Sure, you can find a gaming laptop for under a grand. But you’re going to have to make some compromises — no way you’re getting the latest tech in there like an OLED display. Unless you’re an especially good deal hunter and you happen to be looking right now. Best Buy is selling a Lenovo Legion Slim 5, with said OLED display and an RTX graphics card, for just $979.99.
The Legion Slim 5 mixes a little ThinkPad understatement with gaming power and this 14.5-inch laptop also has a gorgeous 2880×1800 OLED display. It’s no chump in terms of speed either thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate. The Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card might not be the beefiest on the market, but it should be enough to let you play the latest AAA games and absolutely scream through fast-paced multiplayer shooters and MOBAs.
With an 8-core Ryzen 7 78040HS processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage, this thing is more than ready to handle all the standard Windows 11 tasks, too. If that’s not enough, you can pop off the bottom for some upgrades — two SO-DIMM DDR5 RAM slots and an M.2 Gen4 slot are both user-accessible, according to this quick peek under the hood on YouTube. It should make repairs (like a battery swap) easy, too. This thing also has a generous selection of ports: two USB-C on the left, headset and full SD card on the right, and HDMI and double USB-A on the back. No need to pack a USB-C dongle here.
Normally $1,479.99, Best Buy is selling this model for $500 off the retail price. In fact, this model with a Ryzen 7 and 1TB of storage is far cheaper than the Ryzen 5/512GB version. Shipping is free, but if you happen to be near a Best Buy retail store, you might also be able to walk in and pick one up.
Get this RTX-powered OLED laptop for $980Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.