Touchscreens are all the rage at the moment. 

Nintendo Switch games have been designed for touch screens.

The Steam Deck boasts a touchscreen.

Of course, mobile games rely heavily on that tech too.

Does this mean we are reaching a turning point in the world of gaming, though?

Are touchscreens becoming more important for gaming?

In this article, we’ll help you decide whether or not touchscreen laptops are good for gaming.

We will walk you through the sorts of games that will use touchscreens, as well as help you to weigh up the pros and cons of going down this route.

Are Touchscreen Laptops Good For Gaming?

When you choose a laptop with the right specs, using touchscreen gaming laptops is no different from using any other gaming laptop. This means that they can be good for gaming. The problem? Most games are not compatible with touchscreens. This means that the touchscreen becomes redundant 95% of the time.

A touch screen will never hamper your ability to play games. There is no game out there that will refuse to boot up just because you have a touchscreen laptop.

But if you get a 2-in-1 gaming touchscreen laptop, you’ll be able to flip it over into tablet mode and play a whole host of mobile-type games.

Unless you have some very specific games in mind that utilize a touch screen, you might not be using the touch screen for gaming as often as you would like.

Are There Any Games That Can Utilize The Touchscreen On A Laptop?

Because touchscreens are nowhere near as common as non-touchscreen displays, most games haven’t been designed with them in mind. While some games can utilize a touchscreen e.g. Hearthstone and the Civilization games, most cannot. Generally speaking, the games that do support touch screens tend to be slower-paced strategy games, card games, and games that have versions available for mobile and tablet devices.

It would be impossible for us to provide a list of all games that are compatible with a touchscreen on a laptop.

However, these are some games that have been confirmed to work with few issues:

  • Civilization V and Civilization VI
  • Don’t Starve
  • Hearthstone
  • X-Com 1 and 2
  • Ticket to Ride

If you’d like to see a complete list of touchscreen-compatible games on Steam, then there is a curated list available.

How To Choose A Touchscreen Laptop For Gaming?

Selecting a touchscreen laptop for gaming isn’t much more difficult than choosing any laptop for gaming. You want to ensure that the laptop meets the specs for the games that you want to play. It is that simple. Ideally, modern gaming laptops should have at least 16GB of RAM, a capable graphics card, and at least a 10th Gen Core i7 from or equivalent CPU. 

In this section, we are going to look at the sort of things that you should consider when buying a touchscreen gaming laptop.

We have tried to recommend specs that will keep you going for at least a gaming generation.

Although, of course, if you aren’t intending to play the most graphically-intensive games, you may be able to compromise on certain specs.

Choose a Touchscreen Laptop With a Large, High-Resolution Screen

Ideally, you would want that screen to be as large as possible.

At the minimum, you want a 15.6″ screen with a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080).

If you are not opposed to spending a bit more cash and do not mind the extra weight, then a larger screen could offer a more immersive experience.

You may even want to bump up the resolution of the laptop to 4K (3840 x 2160), although these are admittedly much harder to find as a touchscreen.

You will also need a more powerful laptop to play games at higher resolutions.

Full HD (1080p) is a good choice for maximizing the refresh when playing competitive shooters.

Higher resolutions are practical for other types of games though.

Choose One With a Powerful Processor

For a capable gaming laptop, you need a 10th Gen Core i7 Intel processor, at the minimum.

If you want to go down the AMD route, then you can pick up a Ryzen 7.

This is one of the areas that we wouldn’t compromise.

A lot of games nowadays are becoming very processor-hungry, and a poor processor could let down the rest of the system and act as a bottleneck. 

Make Sure It Has Lots of RAM

Touchscreen or not, for any gaming laptop, a minimum of 16GB of RAM is a must.

For most AAA games out today, 8GB of RAM just won’t cut it and will result in regular drops in frame rates during gameplay.

The only reason you should ever buy a laptop with 8GB of RAM is if It was on sale at a super discounted price and you plan to upgrade it to 16GBs straight away.

Practically every game – maybe with the exception of Microsoft Flight Simulator – will run smoothly at 1080p when you have 16 gigs of RAM.

This will help ensure that your laptop is future-proof, at least for the next 5-years or so.

Yes, we know that many of the games on the market have recommended specs of 8-12GB. 

That is fine. However, do bear in mind that PC gaming generally tracks console generations. 

As games start to move away from Xbox One and PS4, we will start to see more and more hefty RAM requirements.

Of course, the more RAM your device has, the better. It just tends to be a bit more expensive on laptops.

A Large SSD

An SSD can be the difference between games loading fast or taking ages to load and save on your touchscreen gaming laptop.

Games install and load way faster on solid-state drives (SSDs) than they do on older mechanical hard drives (HDDs). 

SSDs are also quieter, they use less energy, and make the other apps on your computer load faster and feel a lot more responsive.

You’ll also want plenty of storage.

Games are larger than ever before.

Call of Duty games can easily reach 200GB…and they are growing.

While not all games are going to quite reach the Call of Duty’s lack of optimization, you can still expect them to hover around the 100GB mark.

If you want a ton of games on your laptop, you need a hefty SSD.

500GB is the minimum, but if you can increase your budget to 1TB, then that will be even better.

While an SSD is always going to offer the best performance on games, you can opt for a laptop that has both a standard HDD and an SSD.

You will get more storage space like that, but the games installed on the HDD will load a little slower.

Related Article: Does A Gaming Laptop Need A Cooling Pad? (Explained)

A Powerful Video Card

When choosing a touchscreen laptop for gaming, you’ll want to ensure that it has a capable GPU.

Go for a minimum of a GeForce RTX 3060 GPU or equivalent AMD Ryzen for some solid 1080p gaming.

There are so many different types of cards that look identical in name but perform very differently.

And with shortages in chips and other components, you’ll often catch gaming laptop manufacturers putting underpowered video cards into their devices.

Try to find out the full identifying product number of the GPU so that you can identify exactly which variation of what generation it is and if it’s any good.

You should always look up card comparisons online to check the sort of performance that you can get too.

If you head to sites like YouTube, then you will no doubt uncover a huge number of videos with games played on certain video cards. Use that to make your decision.

Remember, video cards on laptops are slightly different from full-sized video cards.

The performance will be fractionally slower than the PCI version.

A Sturdy Build With High-Quality Keyboard And Precise Trackpad

The feel of the keyboard and trackpad will be pivotal to the gaming experience you will have on your touchscreen gaming laptop.

Unless you’re very familiar with a certain brand and their specific models, keyboards and trackpads are things you can only get a feel for by trying out yourself.

If you can, head to some large computer stores and try out some gaming laptops within your budget and see if there are some you like the feel of more than others.

Other than that, dig deep into reviews online for specific models and see what people are saying about the feel of the keyboard and trackpad.

If you can get a laptop with a mechanical keyboard, then fantastic.

Many laptops at the upper end of the market are made with mechanical keyboards nowadays.

The trackpad should be responsive and feel sturdy.

It needs to have a degree of customization so you can hit the DPI that works best for you. 

Although, do bear in mind that you will rarely find a laptop trackpad that is better than a proper mouse.

Look For A Gaming Touchscreen Effective Cooling

If your laptop’s processor is allowed to get too hot, it will likely be throttled and you will not get the most out of it.

When the processor becomes too hot, it uses a technology called Dynamic Frequency Scaling to limit its power draw and reduce gaming performance.

If your laptop is constantly overheating then you may never get good performance from it.

Laptops run hot. Even with low specs, they run hot.

When you throw in a ton of power-hungry components, they are going to be burning up on the inside.

Any laptop that you purchase should push the idea of cooling heavily.

This means tons of fans. Some laptops are even starting to integrate water cooling, although those are quite rare on touchscreen laptops.

Again, if you have a touchscreen gaming laptop in mind, jump into the reviews and try to find any that highlight overheating issues.

If you do have an ongoing heating issue, you could try a good cooling pad like the Kootek Cooler Pad Chill Mat 5.

Good Battery Life

You aren’t going to be getting a hefty battery life with any gaming laptop. That’s a fact.

This means that you probably shouldn’t focus on battery life too heavily. You may get 2-5 hours, at the most.

Expect your gaming laptop to be plugged in most of the time.

Having said that, though, some gaming laptops do have longer battery lives than orders.

And gaming laptops with touchscreens will use even more battery than gaming laptops without.

One touchscreen gaming laptop with a pretty great battery life is the Asus ROG Flow.

The Disadvantages Of Using A Touchscreen Laptop For Gaming

While touchscreen laptops may seem like a nice idea, there are a lot of downsides to them. 

Putting aside the fact that only a limited number of games use touchscreens, these laptops are also much more expensive.

It can be rare to find a proper gaming laptop with a touchscreen too.

Let’s take a look at some of the downsides of picking up a touchscreen laptop. This way you can weigh up whether a touchscreen is for you.

There Is A Limited Selection Of Touchscreen Laptops That Are Capable Of Gaming

The main problem with wanting a gaming laptop with a touchscreen is the fact that you are seriously limiting your options.

Because gamers tend to steer clear of touchscreens, most companies don’t bother to incorporate them into their devices.

When you do find them, you may have a limited number of specs.

You may have to make sacrifices if you have your heart set on a specific graphics card or processor, for instance.

They Are More Expensive

If two laptops are identical but one has a touchscreen, you will almost always pay more for the touchscreen model.

Touchscreens are expensive.

And they can often add several hundred dollars to the price of a gaming laptop.

Since gaming laptops are hardly cheap anyway, this may push the laptop out of the realms of affordability for many.

A Limited Number Of Games Utilize Touchscreens

It is rare for a PC game to be developed with touchscreens in mind. It is a waste of dev time considering most people don’t use touchscreens when PC gaming.

If a touchscreen is supported, it tends to be because the game is available on mobile (so not the most graphically intensive games), or because somebody has made a mod.

Chances are that many peopåle won’t find the games that they want to play having touchscreen support.

You may want to weigh up whether the extra cost is worth it for the limited selection of games.

Touchscreens Use More Battery Power

Gaming laptops are battery-hungry anyway. Throw in a touchscreen, and the short battery life will be made even shorter.

A touchscreen could easily reduce your battery’s lifespan by 1-hour, even if you are not actively using it.

They Are Usually Heavier

Laptops are made to be portable. A touchscreen can add several pounds, which can make it tougher to haul your laptop from place to place.

This may be less of an issue if you do your gaming at home. 

Touchscreens Often Have Poor Viewing Angles

Finally, most touchscreens require you to look at the screen head-on. Moving your head or laptop even a little can dramatically impair what you see on the screen.

Not ideal for intense gaming sessions.

In conclusion, a powerful gaming laptop will be great for playing games whether it has a touchscreen or not.

However, the majority of popular PC games will not make use of touchscreen features.

You will find some games that do, mostly mobile-type games but the vast majority of AAA games coming to the market will not utilize a touchscreen.

If you have a 2-in-1 touchscreen gaming laptop that you can flip over into tablet mode, It may be worth it for mobile-type games, otherwise, just focus on getting a good gaming laptop.