Best Gaming Gifts for 2024 [CNET]
When shopping for the perfect gift for the gamer in your life, the process can be overwhelming. This especially applies if you don’t know the first thing about video games. Not to mention, the highly coveted gear that gamers want can be quite pricey, meaning your shopping excursion can weigh heavily on the wallet. With that in mind, we’ve included a bunch of options in our guide for the best gifts for gamers — and most of them carry a hefty price tag. That may be a dealbreaker for you, but we urge you to read on as we’ve highlighted a group of gamer gifts for those with tighter budgets as well.
Below, you’ll find tried-and-true staples like the Sony PS5, Nintendo Switch OLED and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S. These are great options, but if you’re indeed shopping for a video game aficionado, chances are they probably have at least one of these consoles connected to their TV right now.
Digging deeper into the gamer sphere, Meta’s Quest 2 offers the best value for a VR headset, though the pricier Quest 3 is also a solid option if you want to splurge. The update to Sony’s veteran PlayStation VR headset, the PSVR 2, is also great but costs as much as the PS5 that’s required for use.
These flashy options are nothing without accessories like gaming headsets, mice and keyboards. While cheaper and more gift-friendly, they can still get pricey. We’ve plowed through a seemingly infinite number of options to find recommendations at all price levels.
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Valve is the company behind the hugely successful Steam online game store, and its Steam Deck handheld comes closer than anything we’ve seen to nailing the openness, flexibility and scale of PC gaming that devoted WASD gamers have yearned for.
Before gifting this device, make sure you know your recipient. It’s a handheld AMD-powered PC running Linux (with an overlay called Steam OS), and it plays many, but not all, of the PC games on the Steam online store. As long as they’re prepared to do some tweaking and experimenting with settings, and feel comfortable with general PC game troubleshooting (versus the plug-and-play ease of living room consoles), the Steam Deck is a fantastic gaming device.
The company just launched a new, higher-end model with a larger OLED screen, bigger battery and a 1TB solid-state drive. It’s more expensive than the older models, starting at $549, but it’s worth it for the upgrades. You can still get the original 256GB model for $399, though. The other two original models have been discontinued, but you can buy them for $349 (64GB) or $449 (512GB) until stock runs out.
Read our Valve Steam Deck review and OLED Steam Deck review.
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The smaller, cheaper Series S version of the Xbox plays all the same games, but at 1440p resolution, which lies somewhere between traditional HD and 4K. More importantly, it’s great for downloading and playing the huge catalog of Xbox Game Pass games, or for free-to-play online games like Fortnite.
There’s a newer model in black with twice the storage for about $50 more, the Xbox Series S 1TB, but it’s not necessary unless you specifically want to gift the black or you know your gamer keeps having to delete games because storage is tight. If you want to give the white model, you can spring for an inexpensive plug-in drive to go with it.
Read our Xbox Series S and Series S 1TB reviews.