I’ll keep it real with you. I loved a lot about my time at college, but the best memories were the multiplayer gaming nights — all of us dropping into matches and getting competitive with drinks and snacks aplenty.
To pull this off in 2025, the best gaming laptop for any college student is the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, which is the perfect size for college students. Even better, you can get up to $450 off one right now at Best Buy — taking the starting price down to an all-time low of just $1,349.
Here are some more power picks for my fellow nerds looking for a banger of a deal!
Today’s other Power Picks
- Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (RTX 5070): was $2,299 now $1,649 @ Lenovo
- Apple iPad (11th Gen): was $249 now $299 @ Amazon
- Shargeek 170 Power bank (24,000 mAh): was $169 now $98 @ Amazon
- Logitech MX Master 3S: was $99 now $79 @ Amazon
Why the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14?
Not only is this one of the best gaming laptops you can buy, but it passes the very specific criteria needed to be great for school too. To test any system for these demands, I have three criteria:
- Portable and powerful: It’s got to be small enough to stash in a backpack with enough horsepower under the hood for getting stuff done fast.
- Durable and ergonomic: There are unique wear and tear challenges on campus, so your laptop needs to be able to withstand this, while having a great keyboard, touchpad and display for those long nights of work.
- Battery life: It’s gotta have the stamina to last through a day of lectures.
…OK since you're all cool, here’s the only picture I can find from one of my gaming nights in 2011. We were on a mix of PS3 multiplayer on FIFA, World of Warcraft raids and Call of Duty team deathmatch nights on PC.
And the 2025 ROG Zephyrus G14 does manage to check these three off (most surprisingly the latter one). Of course, it’s a gaming laptop, so you’re not getting the levels of battery life you’d get from an M4 MacBook Air ($200 off right now), but in day-to-day productivity, it’s still able to slow sip the battery for all-day usage.
But when you do need the performance, it’s there in spades with that beast AMD Ryzen AI CPU and an RTX 50-series GPU turbo boosting speeds in creative workloads and class projects to make any workload fly by on that mesmerizing OLED display — made even better with a top notch tactile keyboard and touchpad.
Then comes the gaming, and the framerates I’m able to achieve on this system is seriously impressive. It actually feels portable, but you can crush AAA titles with the greatest of ease, and relive those multiplayer memories of mine in an aluminum shell that makes it light and portable, but also strong against the college elements.
In fact, aesthetically, you may notice a similarity…and you’d be absolutely right. It’s MacBook Pro-esque with MacBook Pro power, able to play way more games than a MacBook Pro, and is also way cheaper than a MacBook Pro…did I say MacBook Pro enough?
At its all-time cheapest price, this is a must-buy for campus gaming.
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![HIDevolution [2025] ASUS ROG...](https://images.fie.futurecdn.net/products/60cbb9059616003fe7353df7bc0e56e02dd01b3c-100-80.jpg.webp "HIDevolution [2025] ASUS ROG...")
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