**Acer Helios 300: A Disappointing Mid-Range Option**

Just before we find out which gaming laptop was the best of the year, we need to discuss the most disappointing one! If you’ve been following my reviews lately, it’ll probably come as no surprise to hear that this is the Acer Helios 300. My Helios 300 came with an objectively bad screen, and despite having RTX 3070 graphics, the low GPU power limit and single channel memory really held back performance, resulting in the last gen 2070 model beating it in some games, along with a number of other small issues that add up. Now hear me out, you can actually get the Helios 300 in other regions like the US with a better screen, dual channel memory and the RTX 3060 is better value compared to the 3070, though it does still have lower power limits compared to a lot of other laptops. But it’s also priced quite competitively.

That said, I still think there are generally better options for the money. I’m definitely not saying that it’s the worst gaming laptop of the year, I’m just saying that it’s the one that disappointed me the most this year, given just 2 years ago I was saying that the Acer Helios 300 was one of the best you could buy at the time - as far as mid-range gaming performance goes for the money. Unfortunately times have changed. Singular laptop aside, I guess the biggest disappointment this year is just the lack of availability with all hardware in general and the increased prices. Hopefully things get better next year, but yeah I guess we’ll see, I’m not counting on it.

**The Best Overall Gaming Laptop: Lenovo Legion 5**

Alright we’ve finally made it to best overall gaming laptop of the year! Interestingly, the laptop that I’m giving best overall gaming laptop of the year to didn’t even win any of these other categories, and that’s because it just does a lot of things well rather than one or two perfectly while neglecting others. Strictly speaking, the huge Clevo X170 actually won the most categories so far, but that thing is also super huge, expensive and heavy. It’s more of a desktop replacement that’s still somewhat portable compared to a regular gaming laptop that most of you could actually be after.

It’ll probably come as no surprise to you if you’ve watched my other videos recently that this year’s best overall gaming laptop is the Lenovo Legion 5! For around $1300 USD you can get the RTX 3060 model with full power limit, or a couple hundred dollars less for the 6600M, and you get features that just generally aren’t available at this price point like a MUX switch and G-Sync, which help contribute to a great gaming experience. There are of course better laptops at higher price points like say the Eluktronics Mech-15 G3, but in terms of just great value at the mid-range while getting a lot of things right, I think the Legion 5 is the clear winner. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means perfect in absolutely every regard, otherwise it would have won all the other categories, but yeah I definitely think it deserves best overall gaming laptop of the year and I can’t wait to see what they do next year.

**Ranking All 34 Gaming Laptops of the Year**

Check out this video next to see how I’ve ranked all 34 gaming laptops that I’ve tested this year. It’s a bit of a longer video because there was a lot to cover, but I’ve also got this shorter summary if you just want to see the top 5 best and top 5 worst gaming laptops of the year, and of course if you’re new to the channel, thanks for watching, and get subscribed for future laptop videos like this one!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to my gaming laptop awards for 2021!I’m going to cover the best gaming laptops in these 17 different categories,  as well runners up and some honorable mentions, and then at the end we’ll  finish up with the most disappointing and the best overall gaming laptop of the year.Now I can only award gaming laptops that I’ve actually tested this year,  and that’s 34 different machines. Most of the results are based on data from my own testing,  but a number of the categories will be more subjective and depend on my opinion.Alright, we’ve got a lot to discuss,  so let’s get straight into it, or you can skip to different categories using those timestamps below.Our first category is best cooling!  Now there are a few important things when it comes to gaming laptop cooling.Firstly you don’t want the fans to be too loud. Of course higher  fan speed helps reduce temperatures, but once you get above 55 decibels or  so the noise starts getting too loud for most people without headphones.These are some of the loudest laptops I tested this year. With the fans maxed out, the Clevo  X170 at the top was both the loudest, but also the quietest in its lowest performance mode.Because this machine is so large and has so much cooling capacity,  it can actually run quieter than a lot of others while still offering great performance.Here are the rest of the fan noise results with the quieter laptops,  there’s just too many to fit on one graph unfortunately!Purely in terms of quietness, the ASUS Flow x13 was the quietest when under full load,  but as a smaller machine it’s also one of the lower performing options, it’s a tradeoff.Then of course there’s the thermal paste that’s applied to both the CPU and GPU  to keep them cool. Unfortunately most companies don’t even specify what paste they use,  so we’ve just got no idea. But usually the ones that are using half decent paste will specify that  somewhere, especially if they’re using liquid metal, that’ll be all over their advertising.ASUS in particular heavily embraced Thermal Grizzly’s liquid metal heavily this year,  as they’ve used it in their Zephyrus M16, S17,  G15, G14, Flow x13, Scar 15 and Strix G15 Advantage Edition gaming laptops.  Basically liquid metal is just found in all of their higher end laptops across the board.I’ve got to give the best cooling award this year to the ASUS Zephyrus S17.  It’s got liquid metal on the processor as just discussed and the fan noise is a middle  of the pack result. Not amazing, but not as loud as many others.What’s special about it is the unique lift up keyboard design allows extra air to come in,  and even in heavy CPU plus GPU stress tests with an i9-11900H  processor and RTX 3080 graphics I measured 82 degrees Celsius  worst case while basically hitting full clock speeds, impressive stuff.82 degrees is honestly ice cold when it comes to gaming laptops,  as generally under these same stress tests I typically see anywhere between  90 and 100 degrees. I guess it’s just pretty hard for a traditional  laptop design to compete against one where the keyboard literally lifts up to bring air in.Special mentions also go to the Lenovo Legion 5, 5 Pro and 7,  which were the quietest gaming laptops with full power GPUs when under stress test,  though as we can see they were generally louder compared to others in the lower performance modes,  and unfortunately they don’t have fan control through software.Our second category is best screen! The screen is more important than you might think,  I mean it’s literally what you’re going to be staring at while playing games,  and there are a number of things to consider like color gamut, brightness,  contrast, backlight bleed, refresh rate, resolution, response time. When it comes to  competitive gaming, personally I think refresh rate and response time are the most important.Out of the gaming laptops I’ve tested this year,  MSI’s GP76 1080p 240Hz panel was the fastest with an average grey-to-grey response time of 3.27ms,  an excellent result, though this is with the overdrive mode enabled.The competition isn’t too far off, and honestly for most people  most of these are going to be fine, anything under 10ms is fine for my eyes personally.There are of course slower results too, again there’s just too many to fit on one graph!  At 15ms or slower it’s very obvious for me to notice the difference.In terms of screen brightness, Lenovo’s Legion 7 was the best at close to 530 nits.  The Zephyrus S17 was close, but with a 4K 120Hz screen it’s probably not ideal for  most gamers unless you’re spending a ton of money for the 3080 model.  The Legion 5 Pro uses the exact same panel as the Legion 7 at the top and was in 3rd place,  so just goes to show that there’s variance between panels even of the same model.The MSI GP76 that had the fastest response time had a brightness of 344 nits,  so higher than the 300 I want to see as a minimum, but honestly for most people  I think the 16” high resolution and bright panel in the Legion 5 Pro and Legion 7 offers  the best all-round combination for most people, plus color gamut there is good too.I think the better option for most people is the panel that  kind of sits in the middle between brightness and response time rather  than just having one that skews heavily one way or the other.Next up is best battery! There’s way more to this category than simply having a large battery.These are as many gaming laptops that were tested this year that I can fit  on one graph sorted by best battery run time to lowest. The Dell G15 is the clear  winner in the YouTube video playback test, lasting for almost 12 and a half hours,  but the ASUS TUF A15, MSI Delta 15 and HP Victus aren’t too far behind.In terms of gaming on battery power, the Alienware m15 R5 was the highest here  at 2 hours 19 minutes of playable run time, but the real winner is basically any Ryzen  gaming laptop. If we instead show the AMD Ryzen laptops in red and the Intel laptops  in blue, well we can see there’s a clear trend of AMD lasting longer on battery power. There were of  course many more Intel laptops tested, they’re just even lower and don’t fit on this graph.Likewise if we look at how laptops actually perform while running on battery power,  generally speaking in the Cinebench R23 CPU benchmark,  AMD Ryzen options were also ahead of Intel. I mean there’s even a 6 core Ryzen laptop,  the budget friendly Acer Nitro 5, outperforming far more expensive Intel 8 core models.Of course it’s a different story when running plugged into wall power, but on battery most  laptops with an AMD processor perform better. The ASUS Strix G15 Advantage Edition was topping  the chart, but the Dell G15 that had the longest run time came in at third place.So basically Dell G15 for the best run time and ASUS Strix G15 Advantage Edition for the best  performance on battery, but that said, both of those laptops did well in each category.The next category is best GPU! Now technically in terms of raw gaming performance,  Nvidia’s RTX 3080 is the best right now, with AMD’s RX 6800M not too far behind.But this category is about the best overall, not just the best performing.This year I’m saying the best overall GPU for a gaming laptop in 2021 is the  Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, with AMD’s RX 6600M in a close second place.Both of those GPUs are generally found in gaming laptops ranging between  $1000-1400 USD or so, and they both offer excellent performance in the mid-range.Now the RX 6600M is often $100-200 cheaper than the 3060, and it has 2 gigs of extra VRAM,  and it is definitely a worthy option, but in most games, generally speaking the RTX 3060 performs a  little better, it has the advantage of DLSS, which fact is it’s just more popular in more games right  now compared to FSR. That might change, but today DLSS is more popular. Not to mention that right  now Nvidia has superior ray tracing performance, assuming that’s something you care about.Once you step up to higher tier GPUs you start entering diminishing returns, where you pay  more money but get less performance. Likewise with cheaper budget friendly options, although  they’re cheaper, in terms of dollar per frame they often end up being worse value. That said,  if you are after higher performance, AMD’s higher tier 6700M and 6800M offer better bang for buck  compared to Nvidia’s higher tier 3070 and 3080, and performance isn’t too far behind Nvidia.I’ve gone into way more depth in my recent 16 laptop GPU comparison,  which you can check out later.After best GPU I think it only makes sense to cover best CPU next As far as gaming goes, Intel’s 6 core i5-11400H is the winner. Let me explain, AMD fans.First of all, generally speaking,  Intel 11th gen just does better in games compared to AMD’s Ryzen 5000.On average the 6 core i5-11400H was 3% faster than the 6 core Ryzen 5 5600H,  though results of course vary and depend on the specific game as you can see here.Don’t panic, Ryzen isn’t that far behind, but the fact is,  Intel is just ahead in more cases than it’s not today.If you’re wondering if it’s worth stepping up to 8 cores for gaming, well the difference  between the 6 core i5-11400H and the 8 core i7-11800H was only 2% on average in 11 games,  so it’s probably not really worth paying more for 8 cores for the most part today.At least purely for gaming, if you’re doing other tasks in the  background like streaming then an 8 core might make more sense. But yeah,  for most people just playing games today, I think the 6 core CPUs offer great value.Next up is the best keyboard! This one’s definitely going to come down to my personal  preference, and will be much more subjective compared to the previous data driven conclusions.The ASUS Zephyrus S17 was the best one I used all year.  Not only does it offer mechanical keys with per-key RGB backlighting, but when you open  the lid of the laptop the keyboard raises up a little, giving you a better angle for typing.In second place for a 15” gaming laptop, I’d probably give it to the XMG Neo 15/Eluktronics  Mech-15 G3, while others like the Alienware m15 R5 weren’t for me.Those are some pretty pricey laptops though. As far as more budget friendly options go,  honestly the HP Victus 16 really surprised me. The keys just feel nice and clicky and I  really enjoyed typing on that laptop compared to a lot of others at a similar price point.The best touchpad is up next! This one is going to be really difficult without actually having  all the laptops on hand to test side by side, because when it comes to a touchpad,  something you actually touch and interact with, I’m relying on my memory and my notes rather  than actually touching the thing and comparing them all. But yeah, based on all my notes and  my memory I’ve narrowed it down to the Razer Blade 14, ASUS Zephyrus S17, ASUS Zephyrus M16  and ASUS Zephyrus G15. All have relatively large precision touchpads, glass in most cases,  and from what I recall they were all great to use, so let’s consider this one a bit of  a 4 way tie. I suspect Razer’s other Blade models were probably pretty good too, but unfortunately  they only sent me the Blade 14 this year, so I haven’t been able to try them out recently.Let’s make our way over to best speakers next! After reviewing all of my sound recordings,  the Clevo X170 clearly has the best speakers, but it’s also the largest machine I tested this  year with a dedicated subwoofer underneath, so I suppose that’s not too surprising.As far as more regular laptops go, I’ve really got to hand it to the ASUS Zephyrus G15 which sounded  great with its front facing speakers, though apparently there were some popping issues with  the speakers closer to launch, but from what I’ve heard that’s apparently been fixed up,  though I can’t personally confirm as I haven’t had one for months now.The ASUS Scar 15 and ASUS Zephyrus S17 were both also quite good, so whatever  ASUS is doing when it comes to speakers, keep it up, and other companies try and copy them.Now let’s find out which laptop has the best port selection! It’s probably no coincidence  that the biggest laptop this year also has the most ports. More space equals more room for ports,  who would have thought? And of course, again that’s the Clevo X170 desktop replacement.This thing has everything. The left has an SD card slot, two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports  and separate 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks. The right has two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports,  a third USB Type-A, then on the back we get another Type-C port,  two mini DisplayPorts, HDMI 2.1 and 2.5 gigabit ethernet.MSI’s GE76 offers similar options in terms of ports, there’s just a few less,  but honestly still plenty for most people, though it is still a relatively larger 17” model.If you’re after a smaller 15” model, then XMG’s Neo 15 also has a lot to offer,  but I think I’d prefer the Lenovo Legion 7 over it with regards to port selection.  Although the Legion 7 doesn’t have 2.5 gigabit ethernet like the others,  the left and right sides are basically just a Type-C port and the 3.5mm audio combo jack,  meaning everything else is on the back and bulky cables stay out of the way - just how I like it!Additionally, the rear ports actually light up so you can easily see where  you need to plug in without turning it around, and I found this very useful.Seriously, a lot of laptops are starting to put their ports on the back which I really do prefer.  Something as simple as having those port icons light up really is useful,  and with the Legion 7 there’s even a keyboard shortcut to turn them on or off.Next let’s find out which laptop has the best Wi-Fi speed! Based on my Wi-Fi speed testing,  we can see that there’s a clear trend with  Intel and Killer options, which are Intel based, offering faster transfer speeds,  while others like MediaTek and RealTek are towards the lower half. Purely in terms of  fastest gaming laptop Wi-Fi, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with Intel Wi-Fi was the best up the top.Now most gaming laptops have removable Wi-Fi cards which can be upgraded,  and given the best performing Intel Wi-Fi 6e cards cost about $20  it’s a pretty simple upgrade you can to most laptops. So it should be able  to boost the performance of many of those slower machines just shown,  though to some degree it’s still going to depend some things like antenna placement in the laptop.Of course there are some exceptions, like say HP’s Omen 15 which has Wi-Fi  soldered to the board, so it cannot be upgraded, you’re stuck with it.So yeah based on my own testing, the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro wins the Wi-Fi speed category, but  I certainly acknowledge that a lot of the laptops on this list could do way better and potentially  overtake it with an Intel Wi-Fi 6 card, and it’s also worth noting that many regions might even  ship the 5 Pro with different Wi-Fi cards, so you might not necessarily even get an Intel one.I can’t remember if it was the 5 Pro, but there was definitely some Lenovo laptop out  there where they were originally advertising it with Intel Wi-Fi and then I think later  on they swapped over to MediaTek or RealTek or something, so yeah something to be aware  of and that does kind of suck. But again as mentioned, that’s like a $20 upgrade.The next category is most upgradeabilityMost gaming laptops out there these days  tend to have two memory slots, two M.2 slots for storage and upgradeable Wi-Fi. But while  that’s pretty common it’s definitely not always the case, things can vary quite a lot out there.Some laptops like the ASUS Zephyrus series have soldered RAM that can’t be changed, while others  might have soldered Wi-Fi. Or take the HP Victus for example, it’s got upgradeable Wi-Fi, but  it’s under the cooler and harder to get to, while others have different screws, or cables connecting  light bars on the bottom panel to the motherboard making opening difficult, the list goes on.Upon realizing that I didn’t have a way to take all of these factors into account,  I’ve attempted to give scores to laptops based on things like ease of access, how many memory  slots and storage slots are available, to name a few. These are the top results out  of all 34 gaming laptops I’ve tested this year, and the top two results are both Clevo laptops.The X170 at the top is definitely the most upgradeable. It’s got 4 memory slots,  4 M.2 storage slots, upgradeable Wi-Fi, a removable battery,  and it’s very easy to access the internals. Plus you can even change the CPU and GPU.The Gigabyte A5 or XMG Apex 15 is another Clevo machine  and is our runner up with 2 memory slots, 2 M.2 slots,  upgradeable Wi-Fi, a removable battery, a 2.5” drive bay and it’s easy to open too.A general rule of thumb that definitely isn't always the case is that a larger  laptop probably has better upgradeability. That Clevo X170 for instance is a huge 17”  machine. While the gaming laptop with the worst upgradeability I’ve tested  is the 13” ASUS Flow X13, because it’s just tiny and everything’s soldered to the board.Next up is the most portable gaming laptop! The most portable gaming laptop I’ve tested  this year and probably ever is the ASUS Flow X13. It’s a 13” gaming laptop with an 8 core  Ryzen processor and up to Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics, quite impressive given the smaller size,  plus you can always dock to ASUS’s XG Mobile eGPU for way more gaming power.The x13 is a very unique laptop, but some trade offs include it scoring the lowest upgradeability  score out of all laptops as just mentioned. Smaller size means lower CPU and GPU power limits,  so despite having a 3050 Ti I believe it’s at 40 watts, and to top it off it’s quite expensive.  Portability plus high end specs for that size equals more money, that’s just the way tech works.The runners up in this category would be the ASUS Zephyrus G14  and Razer Blade 14. Both are slightly larger 14” laptops which means higher power limits  are possible due to more thermal headroom, thereby resulting in higher performance,  and of course a little more upgradeability, but still much lower compared to other larger laptops.Now let’s find out which gaming laptop was the most improved  this year! For me this is easily the ASUS Zephyrus G15.I mean the title for my review of last year’s G15 was literally “Not all Ryzen  gaming laptops are winners”, and now the G15 is one of the better Ryzen options this year.ASUS basically redesigned the entire chassis and it’s just better in every way.The Dell G15 also deserves some recognition, this basically seems to replace their traditional  G5 series but now we’re getting high GPU power limits and finally a MUX switch to boost gaming  performance without being too expensive, something a number of other companies need to get behind.So which gaming laptop had the best RGB lighting? This might just be the  most important award category out of all of them.But seriously there’s actually a bit to consider, how do we define best?If we’re just talking about the most RGB lighting, then Lenovo’s Legion 7 has you covered,  with per-key RGB, a light bar that runs along the front and some of the left and right side,  RGB logo on the lid and even the air exhaust vents. I complain a  lot about the Corsair iCUE software battery drain issue which does suck,  but at least the software does actually give us a lot of customization over the lighting.The ASUS Scar 15 also had a light bar and RGB logo on the lid, and while it had this  interesting smaller light bar below the screen, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending  on your perspective, there’s no air vent lighting like the Legion 7, and I’ve got  to take points away from the Scar because it has cables that connect the bottom panel  to the motherboard. I’ve actually broken some of these opening the lid because I forgot about them.Anyway if we’re talking about more tasteful RGB and not over the top unicorn spew,  then maybe MSI’s more subtle front light bar, or Alienware’s rear light ring is pretty cool too.Basically it’s going to come down to personal preference, but personally I think Lenovo’s  Legion 7 gets the win. Not only does it have a ton of RGB, but the software is actually pretty  decent for managing it - talking strictly for managing the RGB of course and not everything  else. The Legion 7 also has like 5 or so RGB effects built into the firmware, so even if  you’re not using Windows and you boot it into Linux you can still change between those effects.Just before we get to the best and worst gaming laptops of the year,  let’s talk about content creation! Although I mostly focus on gaming laptops these days,  people still ask me which gaming laptops are best to use for content creation.Generally speaking, Intel 11th gen tends to do better compared to AMD Ryzen in Adobe Photoshop,  Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve.Not to mention that Intel 11th gen also offers faster PCIe Gen 4 storage and Thunderbolt 4,  two things which are actually used by creators. So based on those things I think we can rule out  an AMD laptop winning this category. Now you can of course absolutely do content creation on an AMD  gaming laptop perfectly fine, but we’re after the best here, and objectively Intel 11th gen  is better for creators, and I’ve got to give this award to the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED.The 15” OLED screen is just next level, the colors are amazing and it’s super bright,  plus OLED has a super low response time. Oh and  you get an SD card slot built in too for dumping footage off your camera.You can definitely still play games on it and have a good time,  but at 4K 60Hz it might not be the best option for competitive gaming.The larger Aero 17 is also great if you want a larger screen, unfortunately it’s not OLED,  but it’s still super bright with amazing colors and is what I personally use right now.If gaming is more of a focus but you also want to do content creation, I’d probably  look at the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro - so Intel based rather than AMD for the reasons just discussed.As mentioned earlier, the 16” screen is a nice all-rounder. It gets bright, has decent response  time, above average color gamut and 16:10 screen with a resolution higher than standard 1440p.So it should still look pretty good for both gaming and creating content.Just before we find out which gaming laptop was the best of the year,  we need to discuss the most disappointing one!If you’ve been following my reviews lately,  it’ll probably come as no surprise to hear that this is the Acer Helios 300.My Helios 300 came with an objectively bad screen, and despite having RTX 3070 graphics, the low GPU  power limit and single channel memory really held back performance, resulting in the last  gen 2070 model beating it in some games, along with a number of other small issues that add up.Now hear me out, you can actually get the Helios 300 in other regions like the US with  a better screen, dual channel memory and the RTX 3060 is better value compared to the 3070,  though it does still have lower power limits compared to a lot of other laptops.  But it’s also priced quite competitively. That said, I still think there are generally better  options for the money. I’m definitely not saying that it’s the worst gaming laptop of the year,  I’m just saying that it’s the one that disappointed me the most this year,  given just 2 years ago I was saying that the Acer Helios 300 was one of the best you could  buy at the time - as far as mid-range gaming performance goes for the money.Unfortunately times have changed. Singular laptop aside, I guess the biggest disappointment this  year is just the lack of availability with all hardware in general and the increased prices.  Hopefully things get better next year, but yeah I guess we’ll see, I’m not counting on it.Alright we’ve finally made it to best overall gaming laptop of the year! Interestingly,  the laptop that I’m giving best overall laptop of the year to didn’t even win any  of these other categories, and that’s because it just does a lot of things well rather than  one or two perfectly while neglecting others. Strictly speaking, the huge  Clevo X170 actually won the most categories so far, but that thing is also super huge,  expensive and heavy. It’s more of a desktop replacement that’s still somewhat portable  compared to a regular gaming laptop that most of you could actually be after.It’ll probably come as no surprise to you if you’ve watched my other videos  recently that this year’s best overall gaming laptop is the Lenovo Legion 5!For around $1300 USD you can get the RTX 3060 model with full power limit, or a couple hundred  dollars less for the 6600M, and you get features that just generally aren’t available at this  price point like a MUX switch and G-Sync, which help contribute to a great gaming experience.There are of course better laptops at higher price points like say the Eluktronics Mech-15 G3,  but in terms of just great value at the mid-range while getting a lot of things right, I think the  Legion 5 is the clear winner. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means perfect in absolutely  every regard, otherwise it would have won all the other categories, but yeah I definitely think it  deserves best overall gaming laptop of the year and I can’t wait to see what they do next year.Check out this video next to see how I’ve ranked all 34 gaming laptops that I’ve  tested this year. It’s a bit of a longer video because there was a lot to cover,  but I’ve also got this shorter summary if you just want to see the top 5 best  and top 5 worst gaming laptops of the year, and of course if you’re new to the channel,  thanks for watching, and get subscribed for future laptop videos like this one!\n"