Two years of our own trade-in records – 1,619 devices – show gaming laptops rising from 14.5% to 23.1% of all laptops sold to us, paying a median of $245 versus $139 for everything else. Here are the models that people actually send, and the checks we did before they believe the trend.
Two years ago, about one in seven laptops sold to us was a gaming machine. Today it is almost one in four.
This shift is the clearest signal in our own trade-in records, and it’s 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 have been the fastest growing category, the highest paying category, and as a group they have every single business or consumer model line we buy.
Here’s what the data shows, which models pop up the most, and what it means when a gaming rig is sitting in your closet.
As we counted
Three decisions shape each number below, so they’re worth stating clearly.
The window is two years from submitting ordersfrom October 23, 2024 to October 23, 2026. We counted the device as the customer described it at the time of the quote, 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 have not classified by graphics card. A Dell Precision or ThinkPad P-series with a discrete NVIDIA chip is a mobile workstation, and it counts as one.
Models are grouped into families. “Dell Latitude” covers the 5450, the 7310, the 9450 2-in-1 and the rest, as a reader deciding whether to sell a Latitude regardless of SKU led the list.
The headline numbers
23.1%
of laptop trade-ins in the last 12 months were gaming machines, up 14.5%
265
Gaming laptops traded – more than any single business or consumer model line
$245
median gaming price, compared to $139 for any other type of laptop
86%
of all customers we sold was a laptop
Laptops dominate what we buy. Out of 1,619 devices, 1,393 were laptops. Phones came a distant second at 99, then tablets at 66 and desktops at 39. People delete a laptop on purpose; they tend to trade a phone through a carrier.
Inside these 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 run by a trading machine. Dell’s Latitude line is the single most common laptop customers sell to 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 as you read this table. It ranks Model familiesand gaming buyers are spread over many more brands than are business buyers. Corporate IT departments buy Latitudes and ThinkPads in bulk, so these families stack up. Gamers buy a ROG, or a Legion, or an Alienware, or a Blade – which divides the same volume eight ways.
Add the game families back together and the picture reverses: 265 gaming laptops against 215 latitudes. Gaming is the largest coherent category of laptop we buy, and not a single conventional model line comes close to it.
The Surge Is Real, and It’s Recent
The growth is the part we didn’t expect. Games held steady at around 13-16% of laptop trade-ins through the third quarter of 2025, then increased and stayed there.
Two checks before we believed it.
The first was whether a bulk seller caused it. It didn’t: 152 separate customers made up the gaming laptops last year, and the largest single vendor contributed 2.5% of that. 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 partially, and a new system may quietly redefine what is counted. Measuring only the records of the old system, the game share still rose from 14.5% to 23.1%. The newer records show an independent 23.6%. The trend survives both ways of counting.
Why gaming laptops cost more
A gaming laptop is worth about 76% more at trade-in than the median of everything we buy.
| Laptop type | Median payout | Middle 50% range |
|---|---|---|
| Game night | $245 | $139 – $345 |
| Mobile workstation | $192 | $133 – $307 |
| Business | $155 | $87 – $369 |
| consumer | $114 | $74 – $199 |
The reason is the discrete GPU, and it’s worth understanding because it decomposes differently from the rest of the machine. A four-year-old business laptop competes against a flood of identical off-leasing units, causing its price to collapse. A four-year-old RTX laptop still runs current games on reduced settings, and people are shopping for a buy frames per dollar, not warranty status. Demand remains real even as the model ages.
That is also why the gaming spread below is narrower than the business spread. A used Latitude can be worth $40. A worn legion is rare.
If you are sitting on a gaming laptop
Three things we see often enough to flag.
Don’t wait for a GPU generation you won’t buy. The steepest depreciation on a gaming laptop happens in the months after its successor ships, not gradually. If you have already stopped using, waiting will cost you.
Describe the GPU exactly. On our calculator, the graphics option moves the quote more than any other single choice. Getting it wrong is the fastest way to a revised offer after inspection.
Thermal counting as a condition. A machine that runs hard or has a faulty fan is worth significantly less, and it is one of the findings that our technicians specializing in gaming hardware note the most. If it ran hot, say so and let the quote go out 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 is reviewed or advertised. Two years ago, a gaming laptop was an outlier on our inspection bench. Now it’s almost a quarter of everything we open. That seems worth saying out loud, with the numbers attached.
We will update these numbers as the sample grows. If game sharing returns, we will publish that as well.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common laptop model that people trade?
The Dell Latitude line, at 215 out 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 ranking, as corporate fleets are being retired in bulk.
Are gaming laptops really the biggest category?
As a category, yes. Gaming machines in total 265 units, more than any single model family including Latitude’s 215. They are not the greatest individuals model lineas the 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 all other types of laptops was $139. Your own figure depends on the GPU, generation and condition.
What game brands do people sell the most?
From 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 at 7.5% and Om at 7.5% and HP.
Is the growth in gaming trade-ins just a data quirk?
We checked. The rise from 14.5% to 23.1% appears in a single consistent set of records, and our newer system independently shows 23.6%. Not a single seller drove it – 152 different customers sent gaming laptops in the last year.
Are you paying more for a laptop with an RTX card?
Yes. Discrete graphics is the single biggest 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.