Gaming on a budget can be problematic because when the word “budget” collides with”gaming laptop,” you often get something with low specs that isn’t worth buying. Luckily, the last few years have seen leaps and bounds in that space, and if you’re willing to compromise a little on build quality, you can get a great budget gaming laptop, such as the Acer Nitro 5. You can even pick it up from Walmart for just $699, which is a $300 discount on the $999 it usually goes for.
Why you should buy the Acer Nitro 5
Luckily, the Acer Nitro 5 has many perks, and we’ve even named it one of our best laptops for Fortnite in the budget category, which is helped by the RTX 3060 that’s running under the hood. While it’s not the most powerful GPU, it can easily run the 15.6-inch Full HD screen at a 144Hz refresh rate, even with higher graphical settings, which is a big plus for a niche that tends to focus too much on lower graphics but higher frame rates. It also has a relatively powerful AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, which luckily helps with battery efficiency and will give you between 10-13 hours on general use with low brightness, although that’s going to be cut to a fraction when gaming.
As mentioned earlier, you do take a bit of a hit in the build quality, and while there’s not a ton of flex, you might notice some when typing on the keyboard. Thankfully, that’s not a big deal, especially if you’re mostly going to use it for gaming and light productivity work. Sadly, the Acer Nitro 5 only comes with one 8GB RAM stick, so we encourage you to grab another 8GB of RAM and upgrade it to get that dual-channel performance, which will give you a significant boost for a small cost. You might also consider supplementing the 512GB SSD with one of these external hard drive deals, especially as modern games can easily be 60GB or more.
Ultimately, the Acer Nitro 5 does an excellent job of balancing performance and cost, and with the $699 discounted price at Walmart, the value proposition becomes hard to ignore. That said, there are a lot of other excellent gaming laptop deals to look at, and whatever laptop you go for, be sure to check out these gaming deals to pair with your new gear!
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