01At CES 2021, gaming laptops aren't what they used to be, and that's a good thing

The Asus TUF Dash F15 is a more subtle design for a gaming laptop.

Josh Goldman/CNET This story is part of CES, where our editors will bring you the latest news and the hottest gadgets of the entirely virtual CES 2021.

Some PC gamers have a lot of historical animosity toward gaming laptops. Many gamers buy or build desktops because not only can you get more performance for your money, but they can also be upgraded. Gaming laptops, on the other hand, are known to be expensive and aren't upgradable (rarely upgradeable anyway); plus, they're big and heavy and have poor battery life. 

Or, at least, that's how they used to be. 

At CES 2021, Intel, AMD and Nvidia all announced chips that will make it possible for PC makers to design gaming laptops that won't be any bulkier than your average mainstream productivity laptop. More importantly, battery life will go from just a couple of hours into the double digits (for productivity tasks at least). And, they promise to have incredible performance at more affordable prices. (Although you'll still pay a premium for portability.)

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These laptops promise to be perfect for people looking for a notebook that's compact and lightweight for work or school, but still has the performance needed for gaming and content creation. They're also designed without all the over-the-top gaming aesthetics so they fit in at the office or in the classroom. 

Now, thin gaming laptops certainly aren't a new thing. Razer, for instance, has made its Blade gaming laptops for nearly a decade. But thinner gaming laptops with clean, streamlined designs like the Blade have only really become more plentiful in the past few years, due at least in part to Nvidia's Max Q GPUs that made it easier and less expensive to make slimmer laptops with reliably good graphics performance for gaming. 

And with these new processors and GPUs announced at CES, the gaming performance promises to be better than ever minus the big, bulky chassis. Even if you're after a laptop with esports-level performance, those laptops are smaller and lighter, too.

These are some of the most interesting gaming laptops we saw (either virtually or in person) at CES 2021. 

Lenovo Legion Slim 7

Lenovo

The Legion Slim 7 is little more than a logo away from being one of Lenovo's IdeaPad thin-and-light laptops. In fact, it's the company's thinnest and lightest Legion to date. The laptop will have a 15.6-inch 2160p display with a 60Hz refresh rate and 100% Adobe RGB coverage. Or, you can get it with a 1080p display with a 165Hz refresh rate. The laptop will run on the latest Nvidia RTX 30-series laptop GPUs and next-gen AMD Ryzen processors.

The Lenovo Legion Slim 7 laptop is expected to be available in May, and pricing is not available at this time.

Asus

The Flow X13 is a 2.9-pound, 13-inch two-in-one with a GTX 1650 GPU running the new eight-core, 35- to 54-watt AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS. While that's enough for entry-level gaming performance, Asus will also offer an optional eGPU that also acts as a USB hub with a 280-watt power supply that can drive the laptop as well as the highest-power gaming GPU on mobile, a desktop Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. 

You can preorder the bundle now on Asus' site for $3,000. (International prices aren't available, but that works out to about £2,350 or AU$4,140, converted.)

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Acer Predator Triton 300 SE

Acer

While you won't entirely mistake the Predator Triton 300 SE for a productivity machine, it's definitely more tame-looking than past Triton gaming laptops. The all-metal chassis is only 17.9mm thin and 1.7kg (3.8 pounds), and instead of a big Predator logo on the lid, there's just a postage-stamp-size one in the upper-left corner. It's a 14-inch laptop, and Acer used a 1080p IPS panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. 

Inside will be the new 11th-gen Intel Core i7 H35-series processors and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 graphics, up to 24GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 memory and up to 1TB of PCIe SSD storage. It'll get up to 10 hours of battery life for productivity tasks, too, Acer says. It will be available in North America in February, starting at $1,400.

Razer

As you might expect, Razer updated its thin 15- and 17-inch gaming laptops with the latest RTX 30-series GPUs, but the company is sticking with 10th-gen Intel processors in them for the moment. However, it did update its display offering for both models. The Blade 15 Advanced will have a choice of an FHD-resolution panel with a 360Hz refresh rate, a QHD panel at 240Hz with G-Sync or a UHD OLED display with a 60Hz refresh rate. The Pro 17 will also have three display choices: FHD at 360Hz, QHD panel at 165Hz and UHD at 120Hz.

The new Razer Blade 15 starts at $1,700, while the new Razer Blade Pro 17 starts at $2,300. 

Asus TUF Dash F15

Josh Goldman/CNET

Like the Predator Triton 300 SE, the Dash F15 still leans more toward a typical gaming laptop design with its highlighted WASD keys, angular fan vents and TUF printed large on the lid. Still, with its mix of white and light gray for the body color and that it's thin, compact and relatively light at about 4.4 pounds, it's portable and won't stand out too much at the coffee shop or office when you're getting work done. Also, it can be charged over USB-C and has a rated battery life of up to nearly 17 hours of video playback, Asus says. 

It can be configured with up to an 11th-gen Intel Core i7-11375H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 memory and up to a 1TB SSD. Asus will offer two display options. Both are 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution 15.6-inch displays, but one will have a 240Hz refresh rate with a 3ms response time and 100% sRGB color gamut coverage, while the other will be a 144Hz panel. 

No pricing was announced for the Asus TUF Dash F15. It's expected to be available in Q1 2021 in North America. 

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HDMI 2.1 could reinvent PC gaming, and all gaming laptops should have it

HDMI 2.1 made a big splash at CES 2021. It’s a strange thing to say about a port, but it just may end up having a bigger impact on PC gaming than any flashy new gaming laptop or even a graphics card.

It also might help overcome the barrier that has existed between PC and console gaming since the beginning. Here’s why HDMI 2.1 could finally unite gaming and why all gaming PCs should support it moving forward.

Breaking down walls

A divide has always existed in gaming. Consoles are for the living room and televisions, PCs are for desks and monitors. They’ve evolved separate from one another, developing different tech to fit their specific needs. In recent years, that’s become especially important when it comes to ports.

PCs have gradually moved away from HDMI. You’ll still find HDMI 2.0 in laptops and desktop graphics cards, but most desktop gamers currently favor the fast refresh rates of DisplayPort. All gaming monitors have it, as do desktop graphics cards. DisplayPort 1.4 granted PCs the ability to do 4K at 120Hz, which is something only high-end PCs have been able to use relatively recently. DisplayPort also supports important syncing technology such as G-Sync or FreeSync.

In console world, HDMI is still king. The main reason is that older consoles couldn’t make use of those resolutions and refresh rates anyway. But the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 change all that. They’re more like PCs than any console before them, and by adopting HDMI 2.1, they have the same support for 4K 120Hz as DisplayPort.

We’ve reached a convergence point. As HDMI 2.1 begins to roll out, there might not be much of an advantage of using DisplayPort over HDMI. That presents an incredible opportunity to increase the value of laptops and PC gaming as a whole.

Gaming laptops need to embrace HDMI 2.1

At CES 2021, just one gaming laptop announced support for HDMI 2.1, the Alienware m15 R4. That might not sound too promising, but all evolutions in technology start small, especially when it comes to changes in standards.

That’s especially true since only the most recent graphics upgrade to the Nvidia RTX 30-series is what enables gaming laptops to play in 4K for the very first time. Manufacturers are starting to put 4K 120Hz screens in laptops, such as the Asus ROG Zephryus Duo 15 SE.

Now, imagine for a moment that you have one of these powerful new HDMI 2.1 gaming laptops. You use it for work during the day, and then can freely switch between the gaming monitor in your office and the television in your living room. Your wireless keyboard and mouse connect automatically at your desk, and when you move to the couch, so do your controllers. It would make the portability of gaming laptops so important, especially in a world where you still can’t buy the latest consoles or desktop graphics cards.

Of course, we have a long way to go before HDMI 2.1 is fully embraced by the PC community. Not only is it currently only on the Alienware m15 R4, it’s only being applied to select monitors. It’s also not even a standard feature of all televisions.

Meanwhile, VESA will be surely be advancing its own technology into the future with DisplayPort 2.0, which could again increase bandwidth to keep it ahead of HDMI.

But there’s a much better chance of PCs adapting to HDMI 2.1 than television and consoles switching to DisplayPort or USB-C. It’s the one port that already exists on nearly every device where we need it. That makes HDMI 2.1 the one hope for unifying high-end gaming across the many different platforms where it currently exists.

Editors' Recommendations

Hurry! Grab this cheap gaming laptop from Dell while it’s $265 off

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CloseDell

A good gaming laptop doesn’t always have to be expensive, as you can see with this well-priced Dell G5 15 gaming laptop — now available for just $750 for a strictly limited time only at Dell. Ordinarily priced at $1,015, you save $265 on the usual price, making this a great time to invest in a cheap yet respectable gaming laptop. You’ll need to be quick though. This deal is highly sought after and stock is already running low. If you’ve missed out or you want to check out the competition, we have plenty of other cheap gaming laptop deals for you to consider.

While we haven’t reviewed this specific model, we have checked out the Dell G5 SE gaming laptop which offers a very similar design. We were suitably impressed and this updated revision is sure to be even more appealing. It offers a 10th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory, 256GB SSD for storage, and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card. There’s also a 15.6-inch display that promises to be anti-glare and is backlit. Combined, that’s pretty much everything you could need from a cheap gaming laptop, making it easy to play all your favorite games while on the move.

The Dell G5 15 gaming laptop has some smart features elsewhere, too, such as a dual-fan cooling system which aims to help spread out heat and keep your system responsive no matter how hard you’re playing. There’s also a Game Shift mode that gives you a turbo-boost of power just when you need it, all while keeping things cool. Finally, there’s quick charge functionality, plus the laptop comes in at just 21.6mm thick. It’s everything you could need basically but at a lower price than usual, making it a tempting proposition if you’ve been keen to snap up a laptop capable of gaming but couldn’t quite justify the expense.

Gaming on the move or within a limited space at home is sure to be far more convenient with the Dell G5 15 gaming laptop. Ordinarily priced at $1,015, it’s down to just $750 right now, saving you $265. Be quick though — stock is strictly limited and once it’s gone, it’s gone!

We strive to help our readers find the best deals on quality products and services, and we choose what we cover carefully and independently. The prices, details, and availability of the products and deals in this post may be subject to change at anytime. Be sure to check that they are still in effect before making a purchase.

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