YOU KNOW WHAT’S AMAZING in 2025? The fact that even now, we have so many laptops that are massively mismatched. Not from a competitive level, but rather from a pure hardware level. We’ve tested an absolute ton of gaming laptops over these hallowed pages in the last 12 months, and without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest problem they all have is that the graphics card in particular doesn’t match the screen. It just doesn’t. Let’s list the ones that this journalist has personally looked at: Acer Predator Helios Neo 14, RTX 4060 120W, 3,072x1920 @ 165 Hz screen. Acer Nitro 14, RTX 4060 100W 2560x1600 120 Hz display. Lenovo Legion Slim 5, RTX 4060 2880x1800 120 Hz OLED panel. You get the idea —at the $1,000-$2,000 price bracket, apparently everything is purely mismatched.
The notion from manufacturers is simple: ‘Just game at a lower resolution, it’s fine.’ It’s such a well-engrained premise now that if you go to any hardware reviewer worth their salt, when it comes to reviewing these pesky things, they’ll almost always test at 1080p as the de facto benchmark resolution, rather than native. We know what you’re thinking, though; how did we even get here? Simply put, screens developed faster than graphics card prices dropped. Grabbing a nice, entry-level notebook with an OLED panel in it today is cheaper than you might think. Although that’s great for the desktop experience and our wallets, it’s less ideal when you want to actually use it for its intended purpose: gaming.