For just $554.99, this gaming laptop with an Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU is a bargain

We've just spotted an awesome budget gaming laptop deal going on Walmart right now, where you can get an MSI Thin laptop for just $554.49, complete with an Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, and 16GB of RAM. That's genuinely outstanding value for the specs on offer, especially when you consider that you even get a 15.6-inch screen with a 144Hz refresh rate.

That covers you for all the PC gaming essentials, with specs that aren't far off the machines on our guide to buying the best gaming laptop. The key component in this budget MSI machine, of course, is that Nvidia gaming GPU, which in this case is a GeForce RTX 4050. That's the entry-level chip from Nvidia's last-gen Ada Lovelace lineup, and it gives you 2,560 CUDA cores and 6GB of GDDR6 VRAM.

It also supports Nvidia DLSS 4 upscaling with the new transformer model, which significantly improves frame rates with only a minimal impact on image quality, and it also supports single frame gen. This tech enables the GPU to use its 120 Tensor cores to cleverly use AI to insert an extra frame after each one rendered by the GPU, which helps to smooth out frame rates. The RTX 4050 offers a significant step up from the integrated GPUs often found on budget laptops, enabling you to play your games at decent settings, even if you can't always max them out.

Meanwhile, the screen's 144Hz refresh rate will enable it to keep up with fast action at up to 144fps, and it's based on an IPS panel too. In our IPS vs VA monitor tests, we've found that IPS screens are much more responsive than VA screens, with less ghosting, making them ideal for fast-paced first-person shooters.

It's also refreshing to see 16GB of RAM included in this cut-price machine, which is enough to meet the minimum system requirements of games, and it's a good step up from the 8GB you sometimes see in bargain basement laptops. What's more, the memory is supplied in standard DDR4 SODIMM format, so you can also upgrade it to up to 64GB of the best gaming RAM from our guide at a later date.

You also get a reasonable CPU in the form of an eight-core Intel Core i5 13420H, which can boost to up to 4.6GHz. The cores are split into four P-Cores, which are the important ones for gaming, and an extra four power-efficient E-Cores to help out with multi-threading. Ideally, you'd want at least six P-Cores in a gaming machine, but four cores still covers the basics in most games, and you really can't complain when you're getting a complete gaming system for just $554.49.

The only other slight irritation is the lack of storage space, with this MSI machine coming with just a 512GB SSD, although it's at least a reasonably fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive. It also uses a standard M.2 socket, so you could always upgrade it to your choice of drive from our best gaming SSD guide later.

If you want to take advantage of this deal, then you just need to click on this link here to take you to Walmart, where the MSI Thin 15 B13VE-3023US is currently reduced to just $554.49.

Would you buy a budget gaming laptop with these specs at this price? Let us know your thoughts in our community Discord server.