There are a lot of excellent gaming laptops out there, but they tend to be really expensive and usually outside the budget of most people on the market. Luckily, there are some solid budget options, especially if you don’t need anything super fancy and aren’t playing the latest AAA games. One great example is this configuration of the HP Victus 15, which usually goes for $1,000, but you can grab it right from HP for just $690.
The beating heart of any gaming machine is the GPU, and for this HP Victus 15, you get an RTX 3050, which is an entry-level card that is good for 1080p performance at 60FPS. You may have to make a couple of compromises here and there to get yourself the best framerate performance, although not too much. That said, it’s worth considering upgrading to the RTX 4050 for an extra $90 since it gives you access to the latest DLSS 3 and a bit more performance. You can also upgrade the screen to a version that has a 144 Hz and 9 ms response time for just $25, and while that will absolutely tax the GPU when gaming, it’s an excellent quality-of-life upgrade for the day-to-day for just that little amount of money.
As for processing power, the Intel Core i5-13500H is a very solid mid-range CPU that can more than handle the RTX 3050 or RTX 4050 and is great for general productivity work. If you need a bit more power, you could upgrade it to an Intel Core i7-13700H for $170, or $300 if you also choose the RTX 4050 option, but unless you do a lot of creativity work, it’s probably not worth the cost. The same can’t be said for the 8GB of RAM, and that is worth upgrading to 16GB, although the $90 may be a bit much, especially since you can find some good laptop RAM deals and upgrade them yourself. That said, you can save yourself the trouble if you don’t want to bother with it, and the same goes for the 1TB SSD upgrade for $90; you could do it yourself, but if you don’t have any tech experience, it can be a bit difficult.
Overall, the HP Victus 15 is still great even at the base specs, but it has a couple of great upgrade options that are worth grabbing, especially if you can put some of the $310 discount from HP towards them. Even so, if you’d like a couple more options, then be sure to check out these other great gaming laptop deals.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.