'Tis the season for bargains. So let's take a look at the latest Cyber Monday gaming laptop sales. Here's one: right now you can get a quad-core RTX 2060-powered machine for under $1,000. If you don't mind a price drop on this machine, the Acer Nitro 5 is $799 at Walmart.

First, let's start with what every PC gamer wants to know: this Acer Nitro 5 has a rather respectable RTX 2060 GPU, which is just fine for playing the latest games at 1080p with ray tracing turned on (and with a little help from DLSS). It's probably not the RTX 3080, which I'm sure you'd pay more for, and it hasn't even been introduced as a mobile GPU yet. Also, thanks to the 144Hz IPS screen, many games would be playable at high refresh rates.

That said, if you are looking for your next main gaming machine, you may need to look elsewhere. This is mainly due to storage, which this Acer Nitro 5 lacks a bit: with its 256GB SSD, system startup and general use is pleasant and fast, but to store most games, you have to rely on a slower 1TB HDD. In this day and age, HDDs fill up quickly.

Then there is the quad-core i5-9300H processor. This is probably a good thing, but it is not designed for the future so that it will not become a bottleneck for powerful new GPUs later on. On the other hand, 16 GB of DDR4 memory is very useful for all productivity tasks, gaming and non-gaming.

Overall, there are pros and cons, but $799 is still a pretty good deal for this Acer Nitro 5. It hasn't been that long since we thought $999 for an RTX 2060 gaming laptop was a bit of a bargain. And while the design isn't the sleekest, it looks reasonably portable. The illuminated red keyboard would at least come in handy for late-night gaming sessions.