I’ve Tested Gaming Laptops for Over a Decade. This Is What I Think You Should BuyNow, there’s another class of high-end gaming laptop that focuses more on performance than being thin or portable. The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of my favorites in this class, featuring a beautiful white chassis and glossy OLED display. Unlike some OLED displays, the Legion 7i’s screen can be cranked up to over 1,000 nits of brightness. The result is some really splendid HDR performance that brings games to life. HDR is a powerful way of improving the visuals of your games without a performance cost. The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the very best in this regard.
It’s still fairly thin at 0.7 inches thick too, while a lot of the ports are found on the back. It’s the definition of a “clean” gaming laptop. It’s no slouch when it comes to performance either, offering either the RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 for graphics.
Cheap Gaming Laptops That Are Worth It
No gaming laptops worth buying are actually cheap. High-refresh rate displays and discrete graphics will always make them more expensive than standard laptops. But as you get closer to $1,000, there is one laptop I always come back to: the Lenovo LOQ 15. Pronounced “Lock,” this Lenovo subbrand is known for cutting the fluff and focusing on giving gamers the performance they need at an affordable price. No laptop does that better than the LOQ 15. Many laptop manufacturers sell their RTX 5060 configurations for hundreds of dollars more. In reality, if you’re shopping around $1,000, there’s no reason to not buy the LOQ 15. Just do it.
If you do want to save some extra cash, there is another option that is cheaper than the LOQ 15 with a few compromises in key areas. The Acer Nitro V 16 is that laptop, which comes with an RTX 5050. This was as affordable as $600 at one point last year—before prices on laptops have risen due to the ongoing memory shortage—but it remains the only laptop cheaper than the Lenovo LOQ 15 that’s actually worth it. It’s fairly powerful for the RTX 5050, and while the screen is pretty shoddy, it’s not a bad-looking laptop. The one big caveat is that the 135-watt power supply it comes with doesn’t deliver quite enough power to keep it charged in Performance mode. Read more about this issue in my review, as it’s important to know about if you’re planning to buy it.
There are other cheap gaming laptops out there I’ve tested, such as the MSI Cyborg A15, but either the Acer Nitro V 16 or Lenovo LOQ 15 are better, cheaper options. You will also find lots of gaming laptops under $1,000 that use older graphics cards, such as the RTX 4050 or 3050. In general, I’d recommend staying away from these. They’re only one or two generations back, but remember: Nvidia only releases new laptop graphics cards every couple of years. So, an RTX 4050 laptop may be well over two years old already, and an RTX 3050 is over five years old. Not only do you get worse graphics performance, these laptops are much more likely to need to be replaced sooner.
Experimental Stuff
One of the exciting things about the world of gaming laptops right now is the experimentation. While clamshell gaming laptops with a conventional Nvidia GPU are the most standard way to go, there’s a few different ways to take your PC games on the go that stretch the boundaries. You might consider a gaming handheld, for example, like the Steam Deck or Xbox Ally X. These handhelds have their fans, and while you can’t also do your homework on these devices, they’re great on couches, trains, and planes.
Now, there’s another class of high-end gaming laptop that focuses more on performance than being thin or portable. The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of my favorites in this class, featuring a beautiful white chassis and glossy OLED display. Unlike some OLED displays, the Legion 7i’s screen can be cranked up to over 1,000 nits of brightness. The result is some really splendid HDR performance that brings games to life. HDR is a powerful way of improving the visuals of your games without a performance cost. The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the very best in this regard.
It’s still fairly thin at 0.7 inches thick too, while a lot of the ports are found on the back. It’s the definition of a “clean” gaming laptop. It’s no slouch when it comes to performance either, offering either the RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 for graphics.
Cheap Gaming Laptops That Are Worth It
No gaming laptops worth buying are actually cheap. High-refresh rate displays and discrete graphics will always make them more expensive than standard laptops. But as you get closer to $1,000, there is one laptop I always come back to: the Lenovo LOQ 15. Pronounced “Lock,” this Lenovo subbrand is known for cutting the fluff and focusing on giving gamers the performance they need at an affordable price. No laptop does that better than the LOQ 15. Many laptop manufacturers sell their RTX 5060 configurations for hundreds of dollars more. In reality, if you’re shopping around $1,000, there’s no reason to not buy the LOQ 15. Just do it.
If you do want to save some extra cash, there is another option that is cheaper than the LOQ 15 with a few compromises in key areas. The Acer Nitro V 16 is that laptop, which comes with an RTX 5050. This was as affordable as $600 at one point last year—before prices on laptops have risen due to the ongoing memory shortage—but it remains the only laptop cheaper than the Lenovo LOQ 15 that’s actually worth it. It’s fairly powerful for the RTX 5050, and while the screen is pretty shoddy, it’s not a bad-looking laptop. The one big caveat is that the 135-watt power supply it comes with doesn’t deliver quite enough power to keep it charged in Performance mode. Read more about this issue in my review, as it’s important to know about if you’re planning to buy it.
There are other cheap gaming laptops out there I’ve tested, such as the MSI Cyborg A15, but either the Acer Nitro V 16 or Lenovo LOQ 15 are better, cheaper options. You will also find lots of gaming laptops under $1,000 that use older graphics cards, such as the RTX 4050 or 3050. In general, I’d recommend staying away from these. They’re only one or two generations back, but remember: Nvidia only releases new laptop graphics cards every couple of years. So, an RTX 4050 laptop may be well over two years old already, and an RTX 3050 is over five years old. Not only do you get worse graphics performance, these laptops are much more likely to need to be replaced sooner.
Experimental Stuff
One of the exciting things about the world of gaming laptops right now is the experimentation. While clamshell gaming laptops with a conventional Nvidia GPU are the most standard way to go, there’s a few different ways to take your PC games on the go that stretch the boundaries. You might consider a gaming handheld, for example, like the Steam Deck or Xbox Ally X. These handhelds have their fans, and while you can’t also do your homework on these devices, they’re great on couches, trains, and planes.
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
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