Skip to main content

Should you buy a gaming laptop on Black Friday 2021?

You might be considering buying one of the best gaming laptops released this year in the Black Friday deals.

There are plenty of good options to be looking out for, whether you’re purchasing a gaming laptop now or waiting for Black Friday gaming laptop deals.

  • View Gaming Laptop Black Friday Deals at Amazon
  • View Gaming Laptop Black Friday Deals at Best Buy
  • View Gaming Laptop Black Friday Deals at Dell
  • View Gaming Laptop Black Friday Deals at Walmart

Black Friday is the best time to buy a gaming laptop — but shop early deals

Gaming laptops will be a hot product for Black Friday this year. You’ll likely see some impressive discounts on popular models, especially on the cheaper, budget-level laptops.

There are plenty of reasons to buy early, however. The ongoing chip shortage and problems with the supply chain could cause some significant delays for the holiday season this year. That means the extravagant gift you might be planning may not show up in time if you wait until Black Friday. What good would that be?

Now, you’ll need to be careful about what gaming laptop you choose. There are plenty of cheap gaming laptops to avoid, which can be tempting for their price. You’ll see old gaming laptops with older generations of GPUs, such as the GTX 1650. That’s not a gaming experience you’ll likely be satisfied with, even if you’re only spending $600 or $700.

Instead, the key is to look for newer budget gaming laptops that are discounted by a few couple hundred bucks.

For example, right now you can buy the Asus TUF Gaming Laptop, which you can buy at Best Buy for $800, which comes with an RTX 3050 Ti, Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 17.3-inch 144Hz screen. A laptop like this costs just $100 more but will offer a much smoother experience.

Why buy a gaming laptop?

Gaming laptops have never been better. They’re thinner, sleeker, and more powerful than ever. Although gaming laptops are not cheap, you have more options than ever for what type of gaming laptop you can buy.

There’s been a rise in smaller, thinner gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Swift X13, which is no bigger than a standard 13-inch laptop. Then, there’s the Razer Blade 14, which is a compact laptop even though its RTX 3080 and Ryzen 9 5900HX are extremely powerful.

Razer Blade 14 front view showing display and user.

We are even starting to see more gaming laptops that double just as well as standard work or content creation laptops that rival those you can find in Black Friday laptop deals. For example, the Surface Laptop Studio comes with an RTX 3050 Ti and a 120Hz screen, while the MSI Creator Z16 increases that to an RTX 3060 and a Core i9 processor.

Beyond that, gaming laptops are the best way to get into PC gaming right now. The GPU shortage is making upgrading or building your own PC a complete disaster right now, putting all the lovely tenets of PC gaming in 2021 out of the reach of the average gamer.

Gaming laptops are now powerful enough to support higher resolutions and refresh rates, as well as ray tracing. Thanks to the RTX 30-series graphics cards and excellent gaming processors from Intel and AMD, gaming laptops can be plugged into external monitors and peripherals to recreate the larger format experience of PC gaming as well.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Larsen
Senior Editor, Computing
Luke Larsen is the Computing Editor at Digital Trends and manages all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, and…
Best Buy Black Friday deals: TVs, laptops and air fryers
Best Buy Black Friday

Black Friday has flown by, but if you missed out on yesterday's Black Friday deals, don't worry. The below Best Buy Black Friday deals are all still out there, but they won't hang around for long. With deep discounts on all kinds of tech, including tech for the home theater like TVs and soundbars, as well as laptops and Chromebooks, Best Buy has gone all out this year. Whatever your budget, there's something awesome for you here. To help you navigate the huge sale, read on while we take you through the highlights, saving you time and money with the best deals around.
Top 5 Best Buy Black Friday deals

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K -- $25, was $50
Lenovo Chromebook 3 11-inch -- $90, was $219
Bose QuietComfort 45 -- $249, was $329
Insignia 58-inch F30 4K TV -- $300, was $580
Hisense 70-inch 4K TV -- $550, was $450

Read more
2-in-1 laptop Black Friday deals: Dell, HP and Microsoft from $99
Best Black Friday Laptop Deals

Didn't find the perfect Black Friday deal yesterday? Don't worry! Though Black Friday is over for another year, the best 2-in-1 Black Friday deals are still available. Black Friday competition is forcing all manufacturers and retailers to cut prices on their tablet/laptop combos. If you simply can't decide whether you need a tablet or a laptop, a 2-in-1 laptop has just solved the issue for you by providing you with both. With so many different Black Friday deals around, we've helped simplify matters by rounding up the best options below. Read on while we take you through laptop choices from major brands like Dell, HP, Microsoft, and many more. In no time, you'll be saving big and enjoying the prospect of a new 2-in-1 laptop.

Read more
Don’t get tricked by bad MacBook deals for Black Friday. Buy these instead
The gold MacBook Air M1's logo and keyboard.

Every year for Black Friday, optimistic MacBook buyers get suckered into purchasing a laptop they should never have bought. It's understandable enough -- Apple's products rarely go on sale, so when you see a Black Friday MacBook deal for under $500, it's hard not to get excited.

But let me promise you something: If you buy one of these highly discounted and very old MacBooks, you will be sorely disappointed by what you get.

Read more