Gaming Laptop Suggestions?

I have barely any knowledge in what makes a pc or laptop good for gaming, so I wanted to ask here.

There are so many laptops to choose from (I've looked on newegg, bestbuy, etc.) and my main problem is I don't know what brand to choose. The brands I've been looking into are Asus, MSI, Lenovo, Acer, and Dell. The laptops around my price range ($1000 or less) almost all had the nvidia geforce gtx 960m gpu and i7 processors.

I don't know if getting a certain brand will affect the performance in any way, so if anyone can suggest a brand and model for best performance, that would be awesome and so appreciated.

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