Ideally, you'd want a laptop with one of the new NVIDIA "Max-Q" video cards. NVIDIA has the best driver reputation for games, first, but these versions of their GPUs are particularly outstanding in laptops for how thin they are, and for how much performance you get for how little heat is generated on top of your lap. Not sure if it's still up to date, but Ultrabook was maintaining this shortlist of all the laptops carrying those special GPUs. The problem is that only the GTX 1060 Max-Q would fit into that budget range, but right now only the HP Omen 15 carries it:
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/16277-laptops-nvidia-max-q/
Apparently one version of the new Dell Inspiron 7000 model will also carry it, but otherwise, with that price point, the easiest way to sift through the billions of laptops out there for the ones you want is to use the GPU as your keyword search. Any decent laptop in that range is going to have either a NVIDIA GTX 1060 or GTX 1050 Ti depending on the other components & overall build quality. So just search "laptop GTX 1060", for example.
Honestly,
@Quipling, I've never found a resource more densely packed with wisdom than Amazon's bestselling charts. The internet consumer community is an informed one. This is currently the bestselling gaming-class laptop on Amazon by a country mile, and it happens to be $1050:
Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i7 CPU, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, VR Ready, 15.6" Full HD, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, Red Backlit KB, Metal Chassis, G3-571-77QK
Acer is usually a brand laptop buyers avoid, but their Predator line is respected (in fact, the Predator monitors are the most highly prized gaming displays in the world). Good luck beating the above.
Here's a peer from MSI. It's not an equal value, though, because the i7 is one generation older, it lacks the SSD drive, and most importantly, the GTX 1060 is the 3GB version. Not only does this version of the GPU have half the vRAM, but it's also slower (because they disable some of the transistors):
MSI GE62 Apache Pro-650 15.6" Premium Gaming Laptop i7-6700HQ GTX 1060 3G 16GB 1TB Win 10 Full Color Keyboard VR Ready
If you want to step up the build quality with the same components, then you want a Sager:
SAGER NP7850 15.6" FHD IPS VR Ready Gaming Laptop, Intel i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5, 16GB RAM, 250GB M.2 SSD + 1TB HDD, Windows 10 Home
You can monitor TechBargains, Slickdeals, and the Reddit laptop/electronics deals pages for any barnburner sales. Big sales to be more prolific with laptops than desktops these days since they sell better than desktops, but they also tend to be more fleeting because of it. You might get lucky and save up to a few hundred bucks.
