I know I shouldn't be recommending here that you buy an RTX 3060 gaming laptop in 2023. But if I were looking for a cheap gaming laptop for Prime Day, I would be strongly attracted to this Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 at $800 at Best Buy.

It doesn't have the latest silicon from AMD Ryzen processors or Nvidia graphics cards, but Asus' design is so good that I can forgive some sacrifice in performance. And it is probably the product I would spend my money on.

And I'm not usually one to do that. My Steam Deck sits on the mantelpiece and I use the AOKZOE A1 Pro. Even if I am just playing dredge with that deck.

The 14" scale of the Asus Zephyrus G14 really appeals to me. This makes it very portable and more akin to an actual laptop that I use on the go on a daily basis, rather than something that is always plugged into the wall.

A 1080p, 144Hz screen is a great combination for the RTX 3060 with its previous generation Nvidia architecture. Even if it lags a bit behind the newer RTX 4060 machines, you will still be able to game quite comfortably at this resolution. Similarly, the Ryzen 7 5800HS is not the latest AMD design, but it is an 8-core, 16-thread chip that will happily handle some serious number crunching if needed. It also has 16 GB of DDR4 RAM.

The only thing that really gets my attention is the 512GB SSD. It should be fast enough for anyone's needs, and while it's fine for a budget gaming laptop, it will fill up quickly with the size of modern games. Still, there are some great deals on Prime Day SSDs today, and Asus itself shows how easy it is to replace the drive in the Zephyrus G14 notebook.

Yes, an RTX 4060 gaming notebook can be had for under $1,000, but the Zephyrus G14 is a bargain even with its slower RTX 3060 GPU. For this underpriced machine, there are few compromises regarding design, CPU, or memory, and it really is a beautiful laptop that can be used all day long.