If you're searching for a high-performance gaming laptop that combines top-tier specs with an ultra-sleek design, the best thin and light gaming laptops offer an excellent solution. In 2024, there are more options than ever before, and they're becoming increasingly competitively priced.
Traditionally, gaming laptops equipped with the best graphics cards and processors have been bulky and heavy, which can be inconvenient for gamers on the go. While high performance is great for overclocking and playing AAA games at max settings, portability often suffers. That's where thin and light gaming laptops come into play, striking a balance between a lighter frame and exceptional performance.
One consideration with these slimmer models is thermal performance, as the compact design can lead to increased heat buildup. To mitigate this, you might want to invest in one of the best laptop cooling pads, especially if you plan on long gaming sessions.
We've compiled a list of the best thin and light gaming laptops available, featuring top brands like Lenovo, Razer, Dell, and Alienware. With years of experience reviewing thousands of products, we've identified the best options to help you find the perfect gaming laptop that meets both your performance needs and portability preferences.
The quick list
Want to cut to the chase and find out what the best thin and light gaming laptops are? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices, and you can jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
Best thin and light gaming laptop overall
Despite its 14-inch display and svelte nature, the Lenovo Legion 5 Slim 14 is the best value option especially as it comes with current-gen specs.
The best budget
An excellent cheap option that doesn't sacrifice performance, it has a fast display, a great port selection, and a thin, lightweight chassis.
The best premium
For a thin and light gaming laptop, the Origin EON 16SL is an absolutely monster of a machine, bringing incredible performance with a best-in-class display.
The best for creators
This stylish yet robust laptop offers impressive QHD+ performance and boasts a fast and accurate display for creative workloads.
The best for 1440p gaming
A premium gaming laptop with a great display and a decent battery life, this comes with powerful specs to handle excellent 1440p gaming at 240fps.
The best 17-inch option
While staying portable and stylish, this powerful, long-lasting, large-screen laptop will see you through gaming and creative workloads.
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The best with 240Hz display
This stunning gaming laptop delivers top-tier performance and a well-balanced chassis. The best part: it offers a fast display offering a 240Hz refresh rate.
The thinnest gaming laptop
With its particularly slender form factor, this belies some top-notch specs while weighing less and being thinner than the rest of the options here.
The best thin and light gaming laptops in 2023
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Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best Windows laptop in our list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best thin and light gaming laptop overall
✅ You want an easy-to-carry laptop: At 14 inches and fairly lightweight, this is very easy to take on the go.
✅ You want great performance: You'll get fantastic gaming performance out of this machine, even at high settings, no question.
❌ You want a better webcam: The webcam on this laptop is fairly middling, so invest in a better webcam if you plan on livestreaming.
❌ You want ray tracing: Though general performance is excellent, ray tracing will bog it down considerably.
The Lenovo Legion 5 Slim 14 stands out for its exceptional thinness and lightness, offering a comprehensive package of size, performance, price, and aesthetics. This laptop is exceptionally portable with its 14-inch display and feather-light build, effortlessly fitting into most bags without adding bulk or taking up significant space.
Powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, upgradable to Ryzen 9, and with a GPU option up to the RTX 4060, the Legion 5 Slim 14 excels in both productivity and 1080p gaming, even stretching into some 1440p gaming territory. It delivers impressive benchmark scores and framerates, handling maximum settings in AAA games with ease. The device is also capable in creative and editing tasks, backed by its stunning display that boasts excellent resolution, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, HDR support, up to 500 nits brightness, and a 120Hz refresh rate, catering well to both gaming and creative needs.
However, it's important to note a few limitations. Its ray tracing performance is underwhelming, with noticeable framerate drops when used. Battery life varies significantly based on usage as well. And, while remarkably slim and light, the laptop is slightly thicker than some competitors.
Read the full Lenovo Legion 5 Slim 14 review
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The best budget thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want to game on a budget: Let’s face it: gaming laptops can be bloody expensive, but if you cheap out, you’ll likely be stuck with low frame rates or poor graphics. The MSI GF63 Thin walks the line between value and performance expertly.
✅ You need a multi-purpose laptop: Decent performance in just about every area and a reserved design means that the GF63 Thin can happily double as a laptop for work or study, as well as be a solid PC gaming device.
❌ You want ray tracing: While it’s technically capable, the RTX 3050 Ti just isn’t really able to run games with ray-tracing settings turned on.
❌ You need good battery life: The battery life on offer here is far from dismal, but it’s not what we’d call impressive, if you want to keep the brightness at maximum, you’ll need to plug in.
Budget gaming laptops that still deliver on performance are hard to find, which makes the MSI GF63 Thin (2022) an excellent choice for those wanting to save without having to sacrifice too much in specs in return. The starting price is one that most gaming laptops can’t hope to match in this generation of performance behemoths, especially one that’s also so thin and lightweight. Its battery life is average, but that’s what you’d expect from a gaming laptop in the first place.
Its specs include up to an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, though the Core i5 version is more prominent, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. For the latter, you can also get the GeForce GTX 1650 GPU version for a cheaper price point, which still can handle most games just fine, but we found after testing that it’s best to pay a bit more for the 3050 Ti, as the gaming performance is more than worth it.
The display is also 1080p HD and we found that when combined with its 144Hz refresh made for a smooth gameplay experience and a clear vibrant picture quality. However, it’s not well-suited for high demand tasks, like 4K video editing and running number-crunching scientific programs. The port selection is excellent as well, with every type you need. In fact, in comparison to many other current-gen gaming laptops we’ve tested, it surpasses them all. It does have issues with bloatware, and sometimes the charging cable can block those many ports too.
Read the full MSI GF63 Thin (2022) review
The best premium thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want a thin and light gaming laptop: It weighs surprisingly little for its specs and can easily carry around.
✅ You want great performance: Performance scores high on every benchmark with high frame rates at highest settings.
❌ You want a better webcam: The webcam is pretty average, so not great for livestreaming.
❌ You want a better ventilation system: It mostly warm, but it will run hot under stress.
The Origin EON 16SL is a true dark horse of gaming laptops, as it’s able to balance performance with one of the thinnest and lightest form factors of any of 2023’s offerings. Origin has truly knocked it out of the park with its aesthetic, allowing buyers to customize their laptop exactly how they want it. Even better is the pricing, which is much more reasonable compared to other competing gaming laptops.
Despite having a 16-inch display, it fits well in most medium-sized bags and its lightness keeps it from weighing down your bag while the thin chassis ensures it doesn’t take up much space. Thanks to its robust spec options, including the RTX 4000-series GPU and the 13th-Gen Intel Core i9 CPU, this device delivers outstanding performance, enabling Cyberpunk 2077 to achieve over 90fps on high settings and even surpass 60fps with 'Ray Tracing Overdrive' enabled. Additionally, the 16-inch QHD+ display boasts an impressive 240Hz refresh rate, guaranteeing smooth, stutter-free gameplay.
Even with the impressive performance of the Origin EON 16SL, it is not without its drawbacks. One notable issue is its mediocre webcam, which demands good lighting conditions to produce acceptable image quality. Additionally, while the cooling system is adequate for standard gaming use, it falls short of perfection. This becomes evident as the laptop's underside tends to overheat during prolonged and heavy gaming sessions.
Read the full Origin EON 16SL review
