This nifty little gaming laptop is perfect if you want to get into PC games, and you can get it for $100 off for Amazon Prime Day
- There's a nifty little gaming laptop on sale for Amazon Prime Day that'll suit the casual, budget, and entry-level gamer.
- It's only $100 off the original $1,000 price tag, but I wouldn't recommend it without the discount.
You can nab yourself a gaming laptop that will serve the casual, budget, and entry-level gamers just fine for under $1,000 on Monday, Amazon Prime Day.
The Asus FX503VM is getting a $100 discount, which bring its price down to $900 versus the $1,000 original price tag. At its original price, I'd say it's a bit of a stretch in terms of recommendations. But for $100 off, the Asus FX503VM fits the bill.
I compared the Asus FX503VM's price against similar parts you could buy to build your own gaming desktop, and the laptop's price tag checks out. All the parts I looked at, including the components, a monitor, the Windows 10 operating system, a case, a keyboard, and mouse would mean that building your own PC with similar specs as the Asus FX503VM could be more expensive.
As I mentioned above, the Asus FX503VM's specs, including its Intel Core i5 7300HQ, NVidia GTX 1060 (3GB model), and 8GB of RAM would suit casual, budget, and entry-level gamers. Its specs mean you could play games at full-HD 1080p resolution pretty smoothly with decent graphics settings on games. Don't expect playing games very smoothly at higher resolutions like 1440p, and definitely not at 4K.
Just note that it's not "VR Ready," so if you want to use virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, you'll need to step up to a laptop with at least an Nvidia GTX 1060 with 6GB compared to the 3GB model in the Asus FX503VM.
And while it's a "gaming" laptop, it can do everything else any other Windows 10 laptop can do, too. It can run any app you'd normally run on a Windows 10 machine. You can use it as your main computer for browsing the web, streaming videos and music, and even work.
Gaming laptops certainly have their place for traveling gamers, but the Asus FX503VM's 15-inch display may be a little small for an at-home battlestation, so you may want to consider using a monitor you might have lying around. If you don't already have a monitor, you'd have to consider the extra cost of buying one, like this one from Asus, which is on sale for $170, $30 off its original $200 price tag.
It's a 24-inch monitor with the same 1080p resolution as the Asus FX503VM's display, but it has a lower 75Hz refresh rate, which means it might not play games as smoothly as the laptop's built-in 120Hz display. Honestly, that's totally fine, as anything above 60Hz looks great, and you also get a larger screen to play on.