The HP Victus 15 can be found among our list of the best gaming laptops under $1,000 because you can get it at affordable prices, or scale it up with more powerful components.

The base model that we reviewed is on a rock-bottom sale over at Best Buy, falling to just $479.99, which is an exceptional price for these specs.

HP Victus 15: now $479 at Best Buy (was $799)
The HP Victus 15 has fallen below $500! It packs a GTX 1650, 12th Gen Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM (you may want to upgrade that) and a 512GB SSD. The 1080p display has a 144 Hz refresh rate.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-vict...&intl=nosplash

They're not high-end specs. This model packs an Intel Core i5-1450H and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, which should be fine for older games, but newer games may require that you turn down settings. 8GB of RAM is expected at that price (you may want to upgrade it later), but the 512GB is never a given, so it's nice to see it here.

"Despite having an older GTX 1650 GPU, it can handle most contemporary titles in 1080p at high or medium settings, though you may need to turn down to low occasionally," we wrote in our review.

In our review, we liked the price and performance (including productivity performance). You will have to uninstall some bloatware, though. This configuration also boasts a 1080p, 144 Hz display and a design that won't stand out too much whether you're in a gaming session at home or working on the go.

In general, it's extremely rare to find any type of gaming laptop under $500. Finding any laptop with discrete graphics at that price is tough. That's what makes this deal surprising; sure, it's not the latest and greatest, but for that price, you might not mind playing games on medium instead of ultra.