MSI Titan 18 HX for $5,200: Power. It’s what PC gamers want most, right? Well, if that’s you, and you don’t have a budget, get the MSI Titan 18 HX (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It sets the definition for “large and in charge.” This machine is blinged out with tons of advanced features like a mechanical keyboard, an invisible haptic-feedback touchpad, and plenty of RGB lighting. The touchpad wasn’t my favorite, but typing and gaming on the mechanical keyboard is an absolute joy. There are a few other 18-inch laptops to consider, like the updated Alienware 18 Area-51 or the Razer Blade 18. But the incredible 4K+ mini-LED display is something you can’t get on another 18-inch laptop. Games look gorgeous on it, and thanks to the RTX 5090, you can play AAA games at that native resolution at decent frame rates. This MSI is a beast of a laptop, so don’t try to take it with you on a work trip. Trust me.

Asus ROG Z13 for $2,300: There’s nothing else quite like the ROG Flow Z13 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s a 2-in-1 laptop, not unlike the Surface Pro, but this one’s intended specifically for gaming. That might sound like a contradiction—or maybe just a bad idea. But amazingly, the ROG Flow Z13 has created a new product category in gaming over the past few years, and continues to exist alone in it. By putting all the components behind the screen instead of under the keyboard, the ROG Flow Z13 directs all that hot air away from your hands. That’s always an issue with gaming laptops, no matter how loud or thick they are. And yet, with the ROG Flow Z13, the keyboard always stays completely cool. This year’s model uses an interesting new CPU, too: the AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395, which has a massive integrated graphics chip onboard that’s even faster than discrete graphics like the RTX 4060. In my testing, I was quite satisfied with the system’s performance in games, especially given how quiet it stays and how long the battery life is. It’s expensive, but it’s also incredibly unique.

Gaming Laptops to Avoid

Acer Nitro 5

Courtesy of Acer

Ideally, you should stay away from anything older than RTX 40-series GPUs. Because laptops are not upgradeable in terms of graphics, you’ll want to buy something at least somewhat recent. Even the RTX 40-series GPUs have been out for a while. So, you’re still potentially getting something two years old. You won’t find many RTX 30-series GPUs for much cheaper than 40-series laptops anyway. Here are a few older recommendations that aren’t worth it anymore.

Acer Nitro 5 for $1,098: This is an older machine, and it was a great budget gaming laptop for a while. There are other laptops you can find around this price, like the Acer Nitro V 16 we recommend above. It has an RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512-GB SSD.

Acer Swift X 14 for $1,300: If portability is your top priority, the Swift X 14 (6/10, WIRED Review) is a nice option with good performance, thanks to its RTX 4070 graphics card and Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU. Unfortunately, it runs very hot, and the fan spins almost all the time.

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Today, Meta went to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The state claims that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by implementing design features and algorithms that created dangerous conditions for users. Now, more than two years after the case was filed, opening arguments have begun in Santa Fe.

It’s a big week for Meta in court: A landmark social media trial kicks off in California today as well, the nation’s first legal test of social media addiction. That case is part of a “JCCP,” or judicial council coordinated proceedings, that brings together many civil suits that focus on similar issues.

The plaintiffs in that case allege that social media companies designed their products in a negligent manner and caused various harms to minors using their apps. Snap, TikTok, and Google were named as defendants alongside Meta; Snap and TikTok have already settled. The fact that Meta has not means that some of the company’s top executives may be called to the witness stand in the coming weeks.

Meta executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, are not likely to testify live in the New Mexico trial. But the proceedings may still be noteworthy for a few reasons. It’s the first stand-alone, state-led case against Meta that has actually gone to trial in the US. It’s also a highly charged case alleging child sexual exploitation that will ultimately lean on very technical arguments, including what it means to “mislead” the public, how algorithmic amplification works on social media, and what protections Meta and other social media platforms have through Section 230.

And, while Meta’s top brass might not be required to appear in person, executive depositions and testimonies from other witnesses could still offer an interesting look at the inner workings of the company as it established policies around underage users and responded to complaints that claim it wasn’t doing enough to protect them.

Meta has so far given no indication that it plans to settle. The company has denied the allegations, and Meta spokesperson Aaron Simpson told WIRED previously, “While New Mexico makes sensationalist, irrelevant, and distracting arguments, we’re focused on demonstrating our long-standing commitment to supporting young people … We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we’re always working to do better.”

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a tech industry watchdog, said in an emailed statement that these two trials represent “the split screen of Mark Zuckerberg’s nightmares: a landmark trial in Los Angeles over addicting children to Facebook and Instagram, and a trial in New Mexico exposing how Meta enabled predators to use social media to exploit and abuse kids.”

“These are the trials of a generation,” Haworth added. “Just as the world watched courtrooms hold Big Tobacco and Big Pharma accountable, we will, for the first time, see Big Tech CEOs like Zuckerberg take the stand.”

The Cost of Doing Business

New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez filed his complaint against Meta in December 2023. In it, he alleged that Meta proactively served underage users explicit content, enabled adults to exploit children on the platform, allowed Facebook and Instagram users to easily find child pornography, and allowed an investigator on the case, purporting to be a mother, to offer her underage daughter to sex traffickers.

The trial is expected to take place over seven weeks. Last week jurors were selected, a panel of 10 women and eight men (12 jurors and six alternates). New Mexico First Judicial District judge Bryan Biedscheid is presiding over the case.

Following UK chip startup Fractile’s £100m expansion in Bristol, the UK government is calling for innovative tech businesses to invest in the UK.

The expansion sees the chip company expand its London and Bristol sites over the next three years to create a UK industrial hardware engineering facility. Fractile also plans to grow its UK-based team to develop and optimise next-generation systems.

The Oxford-founded chip manufacturer claims it can take on the AI acceleration chip giants with a new kind of architecture that is capable of running trained AI models up to 50 times faster and at 10% of the cost of GPU-based AI inference.

Backed by Oxford Science Enterprises and funded by Kindred Capital and the NATO Innovation Fund, the company aims to have its AI chips ready this year. It is currently expanding its team of 70 with 40 additional roles, including hardware engineering and testing, semiconductor design and software development.

Last year, Fractile caught the attention of Intel’s former CEO, Pat Gelsigner, who posted on LinkedIn that he would be investing in the startup. In a LinkedIn post, Gelsigner said that in-memory compute approach to inference acceleration that Fractile is developing, jointly tackles the two bottlenecks to scaling inference. According to Gelsigner, the approach overcomes the memory bottleneck that holds back today’s GPUs, while decimating power consumption.

At the time, he said the role of inference performance is still under-appreciated, stating: “Being able to run any given model orders of magnitude faster, at a fraction of the cost and maybe, most importantly, with a dramatically lower power envelope provides a performance leap equivalent to years of lead on model development.”

The government sees the expansion as a significant boost to the UK’s AI hardware ecosystem. Fractile positions its technology as  an alternative to Nvidia graphics processor units (GPUs) for accelerating AI inference workloads.

Announcing the investment at an event in London, UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan called for greater British technology ownership to ensure the UK can command deeper influence shaping a positive future for breakthrough tech like AI. “I am setting Britain’s AI leaders a challenge – bang the drum for startups, spread the opportunities to every corner of our country and embrace risk,” he said.

As part of its industrial strategy, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has set up the Sovereign AI Unit to build and harness the UK’s AI capabilities to unlock economic growth and enhance UK national security. The strategy also includes AI growth zones, which aim to attract investments into key areas in the UK.

A year on from announcing its AI opportunities action plan, there are now five AI growth zones across Great Britain – including two in Wales and one in Scotland – generating £28.2bn in investment, creating more than 15,000 jobs, and providing £5m of targeted funding for each zone to drive adoption at the local level. It is now looking to designate a small number of additional AI growth zones.

“By investing in British tech innovation, just as Fractile is doing today, we can reinforce our leadership in AI and boost our influence on the global stage,” Narayan added.