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Gaming Laptops
Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands
Gaming Laptops
Razer Blade 16 vs Asus Zephyrus G16 2025 edition: We’re potentially picking the best gaming laptop of this generation
Gaming Laptops
Razer Blade 14 (2025) gaming laptop review
Gaming Laptops
Razer’s new super-skinny Blade 14 gaming laptop is a serious threat to my wallet, but I want a GPU with more than 8 GB VRAM for $2,700
Gaming Laptops
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review
Gaming Laptops
Best gaming laptop in 2025: I’ve put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner
Gaming Laptops
Razer Blade 16 (2025) gaming laptop review
Gaming Laptops
I’ve spent weeks testing the best little gaming laptops and there’s only one they’re going to have to prise from my cold, dead hands
Dave James
25 June 2025
Razer’s got a fight on its hands to wrestle the new Blade 14 off me.
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Best gaming laptops
I’ve spent a good few weeks now agonising over which of these two notebooks can claim the crown of best 14-inch gaming laptop—should it be the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 claiming the title for the second year running, or does the redesigned Razer Blade 14 do enough to topple the incumbent champ?
Honestly, from when I first started playing with the new Blade 14 my mind was made up. It’s slimmer than last year’s machine, cheaper, and a whole lot quieter than the frankly annoyingly noisy Zephyrus G14. But that’s not to say there hasn’t been some conflicting thoughts going around in my head.
Because, on paper, it’s really not so cut and dried a result. In the US, the Asus laptop is $100 cheaper, and that’s for the version with the RTX 5070 Ti GPU—the Blade 14, by contrast, can only be configured with either an RTX 5060 or RTX 5070. The G14 is also sporting the best mobile APU that AMD has ever created: the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with it’s excellent Radeon 890M integrated graphics.
The Blade 14 is also an AMD-powered device, but it uses the weaker Ryzen AI 9 365 with the same sort of iGPU as the last-gen APUs.
So… it’s got a lesser spec and it’s more expensive. “How can you be recommending this gaming laptop with just 8 GB of VRAM over the clearly superior Zephyrus?!” This is the question I imagine being screamed at this page right now, but bear with me and I shall explain.
If you want a gaming laptop with a ton of graphical grunt first and foremost, then a 14-inch machine isn’t for you. This form factor is about having a genuinely portable notebook that will play games on the go. It’s about the experience, not the raw numbers. While you will get higher frame rates out of the Asus compared with the Razer—though given the slight silicon differences between the two GPUs, not by much—there is a cost to be paid. And it will be paid by your ears.
The new Zephyrus has this uncomfortable two-tone nature to its fan noise which is hugely distracting and the only way to mitigate it outside of some really good noise cancelling headphones, is to use the manual configuration options to pull back on performance. And at that point, getting to the same fan sound as the quieter Blade 14, you’re then running your RTX 5070 Ti at the same frame rate as an RTX 5070.
I also just straight prefer the design of the Blade 14, too. The sleek matte black MacBook aesthetic has long been a draw for the Razer laptops, and with this new, thinner chassis that’s even more pronounced. It’s a lovely thing, with a gorgeous OLED screen, a decent keyboard, and great battery life, too.
For me, it’s the best compact gaming laptop around.
The quick list
Best gaming laptop 2025All our current recommendations
👉Check out our full guide👈
1. Best overall: Razer Blade 16 (2025)
2. Best budget: Gigabyte G6X
3. Best 14-inch: Razer Blade 14 (2025)
4. Best mid-range: MSI Vector 16 HX AI
5. Best high-performance: Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10
6. Best 17-inch: Gigabyte Aorus 17X
The best gaming laptops
Best overall
1. Razer Blade 16 (2025)
£2,499.99 at Razer
£2,699.99 at Razer
£3,099.99 at Amazon
The best overall
Now we’ve seen the new Blade 16 and Asus Zephyrus G16 laptops side-by-side we can categorically say that Razer has absolutely won this round. On all counts, the newly redesigned Blade 16 is the best gaming laptop you can buy today.
Best budget
2. Gigabyte G6X (2024)
£949 at Amazon
£1,099.97 at Laptops Direct
£1,139 at very.co.uk
The best budget
Gigabyte has created an excellent budget gaming laptop, and while the screen could be better, it offers a nice combination of components for very reasonable money.
Best 14-inch
3. Razer Blade 14 (2025)
£2,399.99 at Razer
£2,399.99 at Razer
Check Amazon
The best 14-inch
If you want your gaming laptop to actually be a proper mobile gaming device, then the newly redesigned Razer Blade 14 is the best compact notebook you can buy. It may top out at an RTX 5070, but that fits perfectly its slimline beautiful chassis.
Best mid-range
4. MSI Vector 16 HX AI
£2,579 at Laptops Direct
£2,599 at very.co.uk
£2,914.94 at Amazon
The best mid-range
We weren’t huge fans of MSI’s last-gen gaming laptops, but the mid-range Vector manages to deliver both high frame rates, a decent price, and a setup that allows for a balanced mode with decent performance and acceptable fan noise.
Best high-performance
5. Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10
£2,700 at Lenovo UK
£3,300 at Lenovo UK
£5,793.89 at Amazon
The best high-performance
If you want the best gaming frame rates full stop, then Lenovo’s redesigned Legion Pro 7i is the gaming laptop you should covet. The new design looks great, and that thicker chassis allows for the absolute best gaming performance we’ve seen in a current-gen machine.
Best 17-inch
6. Gigabyte Aorus 17X (2024)
Check Amazon
View at pcgamer.com
The best 17-inch
The latest Aorus 17X shows that Gigabyte has been paying attention, and has delivered a beefy 17-inch machine that we’d be happy to lug about with us. It’s got a great spec, the screen is sweet, and the battery life is decent, too.
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Editor-in-Chief, Hardware
Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.
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Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands
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