The best 14-inch gaming laptops represent the pinnacle of mobile gaming. Sure, your Steam Deck and ROG Ally X are great for certain games, and certain spaces, but if you truly want to take a gaming PC on the road then a gaming laptop is where it's at. And the absolute S Tier of the gaming laptop is the 14-inch form factor. Fight me.
You can get more cooling, beefier GPUs, and broader screen real estate in a 15- to 18-inch notebook, but the higher up the scale you go the less wieldy, the less portable they become as actual mobile devices. And you can, of course, get smaller laptops in the 13-inch scale, but as soon as you start down that road you're really limiting what you can do with your machine.
Okay, in our best gaming laptop guide we have a 16-inch machine as the top pick, but that's for PC gamers in general. You and I, we know better, right? We know that 14-inch is where it's at. The 14-inch gaming laptop, then, is the perfect fulcrum point for portability and performance. They will support proper discrete graphics chips, retain enough chassis space for a quality screen and still have capacity enough for the sort of cooling a modern GPU requires to game successfully. And you will still have a laptop you can take around with you, use for office/school work on the go, and still have the gaming chops to play the latest titles with ease.
If I'm buying a new gaming laptop, then it's going to be a 14-inch notebook. We've been testing new machines for years, and these are our absolute favorite 14-inch gaming laptops and the ones we'd recommend to you.
Dave has been testing PC gaming hardware professionally for the best part of twenty years. Back then a gaming laptop was the size of a briefcase, so you can probably see why he's been so keen to get his hands on every compact gaming-capable notebook of the past decade. He's been a 14-inch laptop Stan since he first got his hands on the original Gigabyte Aero and he's still going on about them.
The Quick List
The best overall
The Asus Zephyrus G14 is hands-down the best 14-inch gaming laptop you can buy today. The new chassis is premium, and simply gorgeous, pushing it ahead of the Blade 14, and making it the most desirable machine around.
The best budget
Asus has been working hard to make its gaming laptops more grown up in this generation, and the TUF A14—a machine from the more affordable end of the market—now looks far more premium than its price suggests.
The fastest
If you want the most powerful, fastest 14-inch gaming laptop, the Razer Blade 14 is certainly that. It might be slightly chunkier than the rest, but that gives it the cooling to cope with high-performance PC hardware.
The best 14-inch gaming laptop
Our favorite config:
✅ You're after a machine that can be a workhorse as well as a gaming device: The stylish design and eminently portable nature of the new G14 means that it's just as at home in the office as in your gaming space.
✅ You want a great screen: The high-resolution OLED panel on the G14 is a beautiful example of how good laptop displays can be.
❌ You after an upgradeable machine: The memory is completely soldered LPDDR5x, and that means what you get is what you're stuck with. You also only have a solitary SSD slot, which makes replacing the relatively small 1 TB drive a trickier upgrade down the line.
💻 The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has finally overtaken Razer's Blade 14 as the most desirable, and absolute best 14-inch gaming laptop around. It's gorgeous and handles its gaming business with aplomb.
Asus' ROG Zephyrus G14 has been one of the best compact gaming laptops since the company brought its 14-inch machine to the world back in 2020. But it's not been the best 14-inch gaming laptop… until now. With the current 2024 generation of Zephyrus G14 Asus has really dialled into what people want from a premium compact laptop, and that has pushed it beyond Razer's Blade 14 for the best overall crown.
A big part of its success is that new chassis. Previously, this was the thing which had me leaning towards Razer's diminutive Blade: its unibody, super premium aluminum chassis. The slightly plasticky Zephyrus G14 surrounds, however, by comparison made it cheaper from a bill of materials point of view, but also made it feel cheaper than the Razer.
That's all changed now, with Asus creating a full unibody chassis for the latest 2024 version… and it's gorgeous. It feels every inch the premium laptop now, and is really stealing the Blade 14's thunder as the PC notebook giving that proper gaming-MacBook aesthetic. It's slim, it feels great in the hands, and has just the right amount of flair without being overly 'gamery'.
Which might come as a surprise for people who haven't seen a recent Asus gaming laptop. Gone are the aggressive angles and extreme gamer text and RGB LEDs plastered all over the chassis.
The Zephyrus G14 has always been one of Asus' key AMD-based gaming laptops and that has played right into the 14-inch notebook's hands given that the recent Ryzen chips have been fantastic mobile CPUs. The Ryzen 9 8945HS chip at its heart is a great eight-core, 16-thread chip, with the best of the last-gen iGPUs inside it. That's the integrated graphics powering the best handheld gaming PCs around right now, and means you can save some battery, leave the discrete GPU off, and still get impressive 1080p gaming frame rates.
But with the option to have up to a discrete RTX 4070 GPU inside it means you can still get proper gaming performance at higher resolutions, too. There are RTX 4050 and RTX 4060 versions also available, which gives you some scope to pick up more affordable versions of this premium machine.
It's worth noting that the RTX 4070 is limited to 90 W TGP, where the Blade 14 is given 140 W to play with, which does make that the most performant of the 14-inch gaming laptops. But for overall experience, the new Zephyrus G14 is absolutely the one for me. The design makes it far more portable—the latest Blade 14 chassis has put on a bit of weight in its old age—and it comes with a glorious OLED screen no matter which GPU you pair it with.
The 2880 x 1800 OLED screen sports a 120 Hz refresh rate and looks stunning. The colours are vibrant and the contrast is effectively limitless. As an OLED panel, it has the tell-tale inky blacks, but also has enough brightness to really make its gaming visuals pop. It really does make it stand out from the more standard IPS in the Blade 14.
Given the slimline chassis, I can see why we're getting fully soldered memory here, and the 32 GB of LPDDR5x pairs beautifully with the eight-core Zen 4 CPU, but it does put some limits on its upgradeability. As does the solitary M.2 SSD slot, which means if you want more than 1 TB of storage you need to do some technical gymnastics to get a fresh Windows install onto your larger drive.
But those are all relatively minor niggles for what is an absolutely stunning gaming laptop all told. And not just a stunning compact gaming laptop, either. If I've got the money to spend on a new machine, then you best believe I'm spending it on a ROG Zephyrus G14—it's my current object of desire, and Razer is going to have to do some serious work to get back on top.
Read our full Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review.
The best budget 14-inch gaming laptop
Our favorite config:
✅ You want a premium-looking little laptop without the premium: Yes, 14-inch machines are still relatively expensive, but the TUF range is generally cheaper than the Zephyrus, so I expect this machine to be regularly discounted, though it looks anything but the cheap alternative.
✅ You want something to drop into a bag: This is an even more portable machine than the Transcend 14, and easily able to follow you around.
✅ You want good battery life: Even with the RTX 4060 being used you get great battery life from the TUF A14, but switch over to the Strix Point iGPU and you'll get long-time 1080p gaming on the road.
❌ You want the fastest GPU: By virtue of its diminutive scale, Asus has limited the TUF A14 to just the RTX 4060 (and possibly because it doesn't want to cannibalise the RTX 4070 version of the G14.
💻 While the 14-inch form factor still carries a price premium, the Asus TUF A14 is one of the more affordable ones, and by virtue of it being Asus' more budget-oriented range it's likely to be the subject of significant discounts sooner rather than later.
It's a wonderful thing as a tech reviewer to be genuinely surprised by a new product. And another thing entirely for it to be a pleasant surprise, too. The Asus TUF A14 is both. It's the latest 14-inch gaming laptop from Asus' more affordable TUF range of gaming laptops, and rather than using the function-over-form styling previous generations of TUF machines have presented with, the TUF A14 is taking a few style pointers from its older, more glamorous siblings.
The Zephyrus G14 is the prettier one, for sure, but there are absolutely the same familial traits on show with the TUF A14. Gone are the more aggressive, more 'gamer' lines of the chassis, and instead we've got a much more restrained, much sleeker vibe, that feels far more grown up.
Honestly, it's the sort of laptop I could take anywhere with me and not feel embarrassed whenever I flip open the lid and fear a rainbow unicorn vomit of RGB gushing out to greet me. Asus, in its wisdom, and from a desire to keep costs down, has just gone with plain white LEDs for the keyboard backlighting, adding to the restrained feel of this laptop.
And that keyboard is great, too. The spacing between the keys themselves makes it a pleasure to type on, making it a excellent productivity tool—backed up by the fact the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a 12-core, 24-thread processor is able to smash through seriously demanding applications with its Zen 5 architecture giving it real grunt.
That chip also comes with the Radeon 890M iGPU, which is essentially the fastest integrated graphics chip you will find. That means you can disable the more power hungry Nvidia RTX 4060 discrete GPU when you're on battery power, extend that already impressive battery life even further, and still be able to game happily at medium 1080p settings in even the latest games.
And with the 100 W RTX 4060 you're getting high-end 1080p gaming performance and even passable 1600p frame rates to match your higher resolution screen. The 2560 x 1600 panel isn't the most exciting I've used, but it's got a 165 Hz refresh rate, is crisp and clear, and bright enough for me. It doesn't necessarily pop but I'd prioritise price over this part of the build right now.
And added bonus I wasn't expecting is the extra M.2 slot inside the machine, which means you can add a secondary SSD without having to mess around cloning your OS or reinstalling Windows to get some extra storage space. Unfortunately that is the only thing you can upgrade as the RAM is soldered onto the board. That means you're going to have to pick your starting RAM point carefully when it comes to the 16 GB or 32 GB options, as you can't change your mind down the line. Not without a lot of engineering experience and some solder.
Read our full Asus TUF A14 review.
The most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop
Our favorite config:
✅ You aren't one to compromise on performance: The 140 W RTX 4070 at the heart of the Blade 14 is what pushes it ahead of the competition, but you are absolutely paying a premium for the extra frames per second.
✅ You're after good gaming battery life: Despite having a nominally smaller battery, the Blade 14 gets the most out of it and offers the highest gaming uptime of all the laptops we've tested in this category.
❌ You're focused on the best value proposition: Razer's machines always command a price premium and that is certainly the case with the Blade 14. It's a fantastic laptop, especially in terms of gaming performance, but it will cost you.
💻 If you're after the most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop then the Razer Blade 14 is absolutely that. It may be a little chonkier than the others, but it's faster and has a superior battery life, too.
Razer's only AMD-powered machine may not be my absolute favorite compact gaming laptop anymore, but the Blade 14 is still the outright fastest 14-inch gaming laptop you can buy. It delivers the highest frame rates of any of these wee notebooks, and if that's all you care about then—so long as you have the cash—the Blade 14 is the best place to be spending your money.
But you will have to make sure you're happy to spend that much, because this brushed all-aluminum chassis, improved cooling, high-performance GPU, and that Razer premium tax all add up to a big ol' price tag.
For the money-no-object crowd maybe that's going to be worth it for the gaming performance the 140 W RTX 4070 can deliver. On the 1600p screen—still blessedly 16:10 even if it's not quite as high res as the panels on the Omen Transcend 14 or ROG Zephyrus G14—that is what allows it to maintain its performance lead over the rest of the compact laptops we've tested.
And once upon a time that higher gaming performance and the classic Razer chassis would have been enough for me to declare a resounding overall win for the company, but Asus has been laser-focused on breaking Razer's hold on this market with its new Zephyrus G14 and the glorious unibody chassis it's wrapped its laptop in.
The Asus ROG laptop is thinner, lighter, and performs really, really well, even if it can't quite match the Blade 14's overall performance. With the last two generations of Nvidia GPUs Razer has bulked up its laptop, too, meaning the current Blade is thicker than it was and heavier. We could cope with the extra thickness, but the extra weight is certainly noticeable if you hold either the HP or Asus ones.
Though that thickness and improved cooling has certainly helped from a gaming perspective. The cooling allows you to run the GPU at a lower temperature than the competition, but you can also brave the Synapse software and let it run hotter, but crucially quieter, too. That's one of the benefits of that extra laptop girth.
It also has a surprisingly healthy battery life, comparatively speaking. From a standard notebook perspective, no gaming laptop has a good battery life, but you get nearly an hour and 40 minutes worth of discrete GPU gaming time with the Blade 14. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and HP Omen Transcend 14, on the other hand, are lucky if they get to 60 minutes total.
That's impressive given the smaller battery capacity.
Where the performance maybe isn't on par with the others here is in the screen Razer has dropped into its 14-incher. In the Blade 16 Razer has opted for a glorious 240 Hz OLED panel, and for me, it's the absolute best laptop screen you'll see. The Blade 14, however, is rocking a more standard IPS panel, and while it is still a very, very good display, with a 1600p resolution and 240 Hz refresh—it's not got the wow factor of the OLEDs in either the Zephyrus G14 or Transcend 14.
In the end, if you have the money, and its power and performance that you prize above all else, then the Blade 14 is the best performing 14-inch gaming laptop around today.
Read our full Razer Blade 14 review.
Also tested
Where to find the best gaming laptop deals
We regularly curate the best gaming laptop deals each week, so check out our updated deals hub for the latest offers. But here are also the places that we would generally be looking to find those deals for ourselves:
- Amazon: Gigabyte RTX 4060 laptops from $989
- Asus: ROG Zephyrus G16 OLED RTX 4070 for $1,600 @ Best Buy
- MSI: RTX 4060 laptop for $1,000 @ Newegg
- Gigabyte: RTX 4070 Aorus 17 laptop for $1,599 @ Amazon
- Lenovo: Save $500 on a Legion Pro 7 RTX 4080 machine @ B&H Photo
- Walmart: RTX 4070 HP Victus for $1,299
- Target: Manufacturer refurbs from Acer from $800
- Razer: Savings on RTX 40-series Blades
- Newegg: RTX 4080 Gigabyte laptop for $1,800
- Best Buy: RX 7700S Asus machine for $750
- Dell: Gaming laptops from $850
FAQ
What's the most important gaming laptop component?
When it comes to gaming, the obvious answer is the graphics card, but that's where things have gotten a little more complicated recently. With GPU performance now so dependent on cooling, you have to pay attention to what wattage a graphics card is limited to and what chassis it's squeezed into.
As we said at the top, an RTX 4080 confined in an 18 mm chassis will perform markedly slower than one in a far chunkier case with room for higher-performance cooling.
Should I worry about what the CPU in a gaming laptop is?
That really depends on what you want to do with your laptop. An 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen chip will allow you to do a whole load of productivity on the road, but honestly, it will have little benefit in gaming. As long as the CPU has at least six cores and 12 threads, and they're clocked high enough, it will be more than enough to deliver high-end gaming performance when paired with something like the RTX 4070.
Are high refresh rate panels worth it for laptops?
We love high refresh rate screens here, and while you cannot guarantee your RTX 4060 will deliver 300 fps in the latest games, you'll still see a benefit in general look and feel running a 300 Hz display.
Should I get a 4K screen in my laptop?
Nah. 4K gaming laptops are overkill; they're fine for video editing if you're dealing with 4K content, but it's not the optimal choice for games. The standard 1080p resolution means that the generally slower mobile GPUs are all but guaranteed high frame rates, while companies are slowly drip-feeding 1440p panels into their laptop ranges.
A 1440p screen offers the perfect compromise between high resolution and decent gaming performance. At the same time, a 4K notebook will overstress your GPU and tax your eyeballs as you squint at your 14-inch display.
