What is the highest performance can $500 get for gaming laptop?

[Rog-Gamer]

Hi there,
I was planning to buy new laptop with $500 budget. I looked outside and found those laptops under $500 and here at PCmag
I found that Acer Aspire E5 is the highest performance with

• 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6200U Processor
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 940MX with 2GB DDR5 VRAM
  
• 8GB DDR4 Memory
  
• 256GB SSD
  

I have good experience with Asus TP200 so an Asus laptop will be better but the performance is the most important for me.
Is there higher performance i can get with this budget?
Thanks

[Zka17]

I guess, you could get a better answer if you would specify the work/games you intend to use the laptop for...

[Rog-Gamer]

Zka17 wrote:
I guess, you could get a better answer if you would specify the work/games you intend to use the laptop for...

For gaming. No specific games. In general to run as possible as games. So i need the highest available specifications

[JustinThyme]

$500 and gaming laptop don't belong in the same post.*
Do yourself a favor and save up some $$. It's going to take 3X that amount just to get tickets to the cheap seats. The only thing you can play for $500 is mine sweeper and mine craft.

Anything you buy for $500 or less is going to leave you bitterly disappointed, even $1000 is back of the pack bare bones entry level that plays at minimum settings but barely unless you are looking at discontinued 2-3 year old machines. *

*

[Zka17]

I am not much/at all in games, but as I see it - laptops are not for games...
One way to find out the min required specs, is to check the specific games you want.
On the other side, you really may end up with a much better desktop for the same amount of money - specially if you decide to save some more...

[MuntyJack]

I don't advise Acer better find HP, Acer cooler is sucks

[Klaive]

Probably not answering your question but may help with something.

Before getting my gaming laptop, I always used to play on Intel HD 4000/4400.

I've played Skyrim, 7 Days to Die, Blade and Soul, Dragon Nest, Dragon Saga, TERA, and alot others.

Most of them are playable, most on minimum settings. Setting Skyrim in low resolution doesn't seem to affect the quality (or maybe I'm just blind), and it ran on good, playable FPS (30++). On some badly optimized games (7DTD,B&S) however, I was able to get 30ish FPS and it was quite playable for me (casually, nothing hardcore.). In better optimized MMO (Dragon Nest, Dragon Saga), setting it to 1280x720 makes it totally playable (again, nothing hardcore like raids, etc). But again, this is me before getting a better laptop for gaming.

However the main thing that should concern you since you are buying a new laptop is, the cost-performance. It is usually better to save up a few more $$ for the performance you're getting and if you insist on getting a laptop rather than building a PC.

Building a PC is indeed cheaper and give better deals, but I insisted on buying a gaming laptop as I need the mobility (college, uni, etc).

[xeromist]

If you have a restricted budget then I'd save up a bit longer and buy a used or refurbished laptop. My last two gaming laptops have been used and refurbished and as long as you are patient and know what you are looking for you can save a bit of money.

[Sheltem]

xeromist wrote:
If you have a restricted budget then I'd save up a bit longer and buy a used or refurbished laptop. My last two gaming laptops have been used and refurbished and as long as you are patient and know what you are looking for you can save a bit of money.

I would agree on this. If you are specifically looking for a laptop to do gaming on, and your budget is 1000 USD or less, getting a brand new laptop means you will end up with something that struggles with games currently being released and performs even worse on future games.
You have to either allocate a larger budget or hunt deals, including refurbished and/or used laptops.

On the other hand, if you are looking to play old games (kinda Oblivion and older), I think by now even ultrabooks (ones that only have integrated graphics on CPUs with extremely limited TDP) perform rather decently, so you do not specifically need a gaming laptop for these.


As for your example specs, the ideas to not overdo RAM size and get a SSD based laptop are truly smart, but I would advise against U CPUs, since U means minimizing power consumption; those will have severe restrictions on TDP and it may cause the CPU to become a bottleneck (and as we know, pretty much all MMOs are prime examples where CPU performance matters more than GPU).

As for the GPU, you will most likely have to go with what is available. As the saying goes.


TL;DR
Gaming laptops are always in the premium segment, you cannot get them "for cheap" or "affordably".