Gaming laptops aren't usually known for their meager physiques. But the best thin and light gaming laptops break that mold while still providing every bit of performance and style that their 25-pound desktop replacement counterparts do.
While you may assume a thinner build means sacrificing some processing power, that’s not necessarily true. Some of our favorite lightweight gaming options are comparable in performance to the best gaming laptops regardless of form factor.
What you do typically sacrifice is thermal performance, as airflow becomes an afterthought and fan sizes shrink down in favor of a more portable gaming laptop. If your setup allows, you can turn to the best laptop cooling pads to keep the CPU from melting.
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.
The quick list
Want to cut to the chase and find out what the best thin and light gaming laptops are? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices, and you can jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
The best overall
This stylish yet robust laptop offers impressive QHD+ performance and boasts a fast and accurate display for competitive games and creative workloads.
The best budget
An excellent cheap option that doesn't sacrifice performance, it has a fast display, a great port selection, and a thin, lightweight chassis.
The best premium
For a thin and light gaming laptop, the Origin EON 16SL is an absolutely monster of a machine, bringing incredible performance with a best-in-class display.
The best for 1440p gaming
A premium gaming laptop with a great display and a decent battery life, this comes with powerful specs to handle excellent 1440p gaming at 240fps.
The best 17-inch option
While staying portable and stylish, this powerful, long-lasting, large-screen laptop will see you through gaming and creative workloads.
The best with 240Hz display
This stunning gaming laptop delivers top-tier performance and a well-balanced chassis. The best part: it offers a fast display offering a 240Hz refresh rate.
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The thinnest gaming laptop
With its particularly slender form factor, this belies some top-notch specs while weighing less and being thinner than the rest of the options here.
The best thin and light gaming laptops in 2025
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Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best thin and light laptop 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 light gaming laptop overall
✅ You want a thin and light gaming laptop: It weighs surprisingly little for its specs (just 4.05 lbs / 1.84kg) and can easily slip into a backpack or laptop bag to hit the road.
✅ You want great performance: Performance scores very well on every benchmark with high frame rates at highest settings.
❌ You're looking for a budget option: The Razer Blade offers the power you need to game and create, but it doesn't come with a pretty price tag.
❌ You want a better battery life: Great performance means great power draw, and the battery doesn't last as long as some alternatives.
The 2023 Razer Blade 14 earned a spot on several of our laptop roundups, including a comfortable top-spot position on best gaming laptops. The Razer Blade 14 (2024) features even better specs as the previous year's model, and it does so at the same thin and light 4.05 lb (1.84kg) weight.
This sleek gaming laptop from Razer comes equipped with a AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and an Nvidia RTX 4070 to put some power behind its beautiful 240hz display. Our suite of benchmarks found the 2024 Razer Blade 14 offers best-in-class performance for modern 14-inch laptops, and when you marry that with the polished design, THX audio capabilities, and satisfying keyboard and trackpad, you get an outstanding gaming laptop that doubles as a mobile workstation.
With Nvidia's 50 series GPUs announced at CES 2025, and Razer's new lineup of Blade laptops revealed at the same event, we may see a new contender for the best thin and light gaming laptops soon. But as it stands, the Razer Blade 14 (2024) offers unparalleled performance at its weight class with the added features to make it a complete package.
Read our full Razer Blade 14 (2024) review
The best budget thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want to game on a budget: Let’s face it: gaming laptops can be bloody expensive, but if you cheap out, you’ll likely be stuck with low frame rates or poor graphics. The MSI GF63 Thin walks the line between value and performance expertly.
✅ You need a multi-purpose laptop: Decent performance in just about every area and a reserved design means that the GF63 Thin can happily double as a laptop for work or study, as well as be a solid PC gaming device.
❌ You want ray tracing: While it’s technically capable, the RTX 3050 Ti just isn’t really able to run games with ray-tracing settings turned on.
❌ You need good battery life: The battery life on offer here is far from dismal, but it’s not what we’d call impressive, if you want to keep the brightness at maximum, you’ll need to plug in.
Budget gaming laptops that still deliver on performance are hard to find, which makes the MSI GF63 Thin (2022) an excellent choice for those wanting to save without having to sacrifice too much in specs in return. The starting price is one that most gaming laptops can’t hope to match in this generation of performance behemoths, especially one that’s also so thin and lightweight. Its battery life is average, but that’s what you’d expect from a gaming laptop in the first place.
Its specs include up to an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, though the Core i5 version is more prominent, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. For the latter, you can also get the GeForce GTX 1650 GPU version for a cheaper price point, which still can handle most games just fine, but we found after testing that it’s best to pay a bit more for the 3050 Ti, as the gaming performance is more than worth it.
The display is also 1080p HD and we found that when combined with its 144Hz refresh made for a smooth gameplay experience and a clear vibrant picture quality. However, it’s not well-suited for high demand tasks, like 4K video editing and running number-crunching scientific programs. The port selection is excellent as well, with every type you need. In fact, in comparison to many other current-gen gaming laptops we’ve tested, it surpasses them all. It does have issues with bloatware, and sometimes the charging cable can block those many ports too.
Read the full MSI GF63 Thin (2022) review
The best premium thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You want a thin and light gaming laptop: It weighs surprisingly little for its specs and can easily carry around.
✅ You want great performance: Performance scores high on every benchmark with high frame rates at highest settings.
❌ You want a better webcam: The webcam is pretty average, so not great for livestreaming.
❌ You want a better ventilation system: It mostly warm, but it will run hot under stress.
The Origin EON 16SL is a true dark horse of gaming laptops, as it’s able to balance performance with one of the thinnest and lightest form factors of any of 2023’s offerings. Origin has truly knocked it out of the park with its aesthetic, allowing buyers to customize their laptop exactly how they want it. Even better is the pricing, which is much more reasonable compared to other competing gaming laptops.
Despite having a 16-inch display, it fits well in most medium-sized bags and its lightness keeps it from weighing down your bag while the thin chassis ensures it doesn’t take up much space. Thanks to its robust spec options, including the RTX 4000-series GPU and the 13th-Gen Intel Core i9 CPU, this device delivers outstanding performance, enabling Cyberpunk 2077 to achieve over 90fps on high settings and even surpass 60fps with 'Ray Tracing Overdrive' enabled. Additionally, the 16-inch QHD+ display boasts an impressive 240Hz refresh rate, guaranteeing smooth, stutter-free gameplay.
Even with the impressive performance of the Origin EON 16SL, it is not without its drawbacks. One notable issue is its mediocre webcam, which demands good lighting conditions to produce acceptable image quality. Additionally, while the cooling system is adequate for standard gaming use, it falls short of perfection. This becomes evident as the laptop's underside tends to overheat during prolonged and heavy gaming sessions.
Read the full Origin EON 16SL review
The best thin and light for 1440p
✅ Strong battery life: You’ll need some time to charge it, but once it's at 100%, It’ll be a good few hours before you need to plug it in again, perfect when travelling about.
✅ Ergonomic design: Despite the high-end specs, MSI’s latest felt refined in its design. It’s not bulky, can easily be carried around, and feels adaptable.
❌You want a quieter machine: Given its specs, the MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS is an unsurprisingly loud laptop. Even when doing general tasks, it can occasionally sound like a plane taking off.
❌ You need a more affordable laptop: You’ll only need a gaming laptop like this if nothing but the portable best will do. Such high performance is extremely costly - you can get away with cheaper options
If you’re looking for a premium gaming laptop that not only has excellent specs, a great display, and can game at 1440p, all while maintaining a lightweight form factor with an ergonomic and comfortable design made for long sessions, the MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS is the perfect choice.
Packing up to an Intel Core i9-12900H CPU with a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU we found that, after extensive benchmarking, it tackles any of the best PC games at high settings with ease. We pushed this laptop to its limits and the resulting performance with games like Dirt 5 and Cyberpunk 2077 were truly excellent.
The battery does take ages to charge, but since it’s a gaming machine there’s no reason to remove it from power in the first place. It does pay for that performance with some noisy fans and a high price, but if you don’t mind either it’s a great investment.
Read our full MSI Stealth GS66 12UGS review
The best 17-inch thin and light gaming laptop
✅ You love great design: This is a gorgeous machine, the design may be a couple of years old, but with uber-slim bezels it’s still bang up to date and very slick.
✅ You need decent battery life: Despite the large 17-inch screen a beefy CPU performance, the Dell XPS 17 still delivers over 10 hours of battery life away from the mains making for impressive all-day longevity.
❌You want maximum bang for your buck: The Dell XPS 17 is a great performer, but it will cost you.
❌ You want a true gaming laptop: Serious gamers can get better performance at this price point.
The Dell XPS 17 (2024) is the best laptop for people who are looking for a large screen but also want a slick and stylish device that can be comfortably carried around. This impressive thin and light laptop comes with Intel's latest 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs and can even be kitted out with a graphics card.
While we wouldn't suggest making this as your primary gaming laptop, it is excellent for some 1080p gaming on the go thanks to that RTX 3050 or 3060 under the hood. It's also excellent for graphic-intensive tasks like photo editing. It tore through everything from video encodes to 3D renders with ease during our testing.
Couple that with its gorgeous display and outstanding design, and you've got a laptop to show off while at the office, at the coffee shop, or on the long haul flight if you travel for work. It's got a fantastic battery life that will let you keep working for hours.
Read the full Dell XPS 17 (2024) review
The best thin and light with 240Hz display
✅ You want a stunning and distinctive design: If you want a gaming laptop that has one of the most jaw-dropping designs out there, this is a choice pick with its white chassis and beautiful RGB lighting.
✅ You need something thin and portable: Somehow Dell managed to pack some of the best specs out there in an impossibly thin chassis that doesn’t feel any of its five pounds due to a balanced design.
❌You can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars: This is a premium gaming laptop in every way and you can bet Dell is making you pay for that honor with the price, at minimum, of $2000.
❌ You need an ethernet port: The fact that such an otherwise excellent and expensive gaming laptop doesn’t come with an ethernet port is an absolute crime.
Alienware laptops and PCs are well known for their quality, unique designs, and performance, and the Alienware x15 R2 is no slouch in any of these factors. Featuring a stunning design combined with beautiful white color and RGB lighting in the back, it’s a laptop that’s guaranteed to turn heads. This is coupled with its thin chassis that feels incredibly lightweight despite it being five pounds, due to how well-balanced the laptop is.
Its performance is also top-tier, as it scored well in every benchmark we ran the CPU and GPU through, as well as general stress testing with a variety of high-end PC games. In fact, we found that after testing it thoroughly it beat out most other laptops sporting similar specs and sizes.
Unfortunately, it does have a few caveats. Its terrible webcam is technically 1080p though it doesn’t look that way when we tested it out during a conference call and found the framerate and visuals lacking. The battery lasts at most about three hours, so prepare to keep this bad boy plugged in. And its thin chassis comes at an overheating cost, though the excellent software can mitigate that through its fan settings.
Read our full Alienware x15 R2 review
The thinnest gaming laptop
✅ You want something thin and light: The Alienware X14 is just over 0.5 inches thick and weighs just under 4lb, making it easy to slip into your backpack and carry anywhere.
✅ You want a premium gaming laptop: This really is a beautiful laptop, and one of the only gaming laptops on the market that you won't want to hide away in shame.
❌You need long battery life: If you're just looking for a laptop with strong performance and long battery life, we'd actually recommend an XPS 15 or a MacBook Pro instead.
❌ You're on a budget: Just like any Alienware laptop, the Alienware X14 is an expensive piece of hardware
Among thin and lightweight laptops, the Alienware X14 (2022) has a particularly slender form factor, which belies some top-notch specs. Equipped with an RTX 3060 GPU and a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU we found that, during our performance testing, it was able to handle high-end PC games at high settings with no issues. Normally you would have to pay for the honor of great specs wrapped in such a small and gorgeous chassis, but Dell is currently selling it for a much-reduced price point.
The lightweight is especially impressive for a gaming laptop, and even more so because we compared it to the Razer Blade 14 and found the X14 weighs less and is thinner to boot. And despite the thin size, it still manages to cram in a diverse port selection with nearly any slot and port that a buyer could possibly want.
The 14-inch display is no slouch as well, packing in a 1080p LED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate and 7ms response time that’s more than responsive and smooth enough for most gamers on the go, and certainly enough to impress us when we tested it using the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Dirt 5, and other demanding games. However, you’ll have to contend with a less-than-stellar battery life that lasts at most a little over six hours, and a subpar HD webcam.
Read our in-depth Alienware X14 (2022)review
How to choose: best thin and light gaming laptop
There's 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.
Expect also to pay a little more than you would a regular gaming laptop. If you take a look at our list above, while there's a couple of affordable, under $1,000/£1,000 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
Much like our regular laptop reviews, we have a standard process of judging the price, design, performance, and battery life of gaming laptops. In this case performance is not only in reference to how well they perform standard benchmark tests, but also noting how fast it loads up the best PC games and how smoothly they run.
When it comes to thin and light gaming laptops, we made sure the laptops truly deliver on their promise of being slim and easy to transport. 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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