(Image credit: Future / Acer)

Who said you need a huge desktop PC to be able to play games in 2025? There are huge deals to be had on gaming laptops right now, with two Acer models heavily discounted at Walmart before the holidays. This Acer Nitro V 15 laptop, featuring one of Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX GPUs, along with an eight-core Intel processor and 16GB of RAM, is down to just under $550, while an AMD Ryzen model with a better screen is on sale for only $50 more.

• Check out this Acer gaming laptop at Walmart

This is a gaming laptop, however, so the discrete GPU is the bigger draw here. The Acer Nitro V 15 is paired with the mobile version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050, featuring 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM, along with 2,560 CUDA cores. This is an entry-level GPU, but along with faster (and more) VRAM than the RTX 4050 it replaces, you’ve got one big bonus: DLSS 4 support. DLSS 4 means access to ray tracing to games that support it, but more importantly for a spec sheet like this, it uses AI to add up to three additional frames between each GPU-rendered one, massively improving frame rates.

Fake frames might seem unappealing on a top-spec RTX 5090 PC, but on an RTX 5050 laptop, they can have a huge impact on gaming performance, especially in games that are particularly demanding on your system resources. This is a laptop where stable 1080p gaming using high graphics presets is a genuine possibility, hitting the max resolution on this laptop’s 15.6-inch IPS panel. A 165Hz refresh rate also helps to ensure you’ll see smooth motion in fast-paced games, too.

For $549, there’s unfortunately a compromise. It isn’t on RAM, as you’re kitted with 16GB of DDR5 SODIMM memory, although you do have the flexibility to upgrade to 32GB when the RAM prices aren’t so high. The compromise, however, is on storage: there’s a 512GB M.2 SSD with Gen 4 speeds included here, which is big enough for one or two big game releases, but a storage upgrade (or external hard drive) might need to come later.

These specs are genuinely impressive for the price, but if you’ve got an extra $50, you can choose the Acer Nitro V 16 AI for $599 instead. The design on these laptops is almost identical, and you’re still getting 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

You do, however, get a better display: a 1200p, 16-inch IPS panel with a higher 180Hz refresh rate. It’s powered by the same RTX 5050 GPU for gaming, which can push to that native 1,920 x 1,200 resolution in most cases, but your mileage may vary.

Unlike the Intel-powered Acer Nitro V 15, however, you’re also getting an AMD processor. The AMD Ryzen AI 5 240 Pro it ships with has only six cores and 12 threads, but can boost up to 5 GHz. Don’t assume that core size is necessarily the important thing here, however, because this is a faster, newer CPU than the 2023-model Core i5 i3420H and should, in theory, offer better performance, as long as you don’t need the extra cores for heavy multi-tasking work.

Two laptops under $600 with a modern Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series GPU can’t be ignored. The $549 sales price on the Acer Nitro V 15 is impossible to beat, and given soaring RAM and SSD prices, it might be the cheapest we’ll see a laptop with these specs for some time. That said, if you fancy a newer CPU with a better display, the $599 Acer Nitro V 16 AI isn’t a bad laptop to end up with. If you want a budget-friendly gaming laptop before the holidays, both options are worth considering.

If you’re looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard or CPU Deals pages.

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Ben Stockton is a deals writer at Tom’s Hardware. He’s been writing about technology since 2018, with bylines at PCGamesN, How-To Geek, and Tom’s Guide, among others. When he’s not hunting down the best bargains, he’s busy tinkering with his homelab or watching old Star Trek episodes.