Best RTX 4050 laptop

The finest RTX 4050 gaming & creatives laptops on the market

Aaron Ritchie

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This guide will be listing the best RTX 4050 laptops for gaming and creative uses in 2024. We’re going to fill you in with all the info on these latest-gen, entry-level Nvidia GPUs, including what we know about their performance relative to similar SKU laptop graphics cards and pricing info. In short, RTX 4050 laptops represent some of the best budget gaming laptops of 2024, with substantial improvements over the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti models of the previous generation.

Although many of these devices have released now, we could still see a few new models come out over the next year. You can rest assured that we’ll be keeping this guide, and all of our other buying guides, as updated as possible with the latest selections. If you’re short on time, take a glance below at our three top selections along with a brief description of each. If you want to do a bit more research before you pull the trigger, read further for the individual product reviews, plus info on the general performance of this mobile graphics card.

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Best RTX 4050 laptop 2024: in-depth review

The best pick for gaming overall with AMD CPU

Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 (Ryzen 7 7735HS)

CPU

AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050

RAM

16GB DDR5 RAM

Storage

1TB PCIe SSD

Max Refresh Rate

120Hz

Resolution

1920 x 1080

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This Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 is the best RTX 4050 gaming laptop with Ryzen CPU combo, and we think, the best RTX 4050 gaming laptop full stop. it comes with the highest TGP variant of the RTX 4050 that you can get, and for your money you get in-game FPS performance that’s above what you’d expect from the core components.

Besides the CPU and GPU, you get 16GB of DDR5 RAM, plus 512GB of SSD storage. The screen might be limited to 120Hz maximum refresh rate, but when you’re playing on a budget gaming laptop with this level of power, this is quite sufficient for most games. More pertinent is that the screen is a bit on the dim side, though not really any worse than the majority of RTX 4050 gaming laptops at this price point. The c.50% sRGB color replication isn’t exactly great either, but its good enough for gaming.

One big plus though is the battery life, which lasts around 6 hours of general usage (web browsing and the like) – a solid result for a gaming laptop that’s this cheap.

The second best RTX 4050 laptop for gaming with Intel CPU

Acer Nitro 5 (144Hz 1080p, i5-12500H)

CPU

Intel Core i5-12500H

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050

RAM

16GB LPDDR5

Storage

512GB SSD

Max Refresh Rate

144Hz

Resolution

1920 x 1080

How We Review

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Whilst the Intel i5-12500H CPU on this model of the Acer Nitro 5 doesn’t match up to the Ryzen CPU on our top pick in terms of power, nor energy efficiency (the battery life on this laptop is only around 4 hours), it beats our top pick in a number of way that might appeal to consumers.

Firstly the display is 144Hz – not a big improvement but if you’re interested in playing older, non-demanding games like CS:GO in competitive play, then this additional 24Hz effective FPS could be of benefit. Secondly the build quality on this model is superior, as is the contrast ratio of the display (1700:1 – well above average at this price point), though issues with a dim screen still persist, as does the inferior color replication.

Like our top pick this Acer Nitro 5 has one of the highest TGP RTX 4050 laptop GPUs we’ve seen so far, plus 16GB DDR5 RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. All-in-all, a solid budget gaming laptop.

A great OLED RTX 4050 laptop – ideal for creatives on a budget

Gigabyte AERO 14 (90Hz OLED 1800p)

CPU

Intel Core i5-12500H / i7-13700H

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050

RAM

16GB LPDDR5

Storage

1TB SSD

Max Refresh Rate

90Hz

Resolution

2880 x 1800

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This particular RTX 4050 laptop is our ideal pick for those interested in a machine they can use for creative workflows and rendering tasks. The Gigabyte AERO 14 OLED, as the name would suggest, comes with a 3K OLED screen, fantastic to see at this price point, and with it the top-notch contrast and picture quality you’d expect. It even has a 90Hz refresh rate, which is high-end enough to enjoy a bit of light gaming on (not to mention the superb response time you get with all OLED screens).

On top of this you get good brightness, fantastic color gamut coverage (100% sRGB and 99% DCI-P3) plus good accuracy – making it ideal for color-based workflows although we should point out that for some reason the accuracy drops substantially if you set it above 161.348 cd/m², so just be aware of this (outdoor color grading is therefore a no-go).

You two different CPU options: an Intel 12th gen 12500H or a newer, more powerful 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H for a greater cost. The 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM is solid, and the 1TB SSD is very nice indeed. You get a decent number of ports, a good quality of the keyboard, and respectable build quality. Battery life comes it at a fairly impressive 7 hours.

Besides the color accuracy on higher brightness issue, the only real negative of this laptop compared to the others here is that the TGP of the graphics card is weaker, meaning inferior performance. Still, for a laptop that’s designed for creatives rather than gaming, this isn;t the end of the world, and the myriad other strengths more than make up for it.

RTX 4050 laptop release date

Nvidia confirmed 22nd of February, 2023 as the definitive RTX 4050 laptop release date, when the first models to hit the shelves. We’ve seen a number of these come out already but can expect to see many more pop up as the year progresses.

RTX 4050 laptop vs RTX 3050 laptop

The first RTX 4050 laptop performance leak (which has now proven to be accurate) came out when WCCFTECH released the below Time Spy benchmark graph back in November, which shows the RTX 4050 mobile GPU against 30-series mobile GPUs in grey and the new 40-series GPUs in green. Also to note is the inclusion of the RTX 3050 6G in green, which is a new rumoured variant of the RTX 3050 laptop card with more VRAM, as opposed to the original 4G VRAM version.

Generally the original RTX 3050 laptop GPU was quite disappointing – in most ways it was inferior to GTX 1660 Ti laptops, which we typically advised buyers to pick up instead. The RTX 4050 laptop GPU looks like it could be a more enticing budget proposition, if the below performance graph is to be believed, performing 50% better than the RTX 3050 4G, 29% better than the RTX 3050 Ti, but underperforming the RTX 3060 by 15%.

The below will not take into account the improvements of DLSS 3.0 in those games that support it though, which should bring further gains over the 30-series in FPS terms.

It’s good to see that unlike the RTX 4060 laptop and RTX 4070 laptop GPUs, the number of CUDA Cores has actually increased for the RTX 4050 over the previous gen, along with an increased VRAM. The Boost clock speed is significantly higher as you’d expect, but again, like with these other cards, the memory bus has actually reduced, with performance improvements coming from the improved efficiencies of the new architecture.

RTX 4050 laptop vs RTX 3050 desktop

We’ve not seen any comparison graphs yet of the RTX 4050 laptop GPU against the desktop RTX 3050, but we know that the latter outperformed the RTX 3050 laptop GPU by around 10-30% depending on the game. If the leaked Time Spy benchmark graph above can be believed, this could then mean that the RTX 4050 laptop GPU could outperform the RTX 3050 desktop by 20-40% depending on the game.

This would make sense as the RTX 4050 mobile has higher clock speed and the same number of CUDA cores as a RTX 3050 desktop GPU, although the memory bus is again smaller, as is the VRAM. We’ll ultimately have to wait and see until proper testing takes place to know though.

RTX 4050 laptop vs RTX 4050 desktop

As is always the case, desktop GPUs are more powerful than their laptop counterparts, with higher TGP and clock speed. We don’t yet know by what margin the RTX 4050 desktop will outperform the laptop RTX 4050 until it will release, but as soon as we get the data we’ll be updating this section accordingly.

Final Word

With any luck this RTX 4050 laptop guide should have satiated your thirst for knowledge about these new laptop GPUs. As more independent reviews come rolling in, we’ll be updating this page with our selections of what we deem to be the best RTX 4050 laptops on the market, depending on budget and use-case. Whilst you’re here, do be sure to also take a look at our various gaming laptop and laptop guides in the main menu, categorised by both price and by brand.

Best RTX 4050 laptop FAQs