Best VR-Ready Laptop Under $1500

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You no longer have to build a monster PC to run your prized Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset. A VR ready laptop will work well and offer you portability that a desktop PC can never match. The immersive experience of VR is no longer constrained to monster towers. If you have a budget of $1500 for a VR ready laptop, you are good to go.

Best VR-Ready Laptop Under $1500 Reviews

Gaming laptops have improved massively in performance and are now considered feasible, portable alternatives to the contemporary gaming desktop PC. Thanks to some powerful graphics chips and higher speed multicore processors, many of them can be considered VR ready laptops.

We’ve selected our four favorites, all less than or around the $1500 price point. We’ve limited the price point because VR ready laptops can cost as much as $4000 or more if you delve deep into the market.

Be sure to read our Buyer’s Guide at the end for some insight on VR ready laptop features, requirements, and what to look out for when buying one.

Our Top Pick

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Acer Predator Helios 300 15-inch

The Acer Predator Helios 300 features the 6-core 8^th Generation Intel Core i7 8750H and an overclockable Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. You also get an FHD screen with a 144Hz refresh rate and a fast 256GB NVMe SSD.

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Packed with plenty of power and boasting a fantastic construction, the Acer Predator Helios 300 15-inch is our favorite VR ready laptop under $1500.

• CPU: Intel Core i7
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
• Screen Resolution: 15.6” FHD (1920×1080)

The 15-inch version of the Acer Predator Helios 300 is perhaps one of the best mid-range gaming laptops you can buy right now. It’s packed with features that you won’t find in other gaming laptops at this price point.

The powerful Core i7 8750H drives this laptop with its six cores, and you have a special overclockable Nvidia GTX 1060 to let you get the most juice for gaming and VR experience. Additionally, this laptop comes with a full HD IPS panel that runs at 144Hz for a buttery, smooth refresh rate.

A powerful 256GB NVMe SSD ensures fast boot-up and loading times, and a part-metal design with Aeroblade metal fans ensures the laptop stays cool even during the most rigorous gaming sessions.

You might think Acer has compromised somewhere in the build construction to keep the price down, but that’s far from the truth. The touchpad and keyboard of the Acer Predator Helios 300 are superior to other gaming laptops in its class.

For its sheer power, great pricing, and overall appeal, we do believe the Acer Predator Helios 300 is the best VR ready laptop under $1500 right now and highly recommended it to anyone looking to dive into the VR world.

Budget Pick

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MSI GF65 Thin Gaming Laptop

MSI GF65 Thin is a superb gaming laptop with the entry-level variant just below $1000 price bracket, but the specs even that packs are nothing to joke about, two words, beautiful and powerful.

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If we talk about specs compared to the price point, we found this laptop one of the best budget laptops available, not only does it have amazing specs, it is super thin and light, thus having the word thin in its name.

• CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti 6GB DDR6
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 512GB SSD
• Screen Resolution: 15.6” FHD (1920×1080, 120Hz, IPS Display)

When we set out to crown our new king of budget laptops, we had a lot of choices to pick from. But we needed more oomph, more gaming flavour in our laptop this time, so we went straight to the dragon crest, MSI.

The MSI GF65 Thin packs quite a punch in the specs department, with Intel 9th Gen 6 cores, 12 threads processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU. Now let us tell you, that is one heck of a powerful combo right there.

Since it has dual-channel memory option, you can go from 16GB up to 64GB DDR4 RAM, of course, the 64 gigs will take the price point over the below 1 Grand price point, but let us be honest, you won’t need that much RAM unless you also are going to use this laptop for rendering and other RAM heavy functions. And 16GB is way above the 8GB+ mark that is the requirement for VR gaming.

In the below $1000 price point you also get 512GB NVMe SSD, for lightning-fast loading speeds. You will need great loading speeds for games that have a long loading time duration.

If you look below the laptop you see quite a few outlets so the laptop remains cool even when put under high graphic AAA title games pressure. The look is beautiful, it is thin, which means very portable, a brushed aluminum top with the red MSI logo for the extra flair.

Red backlit keyboard and a really thin bezel display of 1920 x 1080 resolution makes this laptop an absolute looker, while the great gaming performance makes it a beast laptop and most of all, it is VR ready since it surpasses all the minimum requirements for VR gaming.

3. Alienware m15

• CPU: Intel Core i7
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD (hybrid)
• Screen Resolution: 15.6” FHD (1920×1080)

Okay, so at the time of writing the Alienware m15 isn’t exactly less than $1,500. In fact, it’s demanding $30 above that budget point. However, for what you get from this laptop, you’ll do well to borrow an extra 30 bucks from someone to own it.

Packed inside is a powerful 8^th Generation Intel Core i7 processor. Six cores are on offer here, and the turbo boost speeds can go up to 4.1GHz. This ensures the integrated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Max-Q is never bottlenecked, making this a VR ready laptop that won’t cost the otherwise exorbitant pricing Alienware is notorious for.

The 15-inch monster also comes with a super-fast combination of 256GB PCI-e m.2 SSD and a 1TB hybrid hard drive. PCIe SSDs are some of the fastest out there right now, so you’ll be blessed with fast load times in VR games. You also get 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM rated at 2666MHz, which should serve you well for most games.

It’s the most expensive product on our list, but it’s also one of the most feature-packed VR ready laptops around the $1,500 mark, which is why it’s hard to turn a blind eye towards it.

4. Lenovo Legion Y740

• CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB DDR6
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage: 1TB SSD
• Screen Resolution: 15.6” FHD (1920×1080, 144Hz, IPS Display)

Lenovo Legion series of laptops are one of the best gaming laptops available in the market today for purchase, and the Y740 boasts the latest technology for gaming available in laptops today. The Lenovo Legion Y740 is a top tier model even amongst its other Legion peers, most of the newest Legion laptops have RTX series graphic cards, but the Y740 has a ready to ship laptop with the best available configuration.

16 gigs of RAM, along with 1TB SSD, for the best loading times, it ditches the HDD, but if you want to save some cash you can drop down to an HDD but we would not recommend it since you would want faster loading times on your AAA game titles. This is more than enough for any VR experience you want from a game, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 just makes it all the sweeter.

A G-sync ready display with 144Hz refresh rate, perfect response times and NVIDIA compatibility gives you most out of gaming experience. You will get the most potential out of your gaming specs with this IPS 15.6” FHD display and with high refresh rates makes it a great pick. Although since we are talking about VR gaming, screen matters little, it is good to know if we need to game on the actual screen itself that it has a great display.

The best part about the laptop is the RGB features on the body, an RGB backlit keyboard with Corsair iCUE ambient system lighting on the sides. This laptop also features the Legion Coldfront, a Lenovo tech that allows for a cooler experience while gaming even under the most graphic hungry games.

All in all this laptop is a great buy if you have the money to spare, you can find it on the Lenovo site around $1500 price tag, which we think would be worth the money.

VR-Ready Laptop Under $1500 Buyer’s Guide

Requirements for VR

VR games and VR applications need a powerful computer. For a good while, VR experience restricted users to powerful gaming desktop computers. VR on a laptop was simply unheard of. Much has changed since then.

Laptops still aren’t as powerful as similarly priced desktop computers, but the surge of high-end gaming laptops have made VR experience with laptops a possibility. VR is still demanding, however, and your laptop will need to meet the minimum requirements for it.

Minimum Requirements

Oculus Rift, the most popular VR headset, lists the following minimum requirements to run it:

• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470
• CPU: Intel Core i3 6100 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• Memory: 8GB+ RAM
• OS: Windows 10 operating system

Recommended Requirements

Recommended requirements are what you should aim for to get a consistent experience across all VR applications and games. Most of the VR ready laptops in this article were selected with the recommended requirements in mind.

• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 480
• CPU: Intel Core i5 4590 / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Memory: 8GB+ RAM
• OS: Windows 10 operating system

GPU vs CPU

VR headsets have similar requirements to video games when it comes to GPU vs CPU. That is, the GPU will handle most of the work and is the ultimate component that will directly influence the overall quality and experience.

That’s not to say the CPU isn’t important – far from it. For a VR ready laptop, you shouldn’t consider anything less than an 8^th Generation Core i5. We recommend the Core i7 8750H if you can afford it.

This may seem well beyond the recommended requirements listed above, but that is because those requirements are predominantly for desktop computers. Laptop CPUs are comparatively underpowered and run at lower clock speeds, and clock speeds are the biggest factor in VR experience.

Cooling

Gaming laptops will run hot under load, and because of their compact nature, they don’t offer the kind of high-end and often extravagant cooling systems as you’d find in desktop computers. A VR ready laptop needs to have an excellent yet compact cooling system to ensure your laptop doesn’t turn into an electronic heater.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to determine how effective the cooling system of a laptop is from the specs sheet of any VR ready laptop. You’ll have to rely on extensive reviews to see how cool the laptop runs under heavy load.

FAQs

What ports do I need in a VR ready laptop?
According to Oculus, the following are the recommended ports you’ll need for a VR ready laptop:

• Video Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• USB Ports: 3x USB 3.0 ports + 1x USB 2.0 port

Why should I consider a VR ready laptop over a VR ready PC?
While a VR ready desktop computer will arguably perform far better than a laptop, the convenience of portability is completely eliminated. Yes, VR ready laptops aren’t the lightest or the slimmest, but they’re still far more portable than a full-fledged desktop computer. Gaming laptops have increasingly become popular in the last two years, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy the VR experience on them as well.

Can I find VR ready laptops for under $1000?
You can find VR ready laptops for under $1000, but your options will be very limited. Out of the handful of VR ready laptops at that price point, the Dell G5 is our top pick as it features the Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB and an 8^th Generation Core i5 processor.