Gaming laptops are too expensive right now, but this one’s a good value

It’s not a great time to shop for a gaming laptop. The unprecedented rise in cost for RAM (and storage to a slightly lesser extent) has made laptops with low-to-midrange specs cost much more than they should. Recent deals on gaming laptops worth your attention have been uninspiring, but one recently caught my eye: MSI’s Katana laptop with a 15.6-inch 1440p display, Nvidia’s RTX 5060 GPU, a fast Intel Core i7 CPU, and the pairing of 16GB DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD costs $1,133.67 at Amazon.

It’s a little painful to be able to recall a time when you used to be able to sometimes find the 4070 or the 5070 GPU variants in laptops around this price point, but those times are behind us for now (but hopefully ahead of us, too, sooner than later). Regardless, the Katana is a good value if you’re shopping in the $1,100 ballpark. I particularly like that its screen has a fast 165Hz refresh rate, and that it’s not hurting for ports. In addition to its barrel plug charging port, it has three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port that can output video, an HDMI 2.1 port supporting up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz output, Ethernet, and a headphone jack.

While RAM is bananas expensive right now, the Katana supports up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at 6,000MHz via two user-accessible slots. It has just one M.2 SSD slot, though. All of the specifications are listed on MSI’s site.

Other Verge-approved deals for your consideration

• You might already have a good Ethernet switch, but maybe you’ve been kicking around the thought of upgrading. Ugreen’s 10-port gigabit switch doesn’t seem all that remarkable, if not for the fact that eight of its ports support power over Ethernet (PoE). More smart home devices are launching with support the tech, which lets you power devices and supply internet connectivity with a single cable. The switch — now down to $37.97 at Amazon (it fluctuates between this price and around $50) — can deliver up to 60W to certain devices, and it’s over $20 less than TP-Link’s similar model. If you don’t envision using this feature, you can get a switch without PoE for much less money.
• Hold onto your shells: the limited edition bundle of the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy from the 1990s is down to $39.09 at Amazon and Walmart. Containing each of the films in 4K Blu-ray (Dolby Vision and HDR10-compatible) would be enough for me at this price, but the set contains a bunch of extras that fans like me will likely enjoy. It contains posters, cards, and other physical trinkets, plus director’s commentaries, interviews, and lossless audio. I wonder how young is too young to show these movies to my kid. I adored The Secret of the Ooze as a youngster.
• Lastly for today, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is $55.99 at Steam during the platform’s summer sale through July 9th. But you can get it for $10 less at Newegg. The online retailer is offering this price when you use the code 5DSUMMER at checkout. The PC port came out several months after the PlayStation 5 version launched, yet it’s great to see that it’s already more affordable to buy on Steam than a physical pre-owned copy for PS5 at GameStop. PC players can enjoy 21:9 aspect ratio support, plus a host of graphical improvements not present in the console version. Read our review.