So I have been daily driving this budget ARM laptop for the past year and a half, and while I knew at the time that the machine would not be a gaming machine by any stretch, I did attempt to do it. The quick answer to the question “Can you game on a bottom-tier ARM laptop?” is:

Kinda? Native gaming is bad… but streaming is perfect!

Gaming natively

Trying to run games on this machine is not gonna be a smooth experience, Steam will install to any storage you may have, it will start, it will run but I could not run most of the games on my steam library. If they even managed to start, their frame rate was sub 30 fps, if the frame rate went above that, it rarely reached 60 fps. With very few exceptions like simple 2D games like “Gato Roboto”, “Another world” or the multiple “Jackbox party pack” games, gaming is a non starter here, so at most you would be using this machine for the occasional party games or playing a 2D platformer at an airport. Although I was surprised even that worked.

But the streaming experience was another thing…

Streaming

Despite all its shortcomings, this laptop has a quite decent wireless card, supporting 802.11ac (2x2) so the network goes real smooth. So I tried installing steam link for windows and the result was good, surprisingly good, to the point that I would play first person shooters just as if I were running locally, games like “Cyberpunk 2077” felt right at home on this laptop just by connection an external mouse.

Verdict

Bad for native gaming, perfect machine for streaming.