It’s been a wild ride for gaming laptops this year. Some have made it into our best gaming laptop (opens in new tab) lineup, while others have fallen by the wayside. But which one will we choose as the best gaming laptop of 2022?
Each of our nominees is topped with a high refresh rate 1440p panel, a tasty chunk of high-speed storage, and a minimum of 16GB of DDR5 RAM. Of course, we’re focusing on machines touting the impressive processing power of 12th Gen Intel CPUs, or indeed AMD’s Zen 3 (Zen 3+ even), as well as the graphical prowess of Nvidia’s 30-series and AMD’s RX 6000-series mobile GPUs.
Those we’ve chosen truly capture the essence of 2022 in the form of portable gaming powerhouses, meeting at the intersection where the performance we demand from a gaming laptop today encounters the demon trio of price, thermals, and battery life. Generally, manufacturers only manage to take down two of the assailants; even in the year of our lord 2022, these awful trade-offs still haunt us.
Hopefully, that’ll change in 2023, but for now, we ask the question: Which gaming laptop will be our sultan of swiftness, our baron of battery life, or prince of portability… Only time will tell. Check out the nominees below.
Best gaming laptop 2022: the nominees
The winner of the PC Gamer Hardware Award for the best gaming laptop will be announced on New Year’s Eve. It’s all to play for, and any one of these three is completely deserving of the crown.
PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2022: The nominees