I’ve spent my day thoroughly updating our best 14-inch gaming laptop guide, and the new top spot is no surprise—it’s the magnificent Razer Blade 14. However, it’s still a pricey beast, so if you’re tight with the pennies like me you’ll be looking for the best bang for your buck instead.
Which is why I’ve added a best value category, and elevated the Asus TUF A14 (2025) into its rightful place. It might not be the most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop you can buy, but it’s capable of delivering a surprising whack of performance out of its 105 W RTX 5060—all for a price that’s a lot less teeth-clenching than the $2,200+ Razer.
Our very own Jacob Fox is immensely taken with this little machine, and it’s easy to see why. In his review, he highlighted the superb chassis, the excellent trackpad and keyboard, and the sheer portability of its 14-inch form factor. We love a 14-inch gaming lappy at PC Gamer, as it’s the most convenient way to take our hobbies out on the road with us, whether it’s to the office, on a flight, or at a particularly boring wedding.
I kid, I kid, I’m not that bad. Probably. Anyway, it’d all be for nowt if the little Asus was no good in the benchmarks, but it’s also capable of a decent turn of speed.
Sure, the mobile RTX 5060 isn’t the fastest GPU in the world, but with a bit of Frame Generation help it’s capable of cranking out some serious frames in some very demanding games. Even in Cyberpunk 2077 with RT Ultra settings (at 1600p with 2x Frame Gen and DLSS set to Quality) it still manages 56 fps on average.
Back the ray tracing down a touch (or go a little further with the DLSS settings) and you’re looking at some very smooth performance and superb image quality from what is a super-portable, backpack-friendly little laptop. Our Jacob was most surprised with the performance, particularly when he took advantage of Nvidia’s AI-enhanced upscaling and Frame Generation goodies.
Which, for $1,700, is pretty good going. Our review sample also came with an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU that proves to be an excellent match for the GPU, although it must be said, it could be a little faster in the productivity benchmarks. Still, for gaming it does just fine—and how much CPU-heavy work were you planning on doing on your next flight, anyway?
There are a few more drawbacks to be aware of, however. For a start, $1,700 isn’t exactly cheap, although good 14-inch gaming laptops aren’t in general unless you can find an astonishing deal. It’s also pretty loud in Turbo mode, and you won’t be able to upgrade its 16 GB of LPDDR5X-7500, as it’s soldered directly to the board.
Other than that, it’s a pretty fantastic value proposition if you ask me. And I’ve saved the best part ’til last—it manages two and a half hours worth of battery life in the PCMark 10 gaming battery benchmark. That’s a genuinely brilliant result for a modern gaming machine, and translates to many hours worth of happy tapping under day-to-day usage, too.
So, it’s handsome, well-built, surprisingly quick, reasonably affordable, and lasts longer under duress than you expect. Yep, that’ll do me. Now I’ve just got to check my savings account before I…
Oh. Do we have an “impossibly good value” category? No? I’ll be back in a bit.
Quick list
The best 14-inch gaming laptops
The best overall
Rarely has a gaming laptop captured our hearts like this one. It might not technically be the fastest 14-inch machine you can buy, but it’s the super-refined, still very speedy laptop experience you want, and the one we’d buy with our own cash in 2025.
The best value
Asus has imbued the latest A15 with a tidy, well-appointed chassis, a good screen, and a 105 W RTX 5060 that’s capable of delivering some surprisingly good gaming performance with some DLSS and MFG help. All for a reasonable price? Yep, that’s value alright.
The best thin and light
If portability is paramount, then the impossibly-thin Zenbook S 14 is well worth considering. It’s got an impressive iGPU that delivers handheld-like performance, which translates to some respectable light gaming figures as long as you don’t push it with the demanding stuff. Don’t expect miracles, though.
