The 5 Best Laptops For Overwatch Reviewed
Overwatch is one of Blizzard’s most popular game.
It’s fast, intense and cartoonish gameplay designed to be run on low specs.
However, with the bullet-quick gameplay and emphasis on accuracy and speedy reaction times, the chances are you’re going to want to play this on a machine with slightly more specifications than your average washing machine.
If you are playing Overwatch on a weaker spec laptop or computer, then you can expect all the quality of a PSOne game, with blocky edges, polygons and massive drops in your framerates.
Luckily, when it comes to laptops, there are a wide range of options, so you won’t have to worry about shelling out a few thousand dollars on the most up-to-date machine on the market.
You can take a laptop out to your local coffee shop or even on your lunch break at the office if you’re feeling sneaky, blasting about for a few hours as your favorite tank, damage or support hero.
But you’ll have to ask yourself what you want the most out of your Overwatch experience: Do you want smooth play and high performance, removing any potential embarrassment that comes with heavy lag?
If so, then expect to spend over a thousand dollars on your portable gaming machine.
Or are you happy with the 1080p resolution with no more than 60fps? If so, you can be looking to save yourself over a thousand dollars on the final price of your gaming machine.
So where can you find the best laptops for Overwatch?
In amongst the hundreds of models of laptops currently available, how can you find a laptop with the specs that you need to get the best out of your Overwatch game? How much can you be looking to spend on a decent gaming laptop?
Well, don’t fear Overwatchers, because help is at hand.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the best laptops for Overwatch currently available on the market.
We also have a buyer’s guide that will help you identify what to look for when purchasing your next gaming laptop, as well as some frequently asked questions.
Best Laptops For Overwatch
1. HP Pavilion Gaming 15-Inch Micro-Edge Laptop
Our first gaming laptop is one that straddles the distance between price and performance, which will be perfect for users who might just be starting in the gaming world and won’t want to blow all and sundry on their first gaming laptop.
Featuring an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, this machine comfortably exceeds the minimum specs for Overwtach, giving you smooth and seamless play – introducing HP Pavilion Gaming 15-Inch Micro-Edge Laptop.
This machine has some great features that make it perfectly adapted to high-octane action games like Overwatch. With a 15.6-inch screen and backlit 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, as well as a 144Hz refresh rate.
The 1TB hard drive will easily store all your added saves, removing the need for you to buy an external hard drive.
It has a 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 graphics card, which will give you crystal clear colors and pixels, maintaining a smooth rate of play when the action gets heated during your Overwatch tournament.
The HP Pavilion 15 has a backlit keyboard that will help you locate the keys, especially useful if you’re trying to create some atmosphere by playing in a darkened room.
The soundbar for this laptop is housed in the front panel above the keyboard that provides a dual sound capacity and HP audio boost, which will be incredibly useful for you when you’re dishing out a friendly diss to your opponents or rallying your teammates.
With over 9 hours of battery life, you can play hard without having to charge the battery, which is perfect when you’re in the thick of playing and the last thing you’ll want on your mind is the worry that your battery might be about to die.
One of the main draws of this machine will also be the incredibly affordable price. If you consider yourself a bargain hunter, you won’t go far wrong with this machine, giving you a solid performance that is indistinguishable from some of the higher-priced laptops.
- Fast and easy multitasking: experience high-grade Graphics and processing power that meets your gaming and multitasking needs for the latest games including Fortnight, PUBG, and Overwatch
- Advanced thermal Management: optimized thermal design and IR sensor keeps your laptop cool to the touch, without affecting acoustics.
- Bios recovery and protection: automatically checks the health of your PC, protects against unauthorized access, secures local storage and recovers itself from boot-up issues
- Fast Processor: 9th Generation intel(r) core(tm) i5-9300h Processor, quad-core, 2.4GHz up to 4.1GHz with Intel's) Turbo Boost
- Realistic graphics: nvidia(r) geforce(r) GTX 1050 (3 GB GDDR5 dedicated). enjoy NVIDIA Pascal) architecture for amazing speed and power efficiency. Vr/mr ready. 15.6-Inch diagonal FHD IPS Anti-Glare micro-edge WLED-backlit Display (1920x1080) with 60Hz refresh rate
2. Asus ROG Strix Hero II Gaming Laptop
Our next machine is a lot more heavy-duty and results in even higher performance, with an impressive 144Hz display and a hexcore Intel i7-8750H 3.9 HGz processor that will give your entire gaming window that clarity and sharpness as well as a fluid aim and lag-free movement – introducing Asus ROG Strix Hero II Gaming Laptop.
With this laptop, you can crank your Overwatch settings to the very highest resolution of 1920 x 1080, giving you an unparalleled visual experience.
It also has 16GG RAM and a hefty storage capacity of 512GD SSD (Solid State Drive). This is a machine aimed specifically at hardcore gamers who want nothing but the top-tier.
The graphics card in particular is what elevates this machine above all other models, the NVIVIA GeForce utilizing real-time ray tracing as well as artificial intelligence and programmable shading.
You might have trouble distinguishing gaming from reality if you’re planning on playing this for hours on end.
When it comes to high-performance gaming, one impediment is often overheating, which causes the fan to cut out and the computer to stall or crash.
However, this laptop comes with a Hypercool Pro feature that increases the efficiency of your laptop, with an extended cladding plate that helps to avoid thermal throttling.
The keyboard is fitted out with a backlight in the front and around the sides that will enable you to see your fire and strafe keys easier.
This will be very important when you’re in the midst of a fast and aggressive firefight with multiple players. This has one of the best cooling fans of any laptop on this list, with an efficient anti-dust system.
- New 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10875H Processor: Turbo Boost of 5.1 GHz and up to 64GB RAM for powerful gaming and work performance
- Experience phenomenal performance with the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series SUPER Graphics, featuring ray tracing technology that delivers a cinematic-quality rendering
- Be immersed in lifelike realism with a vibrant 120Hz UHD Display with Thin Bezels that delivers ultra-smooth performance and maximized screen size
- Custom Vapor Chamber Cooling System: Dual heat exchangers and custom fans to maximize heat dissipation and airflow
- Advanced Connectivity: Featuring USB 3.2 Gen 2, 2.5 Gb Ethernet, UHS-III SD Card Reader, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), Windows Hello, and Thunderbolt 3
3. Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop
Our next laptop really lives up to its mean-sounding namesake, a beast of a machine that comes with a 15.6-inch display screen that can cope with the high-end resolutions and provide you with a perfect Overwatch game.
It has another Intel Core processor which can operate up to 3.8 GHz with minimal effort – introducing the Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop.
The 16GB DDR4 RAM will make your online gameplay very fluid and not prone to lag, with an impressive storage capacity of 256GB in a solid-state drive and 1TB of hard drive space, you can be sure than this machine will handle even the largest accumulation of pixels than can occur when there’s a melee of players on the screen.
Even when operating at its maximum capacity, this machine will give you 7 hours of battery life, which means that you can keep playing harder for longer.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 has its own internal memory of 6GB, so you can rest assured that this laptop can support the most realistic shadows, lighting and pixel count the game can provide.
This game is very visually idiosyncratic and best experienced at its peak graphics setting and resolution.
This laptop is 64-bit, so you can enjoy all the best features of a Windows 10 64-bit OS. It is also very lightweight and won’t be a hassle to carry around if you fancy switching up your gaming environment.
- Aspect Ratio:16:9
- 10th Generation Intel Core i7-10750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 5.0 GHz) with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
- Overclockable NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM
- 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) Widescreen LED-backlit IPS display (144Hz Refresh Rate, 3ms Overdrive Response Time, 300nit Brightness & 72% NTSC)
- 16 GB DDR4 2933MHz Dual-Channel Memory, 512GB NVMe SSD (2 x M.2 slots; 1 slot open for easy upgrades) & 1 - Available Hard Drive Bay
4. Gigabyte Aero Laptop
Our next portable gaming station is one that comes with a feature that is a world-first – that is a 144Hz IPS panel with a thin bazel.
It also comes with a 15.6-Inch that can support 1920 x 1080 resolutions, with a 8750H processor that can enhance the productivity of your laptop by over 50% – introducing the Gigabyte Aero Laptop.
The Aero comes with a 2.2 GHz 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, which will boost the overall performance as well as making your Overwatch game much faster and smoother to play.
This laptop is certified with X-Rite Pantone color calibration, which gives your games that true color quality that really makes it stand out, giving you a far more dynamic and realistic gaming experience.
Couple this with the 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card and you have an incomparable richness that other laptops simply cannot match.
The backlit keyboard on this model gives you the option of setting 16.7 million colors to each key, which means that you can adapt it to your style of playing and create a keyboard that is unique to you!
The battery life is also superlative, giving you more than 10 hours of continuous usage even at the highest settings. You can play just under half the day without having to worry about the juice on your machine running out.
The multiple USB 3.0 ports and Thunderbolt 3 technology lets you transfer large amounts of data at 40Gbps, allowing you to connect with larger 4K display devices. This is perfect if you fancy switching your Overwatch display to a massive widescreen.
- Perfectly sized 15.6" display with ultra-thin bezels and an incredible 89% screen-to-body ratio for productivity and creative tasks | This ultra-high performance powerhouse is less than 1" thick, weighs less than 5-lbs, and housed in a compact, durable CNC aluminum alloy black chasis, perfect for creative professionals and gamers on-the-go
- Ultra-smooth, anti-ghosting FHD 1920x1080 144Hz IPS LCD display with wide angle view and anti-glare for the best multimedia multitasking and gaming performance | Displays up to 100% sRGB color gamut coverage | Individually factory-calibrated and color-accurate within Delta E<1, certified by X-Rite Pantone for true-to-life color and vibrant images
- Up to 8.5-hours of battery life (PCMark 10) to get you through an entire day's work without plugging in for greater work mobility and productivity | Exclusive, built-in Microsoft Azure AI to intelligently optimize hardware profiles to match your daily usage for the most efficient power and battery usage
- Equipped with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q for accelerating and optimizing graphic-intensive creative apps, such as Adobe Creative Suite, Autodesk Maya, Blender, etc. | Powered by the latest 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10750H for faster photo and 4K video editing efficiency and high gaming performance
- 16GB DDR4 3200MHz dual channel memory (8GBx2) for increased multitasking productivity and 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD (2x NVMe storage slots total) for accessing files at lightning speeds, while safely storing all of your large-scale creations and projects
5. ASUS ROG Strix Hero Edition Gaming Laptop
Our final laptop is actually an older version of the previous Hero model we listed above, but that doesn’t mean that it is any less adapted to premium fast-paced gaming.
Equipped with a powerful Intel Core i7-8750H processor and a 120 Hz refresh rate, this machine is designed to render your games with maximum contrast and crystal clarity – introducing Asus ROG Strix Hero Edition Gaming Laptop.
With another 15.6-inch screen and a full HD IPS-type panel display, this laptop can easily cope with running Overwatch at 1920 x 1080 resolution.
The storage capacity is also outstanding: 16 GB RAM, 128GB SSD and 1TB SSHD, you can run a few of your favorite first-person shooters on here at the maximum settings.
The body of this laptop is made from sturdy and lightweight aluminum. The NVIVIA GeForce GTX 10 series comes with an onboard 4GB RAM, giving you the very best graphics, shadow rendering and pixel count.
The keyboard is specially designed for gamers with fast fingers, the LED lights in each key making them easy to find even when you’re in the midst of a button-bashing frenzy. It also features isolated hotkeys, 4 zones of lighting control and 20-million keystroke durability.
The cooling fans have dust-removing properties and are housed just below the keyboard to reduce the thermal pressure that can arise from button bashing. The battery life also lasts around 7 to 8 hours, which is average for most gaming laptops.
However, the connectivity is still excellent, including multiple USB 3.0 ports of different generations, as well as HDMI ports and ethernet jacks and a headphone jack, in case you feel like playing in a public space and don’t want to bother anyone around you with excessive blasting sounds.
- Special design for MOBA gamers: slim 0.9 inches profile and lightweight 5.6 pounds body with dragon scale pattern. 15.6 inches 120Hz 3ms Full HD IPS-Type Panel designed for maximum contrast and clarity
- 8th-Gen Intel Core i7-8750H processor. 6 cores, up to 3.9GHz (Boost clock). Powerful gaming performance with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB graphics
- 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD,1TB FireCuda SSHD for combination of fast OS drive speed and high capacity storage; Battery: 64WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion
- Aura RGB lighting keyboard with 4 isolated hotkeys, 1.8mm key travel, and anti-ghosting technology. 4 zones of lighting control. 20-million keystroke durability
- 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi (up to 6x faster than traditional BGN); Bluetooth 4.1, 3x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1 (Type C), 1x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI, 1x Mini DisplayPort, 1x headphone/Mic jack, and 1x RJ45 LAN port
Laptops For Overwatch Buyers Guide
When it comes to having the best system for your Overwatch play, it will certainly be worth looking at the minimal and maximum specifications that the game requires.
Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i3
RAM: At least 4GB
Storage: 1TB HDD or 128GB SSD
Display: HD (1024 x 768)
Battery: Up to 5 hours
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4400, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, ATI Radeon HD 4850
OS: Windows 7
Recommended System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i5 or i7
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 256GB SSD
Display: FHD (1024 x 1080)
Battery: Up to 10 hours
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050, MD Radeon HD 7950
OS: Windows 10 Home or Professional
You should be sticking to the recommended settings to achieve the best results from your Overwatch game.
But it is assumed that you won’t just be using your laptop for gaming. The more features available on your laptop, the most you’ll be able to do with it.
Here are a few things you should be looking for on the best laptops.
How Easy Is It To Carry?
You’ll more than likely be wanting to carry your laptop from A to B with minimal fuss.
Otherwise, you’d be wanting to purchase a base unit.
You want a laptop that is made from very lightweight material so that it won’t cause you injury from the repeated stress of carrying it.
Laptops built from aluminum are the best lightweight option. Also, look for laptops with plastic components to decrease unnecessary weight.
How Easy Is It To Connect To Other Devices?
Ideally, you should be looking for a laptop with a HDMI port that will allow you to hook it up to your widescreen television to play games and watch movies with that added level of immersion and without any loss of resolution.
Some laptops can cast themselves into a widescreen TV too, so look for a laptop with wireless and Bluetooth functions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is The Best CPU To Play Overwatch With?
Blizzard will always tell you that multicore processors will really make all the difference when it comes to playing Overwatch, although this is not necessarily true.
What matters on a CPU is its single clock speed, which is measured in Hz.
You will also need to pay attention to your processor’s RAM, as this will help you deliver those high frame rates.
The GPU won’t matter to a greater degree, as long as it has a dedicated RAM of its very own. You will see some of the graphics cards listed above do have this added RAM capability.
When it comes to processors being multi-threaded (that is, having multiple cores), benchmarks have shown that these actually do not increase the gains in your Overwatch game by a significant degree.
You can achieve a decent quality to your gaming by having a CPU with a solid clock speed rather than one with more cores.
What Is The Best Graphics Card For Playing Overwatch?
Graphics cards can be divided into two distinct categories: integrated and dedicated.
Integrated graphics cards are the ones that come with your computer, whereas dedicated are their own self-contained units.
They come with their onboard RAMS and processing units, which means they are considered as mini-computers, dedicated solely to increasing their own processing power.
To increase the performance on your Overwatch game, you’ll be more than likely looking for a dedicated unit, as Overwatch can use up an awful lot of your laptop’s integrated processing power.
However, if you want to save money and don’t mind running Overwatch on its minimum specs, then you can find some perfectly decent integrated graphics cards that can handle the added pressure.
Our Final Say
Usually, when you’re looking to buy a new gaming laptop, you won’t be buying it for a specific game.
However, Overwatch is a good high-performance benchmark against which the capabilities of other machines can be measured.
Ideally, if you have the money to spare, you will want to get a laptop that meets the recommended rather than the minimum settings for a game.
However, one way to save you a few hundred dollars is to buy a budget laptop unit and purchase components such as a graphics card and a new operating system separately.
There are plenty of Youtube tutorials that will teach you how to install these components yourself.
If you absolutely have to play Overwatch on a low-end laptop, it is doable. Watch this video to find the right settings for playing Overwatch on a weak laptop: