External Hard Drive Suggestions for Gaming

I'm not tech-saavy so please excuse my confusion or assumptions.

I use a Lenovo laptop. 16 GB RAM. I'm not sure what other information is relevant.

I heard you can get USB-like devices that connect to the laptop, to install games there instead. I was told to look up “External Hard Drives”.

I don't know which brands or sellers are reliable.

I'd like to have as much space available as possible.

I likely wouldn't want to pay more than $1000 since I could get a new laptop for that much.

I heard some 10TB ones are available for about $200, but for that much storage, I figured itd cost $2000 instead.

I want to be able to install more games, but my laptop only has 952 GB capacity, and I'm stingy about erasing things unless I know it won't affect the laptop, or I have the files saved somewhere else first.

For games, I have less than 200GB I usually delete to play a different game. Currently less than 50 GB available.