HP Victus 15.6" 15-fb3093dx Mica Silver 2025

A chunky, plastic slab of a laptop that hides an RTX 4050 at a price that'll make budget builders jealous. Buy it for the frames, not the looks.

We expected the Ryzen 7 7445HS and RTX 4050 to be good for the price, but what surprised us was how well this thing holds up in a sustained gaming session without throttling. It chewed through our esports benchmarks at high frame rates, and even kept up with more demanding titles at medium settings. The 16GB of DDR5 handles multitasking without flinching, and the 70Wh battery outlasted our expectations, delivering nearly 9 hours of video playback in our loop test.

Stacking this against an ASUS ProArt PX13 or Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro feels almost unfair—those are premium creator machines with gorgeous OLED panels and featherlight builds. But they'll choke on modern games. The Victus trades flash for frames. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is more durable and has a better keyboard, but for nearly triple the price you're stuck with integrated graphics. For pure gaming value, none of those come close. If you need a laptop that can also edit video, the ProArt's screen is vastly superior, but you'll pay dearly.

At $789 (that's the Best Buy open-box price), this is a steal. Prices wander up to $924 elsewhere, but even then it's hard to find an RTX 4050 laptop with these specs. If you spot it for less, don't hesitate. Just don't settle for the 8GB RAM variant if you see one.

This is a budget gaming laptop that punches above its weight where it counts: frames per second. If you can overlook a chunky plastic build and a screen that's underwhelming for anything but gaming, the HP Victus 15-fb3093dx delivers RTX 4050 performance for under $800. That's a wild deal, especially when you factor in the 144Hz panel and solid port selection.

If you need a laptop for color-critical work or carrying to class every day, walk away. This thing is heavy and the screen's color coverage can't touch sRGB, so photo editing is a no-go. Grab a MacBook Air or a Galaxy Book5 Pro instead.

If you're after a no-fuss gaming laptop that won't massacre your wallet, the Victus 15 is the one. Accept that the screen is a weak point outside of games, and you'll be grinning at the performance-per-dollar. This is the friend we'd recommend to anyone who wants to play their Steam library without taking out a loan.