Best laptops under R20,000 in South Africa — with several options for gamers

Laptops offer more than just a portable workstation. They can also be used to access a range of online activities, including video streaming, music, gaming, and general browsing when combined with an Internet connection.

While several gaming-oriented laptops in the country are available for less than R20,000, they don’t offer the best specifications but are still highly capable for various games.

However, for laptops with insufficient specs to run the game of your choice, or if you don’t want to use your laptop’s hardware for gaming, you can use Rain’s Nvidia GeForce Now service to stream games from the cloud.

Rain officially launched its locally-hosted Nvidia GeForce Now service on 8 December 2023, following a successful months-long beta.

GeForce Now is the first cloud gaming service officially available in South Africa, offering users without a high-end gaming PC the ability to play the latest titles.

Pricing for Nvidia GeForce Now through Rain starts at R200 per month for the Priority pass, which lets subscribers play games at a maximum 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second via a dedicated gaming server with an RTX 3060 graphics card.

For those wanting a more premium experience, the R400 Ultra plan gives users access to GeForce RTX 3080 servers, enabling gameplay at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second or 1440p resolution at 120 frames per second.

It also extends gaming sessions from three hours to eight.

MyBroadband looked for the best laptops available in South Africa for less than R20,000.

The most affordable option listed is the Asus TUF Gaming A15, with a Nvidia RTX 2050 GPU, AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM for R17,635 from Rebel Tech.

The gaming-oriented laptop features a 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080p display with 144Hz refresh rate and 512GB of SSD storage.

South African residents can get the FA0013NI-model HP Victus Gaming laptop from Evetech for a few hundred rands more.

The laptop has a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050 4GB GPU, a 12th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. It features a 1080p display with a 144hz refresh rate.

One of the laptops listed — the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Gaming from Evetech — is the only one with a refresh rate of higher than 144Hz.

The gaming laptop offers a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, Intel Core i5-12450H, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage for R18,999. Its display is 1080p and has a refresh rate of 165Hz.

One Apple laptop is included: the 13-inch M1 MacBook Air. It is available from Dreamware Tech for R18,599.

The most expensive options listed all sit on the upper limit of our set budget at R19,999. These include another Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Gaming, the Asus ROG G713RC, the 16-inch Dell Vostro, and MSI’s GF63 Thin 12VE gaming laptop.

Ten of the best laptops you can buy in South Africa for less than R20,000 are listed below with pricing and specs.

Asus TUF Gaming A15 — R17,635 (Rebel Tech)

HP Victus Gaming (FA0013NI) — R17,999 (Evetech)

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch — R18,599 (Dreamware Tech)

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 — R18,999 (Evetech)

Dell Latitude 3440 — R19,950 (Takealot)

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED — R19,995 (Rebel Tech)

Asus ROG G713RC — R19,999 (Takealot)

Dell Vostro 16-inch — R19,999 (Evetech)

MSI GF63 Thin 12VE — R19,999 (Evetech)

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 — R19,999 (Wootware)