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2024 has been a funny old year for new gaming laptops. We haven’t seen any new mobile tech from Nvidia and this year’s crop of processors from Intel and AMD have offered only minor upgrades. New AI features are a thing, sure, but they’re still in their infancy - and not quite mainstream enough to make a real dent in the performance of even the best gaming laptops outside of older systems like DLSS.
All of that means 2024 gaming laptops are stuck in a sort of limbo - and that’s excellent news for anyone on the hunt for Prime Day gaming laptop deals this summer. Amazon has traditionally never been particularly good with these specialist rigs, often pricing well over MSRP and stuffing its shelves with after-market configurations that few want or need. But Amazon’s not the only player in its annual sales anymore, and stores like Best Buy and Newegg are primed to offer some of the biggest offers we’ve seen yet.
Last year’s laptops are still valuable - just cheaper
In all our testing, we’ve found that this year’s mobile components are more of a nudge than a leap. Yes, you’ll get marginally better performance with an Intel 14th generation or Ultra processor than you would with last year’s - but we’re talking a few frames. In fact, the 2024 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 actually performed slightly worse compared to its predecessor in some of our tests.
We’ve been spoilt for upgrades in recent years. The jump from 12th-generation processors and RTX 30-Series graphics cards to current Raptor Lake and RTX 40-Series standards was massive. This was the first time we’d seen reliable three-figure framerates in higher resolutions, and lighter Nvidia-friendly games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider holding steady at over 200fps in some instances.
2024’s lineup was a limp whisper compared to 2023’s shout - which makes last year’s gaming laptops all the more enticing. These machines are holding their value far better than the rigs before them, standing toe-to-toe with this year’s releases and sometimes winning from a sheer performance standpoint.
So where have laptop brands put their cash this year if it’s not in new components? Screens. We’re seeing the first wave of 240Hz OLED displays hitting the shelves this year, with the Razer Blade 16 leading the charge. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and 2024 Zephyrus G16 stepped up with their own impressive OLED panels, as did the HP Omen Transcend 14. These panels are impressive to be sure, but they’re also expensive - and like we always say, there’s no point in paying for something you won’t use or appreciate.
If you don’t mind stepping away from the cutting-edge, 2023’s gaming laptops look incredibly similar to 2024’s - with one crucial difference. They’re a year older, which means they’re cheaper.
An RTX 4060 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 from 2023 has dropped as low as $999.99 at Best Buy. This year’s model remains firm at $1,599.99, having only ever dropped to $1,299.99. That’s a $300 difference between generations - impressive considering your core performance is going to match fairly closely. We’ve seen an RTX 4060 Alienware M18 R1 down as low as $1,449.99 at Dell this year, whereas the same spec in an R2 version is still stuck at $1,899.99.
I’ll leave the examples there, you don’t need me to explain that tech gets cheaper as it gets older. When the value of the performance remains the same, though, things get interesting. That’s why this year’s Prime Day gaming deals are going to be so important, especially for those on the hunt for a previous-generation machine (which, I would argue, most value-conscious players should be).
Discounts are getting heavier every year
So why Prime Day specifically? After all, there are plenty of sales happening all the time - you just have to catch them when they offer record-low prices. Prime Day is a better time to buy because of the concentration of deals, though. Retailers like Best Buy and Newegg know this is a period of intense competition, having met Amazon where it’s at for years now. They will now run their own site-wide blowout sales over the same days as each Prime event - and considering Bezos is so blind when it comes to gaming rigs that’s a blessing.
Last year we saw up to $650 off some of 2023’s biggest releases - and no prizes for guessing that Amazon was nowhere to be seen in our roundups of the best offers. Dell, B&H Photo, Best Buy, and Newegg led this charge, dropping RTX 4060 laptops in particular down to some impressive prices.
We’ve already seen those rates beaten in 2024, though. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i with an RTX 4080 GPU was the biggest find of last year’s Prime Day gaming laptop deals. It struck $2,099 for the first time, all the way down from $2,749. We’ve repeatedly seen this spec crash out at between $1,899 and $1,999 since then.
Not only that, but there’s a running trend that discounts across computers as a whole category are growing with every major sales event. Black Friday, for example, saw an average of 23.7% off computers (Adobe) - a modest boost over 2022’s average of 20% and a sizeable chunk of change compared to 2021’s 10% average saving (Adobe, via Emarketer). The same tech that saw those discounts over Black Friday will likely be returning to the sales shelf on Prime Day - but with an extra eight months of price cuts under their belts.
Not only are individual laptops getting cheaper, then, but retailers are willing to shave more and more off their prices as a whole these days.
Low prices + high value
That’s a potent combination. Gaming laptop deals on Prime Day 2024 are going to be particularly spicy - not just because their rates are going to be lower but because their overall value remains intact. If you’re using this year’s summer sales to upgrade your portable rig, we’d seriously consider picking up an older machine - it’s going to be your best chance to buy for a while.
We’re also rounding up everything you need to know about this year’s Prime Day PC deals as well as all the prices we’re expecting to see in 2024’s Prime Day laptop deals as a whole. Or, for something more portable, check out our predictions for this year’s Prime Day Steam Deck deals and Prime Day Asus ROG Ally deals.
