Finding a good gaming laptop under $500 isn’t easy. Browsing through options for budget-minded gamers can feel a bit like staring at a field of potatoes. Unless you know what to look for, that is. Below, we’ll not only provide you with our hand-picked list of the best gaming laptops under $500, but also a quick guide on how to evaluate the various specs of a machine to make your own decision.

Remember that value under $500 is a zero-sum game. Every pro is bound to have some sort of cons, and you’re not getting the world in a laptop with a price tag hovering somewhere around half that of a new iPhone. So gauge your expectations and prioritize what you need over what you want.

For gaming, your first priorities are the graphics card and the processor. These are the left and right hands of your gaming computer, and they will do the heavy lifting of processing the game itself and drawing it on the screen for you dozens of times per second.

The second most important spec is RAM, the temporary cache that holds information for frequent access. A decent amount of RAM essentially saves your processor the time it has to search for information on your machine each time it goes looking for it, by keeping it readily available. Sort of like having a cup holder instead of a cooler in the trunk.