The best thin and lightweight gaming laptops of 2025 are proof that you don't need to lug around a big and bulky laptop if you want to play on the go.
Thanks to cutting-edge mobile components from the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel, which offer the kind of performance that can rival even the best gaming PCs, you don't have to sacrifice performance for portability, and massive strides have been made to ensure that the hardware in these thin and light gaming laptops are as power efficient as possible. This means modern gaming laptops can go for longer on battery power than ever before (though you're still not going to get day-long battery life just yet), and it also means the components inside don't produce as much heat, allowing laptop makers to include them in some impressively thin designs.
To help keep your thin and lightweight gaming laptop cool while gaming, make sure you check out our best laptop cooling pads guide to ensure you're getting the best possible performance from your gaming laptop.
Our computing experts have tested thousands of laptops for TechRadar - many of which have been gaming laptops - and we've narrowed our favorite thin and light gaming laptops down so you can find the best pick for your budget and performance needs.
To make it onto our list of the best thin and lightweight gaming laptops, every device needs to be less than one inch (25.4mm) thick, and weigh less than 5 lbs (2.2kg). Oh, and of course, they need to be able to play the best PC games you can buy right now.
On 09/30/2025, this page received a major overhaul with an all-new lineup of the very latest thin and light gaming laptops from the biggest laptop brands in the world.
I've been leading TechRadar's laptop coverage for over 10 years, and have personally reviewed over 100 laptops during that time. I've been a keen PC gamer since the early 1990s, so I know what makes a great gaming laptop. I was always more of a fan of gaming desktop PCs, as early gaming laptops were just too big and bulky to be easily portable, however many modern gaming laptops are impressively sleek machines that offer excellent gaming performance - and in this guide I've picked the very best thin and lightweight gaming laptops that combine portability with gaming performance.
The best thin and lightweight gaming laptops in 2025
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Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best thin and lightweight laptops in our list. We've tested each one extensively at TechRadar, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best thin and lightweight gaming laptop overall
✅ You want the very best thin and lightweight gaming laptop: The Blade 14 (2025) truly is the MacBook of gaming laptops, with a thinner and lighter form factor than last year's model.
✅ You want an amazing OLED screen: The OLED panel on the Blade 14 is fantastic, beating out mini-LED rivals and absolutely burying IPS laptops without breaking a sweat.
❌ You're looking for a budget option: This laptop starts at two grand and only gets more expensive the better its configuration.
❌ You want the most powerful gaming laptop: We loved the performance of the Razer Blade 14 during our review, but if you want the absolute best performance, look at a gaming laptop with an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 laptop GPU.
If you're looking for the best thin and lightweight gaming laptop money can buy, then there's a good chance that a Razer Blade 14 model will be our number one pick. For the past two year's we've had the most recent models sitting at the top of this guide, and the Razer Blade 14 (2025) continues this fine tradition.
As we point out in our Razer Blade 14 (2025) review, the latest model combines cutting-edge gaming performance with incredible portability. Performance is handled by the likes of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU and Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, and thanks to the stunning OLED screen and six-speaker audio, games look and sound incredible on this machine.
The 14-inch screen size helps keep the overall size of the Razer Blade 14 (2025) as compact as possible, while still offering impeccable gaming performance. While Razer's hardware usually costs more than the competition, when a gaming laptop is this well designed and solidly built, the higher asking price is slightly easier to stomach.
Because of its thin and lightweight design, there are a few compromises - for example, the keyboard feels slightly shallow, which may disappoint gamers who prefer more responsive and tactile gaming keyboards. The Razer Blade 14 (2025) can also get a bit hot when playing particularly demanding games - a price you often have to pay with thin and light gaming laptops, where their compact sizes means keeping their components cool is much trickier with less space for fans and general airflow.
We spent over three weeks using the Razer Blade 14 (2025) for general work, as well as playing the latest games, and we were very impressed with how well this laptop performed.
At its native 2880×1800 resolution, games like F1 2024 and Helldivers 2 ran well into the high double and even triple digits on ultra settings with balanced DLSS (not counting Frame Generation) when it comes to frame rates. We also got some fantastic results with Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing lighting effects turned on. While this isn't a laptop you can open up and upgrade (you won't find many thin and lightweight gaming laptops that are upgradable), thanks to its excellent specs, you'll be able to play modern games on this laptop for many years to come. Just bear in mind that while the RTX 5070 is an excellent laptop GPU, there are gaming laptops out there that come with even more powerful RTX 5080 and 5090 GPUs.
Read our full Razer Blade 14 (2025) review
The best value thin and lightweight gaming laptop
✅ You want an affordable thin and lightweight gaming laptop: The Asus TUF Gaming A16 proves that you don't need to spend a fortune for a thin and light gaming laptop.
✅ You don't want to make too many compromises: Despite its low price, the Asus TUF Gaming A16 doesn't cut too many corners - its specs are pretty great for the price - it's just the display that feels budget.
❌You want a high-quality screen: The display of the Asus TUF Gaming A16 is OK, but colors can look washed out, and it's quite reflective as well.
❌ You want a silent laptop: Even for a gaming laptop, the Asus TUF Gaming A16 is loud when in use thanks to some overzealous fans that whirr up at the drop of a hat.
While a lot of the best thin and lightweight gaming laptops are quite expensive, due to their combination of cutting-edge gaming components and premium designs, the Asus TUF Gaming A16 proves that doesn't have to always be the case. This is a much more affordable thin and light gaming laptop than many competitors, especially from Razer, and despite its lower price, it still offers an excellent gaming experience thanks to Nvidia's latest RTX 5000 series GPUs, along with a design that is impressively svelte.
Because this is a cheaper laptop, the materials used for its body aren't the most premium, but it still feels sturdy and well built. The review sample of the Asus TUF Gaming A16 we were sent came with the RTX 5050 GPU, and it was able to run graphically-ambitious games like Cyberpunk 2077, and while it can't manage the game at its highest settings, with a bit of tweaking we got it running smoothly while still looking really good.
The large 16-inch screen does an OK job making games look good, but with a 1920 x 1200 resolution and rather washed-out colors, this isn't the best display you're going to get in a laptop, and it's the one area where it feels like Asus has made a compromise to keep the price down. Still, if you're on a budget but want a thin and lightweight gaming laptop to play the latest titles, this is a fantastic choice.
Read our full Asus TUF Gaming A16 review
The best premium thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want the best gaming experience on a thin and lightweight laptop: While the Razer Blade 16 isn't as svelte as the Blade 14 (higher up in this list), its larger screen means a more immersive gaming experience, and it comes with more powerful hardware.
✅ You want great performance: Performance scores high on every benchmark with high frame rates at highest settings.
❌ You are on a budget: No thin and light gaming laptop is every going to be really cheap, but the Razer Blade 16 is a particularly premium laptop, with a price tag to match.
❌ You're after supreme portability: The price you pay for a larger 16-inch display is that this isn't the most portable laptop on this list, but it's still impressively thin and light for a gaming laptop.
The latest Razer Blade 16 for 2025 packs some of the very best gaming components into an amazingly slim and svelte chassis, offering unrivalled gaming performance for a thin and lightweight gaming laptop.
It currently sits at the very top of our best gaming laptops list, and for good reason. However, due to its larger size, it's not quite at the top of this list of thin and lightweight laptops, with its smaller sibling, the Razer Blade 14 (2025), pipping it to the post.
But the Razer Blade 16 (2025) still deserves a high spot in our list of the best thin and light laptops, as while it might not be the most portable lightweight gaming laptop on the market, it offers an incredible premium gaming experience thanks to its gorgeous design and high-end specifications.
During our time testing the Razer Blade 16 (2025), we were particularly impressed by the screen. Sure, it's not 4K, but the OLED panel and incredibly fast 240Hz refresh rate meant the games we played on this gaming laptop, such as Cyberpunk 2077, looked (and felt) brilliant.
To really get the benefit, we found that turning on Nvidia's DLSS and Multi Frame Gen (MFG) features, some of which are exclusive to the RTX 5000 series of GPU, made a huge difference in performance. In Cyberpunk, the maxed-out ray-tracing preset struggled a bit with an average of 43 fps (frames per second). With DLSS 4 and MFG, it leaped to 217fps while still looking absolutely stunning. In Returnal, the 113fps average went to 240fps at 1440p, allowing the game to take full advantage of the 240Hz refresh rate, leading to a gaming experience that felt fast, responsive and fluid - all while looking incredible.
The Razer Blade 16 (2025) won't be for everyone, especially if money is tight, but if you have the cash, this is a simply incredible thin and lightweight gaming laptop.
Read the full Razer Blade 16 (2025)
The best OLED thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want a portable gaming laptop: The compact dimensions and 14-inch screen, along with its light overall weight, means the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025)
✅ You want brilliant gaming performance: Even when playing games at their highest graphics settings, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) offers smooth and responsive performance, and games look amazing on its OLED screen.
❌You want a quiet laptop: The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) gets hot when gaming, and that means the fans can get noisy.
❌ You have a tight budget: This is another premium thin and light gaming laptop, and that means it's far from cheap.
Asus has been making some of the best thin and lightweight gaming laptops for some time now, with its Zephyrus lineup in particular, and its latest model, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025), is another excellent example of this. Its design is understated for a gaming laptop, but it looks sleek and premium, weighing just 3.31lbs / 1.50kg. This makes it incredibly easy to carry around with you, so it's an ideal gaming laptop for people who travel a lot. You're not making any compromises when it comes to performance, either, with up to a mighty Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti GPU, which allowed us to play a range of games at their highest quality settings when we reviewed the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025). The 14-inch OLED screen also looks absolutely fantastic, with a speedy 120Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support meaning that you'd be hard pushed to find a better performing gaming laptop. However, having such powerful components in a slim and light chassis means the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) can get quite hot when gaming, and that in turn means the fans whirr up and can be quite noisy. It also means this is quite a pricey device, even by gaming laptop standards. When it comes to build quality and performance, however, you'll be hard pressed to find a better machine.
Read the full Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review
The best thin and light convertible gaming laptop
✅ You want a very portable device: Due to its convertible design, you won't get a gaming laptop that's thinner or lighter than this.
✅ You want to play modern games: This is far from the most powerful device in this list, but it still offers good performance when playing the latest games.
❌You can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars: The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a unique device, but that means it comes with an exceptionally high price.
❌ You want the very best gaming performance: As the Asus ROG Flow Z13 is technically a Windows 11 tablet, it means it uses mobile components, including an integrated GPU, so while performance is surprisingly good, it can't compete with more traditional gaming laptops.
The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is the most unique device in this list of thin and lightweight gaming laptops, mainly because it's not actually a laptop.
Instead, it's a powerful tablet running Windows 11. So why's it in this guide? It's because by connecting it up to its removable keyboard, it turns into an incredibly thin and light laptop that's capable of gaming (it is part of Asus' Republic of Gamers line, after all).
Its unique design means there's no traditional gaming laptop that can match it when it comes to portability, so if you're after the absolute thinnest and lightest gaming laptop, then the Asus ROG Flow Z13 is worth considering.
Its unorthodox design does come with some drawbacks, however, which you should consider before buying. Becaue it's essentially a gaming tablet, it does not feature a dedicated graphics card like pretty much any other gaming laptop does. Instead, the AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390 or MAX+ 395 chip (depending on which configuration you go for) includes an integrated GPU. So, you can't expect the kind of gaming performance other (often much cheaper) gaming laptops with dedicated GPUs can offer. Having said that, it does a good job of playing games - we saw Cyberpunk 2077 hit 73fps on ultra settings, for example.
The other drawback is price. This is an incredibly expensive gaming device, and most of that money seems to be because of the unique design. That means there are plenty of gaming laptops that cost less, but offer much more power. If game performance is more important to you than pure portability, then definitely look elsewhere
Read our full Asus ROG Flow Z13 review
The best thin and lightweight gaming laptop for students
✅ You want something thin and light to play on while at university: The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ combines an impressively thin laptop with powerful specs - and the price is decent.
✅ You want a great screen: The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ features a stunning OLED screen, and while that bumps up the overall price, it really makes games and media look incredible.
❌You need long battery life: Even by gaming laptop standards, the battery life of the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ is short.
❌ You're on a tight budget: The MSI Stealth A16 AI+ is very fairly priced compared to the compeition, but this is still a very expensive laptop.
If you're a student looking for a great thin and light gaming laptop, then the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ will be a good choice. While it's far from cheap, compared to other gaming laptops with the kind of high-end specs this machine comes with, it's very fairly priced.
We were really impressed with the model we reviewed, which comes with an RTX 5070 Ti GPU, with the MSI Stealth A16 AI+ hitting an impressive 105fps on average while playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with settings set to 'Ultra', while Dirt 5 hit a huge 206fps. This is all native - if you turn on features such as DLSS and Multi Frame Generation, you're going to get even better results - and you can also buy this laptop with the more powerful RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs as well. This means, as long as you have the budget for it, you should expect even better games performance.
It means this is a very future-proof gaming laptop, so it'll easily last you throughout your time at university and beyond, allowing you to play all the latest games for a very long time.
Its thin and light design makes it a very portable gaming laptop, which again is great for students, and it has an impressive amount of ports as well. One area it does fall down in, however, is battery life. During our tests, it managed just under five hours of general use - and that sank even lower when gaming. However, thanks to its fantastic design (including a gorgeous OLED screen) and sensible price, we still recommend you check this laptop out - as long as you're not planning to use it unplugged for any length of time.
Read our in-depth MSI Stealth A16 AI+ review
How to choose: best thin and light gaming laptop
There's a very thin line between portability and power when it comes to gaming laptops. That's because you need a bit more power than what integrated graphics can offer to have that smooth and immersive gaming experience, and more robust internals like discrete graphics require a proper cooling system and ventilation, especially when being pushed, to perform well. Otherwise, you end up with throttling issues, which will ruin your gaming experience.
So, when choosing the best thin and light gaming laptop for you, that's the most important thing to focus on: that whatever GPU is powering the laptop you're eyeing is staying cool under pressure.
Also expect to pay a little more than you would for a regular gaming laptop. If you take a look at our list above, while there's a couple of affordable options on this list, you may have to stretch your budget a little. It's not, after all, cheap to make such thin and light laptops that can deliver as much power as they do.
Pay close attention to the battery life as well. A curse of gaming laptops is the terrible battery life, but if you want something that can get you through a couple of hours' of gaming on a train, you'll certainly find a handful of options on hand. So don't give up on that dream.
How we tested these thin and light gaming laptops
As with regular gaming laptops, when we review thin and lightweight gaming laptops, our primary focus is on gaming performance. So, we compare the specs with other gaming laptops around the same price point to ensure they offer the best bang for your buck.
We also play a range of the very latest games on these laptops to see how they cope, usually at native resolution and at the very highest graphical settings. We'll then adjust the graphics settings to get the best possible performance - and if available, we also turn on features such as DLSS, Multi Frame Generation and AMD FSR to see how they affect performance. However, we always make sure to run the games at native settings as well to test the raw power of the hardware.
We also run several in-game benchmarks to help us gauge the laptop's performance. We often update the list of games we use to benchmark thin and lightweight gaming laptops to ensure the latest games are represented, and at the time of writing, these are the games we use:
- Civilization VII
- Cyberpunk 2077
- F1 2024
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
We also run our standard suite of benchmark tools, including Geekbench, 3DMark and PCMark, and use these results alongside our real-world testing (which usually takes around two weeks) to get a complete overview of the performance offered by these laptops.
Because we're looking for the best thin and lightweight gaming laptops in this buying guide, we also make sure we pay particular attention to the design of these machines. This means measuring their dimensions and carrying them around with us to see just how portable they are. We also make sure that not too many compromises have been made to keep these gaming laptops as thin and light as possible - the laptop needs to be less than 1-inch (25.4mm) thin, and weigh less than 5 lbs (2.2kg) to be eligable for this guide.
We also run the laptops all day to test their battery life to make sure you really can game throughout the day without issue. Price will vary per gaming laptop, but we don’t hesitate to let you know if an item is more expensive than its competition.
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