Gaming laptops have come a long way in recent years. No longer is a massive jet engine or two required to cope with the heat output of mobile graphics chips. As such, notebooks have slimmed down considerably to offer desktop-class graphics in an actually-portable form factor.
This is thanks in large part to Nvidia's Pascal GPUs. The 10-series of graphics cards are more powerful and efficient than ever. With higher clockspeeds and lower temperature output than previous generations, it's now possible to pack GTX 1060 and 1070 GPUs into laptops that measure around or sometimes less than an inch thick. Even better, those 10-series cards aren't tuned-down mobile variants but rather every bit as powerful as their desktop counterparts. Taking things a step further, Nvidia's new Max-Q design philosophy does sacrifice a bit of performance to get power draw even lower. These systems are thin, light, and quiet, yet still powerful. You'll find our favorite pick in that category here, and we have a dedicated Max-Q buying guide as well.
Just as impressive, laptop screens are getting closer and closer in feature set to their desktop counterparts. Features such as high refresh rates, 1440p or 4K resolutions, and G-Sync technology are no longer limited to the tabletop form factor. And perhaps best of all, a modest combination of these features and performance can be had at non-insane price points.
In testing for this guide, we called in a literal stack of gaming laptops from various hardware manufacturers. We limited our overall choice to laptops featuring a GTX 1070 GPU, as systems with that spec have the best balance of performance, features, and price for most gamers, while the the budget category was limited to laptops featuring a GTX 1060 GPU. For slim Max-Q systems, we've focused on the more reasonably-priced GTX 1070 variants, but will be evaluating high-end GTX 1080 Max-Q systems soon.
