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Gaming laptops are a tough sell. To provide the power to play games at decent settings, they sacrifice portability, battery life, and value compared to non-gaming laptops. At the same time, a $2,000 gaming laptop is less powerful and less upgradeable than a $1,200 desktop gaming PC. And a $1,000 ultrabook will handle non-gaming tasks just as well at a third the weight and with four times the battery life, much better build quality, and a better keyboard and trackpad.

So what are we to make of the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE ($1,799)? This slim gaming laptop packs a punch with an Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia Max-Q GTX 1060 GPU, plus it has one of the best displays we've seen on any gaming laptop. It's also one of the lightest (4.9 lbs) and thinnest (0.7 inches) affordable gaming laptops we've seen! The trade-off: Battery life isn't great and the fans get loud when gaming.