Gaming Laptops Are Now Nearly 1 in 4 Laptop Trade-Ins
Two years of our own trade-in records — 1,619 devices — show gaming laptops climbing from 14.5% to 23.1% of every laptop sold to us, and paying a median $245 against $139 for everything else. Here are the models people actually send in, and the checks we ran before believing the trend.
In this article
Two years ago, roughly one in seven laptops sold to us was a gaming machine. Today it is nearly one in four.
That shift is the clearest signal in our own trade-in records, and it is not a small one. We went back through every device customers sent us between October 2024 and October 2026 — 1,619 gadgets across 1,355 orders — and sorted the laptops by what they actually are rather than what the box said. Gaming laptops were the fastest-growing category, the highest-paying category, and as a group they outnumbered every single business or consumer model line we buy.
Here is what the data shows, which models show up most often, and what it means if a gaming rig is sitting in your closet.
How We Counted
Three decisions shape every number below, so they are worth stating plainly.
The window is two years of submitted orders, from October 23, 2024 to October 23, 2026. We counted the device as the customer described it at quote time, not after inspection, and we excluded internal test orders and merged duplicates.
A "gaming laptop" means a machine sold under a manufacturer's gaming line — ROG, TUF, Legion, LOQ, Nitro, Predator, Alienware, Dell G-series, Omen, Victus, Razer Blade, Aorus, and MSI's G-series and Raider/Katana/Stealth families. We did not classify by graphics card. A Dell Precision or ThinkPad P-series with a discrete NVIDIA chip is a mobile workstation, and it is counted as one.
Models are grouped into families. "Dell Latitude" covers the 5450, the 7310, the 9450 2-in-1 and the rest, because a reader deciding whether to sell a Latitude does not care which SKU led the list.
The Headline Numbers
Laptops dominate what we buy. Of 1,619 devices, 1,393 were laptops. Phones came a distant second at 99, then tablets at 66 and desktops at 39. People clear out a laptop deliberately; they tend to trade a phone through a carrier.
Within those laptops, the four-way split looks like this.
| Laptop type | Units | Share | Median payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer (Inspiron, IdeaPad, MacBook Air, Aspire…) | 531 | 38.1% | $114 |
| Business (Latitude, ThinkPad, EliteBook, Dell Pro…) | 473 | 34.0% | $155 |
| Gaming (ROG, Legion, Alienware, Nitro…) | 265 | 19.0% | $245 |
| Mobile workstation (Precision, ZBook, ThinkPad P) | 124 | 8.9% | $192 |
The Most-Traded Laptop Models
Ranked by units, the leaderboard is led by a business machine. Dell's Latitude line is the single most common laptop customers sell us, by a wide margin.
| # | Model family | Units | Share of laptops | Median payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dell Latitude | 215 | 15.4% | $151 |
| 2 | Apple MacBook Pro | 92 | 6.6% | $225 |
| 3 | Dell Inspiron | 66 | 4.7% | $84 |
| 4 | Dell XPS | 57 | 4.1% | $142 |
| 5 | Lenovo IdeaPad / Yoga | 51 | 3.7% | $93 |
| 6 | Dell Precision | 51 | 3.7% | $189 |
| 7 | Lenovo ThinkPad E | 50 | 3.6% | $93 |
| 8 | MSI gaming (G-series, Raider, Stealth) | 43 | 3.1% | $287 |
| 9 | HP 14/15/17 Series | 43 | 3.1% | $82 |
| 10 | Acer Aspire | 33 | 2.4% | $80 |
| 11 | Lenovo Legion | 31 | 2.2% | $229 |
| 12 | Dell Alienware | 31 | 2.2% | $271 |
Be careful how you read that table. It ranks model families, and gaming buyers are spread across far more brands than business buyers are. Corporate IT departments buy Latitudes and ThinkPads in bulk, so those families pile up. Gamers buy an ROG, or a Legion, or an Alienware, or a Blade — which splits the same volume eight ways.
Add the gaming families back together and the picture inverts: 265 gaming laptops against 215 Latitudes. Gaming is the largest coherent category of laptop we buy, and no single conventional model line comes close to it.
The Surge Is Real, and It Is Recent
The growth is the part we did not expect. Gaming held steady around 13–16% of laptop trade-ins through the third quarter of 2025, then stepped up and stayed there.
Two checks before we believed it.
The first was whether one bulk seller caused it. It did not: 152 separate customers accounted for the gaming laptops in the most recent year, and the largest single seller contributed 2.5% of them. This is many individual people making the same decision, not one reseller clearing a warehouse.
The second was whether our own record-keeping changed mid-window — we moved to a new platform partway through, and a new system can quietly redefine what gets counted. Measuring only the older system's records, the gaming share still climbed from 14.5% to 23.1%. The newer records independently show 23.6%. The trend survives both ways of counting.
Why Gaming Laptops Pay More
A gaming laptop is worth roughly 76% more at trade-in than the median of everything else we buy.
| Laptop type | Median payout | Middle 50% range |
|---|---|---|
| Gaming | $245 | $139 – $345 |
| Mobile workstation | $192 | $133 – $307 |
| Business | $155 | $87 – $369 |
| Consumer | $114 | $74 – $199 |
The reason is the discrete GPU, and it is worth understanding because it decays differently from the rest of the machine. A four-year-old business laptop competes against a flood of identical off-lease units, so its price collapses. A four-year-old RTX laptop still runs current games at reduced settings, and the people shopping for one are buying frames per dollar, not warranty status. Demand stays real even as the model ages.
That is also why the gaming spread is tighter at the bottom than the business spread. A worn-out Latitude can be worth $40. A worn-out Legion rarely is.
If You Are Sitting on a Gaming Laptop
Three things we see often enough to flag.
Do not wait for a GPU generation you are not going to buy. The steepest depreciation on a gaming laptop happens in the months after its successor ships, not gradually. If you have already stopped using it, the wait is costing you.
Describe the GPU accurately. On our calculator the graphics option moves the quote more than any other single choice. Getting it wrong is the fastest route to a revised offer after inspection.
Thermals count as condition. A machine that throttles hard or has a failing fan is worth meaningfully less, and it is one of the findings our technicians record most often on gaming hardware specifically. If it has been running hot, say so and let the quote account for it.
Why We Publish This
We buy these machines, so we have the only honest view of what people are actually selling, as opposed to what gets reviewed or announced. Two years ago a gaming laptop was an outlier on our inspection bench. Now it is close to a quarter of everything we open. That seemed worth saying out loud, with the numbers attached.
We will refresh these figures as the sample grows. If the gaming share turns back down, we will publish that too.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common laptop model people trade in?
The Dell Latitude line, at 215 of 1,393 laptops (15.4%). It is followed by the Apple MacBook Pro (92), Dell Inspiron (66) and Dell XPS (57). Business laptops lead the individual-model rankings because corporate fleets retire in bulk.
Are gaming laptops really the biggest category?
As a category, yes. Gaming machines totalled 265 units, more than any single model family including the Latitude's 215. They are not the biggest individual model line, because gaming volume is split across ASUS, MSI, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, HP and Razer.
How much is a used gaming laptop worth?
The median payout was $245, with the middle half falling between $139 and $345. The comparable median for every other kind of laptop was $139. Your own figure depends on the GPU, the generation and the condition.
Which gaming brands do people sell most?
By units: ASUS leads at 21.5% of gaming trade-ins (ROG, TUF and Zephyrus combined), then MSI at 15.8%, Lenovo Legion at 14.3%, Alienware at 11.7%, Acer at 9.8%, Razer Blade at 7.9%, Dell's G-series at 7.5% and HP Omen and Victus at 7.2%.
Is the growth in gaming trade-ins just a data quirk?
We checked. The rise from 14.5% to 23.1% appears within a single consistent set of records, and our newer system independently shows 23.6%. No single seller drove it — 152 different customers sent gaming laptops in the most recent year.
Do you pay more for a laptop with an RTX card?
Yes. Discrete graphics is the single largest upward adjustment on most laptop quotes, which is why gaming machines carry a higher median payout than business or consumer models of the same age.