Is now a good time to buy a gaming laptop?

The 2026 gaming-laptop landscape

Halfway through 2026, the gaming-laptop market is in one of its most coherent moments in years. Every major chassis from ASUS, MSI, Lenovo, Acer, HP, Dell and Razer has been refreshed with current-generation silicon. Driver maturity is excellent. Game support for the new feature stack — DLSS 4, frame generation, ray reconstruction — is broad and stable. None of that "wait three months for the launch driver to settle" anxiety from generations past.

If you walked into our Centurion warehouse today, you'd see four broad classes of machines on the shelf: thin-and-light 14-inch ultraportables targeting students and content creators, 15- and 16-inch all-rounders that handle work and gaming, dedicated 16- and 17-inch performance chassis built around the higher-tier mobile GPUs, and a small but vocal flagship segment running 18-inch panels with the full 5090M and Core Ultra 9 200HX combination.

What's not in market: any officially-announced Super mobile refresh, any 60-series mobile (next-gen), or any meaningful new chassis category. The shape of the market for the next 9-12 months is more or less the shape you see right now.

What's in market right now — chips and GPUs

Let's get specific. Here's the silicon you'll actually find in SA gaming-laptop stock in mid-2026.

NVIDIA RTX 50-series mobile (Blackwell)

The 5070M is the volume seller — it's the GPU we ship the most chassis around, by a wide margin. It hits a price point that students, working professionals and serious gamers can all justify, and it's good enough for 1440p in just about everything modern at high settings without needing aggressive DLSS upscaling.

CPUs you'll see paired with them

AMD Ryzen AI 300 series. The standout for thin-and-light gaming laptops. Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max+ 395) shows up in premium ultraportables and creator laptops; Strix Point (Ryzen AI 9 365 / HX 370) is in the mainstream 14-16 inch range; Krackan Point is the budget end. All include an NPU for on-device AI workloads — not transformative for gaming, but useful for the creator-gamer crossover buyer. Battery life on the Ryzen AI side is genuinely good — 10-13 hours of light productivity is normal.

Intel Core Ultra Series 2. Two distinct families. Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 7 268V, 258V) dominates the ultraportable side — exceptional battery life, integrated Xe2 graphics that punch above their weight, and a strong NPU. Arrow Lake-HX (Core Ultra 7 255HX, 265HX, 275HX) is what you'll see paired with 5070M and 5080M GPUs in performance chassis.

Intel Core Ultra 9 200HX. The flagship pairing — Core Ultra 9 285HX or 295HX with RTX 5080M or 5090M. This is the "no-compromise" tier. Expect it to be loud under load, but the raw performance is the best you can put in a laptop chassis right now.

What's coming — the Super mobile refresh

Here's the question that hangs over every gaming-laptop purchase in 2026: should I wait for the Super refresh?

Honest answer: nobody outside NVIDIA knows the exact date. As of mid-2026, there is no official announcement. The most credible roadmap leaks and analyst reads point to a CES 2027 reveal (early January 2027) with chassis shipping in volume from late Q1 into Q2 2027. SA stock typically lands 4-10 weeks behind global availability for new mobile silicon.

Translating that to a decision: if you bought today, the earliest you would see Super-equipped chassis at meaningful SA volume is roughly March-May 2027. That's 9-11 months away. For some people, that's worth waiting for. For most people, it isn't.

What a desktop-generation Super refresh has historically delivered:

• 10-15% more rasterisation performance at the same tier vs the non-Super card — sometimes more, sometimes less depending on memory bandwidth changes.
• More VRAM at the mid-tier — a 5070M Super may bump from 12 GB to 16 GB, which matters for 1440p with ray tracing enabled.
• Similar power envelopes — so similar chassis options, similar thermal designs, similar battery life.
• Roughly flat MSRP at launch, which pushes the current generation down a notch on price.

That last point matters enormously. If the Super refresh ships and the current 5070M and 5080M chassis drop R3,000-R6,000 to clear stock, you may be better off buying the current gen at clearance than paying full price for Super on launch.

Buy now if you need it — when waiting hurts

There are five concrete situations where buying right now is unambiguously the correct call, regardless of what 2027 looks like.

You need it for work or study. If you're starting varsity in 2027, you need the laptop now to prep, to do orientation work, to settle in. If your job depends on a working machine, every week of delay is a week of risk. The cost of not having the right tool today vastly exceeds the upside of waiting for 12% more performance later.

Your current laptop is dying. Failing batteries, dodgy keyboards, screens with dead zones, fans on their last legs. You're not "deciding" anymore — the laptop is deciding for you. Buy now, and buy something you'll be happy with for 4-5 years.

You're targeting the 5060M or 5070M tier. The Super refresh will have its biggest impact at the top of the stack. At the 1080p and 1440p mainstream tiers, the current 5060M and 5070M will not be meaningfully outclassed. A 5070M bought today will play 2028's games at high settings comfortably. You're not "future-proofing less" by buying now.

The rand is weakening. If ZAR is trending against you, prices are going up next stock cycle, not down. Locking in current pricing protects you from the move.

You've found a real deal. A specific machine, a specific spec, a specific price that genuinely beats market. Black Friday, end-of-life clearance, an open-box unit at Evetech — when value lines up, take it. Deals don't wait for your perfect timing.

Wait if you can — when waiting pays

Equally honest: there are scenarios where waiting is the smarter call.

You already have a working machine. If your current laptop or desktop is comfortably handling what you do today, the upgrade calculus is different. You're not solving a problem — you're shopping for an upgrade. In that case, holding for 6-9 months to see the Super refresh land and the current gen drop in price is a defensible strategy.

You're chasing the absolute top of the stack. If your target is a 5090M chassis and you're spending R75,000-R95,000, you're in the tier where the Super refresh will deliver the most measurable uplift. A 5090M Super may close the gap between mobile flagship and desktop more meaningfully than any of the mid-tier refreshes.

You have a specific feature need that's coming. Wider OLED panel options, more 18-inch chassis, USB4v2 ubiquity, refreshed thermal designs — these tend to land in the next cycle of chassis updates, often timed with the GPU refresh.

You're a creator-gamer chasing VRAM. If you're doing local AI workloads, 4K video editing or 3D work alongside gaming, VRAM matters more than raw GPU horsepower. A 5070M Super at 16 GB would be a meaningful step up from a current 5070M at 12 GB for these workloads. This is the most legitimate "wait for Super" argument we hear.

The rand is strengthening. If ZAR is rallying, current pricing reflects the previous landed cost. The same SKU may be R2,000-R4,000 cheaper one or two stock cycles from now without anything else changing.

SA timing — the ZAR + retail seasonality reality

Here's the part most overseas buying guides miss completely: in South Africa, when you buy a laptop matters as much as which laptop you buy.

The rand is the variable nobody talks about

Every gaming laptop sold in SA is imported, priced in USD wholesale, then landed and marked up in ZAR. A move on the dollar-rand pair flows directly into the price you pay. Real numbers from our own pricing history:

• A R45,000 laptop at R18.50/USD becomes a R42,500 laptop at R17.50/USD — a R2,500 swing on a one-rand currency move.
• A R75,000 flagship at R19/USD becomes a R71,000 flagship at R18/USD — a R4,000 swing on the same machine.
• Repricing cycles at SA retailers run every 4-8 weeks as new stock lands at new exchange rates. Old stock often stays at old prices until it clears.

What this means practically: if the rand is strengthening and you can wait one stock cycle (call it 6-8 weeks), you may save 3-6% on the same machine without anything else changing. If the rand is weakening, that same delay costs you.

The retail calendar in SA

Refurb and open-box — the underrated SA play

Brand-new laptops at retail are not the only path. In SA, where every imported rand counts, refurbished and open-box machines are an underrated value play.

What you actually get

Open-box machines are customer returns (often unopened or barely used), demo units, B-stock from distributors and warranty-replacement returns. At Evetech, these are inspected, tested and typically come with the full original manufacturer warranty intact. Expect 8-15% below new pricing on the same SKU.

Refurbished machines are more heavily tested and reconditioned, often ex-demo or out-of-box-failure units. They include our own warranty (typically 6-12 months) on top of any remaining manufacturer warranty. Expect 20-30% below new pricing.

The math that wins for a lot of buyers: an open-box 5080M for R45,000 versus a new 5070M for R36,000. The open-box machine is a tier higher in GPU, has more VRAM, will age better, and still comes with the manufacturer warranty. For people who don't need a sealed box, this is the highest-value path into the upper tiers.

Across the gaming laptops we've sold from our Centurion warehouse in the first half of 2026, the <strong>RTX 5070M chassis is the runaway volume winner</strong> — roughly 4 in every 10 laptop sales sit in the R28k-R38k band. The conversation we have most often: <em>“should I wait for Super?”</em>. Our honest answer to nearly every customer is the same — <strong>if you need a laptop in the next 6 months, buy now</strong>. The Super refresh isn't dated, it's not confirmed, and even if it lands on the optimistic timeline, SA stock will be 2-3 months behind global launch. For 1080p and 1440p gamers, the current generation is more than enough. The only customers we steer toward waiting are the ones chasing a 5090M flagship and the creator-gamers who genuinely need the VRAM jump.

Behind the Bench · From Evetech Centurion

Key takeaways

1. RTX 50 mobile is mature, drivers are stable, SA stock is healthy — this is a buyable moment, not a transitional one.
2. The Super refresh is unannounced. Most credible read: CES 2027 reveal, SA stock March-May 2027 at earliest.
3. Buy now if you need it — for work, study, a dying machine, or at the 5060M/5070M tiers where Super won't move the needle.
4. Wait if you have a working machine, you're chasing 5090M-class performance, or you need the VRAM bump for creator workloads.
5. ZAR matters. A one-rand move on USD/ZAR is R2,500-R4,000 on a typical mid-range gaming laptop within one stock cycle.
6. Black Friday late November is the deepest discount window. Back-to-varsity January-February is the second best window.
7. Open-box and refurb at Evetech can land you a 5080M for the price of a new 5070M — best value path in the SA market.

Frequently asked questions

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