• Gigabyte G5 | RTX 4060 | $1,099.99 $799.99
• Asus TUF A16 | Radeon RX 7600S | $1,099.99 $749.99

Angling for a cheap gaming laptop doesn't make the hunt for a good price any easier—especially when every seller's yelling for attention on your search engine of choice. Good thing you've got us, eh? Especially when we might just wind up saving you $300. That's [[link]] a lot of dough to save when you're hunting for budget builds like the Gigabyte G5 or the Asus TUF A16, sporting the latest Nvidia and AMD GPUs respectively.  

First things first—the Gigabyte G5. This thing's packed with a 10-core, 16-thread CPU, a RTX 4060, 16 gigs of RAM, and a 512GB SSD—which is a gaming minimum nowadays. No catches involved, either. Our G5 review calls it a "straightforward, well-built, and cleverly provisioned gaming laptop." 

Gigabyte G5 | Core i7 12650H | RTX 4060 | 16GB DDR5-4800 | 512GB SSD | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | $1,099.99 $799.99 at Best Buy (save $300)
This is a lot of laptop for not very much money. To start with, you're getting a 10-core, 16-thread CPU that will easily cope with pretty much any game you throw at it. There's an RTX 4060 Mobile graphics chip too, that supports DLSS upscaling and frame generation. The storage is a bit disappointing, and you'll probably want to upgrade it at some point with a large SSD. For portable gaming and school work, though, this Gigabyte G5 laptop will keep you and your wallet happy.

Price check: Newegg (8GB version) $750 | Amazon $1,149

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Asus TUF A16 | Radeon RX 7600S | AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS | 16GB DDR5 | 512GB SSD | 16-inch | 1200p | 165Hz | $1,099.99 $749.99 at Best Buy (save $350)
For a gaming laptop with close to RTX 4060-level gaming performance the TUF A16 feels like a genuine bargain. That 512GB SSD is a bit miserly, but everything else seems like excellent value for money. That RX 7600S GPU is a [[link]] rare AMD mobile GPU, and sits above the RTX 4050 and a bit below the RTX 4060 in terms of performance. For a $750 gaming laptop, that's a good place to be.

Price check: Amazon $1,139.99 | Newegg $1,029.99

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Normally this'd fetch you $1,149 on Amazon, but Best Buy has it listed for $799.99—that's over $300 in savings. Which is more than enough to buy another SSD with change left over, which you'll probably want to do. Luckily it also has a M.2 SSD slot free in the back, so you can keep pace with today's mammoth drive-buster games.

Then there's the Asus TUF A16. While it doesn't have an RTX 4060 like the GIGABYTE G5, it has a RX 7600S GPU, which comes pretty dang close performance-wise. It also comes with an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 7735HS and 16GB of DDR5 RAM. Like the Gigabyte it shares that SSD space issue—just 512GB—but you're saving a few hundred bucks and they're easy to install, so that's a simple solve.

• We're curating all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here.

Amazon wants to sell the Asus TUF A16 to you for $1,139.99, while Best Buy has [[link]] it for a $749.99 steal. That's around a $390 difference. Even a budget 1TB SSD would barely make a dent in the savings you're getting by avoiding Jeff's big A.

Overall, it's a pretty dang good time to buy a gaming laptop. You're getting great value for your money with either of these builds—and if you can deal with how they tend to roar (the same with any laptop, unfortunately) you're going to have a good time. Plus with how cheap SSDs are at the moment—and the Black Friday Savings—you're completely dodging the downside of both builds.