It might be difficult to find a good deal on a graphics card right now, but gaming laptops are still easy to come by at acceptable prices. We saw plenty of great sales on laptops during Black November Friday and parts of December, and now you can get Lenovo’s IdeaPad Gaming 3 laptop with a GTX 1650 Ti graphics card for just $699.99 at Newegg. That’s a $70 discount from the usual cost, and one of the lowest prices we’ve seen yet for a laptop with that GPU.
This laptop is equipped with a 10th-generation Intel Core i5-10300H processor, a four-core/eight-thread chip with a 45W TDP. You also get a large 15.6-inch 1080p IPS screen (though it’s capped to 60Hz), 8GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD for storage. The main attraction is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card, which is a great GPU for entry-level 1080p gaming. You’ll be able to play just about any current PC game, as long as you turn down the graphics options.
There were some corners cut to bring this laptop under the $700 mark, most obviously the small SSD and low amount of memory. The 256GB drive won’t be large enough to store more than a few games (on top of what Windows requires), and many games will run better with 16GB RAM. Thankfully, both of those are easy to upgrade on Lenovo’s gaming laptops—the service manual [PDF warning] says once you remove the 10 screws on the bottom lid, you get instant access to the SSD, Wi-Fi card, RAM slots, and other components. There appears to be a 2.5-inch drive slot that comes empty from the factory, so if you have an old SATA SSD or hard drive already, you can just slot that in.
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 | $699.99 (save $70)
This entry-level gaming laptop has a Core i5 CPU, a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card, and a large 15.6-inch 1080p screen. The built-in 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM will need to be upgraded to take full advantage of the hardware, though.
If this laptop isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, have a look at our roundup of the best gaming laptops. We have recommendations for every price point, and if you’re specifically looking for the best sales right now, check out our gaming laptop deals hub.