ASUS ROG Gaming Laptop Packs RTX 3080 Firepower For $300 Off And More Holiday Deals
Pay no mind to Black Friday and Cyber Monday officially having passed because 'tis an entire season of savings. That means many discounts remain, and even more will undoubtedly be added as Christmas comes into full view. And speaking of Christmas, if you're looking to really surprise someone special with a gaming laptop, then check out these deals.
Starting at the higher end of the spectrum, you can score an ASUS ROG Strix Scar 15 gaming laptop powered by a Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU and GeForce RTX 3080 GPU for $1,699 on Amazon (save $300).
That's a potent one-two combo. On the CPU side, you're looking at an 8-core/16-thread mobile Zen 3 chip with a 3.3GHz base clock, 4.6GHz boost clock, and 16MB of L3 cache. And for the GPU, the GeForce RTX 3080 is the second-fastest on tap from NVIDIA in mobile form, behind only the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Unfortunately, this is the 8GB GDDR6 model instead of 16GB, but it's still a powerful part with up to a 1,645MHz clock speed.
Other features include a 15.6-inch IPS display with a smoking-fast 300Hz refresh rate, 16GB og DDR4 memory, 1TB of SSD storage, and an optical-mechanical keyboard with per-key RGB backlighting.
On the polar opposite end of the pricing spectrum, there's an ASUS TUF Gaming F17 laptop on sale for $699.99 right now (save $200). It's also a physically bigger laptop if, like myself, you or the recipient prefer a 17.3-inch display (this one supports 1080p at 144Hz). I find the larger form factor is easier on the eyes (especially I get older).
This one pairs an Intel Core i5-11400H processor based on Alder Lake with a GeForc RTX 3050 GPU. That's considerably less firepower than a GeForce RTX 3080 (in any configuration), but you should still be able to achieve 60 frames per second at 1080p in games like GRID Legends, Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5, F1 22, and other titles, depending on the in-game settings.
Other specs are in line with the budget price tag, such as 8GB of DDR4-3200 memory and 512GB of SSD storage. You'll likely want to add another 8GB of RAM at some point, which can typically be found for between $25 and $40.
Looking for something that falls somewhere in between the above ASUS ROG Strix And TUF Gaming laptops? Then take a gander as MSI's Pulse GL66, a 15.6-inch gaming laptop with a 144Hz Full HD 1080p display—it's marked down to $1,374.99 on Amazon (save $224.01) via a marketplace seller. If you prefer to stick with items shipped and sold by Amazon, pricing is a little higher (but still reasonable) at $1,438.48.
Either way, you're looking at a gaming laptop that pairs an Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake processor with a GeForce RTX 3070 mobile GPU. It also boasts 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, USB 3.2 Gen 1 connectivity (Type-A and Type-C), Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless connections, and an RGB-backlit keyboard.
Here are some other gaming laptop deals...
- ASUS ROG Strix Scar 15 (240Hz, i9-12900H, RTX 3070 Ti): $1,899.99 (save $150)
- MSI Stealth 15M (144Hz, i7-11375H, RTX 3060): $1,197.77 (save $201.23)
- ASUS TUF Dash 15 (144Hz, i7-12650H, RTX 3060): $1,184.94 (save $115.05)
- Acer Swift X Creator (Ryzen 7 5825U, RTX 3050 Ti): $879.99 (save $220)
- Acer Nitro 5 (144Hz, i7-11800H, RTX 3050 Ti): $756.20 (save $173.79)
- MSI GV15 (144Hz, i5-11400H, GTX 1650): $605.96 (save $114.04)
Note that a few of these are from marketplace sellers. In some cases, Amazon as a seller is an option for a little more (scroll down on the applicable listings). And finally, while not a gaming laptop, there's a pretty good deal on Microsoft's Surface Laptop 5—it's on sale for $1,499.99 at Amazon (save $300).
