It’s tough to find decent gaming laptops under $1,000. However, Best Buy has what I consider to be a good entry-level model for 1080p gaming in Lenovo’s 15.6-inch LOQ laptop, which is selling for $649.99 (usually $959.99) through today, April 9th. Even with its Nvidia’s RTX 4050 (its lowest-tier GPU of the series), the laptop is likely to be performant enough to play many titles at respectable frame rates if you adjust video settings per-game as needed.
A few things stand out to me about this laptop that make it worth considering. For one, I’ve always loved the typing experience of other Lenovo gaming laptops that I’ve used (impressively, this one stocks a full keyboard with a numpad). I also like that, despite being an entry-level machine, it has 16GB of speedy 4,800MHz DDR5 RAM, and you can go up to 32GB by opening up the chassis. Same goes for the SSD — it comes with a somewhat paltry 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, but there are two slots, and each tops out at 1TB.
A few other Verge-approved deals for you
- PC gamers into Destiny 2 can get every expansion for the free-to-play game in one of Humble’s bundles. The top-tier bundle is $28, and includes content dating back to the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions as well as newer expansions, like The Edge of Fate and The Final Shape. A fun perk in the $28 tier is a 25 percent off coupon for Marathon, Bungie’s latest game. It’s a punishing extraction first-person shooter for teams up to three players that Destiny fans might dig.
- If you have a Nintendo Switch 2 and are considering getting Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom’s latest entry in the franchise, here’s a deal to consider. The Resident Evil Generation Pack costs $89.99 at Amazon and Best Buy and includes Requiem, Resident Evil 7, and Resident Evil Village. Nintendo stopped selling the bundle on its eShop in March, and now it sells those older games digitally for $29.99 and $39.99, respectively — totaling $140 for all three a la carte. Here’s our review of Resident Evil Requiem.
- You can turn one AC outlet into six (with a pair of USB-C and USB-A ports, to boot) with Anker’s 10-in-1 mountable power strip. It’s down to $15.99 at Amazon, a small, but nice $4 discount off its usual price. Its leftmost USB-C port tops out at 20W charging, while the other supports up to 15W, which is enough if you want to keep your phone charged while you sleep or in between events. In case its 300-joule maximum isn’t high enough to assure you it’ll protect your priciest, most power-hungry devices, Belkin’s six-outlet surge protector offers slightly better protection (up to 1,680 joules) and costs $22.99 at Amazon.
