This is the best gaming laptop I could buy for $400 USD!
But despite the lower price, it still has Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics,
so you can get an FPS boost with DLSS in lots of games.
RTX 3050 gaming laptops start from $650 on Best Buy right now,
which is way more than what I spent for similar performance in games.
And this isn’t just because I bought this laptop second hand!
Micro Center in the US had a very similar Gateway laptop on sale for $399 until recently,
proving 400 bucks for a brand new RTX 3050 laptop is possible. It does
still have a sale for now, except they put it up $50 a few days ago.
But that’s just the nature of sales, they come and go every day, which is why we run
the gaminglaptop.deals website. We update it every day with all of the latest sales so that
you can save money with your next laptop, you can check it out with the link below.
The laptop I’ve got here is Gigabyte’s G5. It has a 6 core Intel processor,
Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics, 16 gigs of RAM and a 144Hz screen.
So just to be clear, I bought this Gigabyte G5 second hand for $400 USD as it was the
best gaming laptop I could find in Australia. But I’ve also demonstrated that it is possible
to get a brand new gaming laptop with these same specs in the US if you can find the right sale.
So let’s find out how well a $400 gaming laptop performs in games!
I’ve tested Cyberpunk 2077 with and without DLSS enabled, because let’s be real,
if you’re buying a gaming laptop with RTX graphics it makes sense to use DLSS. That said,
I don’t have data from other laptops with DLSS on, so we could of course get an FPS boost from
the other RTX laptops too. The point I’m trying to show here is that we can get a 50% FPS boost
with this simple change on our $400 laptop. But then even without DLSS, our $400 laptop
was performing much better compared to the ASUS ROG Ally, a $700 handheld gaming console.
There’s a smaller 26% FPS boost in Red Dead Redemption 2 with DLSS on,
and DLSS was just able to get it to 60 FPS with high settings. The older and
cheaper GTX 1660 Ti performed a little better, but GTX laptops can’t use DLSS,
so it’s fair to say the 3050 can definitely do better with DLSS. You can of course use FSR
on GTX graphics to get an FPS boost too, but generally speaking, DLSS is better than FSR.
Next up is Control, our cheap 3050 was 25% faster compared to the same GPU in MSI’s GF63, which has
much worse build quality and generally costs more. MSI’s laptop has a lower 40 watt GPU power limit,
so this just goes to show that there’s more to performance than the name of the GPU model. That
GTX 1660 Ti laptop was much further ahead this time, but this game is an example of
one that doesn’t have FSR support, only DLSS, and turning that on pushes the G5 above 60 FPS.
So generally speaking, in those 3 games at 1080p high settings,
our $400 gaming laptop was getting us around 60 FPS with DLSS on.
It’s also always performing better than the ASUS ROG Ally. To be fair that is
a smaller handheld console, but it also costs $300 more. But I’ve already done a
whole video comparing a $700 gaming laptop against the $700 ROG Ally.
There’s way more to a gaming laptop than just gaming, so let’s check out the rest!
The whole laptop is plastic and feels a little cheap, because better materials
just cost more money. There was quite a lot of flex to the lid, but despite that,
it doesn’t wobble when typing, so I didn’t find it annoying to use.
Surprisingly the keyboard deck is fairly sturdy, even when pushing down hard.
One finger opening isn’t possible as it’s back heavy,
but overall build quality isn’t too bad for the price.
The G5 feels lighter compared to most laptops I test,
and lower specs mean only a small 150w charger. It’s quite chunky though,
I can’t remember the last time that I had a gaming laptop this thiccccc with 5 c’s.
The keyboard is fine for typing on, but it feels a little mushy because you can also remove it.
It’s got RGB backlighting, but you’re limited to like 13 colors.
The touchpad felt a bit small compared to newer laptops,
and I’m not personally a fan of the left and right click buttons as I just like
touchpads that press down anywhere - but this is personal preference and it worked fine otherwise.
It’s actually got a good port selection, with USB Type-A and C ports on the left and right sides,
and even an SD card slot. There’s even Mini DisplayPort on the back,
that’s quite rare these days. There’s just more connectivity compared to many laptops 2
to 3 times the price. There’s no MUX switch, and only Mini DisplayPort connects directly
to the Nvidia graphics, so you can connect a screen to that for an extra FPS boost in games.
The screen is one of the first places that gets cheaped out on in cheaper gaming laptops,
but surprisingly the G5’s isn’t too bad. Trust me,
around 90% sRGB coverage and 300 nits brightness is a great result for $400. Again,
I’ve seen much worse from laptops twice the price. Sometimes it looks like it’s flickering on camera,
but it doesn’t look that way in person. And this is because cheaper panels like this use
PWM to adjust brightness, and unfortunately this prevents me measuring response time.
There’s a lot going on inside, including two RAM slots, two M.2 storage slots,
space for a 2.5” SSD, removable Wi-FI, and even removable battery at the back.
This level of upgradeability just puts it on a different planet compared to
far more expensive laptops out there, but don’t forget it is thicker too.
I was surprised to see two sticks of memory. This gives us dual channel,
and with DDR4, this provides a nice FPS boost in games compared to only 1 stick.
It’s kind of cool that the battery can be removed without any tools, you just
don’t see this anymore. In theory you could buy a spare battery and have a charged one ready to go.
Which might be a good idea, because the small 49Wh battery doesn’t last for very long. Barely
over 3 hours in the YouTube video playback test, but I guess to be fair it’s also the
cheapest laptop out of this list. Not only that, but when doing the game test, well we
normally limit it to 30 FPS, but it could only sustain around 20 FPS in The Witcher 3 at medium
settings and wasn’t very playable. So yeah, I'd avoid using the battery where possible.
The speakers are down the front, but they don’t sound very good at
all. They’re muffled and tinny without any bass.
You can pick between these different performance modes in software,
and there’s some control over the fans too.
Unfortunately mine runs hot, maybe it just needs a repaste. Both the
CPU and GPU were thermal throttling with a combined stress test running,
but the keyboard deck only felt a little warm, so at least it’s not
uncomfortable. The fan noise isn’t too loud compared to a lot of other laptops either.
CPU performance in Cinebench was similar to other laptops
with Intel’s i5-11400H. Lenovo’s Legion 5i is a more premium laptop that costs more,
while the ASUS TUF F15 just underneath often goes for $700, or sometimes $500 with a great
sale. So again, good performance for the dollar compared to other options.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen. Here’s how the camera and microphones look and sound,
and this is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard.
So the speakers and battery life sucks, the internals can run hot, and the plastic build
can feel a little cheap. But honestly for $400 I don’t think that those compromises are that
bad. The performance in games is still decent and the screen looks surprisingly good compared
to other more expensive laptops. Cheap gaming laptops might be finally starting to suck less.
The main reason that I bought this laptop was because I was competing against a couple of
other YouTubers to see who could buy the best laptop for $400. So check
this one out next to see who wins that competition. I might be a little biased,
but I think I won when it comes to gaming. But I’ll let you be the judge!