Best Gaming Laptops for Kids
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At Coder Kids, we are often asked, “Which laptop should I buy for my child?” The best answer for each parent really depends on purpose and budget. There are a lot of reasons you could buy your child a computer - browsing, coding, watching youtube, playing Minecraft, playing Fortnite, or rendering 3D animations. Each of those purposes would likely require a different answer from us.
In this blog post, we will talk specifically about gaming laptops - like if your child wants to play games like Fortnite, Overwatch, or some other resource intensive game. For these types of games, they will need a more powerful computer than a Chromebook or low-end PC. Checkout this blogpost for info on coding laptops for kids. Or, if you’d rather get a gaming desktop, we can help! Check out our blog post “Gaming PC’s for Kids.”
Before we dive into the list, we’ll talk about the main specs you should look for when choosing a gaming laptop for kids. That way, even if inventory changes, you’ll know the general specs to look for in a gaming laptop for your child.
Gaming Laptops vs. Traditional Laptops
Gaming laptops are not necessarily more expensive than a traditional laptop used for work or pleasure, instead, they are built for a specific purpose. If you are looking for a traditional laptop, you can get something super sleek and fast for about the same price as the “luxury” gaming laptop listed below. For example, the Microsoft Surface Book 3 with upgrades can come in at $2,500. And while laptops like the Surface Book are powerful and awesome, they are missing one crucial feature - a dedicated graphics card. So while these laptops might be able to run games like Fortnite, you are not going to get nearly the same frame rate, the screen size will be smaller, and you will find yourself at an automatic disadvantage in the game. Again, traditional laptops are great for getting work done, but they aren’t designed for gaming.
Gaming laptops are built specifically for the needs of a gamer. Games require massive amounts of graphics processing, and a dedicated gaming computer can do just that. And even though they are build for gaming, gaming laptops can also do much more than just gaming, including school, “work”, coding, game creation, and video editing. The main difference between a “gaming” laptop and just an ordinary laptop you might use for work is typically the graphics card. Gaming laptops are generally larger and heavier, so they aren’t as practical to be used as day to day portable laptops for college students (unless they want some extra exercise). But when it comes to gaming, a gaming laptop performs better than one without the dedicated GPU.
Gaming Laptops vs. Gaming Desktops
If you or your child are into gaming, you might be wondering if you should go with a laptop or build / buy a desktop. Well, this comes down to personal preference and what you are looking for. If you want top of the line specs that won’t become outdated, I would recommend a desktop. The reason is, you can upgrade a desktop endlessly so you can always stay up to date with the newest technology and improvements. However, I personally like gaming laptops. Maybe some would say I’m not a purist gamer, but for me, I love having the portability of a laptop - to be able to play games wherever I want to, from the couch, hooked into my TV, or at a friend’s house. The specs my gaming laptops provide me are good enough to last 5 years or so, and then I can just upgrade the laptop. That is about the same timeline someone would need to upgrade a desktop, anyway. If you’d like information about building a gaming desktop for your kid, we’ve got you covered!
The Graphics Card and Other Specs
As I mentioned, the most important spec and unique characteristic for a gaming laptop is the graphics card. Up until around 2018 when NVIDIA released new graphics cards, their 10 series cards were pretty good. In late 2018, they started releasing their 20 series cards, and by 2020, they’d released their 30 series cards. If you can get your hands on one and have a high-end budget, go for the 3070 or 3080. Cards like the 2070 and 2080 are very solid cards as well. Generally speaking, try to avoid the 10 series graphics cards, because they will be outdated soon. The laptops we are recommending below are all new generation cards, and they fall into different tiers of strength, but they will all run games like Fortnite at a decent frame rate. This paragraph only provides a basic overview of graphics cards. Before you buy a laptop, if you want to be sure, check out a benchmark page like this one.
The other specs you should consider for a gaming laptop include an SSD hard drive, the processor and RAM. For gaming laptops, be sure it has an SSD hard drive to run its operating system. Look for laptops with an Intel processor of i5 or higher and 8gb or higher for RAM. The higher you go on CPU and RAM, the more resources your computer will be able to handle.
Can’t my child do gaming with a cheaper computer?
The truth is, there are a lot of options for gaming these days. Many kids play video games on phones or tablets, or gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch. These are great options if you are not ready to drop over $700 on a gaming laptop. That said, for Coder Kids, we use a lot of cheaper laptops, in the $200-300 dollar range, and we have some great recommendations for more affordable computers. However, outside of basic games and possibly Minecraft and Roblox, cheaper computers without a dedicated graphics card are just not powerful enough to do lots of gaming.
Now let’s get to our list of the Best Gaming Laptops for Kids!
Best Budget Gaming Laptop (under $800)
If you’re looking for an affordable gaming laptop, The Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop is still our pick in February 2021. Even though it has a slightly older than preferred graphics card, the price for performance is about what you’d expect from a $700 gaming laptop. It has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Graphics and 8GB of RAM. The GTX 1650 card gives a slight improvement over the previous generation card, and will offer a decent frame rate for most games. Be warned, your child might complain about some lag if they try to push the settings too high. More than likely, they will need to play games like Fortnite at medium settings to keep lag from creeping in.
We have bought comparable laptops for Coder Kids, and generally speaking, students are happy with the specs on this laptop. One nice consideration is that, coming in at 15.6”, it is much more portable than other gaming laptops, and it still has a lot of features your child will want, like a back-lit keyboard. So while it is difficult to find a cheap gaming laptop, this one has the basic specs of a good one for the price, especially if you’re okay upgrading in 3 years when the graphics card is outdated.
Best Mid-Range Gaming Laptop (under $1400)
If you have a little more money to spend, you won’t be disappointed with the MSI GL65 Leopard! This laptop is priced at $1,399. It has a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and 16GB of RAM. MSI is a brand that puts out great gaming laptops - we own a few in Coder Kids and are always impressed with their build quality and specs.
This is the laptop we would recommend for most people, unless you have a top end budget. With the 2070 card, i7 processor, and 16GB of RAM, your child will be set up to be able to play their games at max settings. If you want to upgrade the RAM, that is always possible. And while $1,399 might seem like a lot, this laptop should last for years and allow your child to always play the latest games. I would expect this laptop to last about double the time of the gaming laptop in the cheap category.
Best Luxury Gaming Laptop
CUK GE66 Raider by MSI Gaming Laptop
If the sky’s the limit for your budget, the CUK MSI GE66 Raider is our pick! This laptop is priced at $2,299. The higher price comes with a lot of great options and benefits. It has a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and 32 GB of RAM.
This laptop is high-end, it’s true, but it is not the most expensive laptop out there. As I mentioned before, MSI is a solid brand with a great reputation. You’re getting the 3070 graphics card which will last for a very long time. And even though we’ve focused a lot on the graphics card in this post, this laptop also comes with a very strong latest generation Intel CPU. For the price, this is a great machine.
Used Gaming Laptops as Another Option
If you are shocked by the pricing of gaming laptops (which is not an uncommon reaction), definitely consider buying a used or refurbished gaming laptop. Gamers are a very particular bunch, so if someone owns a gaming laptop and a new graphics card comes out, you will likely find a lot of great options on the second-hand market.
But also be warned, you can never be totally sure when you’re buying a used laptop. You might get a great deal, or you might get a lemon. Sometimes it is better to invest in the warranty and peace of mind that comes from a new laptop. If you’re interested in a used gaming laptop, we recommend checking out Ebay, because many items carry buyer guarantees.
Summary
There are a whole lot of gaming laptops out there! We listed our top 3 picks for the Best Gaming Laptops for Kids in 3 different price ranges. Since gaming laptops change so much so quickly, we also made sure to give you some overall rules of thumb about what specs to look for in gaming laptops. Here are our top picks again:
Budget: Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop
Mid-range: MSI GL65 Leopard
Luxury: CUK MSI GS75 Stealth Gamer Notebook
We hope this helps in your search for the Best Gaming Laptops for Kids!
If you’re looking for some more ideas about what kinds of gifts gamers and coders would like, check out our Coding Gifts for Tweens and Coding Gifts for Kids blogposts.
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