This $599.99 Nvidia GeForce RTX gaming laptop deal offers outstanding value

It's not often that you see a sub-$600 laptop of any sort with a decent spec, let alone one with a proper Nvidia GeForce RTX gaming GPU, but this latest MSI Thin gaming laptop deal at Walmart bucks the trend. Right now, you can grab a full machine with a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics card for just $599.99, which is an absurdly low price, especially when you consider that you get a 144Hz screen as well.

Importantly, there are no areas where this MSI machine is seriously compromised, with many of the key specs being in line with the systems on our guide to buying the best gaming laptop. It's the Nvidia GPU that lifts this machine beyond the usual budget systems with integrated graphics, though. The GeForce RTX 4050 is the entry-level option from Nvidia's last-gen GPU lineup based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, and it supports ray tracing in games, as well as Nvidia DLSS.

The latter tech includes frame generation, which uses AI to insert an extra frame after each one that's genuinely rendered by the GPU, and this graphics card's Tensor cores also support the new Nvidia DLSS 4 transformer model for upscaling. This means the GPU can render games at a lower resolution than 1,920 x 1,080, and then use the AI cores to upscale it - the new model works remarkably well, making game graphics look sharp and stable, without the blurriness of previous DLSS models, while also improving your frame rate.

Of course, the RTX 4050 isn't a top-end gaming GPU, but it's a great inclusion at this price - you'll have no trouble running your games at decent settings at the screen's 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, even if you're not able to max them out. The screen is also a solid inclusion, and not just because of its fast 144Hz refresh rate. It's also based on an IPS panel, and in the testing for our IPS vs VA feature, we found this tech is much better suited to fast-paced action games where responsiveness is key.

It's also refreshing to see that this budget laptop buy comes with a full 16GB of memory. It's not the latest DDR5 RAM, but in our experience, it's better to have 16GB of 3,200MT/s DDR4 memory than 8GB of faster DDR5 RAM. Even the CPU is a decent offering, with the Intel Core i5 13420H offering eight cores and a maximum clock speed of 4.6GHz. On the downside, only four of these cores are the P-Cores that are optimized for performance, and are the important ones for games, but it's still a decent CPU at this price.

If there's one fly in the ointment, it's the fact that this laptop only comes with a 512GB SSD, which doesn't give you much storage space for the latest games with their big install sizes. However, it's at least a PCIe 4.0 NVMe model, so it's fast, and it comes on an M.2 module too, so you can upgrade it to the best drive you can afford on our guide to buying the best gaming SSD at a later date if you want, although doing so will require you to take the laptop apart.

All in all, this is a surprisingly decent spec for a very reasonable price. We saw the RTX 4060 model drop to $648 earlier this year, and this $599.99 deal enables you to get a full machine for an even cheaper price, albeit with a less powerful gaming GPU. If you want to take advantage of this deal, then you just need to click on this link here to pick it up from Walmart.

If you need any more bits and pieces to complete your gaming setup, you'll also be able to find some great budget buys on our guide to the best gaming mouse, as well as our best gaming headset buying guide.

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