The best gaming laptops for 2025: Tested and vetted

Read Mashable’s full review of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE.

The budget Acer Chromebook 516 GE promises its users a fantastic cloud-based PC gaming experience, and in our testing, it definitely delivers. At this price point, quality gaming laptops are hard to come by, but the Chromebook 516 GE breaks that mold by offering top-notch performance during gaming and general use, a beautiful display, killer perks, and more for $649. Thankfully, it regularly goes on sale for under $500 — especially at Best Buy, where it’s currently sitting at only $419. If you’re looking for the intersection of quality and value, you’ll find it here.

If you’re not familiar with cloud gaming yet, it’s the equivalent of watching content through an app like Netflix: You’ll be streaming games rather than downloading them or owning a physical copy. That means no load times to start playing, no downloads, and no updates. Sometimes, this can result in poor game quality and choppy performance, but this laptop doesn’t have those problems. We used Xbox Game Pass as our cloud platform of choice during testing, and we had an overall great experience (we also used an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, which connected easily).

We played single-player games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Rollerdrome, and Cyberpunk 2077, as well as online multiplayer games like Sea of Thieves, Mortal Kombat 11, and Fortnite — all of which require fast and responsive performance to play as intended. We’re happy to report that every game we booted up ran swimmingly, save for a slight loss in fidelity (which is extremely common with cloud gaming). We also experienced zero input lag or stuttering, an impressive feat.

Luckily, you won’t be beholden to Game Pass. Along with your purchase, you can redeem three free months of NVIDIA GeForce Now at the Priority level, which grants you access to NVIDIA’s high-end cloud servers with enhanced resolution and frame rate. You get other perks, too, including three months of YouTube Premium, a year’s worth of Google One cloud storage, and a month of access to Boosteroid. As we said, the value for your money here is stellar.

Aside from the gaming-centric features, the Acer Chromebook 516GE is also a really solid laptop in general. The build quality feels durable and sturdy like a gaming laptop should, and it features a nice RGB keyboard with anti-ghosting tech that’s incredible to type on. You’ll also get a bevy of ports, including USB-C, HDMI, and Ethernet. The real showstopper is the laptop’s display — the 16-inch, 1600p screen looks fantastic and boasts clear, bright, and vibrant colors. It also supports a 120Hz refresh rate, which is amazing for a budget gaming laptop (even though you can’t drop it down to save some battery life).

Mashable Tech Reporter Alex Perry also enjoyed his time with the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE, citing display and performance as highlights as well. He used NVIDIA’s GeForce Now app mostly during testing and said it performed better than Game Pass, at least at the Ultimate subscription tier. We can’t speak to the free tier, but it’s probably closer to the base Game Pass experience. All in all, Perry also agrees that this gaming Chromebook is a great value for the price, especially on sale.