Gaming on a budget can be problematic because when the word “budget” collides with”gaming laptop,” you often get something with low specs that isn’t worth buying. Luckily, the last few years have seen leaps and bounds in that space, and if you’re willing to compromise a little on build quality, you can get a great budget gaming laptop, such as the Acer Nitro 5. You can even pick it up from Walmart for just $699, which is a $300 discount on the $999 it usually goes for.
Luckily, the Acer Nitro 5 has many perks, and we’ve even named it one of our best laptops for Fortnite in the budget category, which is helped by the RTX 3060 that’s running under the hood. While it’s not the most powerful GPU, it can easily run the 15.6-inch Full HD screen at a 144Hz refresh rate, even with higher graphical settings, which is a big plus for a niche that tends to focus too much on lower graphics but higher frame rates. It also has a relatively powerful AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, which luckily helps with battery efficiency and will give you between 10-13 hours on general use with low brightness, although that’s going to be cut to a fraction when gaming.
As mentioned earlier, you do take a bit of a hit in the build quality, and while there’s not a ton of flex, you might notice some when typing on the keyboard. Thankfully, that’s not a big deal, especially if you’re mostly going to use it for gaming and light productivity work. Sadly, the Acer Nitro 5 only comes with one 8GB RAM stick, so we encourage you to grab another 8GB of RAM and upgrade it to get that dual-channel performance, which will give you a significant boost for a small cost. You might also consider supplementing the 512GB SSD with one of these external hard drive deals, especially as modern games can easily be 60GB or more.
Ultimately, the Acer Nitro 5 does an excellent job of balancing performance and cost, and with the $699 discounted price at Walmart, the value proposition becomes hard to ignore. That said, there are a lot of other excellent gaming laptop deals to look at, and whatever laptop you go for, be sure to check out these gaming deals to pair with your new gear!
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.