
Memory and storage – This is where you have the most control over your budget laptop purchase, and also where you can upgrade later on for relatively little cost. NVIDIA has been making the top GPUs for a long time, which means their older units are still great. Which means it’s also the place you can slide in one or even two gens behind and find yourself with an excellent GPU at a steep discount. Graphics card – The graphics card, or GPU, is probably where the most frequent upgrades happen. Processor – You may not be able to score the Intel Core i7 “Alder Lake” or one of the other ludicrous-speed processors, but a very solid AMD Ryzen 5 processor is well within range, as is a last-gen Intel Core i5. So what are the most important things to look for as you sort out good budget gaming laptops from cheap junk?
