The best laptops for games and schoolwork in 2025

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The best laptops for games and schoolwork in 2025

While there are still traditional laptops and gaming laptops, the dividing line has almost disappeared. Today, if you have a fast CPU and graphics card, as well as advantages such as a large screen and a good cooling system, you can play a decent number of games on your laptop. Besides, not everyone wants a big game rig, and everyone wants to spend the money necessary to get one of those. If you’re considering a new laptop for school, there are more options now than ever to help you both through your challenging studies and keep up with your next AAA game. These are our top picks for the best laptops for gaming and school work – but if you’re looking for a gaming laptop rather than an all-in-one, check out our list of the best gaming laptops for our recommendations.

The best laptops for gaming and school in 2025

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Read our full ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 review

The Zephyrus G14 has been our gaming laptop recommendation for years, but it’s better than ever this year thanks to a refined aluminum unibody case, a beautiful OLED screen and a weight reduction to just 3.3 pounds. It feels incredibly light for a machine with AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU graphics and an NVIDIA RTX 4070. While the new Zephyrus G14 loses the RTX 4080 option from the previous model, that’s not a big deal. You’ll be better off with a simple and attractive model that doesn’t cost a ton.

$2,000 at Best Buy

Is Lipman Photography for Engadget

Read our full Razer Blade 14 review

Razer’s Blade flagship laptops have been the closest PC analog to Apple’s MacBook Pro since their inception, and the latest Blade 14 doesn’t change that at all. It features the company’s signature build quality with a solid aluminum case, but now sports AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU and your choice of NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 and 4070. The new LCD with a refresh rate of 240Hz will let you play almost everything. at eye-popping speed (or, at the very least, it will give you useful accuracy while logging in). Overwatch 2). While we would have liked to see an OLED screen like the one on the Zephyrus G14, the Blade 14 is still an excellent gaming notebook. Just be prepared to pay a premium for its good hardware.

$2,836 at Amazon

Is Lipman Photography for Engadget

While Alienware has established itself as a solid premium product, Dell’s affordable G-series notebooks are worth a look for anyone needing a budget-friendly machine. In particular, the G15 continues the trend of delivering more powerful hardware – including Intel’s latest 13th-gen CPUs, AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs and NVIDIA’s RTX 30- and 40-series GPUs – less than $1,000. Of course, the case is plastic, and the laptop screen does not offer all the latest goodies (at least at the end there is a 165Hz option!). But for the price it’s hard to find anything more powerful.

$800 at Dell

Dell

After one year on the market, Dell went back to the drawing board with its latest Alienware m16 and redesigned it from the ground up. The result is the m16 R2, a lightweight and affordable sportsbook that’s still packable Cyberpunk 2077 with its RTX 4070 GPU. At 5.75 pounds, it’s a sturdy beast, but it’s 20 percent lighter than the previous 7.28-pound model. And for some, the weight will be worth living with the m16 R2’s beautiful 16-inch 240Hz LCD panel.

$1,399 at Dell

Asus ROG

Sometimes, a 16-inch or 17-inch screen won’t cut it. For the more demanding gamer and media editor, there’s the ROG Strix G18, an 18-inch monster sporting Intel’s latest 14th-gen CPU and NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series family (which includes the top-end RTX 4080). The Strix G18 screams “gaming laptop” more than anything else in this guide, but it’s a solid choice for anyone looking for a big-screen machine at an affordable price.

$1,760 at Amazon

Are gaming laptops good for school?

As we have said, gaming laptops are especially useful if you are doing any heavy work. Their biggest promise is powerful graphics performance, which is not limited to PC gaming. Video and 3D editing programs can also tap into their GPUs to handle demanding tasks. While you can find decent GPUs in some productivity machines, like Dell’s XPS 15, you can sometimes find better deals on gaming laptops. My general advice for any new horse: Pay attention to the details; get at least 16GB of RAM and the largest solid state drive you can find (preferably 1TB or more). Those two components are often difficult to improve down the line, so it’s worth investing what you can up front to get the most out of your PC gaming experience in the long run. Also, don’t forget the basics like a webcam, which may be needed for the homework part of your work.

The biggest disadvantage in choosing a gaming notebook is portability. For the most part, we’d recommend the 15-inch models for the best balance of size and price. Those typically weigh about 4.5 pounds, which is more than three pounds for an ultraportable. Today’s playbooks are still lighter than older models, though, so you won’t be throwing around a 10-pound brick. If you’re looking for something lighter, there are plenty of 14-inch options these days. And if you’re not into LED lights and other gamer-centric hacks, keep an eye out for more modest models that still include essentials like a webcam (or make sure you know how to turn those lights off).

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