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Bang for buck gaming
If you have been waiting for a proper budget friendly gaming laptop, this HP Victus 15 config is a Black Friday offers that actually made me pause the deals spreadsheet doom scroll.
This variant pairs a 13th gen Core i5 with an RTX 4050, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, which is exactly the sort of spec you want for smooth 1080p gaming without paying high end money. The 15 inch display runs at 1920 x 1080 with a 144Hz refresh rate, so you can push drop the quality and push high frame rates in esports titles and still get very playable performance in more modern AAA games with settings tuned sensibly.
That said, you won’t be running Cyberpunk 2077 on Ultra, or even anything close, but you can still get plenty of gaming fun from the machine.
The Victus 15 with RTX 4050 usually sits around the AU$1,500 mark and HP currently lists it at AU$2,199 on its own store. Right now though, it is significantly cheaper via HP’s eBay store, and if you apply the code HPNV20 at checkout it drops to about AU$999, which is very close to the best price I have seen for this laptop. At least lately.
There are compromises of course. The 512GB SSD will fill up quickly if you install a lot of large games, so factor in either some uninstall discipline, an SSD upgrade or an external drive.
But if your budget is roughly AU$1,000 and you want a laptop that can genuinely game at 1080p rather than just look the part, this Victus 15 deal is one I am happy to flag as the real deal.
- HP Victus 15 | i5 / RTX 4050 / 16GB / 512GB SSD:
was AU$1499now AU$999.20
Morning all, and welcome to our live coverage of Black Friday laptop deals in Australia.
Black Friday officially lands on November 28 this year, but the sales have already started to roll in from the big brands and retailers. Some of them are genuinely great prices on machines I have been watching for months.
Others are… less impressive….
And that’s what this live blog is here for. I spent the year tracking laptop prices and promos so I have a clear idea of what a fair street price looks like, and what a real discount is versus an inflated RRP.
To vet a deal, I check its recent price history and prices during previous sales to see whether it is actually a saving worth caring about.
Laptops are usually at their most competitive around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the volume of configurations, coupon codes and, uh, creative pricing strategies from sellers can make it hard to know where to start.
But fear not, as I will highlight the offers that stand out for value, not just the biggest percentage claims, whether you are after an affordable machine for work or study, a creator laptop with a colour accurate screen or a gaming rig from budgets big to small.
Behind the scenes I will be living in the glow of spreadsheets across four displays, and I will keep updating this page right through the Black Friday weekend and into Cyber Monday.
So bookmark this page and check it regularly to see the latest price changes and new deals.
