This month I've been testing: Gaming laptops, headphones, and the odd mouse or two. I've also fallen back into the time sink that is Diablo 4, because the best way to test a gaming mouse is to hammer it repeatedly while swearing. Probably.
One of the clichés you learn to avoid as a writer is starting a piece with "when I was younger." However, I am nothing if not contrarian, so without further ado—when I was younger, gaming laptops were rubbish.
From tank-like chassis designs, to scratchy plastics, to keyboards that felt like typing on bubble wrap, there was something majorly wrong with almost all of them. The long-held advice was: if you're looking for a gaming machine, don't buy a laptop. Proper gaming PCs were for play, mobile machines were for work, and buying a gaming laptop was an easy way to waste your money.
Over the years, that perception has changed. Certainly, it's been possible to buy a properly powerful gaming laptop for a while now for a reasonable price, and we at PC Gamer spend our days hunting down the best gaming laptop deals for that very reason.
Portability, too, has come a long way. Slim, svelte machines that can slip into your backpack without issue while still allowing some gaming on your next flight are now much more commonplace, and the world is better for it.
But 2024 felt like a sea change moment for me. Despite recent advances, I started the year still of the opinion that, while gaming laptops were much better than they once were, they were still a step or two away from being the ultra-flexible, futuristic machines we all desire in our heads.
And then I got my hands on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16. I still remember the moment I pulled it from its box, and literally laughed out loud. It's absurdly thin, with a milled aluminium chassis that's part MacBook (boo, hiss), part sci-fi (yay). The glittering slashed rear lid design is pin-sharp in person, the form factor discreet. You could easily bring this to a meeting and never raise an eyebrow, except for perhaps from some uninformed soul wondering whether they missed the latest Apple announcement.
Except my review model had a mobile RTX 4090 inside it. And that, if you ever get the chance to hold a G16, is absurd. I remember flipping it around in my hands. Where exactly had it gone? How on earth is it going to keep it cool?
Well, the short answer is, it doesn't. The G16 is yet another laptop where shoving Nvidia's top-spec mobile GPU into the frame is a bad idea. And yet, it was better than I thought it would be when it came to performance. Yes, that GPU is heavily thermally throttled, and yes, the fans spin up a treat, but it was better. Not good enough to justify buying one with this particular graphics chip onboard, but still mightily impressive in a laptop this sleek and desirable.
As a result of this mismatched GPU and chassis combo, I had to take a sizable amount off the score in my review of the G16. Thanks to the presence of the RTX 4090, it was too expensive, and it simply didn't make sense to buy the particular model I had in my hands.
Gosh it was nice, though. So I was very pleased to see that my dear colleague Jacob, in his review of a Strix Point and RTX 4070-equipped version, fell in love with it as much as I did. This was very similar to my review unit, with the mega-GPU caveat removed. And what a fantastic laptop it is.
Jacob also reviewed its smaller sibling, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, and gushed about its virtues to all who would listen. Both the G16 and the G14 have OLED screens, nice keyboards, excellent speakers, good battery life, and that cant-put-your-finger-on-it feeling of premium. Not only that, but we've been finding them on discount all year, making both of these laptops even better value than they are at MSRP.
2024 to me felt like the year gaming laptops started to ditch their cantankerous roots, and began blossoming into something altogether more refined.
It's not just Asus that's been having a year of it, either. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9 impressed our Katie immensely, thanks to its fantastic speed, impressive Thermal Mode, and thick-yet-understated chassis.
This is a mean machine, and while not as portable as the Zephyrus models, certainly makes a case for itself as a grown up, powerful gaming laptop for those of us that don't spend all of our waking lives bathing in RGB.
Want another? How about the Razer Blade 14, a perfectly portable little machine with an all-metal chassis, a great trackpad, and a long battery life. It's not massively different to the Razer Blade models before it, but looks and feels like a refinement of a formula long iterated on in the Razer labs. Gaming laptops are getting better, it seems, and all of a sudden the portable gaming machine future starts to look very bright indeed.
Check out more of the year's best tech in our PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024 coverage.
Of course, there are exceptions. The MSI Titan 18 HX A14V feels like it comes from a different era entirely, and the Asus Strix Scar 18 is still a bit of a dinosaur despite having some redeeming features. But overall? 2024 to me felt like the year gaming laptops started to ditch their cantankerous roots, and began blossoming into something altogether more refined.
Which makes me very excited for 2025. When it comes to components, we've only just started seeing the latest Strix Point and Lunar Lake laptops hitting the market, and we've been impressed in our early testing with what the new mobile CPUs can provide. CES 2025 is usually the venue for major laptop releases, and I can't wait to get my hands on the latest models when I fly out to Vegas at the start of next year.
And as for GPUs? Well, who knows at this point. While we're expecting to see a range of new Nvidia graphics cards releasing next year, how long it'll be before mobile versions appear in new machines is anyone's guess. Although, given that CES has always been about laptops, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a mobile GPU launch or two thrown in the mix. Regardless, whatever the new mobile chips end up being, I imagine they'll still pump out heat in a way that gives manufacturers headaches.
But with everything else about gaming laptops seemingly improving, I'm very curious to see what the next generation looks like when manufacturers start churning out new models with the latest components. 2024 may be the year when gaming laptops grew up, but as for what they might look like in 2025? I think we should all be very excited to find out.
