What is the Best Gaming Laptop under 3000 Dollars in 2023?

ASUS ROG Zephyrus S

The Zephyrus S continues the Asus ROG series as a gaming laptop brand to be reckoned with. The Zephyrus S is a great gaming laptop which to a large extent justifies that reputation, though it has its own shortcomings. This review will look at all of them and allow you to make the decision whether to get it or not.

The Zephyrus series comes in 15.6” and 17.3” sizes, and is equipped with Intel Core i7 CPUs and top-of-the-line GTX or RTX graphics cards. This model has an Intel Core i7 i7-8750H CPU, GeForce RTX 2080 with Max-Q design, and 16GB DDR4 RAM. The full specifications can be found below.

Design

Now in terms of design and aesthetics, Asus did justice with this laptop. To say the least, this machine is beautiful. It is one of the thinnest high-end gaming laptops out there.

The chassis is a slim and compact one, with a height measuring just 0.6 inches. The chassis is constructed from an ultraportable military-grade magnesium alloy, and it is quite sturdy and solid. On the lid, there’s the familiar ROG logo in a bold red color. The lid however cannot open to a wide angle, as the Lenovo Legion reviewed above.

The keyboard deck is also metal material, with a completely different approach. Above the keyboard are cooling vents that suck in cool air for the cooling system, and there’s also the familiar ROG logo on this area. This laptop is also quite lightweight, clocking up to 4.6lbs, making it one of the lightest gaming laptops around.

The display features a thin bezel, with the exception of the bottom bezel which is etched ASUS ZEPHYRUS. But then, the display is quite stylish. The Zephyrus S and has a beautiful RGB lighting system, the “Aura”. The keyboard backlight colors can be customized to suit your mood and style, and you can also configure the air intake at the back and sides with beautiful ambient lighting. Even if you don’t like the light show, you can always turn them off.

Keyboard/Trackpad

Asus did a complete departure from the norm with the layout of the keyboard deck. The keyboard layout is distinctive; its position has been brought down from its usual place on a laptop keyboard. The arrow keys are also quite smaller and could be cumbersome to use.

The keyboard is kind of too soft for typing, and you should probably look at an external keyboard with a crisper tactile response. The lights are beautiful, and you can change them via the bundled Aura software to several color modes.

The touchpad has been moved to the right, which left-handed folks will find unusable. It is quite smooth and performs multi-touch functions quite well. Also, because there’s a lack of a physical number pad, the touchpad has a number pad mode, which can be turned on with a special key.

Display

The display is a beautiful 15.6” matte display, in Full HD. It is also rated at a 144Hz refresh rate and response time of 3ms. The display also reproduces colors quite accurately, with sRGB coverage of 91.8%. Actually, the display is factory-calibrated, so it does a great job with color reproduction out of the box.

There are also decent viewing angles due to the IPS feature, though there’s some backlight bleeding along the bottom edges. Being a matte display, the images are a bit grainy, in contrast to a glossy display. But this is a minor issue anyway. The colors still come out vivid and look good.

At a display brightness of just above 300 nits, the display brightness is average. You can use this machine in the shade but forget about using it in bright sunlight.

Audio

The audio reproduction is typical. The audio is balanced, though the bass frequencies aren’t well-represented. One of the things you can do is to download the Nahimic app from the Windows store and install it. The sound should come off better. Otherwise, a good headset or speakers would help.

Battery Life

The 50 Whr battery does a piss-poor job of keeping this machine humming during gaming, which is what this laptop is designed to do. It manages a little under 50 minutes at intense gaming and can clock up to 3:30 hours in normal usage. For a laptop of this caliber, this is unacceptable.

We know that gaming laptops are plagued with poor battery life, but this is way too poor. So if you plan to work away from home or the office, then please carry your charger. Asus, please work on this.

Temps

This machine also battles with heat issues, as is common with most high-end gaming laptops crammed with powerful components. The keyboard is mostly cool during intense gaming, while the heat is concentrated above it and at the underside. The airflow cooling system is innovative; drawing in air from the top and bottom of the chassis, and pushing hot air out through the sides and back.

The fans can be adjusted to fit whatever you are doing, whether doing light typing work, in which case silent mode is best, or doing some graphic design or video editing, in which balanced mode is best, or intense gaming, in which turbo mode is best. We loved the flexibility of the fan speed settings.

Gameplay/Performance of the Asus Zephyrus S

The combined power of the i7 processor and RTX 2080 do a great job of destroying anything you throw at this machine. Of course, its shortcomings with heat and poor battery life are compensated with its processing power and responsiveness.

With this machine, you can play most games at the highest settings without breaking a sweat. Here’s a sampling of games with benchmarks.

GAME	FPS	SETTINGS
Battlefield V	100-120/68-78(Raytracing on/off)	Ultra
Doom	130-140	Ultra
Far Cry 5	103	Ultra
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor	189	Ultra
Rise of Tomb Raider	94	Ultra
Shadow of Tomb Raider	88	Ultra
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	90-118	Ultra

In terms of system performance, the Zephyrus S scores 6690 Points on the PC Mark 10 Digital Content Creation tests. File transfer isn’t as speedy as other brands in this review, with Sequential reads topping out at 1238.57MB/s and writes at 920MB/s.

Connectivity

The machine lacks some major connectivity options such as Thunderbolt, a card reader, and Ethernet. However, there’s an HDMI port, USB 2 and 3 ports, an audio jack, and Bluetooth 5. There’s also Wi-Fi delivered by the Intel AC 9560 wireless radio.

Upgradability

This unit has a total of 16GB RAM, with 8GB permanently soldered to the mainboard. You only have just one slot for upgrades. But how practical is this when you have to match the RAM timings and latencies for best performance? Your best bet will be to use the same type of RAM and probably add a 16GB stick for a total memory of 24GB.

You can also upgrade the storage if you want, though you are limited to just one slot too.

 Specifications of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S

Display	15.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 px, IPS, 144 Hz, Pantone Validated, non-touch, matte
CPU	Intel Coffee Lake-H Core i7-8750H CPU
Graphics	Intel HD 630 + Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q 8GB
RAM	16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz (8GB soldered + 1x 8GB DIMM)
SSD	512 GB SSD (Intel 660p SSD PEKNW512G8) – 1x M.2 NVMe 80 mm slot
Networking	Wireless AC (Intel AC 9560), Bluetooth 5.0
Additional Features	4-zone RGB backlit keyboard, HD webcam, 2x 2W front-facing speakers
Ports	1x USB-A 3.1, 2x USB-A 2.0, 1x USB-C gen 2 with DP and PowerDelivery, 1x USB-C gen 1, HDMI 2.0, mic/earphone, Kensington Lock
Audio	4x 2W speakers, 1x subwoofer, 1x headphone jack, 1x microphone jack, 1x line-in, 1x line out
Camera	No
Battery	50 Whr, 230 W brick
Power Adapter	330W
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions (WxDxH)	360 mm or 14.17” (w) x 268 mm or 10.55 (d) x 16.2 mm or .63” (h)
Weight	4.58 lbs (2.08 kg) + 1.72 lbs (.78 kg) power brick, EU model

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MSI GS75 Stealth Gaming Laptop

MSI lives up to its reputation as a foremost maker of high-tech computer hardware, especially gaming gear and accessories. The MSI GS75 Stealth Gaming Laptop is a clear example of beauty and craftsmanship blended together to produce a mean gaming machine that can compete or even outperform a gaming desktop PC.

The MSI GS75 Stealth Gaming Laptop is a 17.3” model armed with an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2080 8G with Max-Q design, a 144Hz 3ms display, an Intel Core i7-8750H – 6 core CPU, and 32GB of fast DDR4 RAM. To a large extent, these are high-end components that deliver blazing fast gaming performance.

Design

The all-black plastic material of the MSI GS75 Stealth is solidly built, with a little flex on the lid. The black color is punctuated by gold in some places including the logo on the lid, the hinges, and the cooling vents. You’ll also find the touchpad rimmed with this lovely golden material all around, and the rims of the chassis.

On the lid is the familiar MSI emblem in gold, and when you open the lid, you’ll notice the thin-bezel display is just 5.2mm thick. On the top is the diminutive webcam, placed at a vantage position for video shots. One issue we noticed is that this machine chassis collects dust rather quickly, due to the material used in the build. This is a minor issue anyways.

You can even open or close the lid with just one finger. The weight is just a little over 5lbs, which is impressive for a laptop this big. The keyboard deck is expansive, with a full keyboard layout. The Stealth has exceptional build and design quality no doubt but read on to find out about performance.

Keyboard/Trackpad

Beautiful keyboard. Beautiful backlight. There’s also per-key lighting which is fully customizable. When you hit the function key, the function keys light up which is cool. The keys themselves have a nice feel and respond well without being too springy.

You’ll find out that the Windows key was removed from the left side of the keyboard. This might take a while to get used to, however, so it’s not a major issue. Also, there are some minor alterations to the usual keyboard layout, such as the arrow keys intruding into the number pad area.

For the touchpad, the feel is super-silky smooth glass material which allows you to do virtually any kind of multi-touch operation. The size is also much bigger than the average touchpad by 35% in width, and although it lacks the familiar two buttons, it is able to perform clicks easily. one downside of this unusual size is that the touchpad gets in the way of typing with this keyboard. 

Display

Without a doubt, the Stealth has a super-beautiful Full HD display with good color output (up to 78% sRGB coverage), and the images are sharp and crisp too. The matte display is bright enough for everyday gaming, at 345 nits, though in bright sunlight visibility is a different matter entirely.

The 144Hz refresh rate/3ms response time helps in fluid gaming, and the viewing angles are also wide enough. The display is well-suited for gaming, and also photo/video editing on this machine. By a long shot, the display on this laptop is excellent.

Audio

The speakers are located near the front, on both sides. The sound output is loud enough, but the bass is almost absent, that is unless you attach an external speaker or headphones.

Battery Life

The Stealth clocked up to 6 hours on battery tests for everyday tasks. When it comes to gaming, however, you should expect roughly 2:30 hours of non-stop gaming.

Temps

This machine runs hot, no surprise though, with the high-end gaming components it is built with. You may need to download the Throttlestop app which does a good job of disabling the Turbo performance scheme, thereby keeping this machine in the 50-65o Celsius temperature range and just turning it on when you might need it. You’ll see massive temperature drops doing it. Otherwise, it will run 90-100^oCelsius which is bad for your laptop components.

The cooling system on the Stealth consists of 3 fans, up to 47 blades each, 7 copper heat pipes, and 4 exhausts, all working tirelessly to cool the CPU and GPU. The fans can get quite noisy during gameplay though, but this is typical for laptops in this class, no thanks to the high-ticket processor and GPU it has to cool.

Gameplay/Performance

This machine screams excellent gaming performance; it allows you to run any game on max settings and usually get between 60 – 100fps. It is also powerful enough to play games in 4K if you connect to a capable external monitor. Here are some game benchmarks for the Stealth.

GAME	FPS	SETTINGS
BioShock Infinite	263.6/163.7	High/Ultra
The Witcher 3	135/76.9	High/Ultra
Far Cry 5	99/95	High/Ultra
Batman: Arkham Knight	134/92	Ultra High
Ashes of the Singularity	81	High
Ark Survival Evolved	63.5/43.9	High/Ultra
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	77	High
Rage 2	96.1/93.3	High/Ultra

The system performs great in terms of system performance, scoring a respectable 37968 points in 3D Mark 06 standard tests. File transfer is also fast, with speeds up to 3420MB/s for sequential write, and 3514MB/s for sequential read speeds. You should encounter no performance issues with this laptop, whether gaming, editing photos/videos, or just plain everyday computing.

Connectivity

The Stealth is loaded with ports aplenty. There’re USB 3 ports, Thunderbolt, Bluetooth, a MicroSD card reader, Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller, and Killer Wireless-ac. One of the ports lacking is a mini display port for hooking it up to an external G-Sync enabled display. This is not a major issue though; the DisplayPort takes care of that.

There’re also audio jacks for speakers and a mic.

Upgradability

We don’t really think you want to upgrade the RAM. At 32GB there’s ample memory for whatever you might want to do with this machine. But if you must, you can still add another stick to bump the RAM up to 64GB.

For storage, this unit comes with a pair of NVMe drives in RAID O, and the system counts it as a 2TB drive. However, if you need more storage, there’s an empty NVMe m.2 drive bay, which you can populate with a drive easily.

Specifications of the MSI GS75 Stealth

Display	17.3 inch 16:9, 1920 x 1080p, 127 PPI, IPS, 144 Hz, glossy: no
CPU	Intel Core i7-9750H 6 x 2.6 – 4.5 GHz, Coffee Lake-H
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 -Q – 8192 MB, Core: 990 MHz, Memory: 1500 MHz, GDDR6, 256-bit connection, Optimus
RAM	32768 MB DDR4-2666, dual-channel, two SO-DIMM slots, max. 64 GB.
Storage	2x Samsung SSD PM981 (RAID 0), 2048 GB Slots: 3x M.2 2280: 2x occupied (NVMe/SATA), 1x free (SATA)., 1803 GB free
Soundcard	Realtek ALC1220 @ Intel Cannon Lake PCH
Mainboard	Intel HM370
Networking	Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (up to 5000MBit/s), Killer Wireless-AC 1550i Wireless Network Adapter (9560NGW) (a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi 4/ac, Wi-Fi 5), Bluetooth 5
Ports	1 USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen1, 4 USB 3.1 Gen2, 1 Thunderbolt, 1 HDMI, 1 DisplayPort, 1 Kensington Lock, Audio Connections: Dedicated 3.5 mm headphone and microphone jacks, Card Reader: MicroSD
USB Ports	3x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1x USB 2.0 Type-A, 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C
Additional Features	Speakers: Stereo, Keyboard: SteelSeries, RGB, Keyboard Light: yes, Dragon Center, Norton Security trial, 24 Months Warranty
Camera	Webcam: HD, Primary Camera: 0.9mp
Battery	80.25 Whr, 5380 mAh Lithium-Ion, 4-cells
Power Adapter	230W
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro x64
Dimensions (WxDxH)	Height x width x depth (in mm): 18.9 x 396 x 259 (0.74 x 15.59 x 10.2 in)
Weight	2.28 kg (80.42 oz / 5.03 pounds), Power Supply: 724 g (25.54 oz / 1.6 pounds)

Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model

A sibling of the Razer Pro 17, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced model is one of the Razer gaming laptops released early summer of 2020, with an updated configuration featuring Intel 10^th Gen processors and NVIDIA RTX GPUs. The Advanced model differs a bit from the base model, in terms of configuration.

This model is the 15.6” Advanced Model with Intel Core i7-10875H 8-Core processor, NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q GPU, 16GB RAM, a 4K OLED display, and all the bells and whistles such as beautiful RGB lighting, numerous connectivity options all wrapped in a well-designed chassis.

Design

This laptop has a similar design to the Razer Pro 17, so please refer to the Razer Pro 17 review for details. The CNC Aluminum chassis stands out boldly, giving the machine a lean weight footprint. This is one of the most striking features of this laptop. It’s also quite slim, with a thickness of just 0.7 inches.

One thing to take note of is the ease with which it gathers fingerprints, due to the glossy finished chassis. Not a major issue but worth mentioning though.                                                                                                       

Keyboard/Trackpad

It comes equipped with a beautiful full-sized keyboard with per-key RGB lighting which is a delight. You can also control the lighting with the Razer Chroma. The keyboard has good responsiveness and feel.

The large Precision Glass Touchpad is also fantastic, as far as touchpads go. The feel is super-smooth and you can do a lot of swipes and pinch on it, and more. But there’s a problem; the touchpad has no physical button to disable it.

Display

The 15.6” display does justice to pictures and video, and most especially gaming. With refresh rates of up to 300Hz and up to 3ms response time, the 15.6” FHD thin bezel display provides visual clarity and support for up to 100% sRGB color. It is also custom calibrated right out the box for color accuracy and perfection. The 4K OLED touch display is beautiful and vivid, and makes you want to look at it all day long.

Audio

The Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers are ok and typical with less bass. We don’t really expect stellar sound reproduction on the speakers, but you can get close to this with external speakers or quality headphones like the Razer Kraken Gaming Headset.

Battery Life

The Blade 15 Advanced model offers average battery life, at just a little over 2 hours for intense gaming. If you are doing regular stuff, you could easily squeeze out up to 4 hours plus on the machine.

However, understand that disabling some features, like the Chroma lighting, switching to integrated graphics while running on batteries, and adjusting the brightness can all go a long way to wringing out a much longer battery life from this machine.

Temps

Under full load, the laptop manages to stay at a not-too-hot temperature of 79oc, thanks to its awesome Vapor Chamber cooling system. All the same, the top can get quite warm during prolonged use, which could be uncomfortable for the hands. I guess this is an issue with powerful laptops like these until the manufacturers figure out a way to effectively eliminate heat issues.

Gameplay/Performance

This machine destroys every game thrown at it, at high or ultra-settings. It also performs incredibly fast in normal system file copy operations. We don’t expect less from a machine as powerful as the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model.

Here’s a brief summary of some game benchmarks.

GAME	FPS	SETTINGS
Escape from Tarkov	120.5/119.5	High/Ultra
Anno 1800	75/45	High/Ultra
Far Cry 5	108/102	High/Ultra
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	104/92.5	High/Ultra
Assassin´s Creed Odyssey	76.5/56	High/Ultra
Hitman 2	78.6/77	High/Ultra
Metro Exodus	76.1/61	High/Ultra

The system comes with a single 1TB NVMe drive, which returned speeds as high as 3100MB/s sequential read speed, and 2100MB/s write speed. Not bad.

Connectivity

There are lots of connectivity options including HDMI, Card reader, USB 3, and Ethernet. Please see the specifications below for full details.

Upgradability

Really upgradable, but the presence of just 1 NVMe slot makes nonsense of the storage upgrade. The RAM can be increased to a maximum of 64GB, which is good.

Specifications of the Razer 15 Blade Advanced Model

Display	15.6″ 4K, 3840 x 2160, OLED, 100% DCI-P3, 1ms response time, 16:9 aspect ratio, touchscreen w/ 4.9mm bezel, individually factory calibrated, 60Hz
CPU	9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-9750H, 6 Cores / 12 Threads, 2.6GHz / 4.5GHz (Base / Max Turbo), 12MB Cache
Graphics (Discreete/Integrated)	NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2080 with Max-Q Design (8GB GDDR6 VRAM, Optimus™ Technology)/Intel® UHD Graphics 630
RAM	16GB dual-channel DDR4- 2667MHz (8GB x 2)
SSD	1TB SSD (M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4)
Input & Output	Precision glass touchpad
Additional Features	Razer™ Synapse 3 enabled with programmable keyboard, backlighting, fan control, Kensington™ Security Slot, Intel® Platform Trust Technology (Intel® PTT) security enabled
Networking	Intel® Wireless-AX200 (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax, and Bluetooth® 5 connectivity)
Ports	HDMI 2.0B output, Mini DisplayPort 1.4 output, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (USB-A) x3, Thunderbolt™ 3 (USB-C), 3.5mm headphone/mic port
Finish	Anodized Black, backlit green Razer logo
Audio	Built-in stereo speakers, Built-in array microphone, Dolby® Atmos support, 7.1 Codec support (via HDMI)
Camera	Windows® Hello built-in IR HD webcam (1MP / 720P)
Battery	Built-in 80Whr rechargeable lithium-ion polymer battery
Power Adapter	230W
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions (WxDxH)	0.70″ / 17.8mm x 9.25″ / 235mm x 13.98″ / 355mm
Weight	4.87 lbs / 2.21 kg

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