Need advice for new budget gaming laptop for February purchase

Kristy · October 9, 2019

Hey guys, I'm new here but I've been watching Linus Media Group on YouTube for a while now. I thought this would be a good place to get suggestions for a new budget gaming laptop to replace my aging Lenovo Y700. My target price is $1000, more than I paid for the Lenovo, with a little flexibility in that budget. Not sure what the tax refund will bring just yet but it should be at least that much, though I can't go spending it all on a laptop.

I'm a truck driver, so space is at a premium. Smaller screen/smaller footprint is better, thickness of the laptop is acceptable to make up for the lack of space a small footprint causes. Naturally it has to be better than my current laptop, which has seen some upgrades over the three and a half years since I got it. Biggest upgrade was swapping out the 1TB HDD for a 2TB SSD, but I also maxed out the RAM. Current specs:

Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7
Memory Size - 1024 MB
Memory Type - DDR3
Core Clock - 800 MHz
System Memory - 16 GB
CPU Type - AMD FX-8800P Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G
Drive: 2TB WDC WDS200T2B0A-00SM50

I've been big on AMD forever but I was never a big ATi fan, so I'm more than willing to switch to an Intel/nVidia based system since I doubt I'll find a AMD/nVidia system with AMD having acquired ATi years ago.

So in summary, I'm looking for a new compact budget gaming laptop, with the footprint being the main size issue being the footprint, budget of $1000, no preference on Intel/AMD, that I can buy in February when I get my tax refund, or possibly sooner with a loan that I'd pay off with said tax refund, if a deal pops up to justify an early purchase and negate the interest and fees from getting the loan.