Readers' Choice 2024: The Best Gaming Hardware Brands

(Credit: René Ramos; Corsair, Sony, Razer, Valve)

When it comes to gaming tech, everyone has their favorites, whether it’s a sleek console, a powerhouse gaming PC, or that perfectly balanced mouse you can’t imagine playing without. Here at PCMag, we test just about every kind of gaming device you can imagine and have strong opinions on what's worth buying—but we also care about your opinions.

To that end, we asked thousands of PCMag readers to rate their gaming setups, from consoles and handhelds to keyboards, controllers, and everything in between. The goal? To get a broader, more rounded perspective on what makes a great gaming experience.

Now the results are in, and they offer a fascinating snapshot of what gamers truly value—and which devices and peripherals deliver the goods. Dive into our report below to see which gaming brands reign supreme according to players like you.

The Top Gaming Console Brands of 2024

Narrowing down what to call a dedicated gaming system isn’t easy anymore. Consoles—gaming systems that hook up to a TV—double as streaming media players, online game stores, and more. Handheld gaming systems are proliferating as well, and with the right setup, most can also work as full-on TV-connected consoles.

To get a full look at the big, wide world of gaming, we asked readers about gaming systems across all of those options, be they consoles, handhelds, or a mix. We have three Readers’ Choice Award winners to award based on their use. (Note that this is one of the few PCMag surveys where we ask about specific products, not just the company that makes them, since plenty of aging game systems remain in heavy use.)

First and foremost is the top-rated product, period: The Steam Deck (plus the newer, brighter, Steam Deck OLED). 92% of our respondents use Steam Deck specifically as a handheld, earning Valve our Readers' Choice Award for the category. The device can also be used as a traditional TV-connected console, but far fewer readers report hooking it up to any kind of external display.

Second on the list is the Nintendo Switch, which can’t quite keep up with Steam Deck on overall satisfaction and likelihood of recommendation. It more than makes up for that in the subcategories, though, where Switch either beats or ties Steam Deck. With an even split of respondents saying they play the Switch as a console and a handheld, Nintendo deserves the win for combo consoles-plus-handheld systems.

Lastly, we can’t ignore the regular console systems that have been the bread-and-butter of gaming for decades. The PlayStation 5 just barely outscores Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, but the console's excellent ratings for game performance give it just enough of an edge to earn Sony our Readers’ Choice Award for gaming consoles.

(Note: Click the down, left, and right arrows in our interactive charts to view different elements of our survey results.)

This isn't the first time Sony has clinched our award for best console, either. The company also won in 2017, largely thanks to the PlayStation 4, which was still relatively new then. However, according to the results of our most recent survey, it hasn’t aged as well as the Xbox One X/S.

It’s worth noting that this year’s newest handheld, the MSI Claw, while behind the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch, outscores all non-handheld consoles in our survey. The PlayStation 5 Pro didn’t debut until after the survey ended, so we don't have any data on that particular platform.

For our in-depth reviews, read The Best Handheld Gaming Devices for 2024 and Gaming System Reviews.

The Top Gaming Desktop, Laptop, Phone, and Tablet Brands of 2024

Gaming on a PC never wanes; it’s a massive part of the industry, whether it's done on a laptop or desktop.

When it comes to gaming on a desktop PC, MSI is the brand that PCMag readers prefer. The company earns top marks for overall satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and tech support. It's worth noting, however, that the real winners are people who self-build their PCs. Their satisfaction with desktops for gaming is higher than that of MSI or any other brand in nearly every measure we poll for, save for likelihood to recommend and tech support.

MSI is also the top brand for gaming on laptops. It's an across-the-board win, with the company earning exceptional scores for gameplay/performance and graphics capabilities. No other brand is even close, regardless of what category you look at. When it comes to gaming-specific laptops, MSI is in a class all by itself.

For gaming on phones, Samsung devices are the way to go. The company's satisfaction scores aren’t quite as high as those we see for consoles or PCs, but they're still respectable nonetheless. Samsung towers over the competition in this space, while Apple lands at the very bottom.

The tables turn when the tablets come out, though. Samsung’s Android-based tablets are thoroughly outshined by Apple's iPad when it comes to gaming—particularly for gameplay and display quality. The only area where Samsung has an edge is game selection.

The Top Gaming Controller, Keyboard, and Mouse Brands of 2024

Gaming is more than just screens and computers, so we also ask readers to rate their peripherals.

This year, only two controller makers manage to meet our response threshhold and make the final results: Sony and Microsoft. Of those two, Microsoft's Xbox controllers have a clear edge over the DualShock/DualSense controllers that Sony offers for the PlayStation 4 and 5, and outscore them in nearly every category of our survey.

Third-party gaming keyboards offer fancy lighting and programmable keys to help tackle almost any in-game command. Of the two brands that make the cut this year, Corsair earns top marks for setup, reliability, ease of use, comfort, and overall satisfaction. However, it can’t beat Logitech for cost or likelihood to recommend.

Another loss for Logitech comes from the gaming mouse category. Instead, the fancier, costlier Razer brands take our Readers’ Choice Award, posting high marks for comfort, RGB lighting, and programmability.

For our in-depth reviews, read The Best Gaming Keyboards and The Best Computer Mice

The Top Game Store and Service Brands of 2024

While it's still possible to buy games from brick-and-mortar retailers, most gamers tend to favor digital downloads and subscription services instead. According to our survey results, most prefer to use Steam, the service by Valve that inspired the Steam Deck. After over two decades, Steam is an almost perfect way for people to get games for the PC or the Steam Deck. You can even use Steam on Xbox via third-party services, or link it directly to the PlayStation Network. It’s everywhere, and the scores it earns reflect that. However, readers suggest it could improve things like setup, ease of use, and tech support.

While other PC gamer marketplaces exist, none make the cut this time. The only other contenders in our final standings this year are console-specific services from Sony and Microsoft. Sony’s PlayStation Plus has a slight lead over Microsoft's Xbox GamePass in almost every category except for subscription cost and game selection.

For our in-depth reviews, read The Best Places to Buy and Rent PC Games Online in 2024.

The PCMag Readers’/Business Choice survey for Gaming was in the field from September 30 to November 4, 2024. (Desktop data was collected during our Readers’ Choice Desktops survey from May 12 to June 2, 2024.) For more information on how we conduct surveys, read the survey methodology.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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