Black Friday Is Here! Get The Year’s Best Prices on Gaming Laptops and Desktops

Black Friday has begun, and real gamers know that it’s an opportunity to score big on powerful PCs. This was a great year for hardware, with Nvidia’s new Blackwell 50-series GPUs pushing both 4K performance and advanced AI potential, and we’ve seen some really great machines pass through the PC Labs testing portal. Below you’ll find some nice price drops on well-reviewed desktops and laptops, so snag your dream machine as soon as you can.

Finding The Best Black Friday Gaming Deals

It’s not as simple as clicking “sort by price.” Be careful when browsing retailers during the holiday season, as some sellers try to fake you out with fraudulent high base prices and “discounts” that aren’t any better than what you can get year-round. When it comes to gaming hardware, the best way to understand what you’re getting is by reading our in-depth reviews, where we benchmark components and compare to find where the actual values are.

Asus Gaming Laptop Deal

Let’s open up the Black Friday gaming festivities with a recently-released Asus gaming laptop that we gave an Editors’ Choice award to in our review, gushing over its wickedly crisp 2.5K MiniLED display with a blistering 240Hz refresh rate. Paired with the RTX 5070 Ti graphics card and you’ll get some of the best portable visuals you can pull off in this price bracket. The Strix R16 packs some very surprising bonuses as well. When we put it through our extensive benchmarks, we were wowed by how long the battery lasted, a rare thing in a gaming machine with a screen this good. Amazon is offering a 22% off deal.

Razer Gaming Laptop Deal

If you’re interested in an ultralight portable that packs a ton of power, the Razer Blade 14 is a steal at $1000 off. We gave this laptop an Editors’ Choice in our review, praising its sleek and dynamic design, luxurious build quality, and high-end components, including a speedy Ryzen 9 processor, a Nvidia 50-series graphics card, and a bright and crisp 3K display. One of the low-key coolest aspects of the Blade 14 is its battery life. We tested it at over 10 hours of use on a single charge, which is remarkable for a lightweight gaming machine.

HP Gaming Laptop Deal

We gave an “Excellent” rating to HP’s Omen Max 16 laptop in our review, gushing over the high-powered machine’s premium-grade chassis, complete with per-key keyboard backlighting, full-sized number pad and responsive touchpad. Under the hood, you’ll get a complement of excellent components, including a next-generation RTX 50-series graphics card. HP’s Omen Gaming Hub gives you access to robust overclocking controls, like per-core CPU multipliers, voltage adjustments, and more. You can snag this mid-range build for 29% off.

Lenovo Gaming Laptop Deal

It’s a budget baby, but there’s no better discount out there right now than an staggering 41% price cut on the Lenovo LOQ 15 gaming portable. We reviewed a significantly less capable loadout (with an Intel Arc GPU instead of a new Blackwell-series RTX 5050) and still liked it, noting that it had a great CPU for the price, along with a solid 144HZ full HD display and good port selection. This configuration also has a better CPU than the one we benchmarked, a 13th generation Core i5, so you can expect even better performance.

MSI Gaming Laptop Deals

On the other side of the spectrum, the MSI Raider 18 is about as powerful as a gaming laptop can be without a prescription. We gave it an Editors’ Choice award in our review, with product expert Charles Jefferies saying that it “goes for power, top to bottom,” thanks to its cutting-edge Core Ultra 9 processor and top-of-the-line RTX 5090 graphics card. The incredible huge 4K mini-LED screen can take every frame that thing pumps out in max resolution and look good doing it. Of course, it has all the connectivity you’d expect, including Wi-Fi 7 radios and Thunderbolt ports. It’s spendy, but slicing $475 off makes it doable.

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MSI gives budget gamers plenty of love, too, and we gave an Editors’ Choice award to the MSI Katana 14 HX, which is on sale for $200 off at Walmart for Black Friday. In our review, we approved of the low-priced portable’s comfy keyboard, wide range of connectivity options, and surprisingly capable RTX 5050 graphics card, which shreds in 1080p play. It is a bit chunky-feeling, which is to be expected from a budget gaming machine, and a 512GB SSD will struggle with too big a Steam library, but on the whole this is a very solid pick for gaming on the cheap.

Alienware Gaming Desktop Deals

Looking to set up a new home gaming battlestation? We raved about the recently-released 2025 Alienware Area-51 in our review, with its totally redesigned chassis delivering futuristic appeal thanks to a metal front panel, illuminated RGB loop and tempered glass side panel. Inside, you’ll find top-quality components, including a new Blackwell-series Nvidia graphics card. If you’re a tinkerer, the access method for this tower is one of the simplest and coolest we’ve ever seen, and the positive-pressure airflow system is innovative and quiet, even under heavy pressure.

If you want to bump your graphics performance up a notch, this 2025 Alienware Aurora loadout comes with the excellent RTX 5080 card, which hits the sweet spot between performance and price and dazzled us in testing. We reviewed this prebuilt and rated it “Excellent,” praising its quiet operation and generous connectivity. We’ve supported Alienware’s decision to move into more restrained case designs, and this one combines form with function quite well, with a potent Intel Ultra 9 processor and plenty of RAM. Amazon has an exclusive Black Friday deal dropping 22% off.

Lenovo Gaming Desktop Deal

For something a little more budget-friendly that still boasts a Blackwell 5070 Ti PU (which we consider the best pick for 1440p and light 4K gaming), you can’t lick this discount on the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i. We reviewed the last generation of this gaming rig and rated it quite highly, noting that its chassis had excellent airflow, minimizing fan noise even under heavy load. The transparent tool-less side panel gives you easy access for repairs and upgrades, and 2.5G Ethernet, WiFi 6E, and versatile I/O ports give you all the connectivity you could ever want.

Asus Gaming Desktop Deal

Finally, here’s a really solid 1080p performer from Asus with some nice specs for the price, especially at a $230 Black Friday price cut. Although we haven’t put this particular prebuilt through its paces yet, we do have a review of the included RTX 5060 graphics card, which we declared “Excellent” thanks to its buttery-smooth 1080p and light 1440p performance, excellent thermal handling and cool AI applications. The Ryzen 7 processor in here is also a great buy, and the RAM and storage are both solid. It’s a breeze to expand, too, with dual no-tool panels making the insides accessible.

You need to also click through to our guide to Black Friday deals, because our editors are working tirelessly all weekend long to spotlight the best bargains.

About Our Expert

K. Thor Jensen

Contributing Writer

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Experience

K. Thor Jensen is a writer and cartoonist living in the Pacific Northwest. He has contributed to dozens of prestigious outlets, including PCMag, Tested, Clickhole, and Newsweek. His second graphic novel, Cloud Stories, was released in 2017.

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