13 Best Laptops of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.

Best Laptop Overall

Amazon (13 Inch)

Best Windows Laptop

Best Buy

Best Gaming Laptop

Razer

Best Budget Laptop

Amazon

Deciding on the best laptop to buy is a task. They aren’t cheap, but there’s more at stake than just your budget. Your success in work, school, or even in gaming could depend on the hardware inside the PC you choose. Most of us go years between making purchases of this magnitude, and there are many makes, models, and chip configurations to choose from. Don't worry. I've been testing laptops for a decade—these are our top picks for 2025.

If you don’t know exactly what you need or what all the various hardware jargon means, read our How to Buy a Laptop guide. Check out our other computing guides, including the Best MacBooks, Best Cheap Laptops, Best Gaming Laptops, Best Linux Laptops, and Best Laptop Backpacks.

Updated June 2025: We’ve added the Dell 14 Plus, Surface Pro 12, and Asus ROG Flow Z13, as well as the refreshed versions of the Lenovo Yoga 9i and Framework Laptop 13.

The Specs to Know When Buying a Laptop

If none of these laptops quite rings your bell, that's OK! There are far more laptops than we have time to test. To help you make smart choices, we put together a complete laptop buying guide. We also have the details about all the CPU and GPUs you need to know about for 2025. We recommend sticking to these guidelines:

RAM: In most cases, make sure you get 16 GB of RAM. That's become the new standard, in even more affordable laptops. Upgrading to 32 GB is even better and means you never have to worry about running out of memory, especially if you're a gamer or video editor.

CPU: In the world of Windows laptops, you have three CPU brands to choose from: Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 launched in late 2024, providing a huge increase in battery life. It also has the best integrated graphics of the three. AMD chips are primarily reserved for gaming laptops, as they’ve struggled to take much ground from Intel. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips, however, have challenged Intel in a serious way over the past year with its ARM-based chips, offering some of the best battery life we've ever seen on Windows machines

Discrete graphics: Want to play AAA PC games or edit video on your laptop? You’ll likely want a standalone graphics processor, and at this point, Nvidia is the primary option. The RTX 5090 recently launched as the most powerful new GPU available, but the 40-series still remains a good option. Integrated graphics have improved significantly over the years though too, especially with Apple's M4 line.

Screen: The display depends on the size of the laptop. A 1200-pixel resolution (HD+) screen on a 13- or 14-inch laptop looks sharp enough, but you’ll want more pixels on larger displays. While IPS screens will be good enough for most people, OLED or Mini-LED are becoming more common, which provide better color accuracy, contrast, and even decent HDR performance.

Connectivity: Ports are important; though everyone needs something different. For most people, though, we suggest at least two USB-C ports and at least one USB-A and HDMI for those legacy devices. (Remember that nearly all laptops today use one of those USB-C ports for the power adapter.) Thankfully, most laptops still have headphone jacks, but always check, because a few daring machines have dropped it. Lastly, make sure there's Wi-Fi 6E support or newer. Even if you don't have a Wi-Fi 6E router yet, it's a good bet you will in the future (see our Best Routers or Best Mesh Routers guides if you need a new one).

Battery life: Battery life is extremely competitive these days, with Apple, Qualcomm, and Intel all making highly ambitious battery life claims. Most laptops with the latest chips (and without discrete graphics) will get you over 10 hours of battery life, or many more if your workload is lighter.

How We Test Laptops

I have been reviewing laptops for a decade, and WIRED contributor Chris Null has been testing these machines for 25 years. We test each laptop we review in a variety of situations, including both synthetic benchmark tests, real-world use cases, and comparisons against similar equipment. We don’t consider hardware in a vacuum: Our reviews aim to match laptops with the people that will benefit from them the most, taking performance, usability, portability, and price all into account.

We put every laptop through a gauntlet of tests before writing a review and assigning them a rating. That test methodology includes answering the following questions (and more):

How durable is the laptop? What is it made out of? Does the screen flex when you attempt to bend it? What color options are available?

What are the specs of the laptop and how do they compare to similar machines? This includes: CPU, RAM, storage capacity, graphics processor, and ports. Are the specs for the ports (such as USB) up to date?

How is the input experience? Does the keyboard respond well or is it mushy? Are keys placed where they should be (including the arrow keys)? Is there a numeric keypad? How about the trackpad? Is it responsive and easy to click? Is it too small? Too large?

How bright and detailed is the screen? What is the resolution of the screen, and is this sufficient given the size of the panel? If the unit has a touchscreen, is it responsive and easy to work with? Is it OLED or Mini-LED?

How is the unit’s performance compared to similar (and similarly priced) laptops? Our testbed includes more than 20 synthetic benchmarks, though this is constantly evolving and is dependent on the unit’s CPU and operating system, as macOS and Snapdragon-based laptops have fewer benchmarks available. Those benchmarks include various tests within the latest versions of Geekbench, PCMark, 3DMark, Procyon, GFXBench, Superposition, Cinebench, and various gaming-related tests such as 3DMark and Cyberpunk 2077. Note that WIRED does not, in general, report raw benchmark scores.

How long does the battery last? We test all machines by playing a standard video on YouTube at full screen brightness and recording when the battery dies. How does this compare to the industry?

How heavy is the laptop and how thick is it? Thickness is measured at the widest point of the laptop, including any legs or standoffs on the underside of the unit. Again, how does this compare to the market?

What is the system like in day-to-day use? Are there any quirks to report—such as oddly placed ports, a surfeit of preloaded shovelware, or unexpected problems that make using the laptop difficult? Are there any bugs or crashes to mention?

How loud is the unit’s fan under load? How are the speakers? Can they fill the room or is the laptop good only for close quarters listening?

Given all of the above, does the laptop represent a good value or a poor one? Is the unit on sale frequently? Can it be configured to order with upgraded or downgraded specs?

What Is a Copilot+ PC?

You are not alone in your confusion over this new laptop spec, which has been the biggest news to hit the PC space in a while. First, you might note that almost all new Windows laptops have a Copilot button to the right of the space bar—tapping on it opens Microsoft’s “everyday AI companion,” Copilot. Surprise! This does not, however, mean you’re using a Copilot+ PC.

Copilot+ PC is not a button but rather an AI-focused Microsoft specification that manufacturers can receive by packing their laptops with an on-device AI processor capable of at least 40 TOPS (trillion/tera operations per second) plus “all-day battery life.” Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite and Plus CPUs were initially the only ones to fall under this classification but now Intel and AMD machines can also be Copilot+ PCs with the right hardware. 40 TOPS is a bit of an arbitrary number, of course, and we’ll likely see the next generation of chips surpass it.

What can a Copilot+ PC do? In a nutshell, it uses a piece of hardware called an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that can accelerate AI tasks right on the device without having to leverage those servers of GPUs we always hear about. While third-party developers have been adding more features that support the NPU, Microsoft started by launching a handful of AI features that the NPU could take advantage of, including Cocreator image generation in Microsoft Paint, Windows Studio Effects in video calls, and Live Captions for translation. Copilot+ PC’s most talked-about feature is Recall, which lets you find that one piece of information you know you saw three days ago but can’t remember where; it’s still yet to be broadly available yet (after many delays and backtracks due to privacy and security concerns).

The available on-device AI features to try out might be disappointing, but the improvements to battery life are massive. For the first time since Apple silicon launched in 2020, Windows laptops are finally able to compete with MacBooks in battery life, and that even includes the new Intel chips.

Do you need a Copilot+ PC? No, but if you’re buying a new Windows laptop, you should buy one. Not only do they get great battery life, they also come with on-device AI and start with 16 GB of RAM.

What Are the Best Laptop Brands?

Unlike the smartphone world, the biggest laptop brands have been around in the tech industry for over 40 years by now. Taking Apple out of the picture, there are four laptops brands that stand above the rest, following the latest trends and Tech, while backing that up with reliable support and services.

Lenovo is the biggest PC brand in the world, at least in terms of global shipments. It's perhaps most well-known for its familiar subbrands like ThinkPad and Yoga, but it also isn't afraid to take risks with more experimental designs and advanced Tech. Lenovo has also made a name for itself in the gaming space too with its Legion laptops, known for balancing performance and features at the most competitive prices.

Asus has quickly become a favorite, notable for its sheer number of laptops available in the consumer market. The company takes a similar approach to Lenovo, and that's led Asus to being able to quickly innovate on new Tech and designs, while also launching premium clamshell laptops at more affordable prices than its competitors. Gaming laptops in particular are a space that Asus has come to dominate in, with the ROG Zephyrus, Strix, and TUF brands leading the way.

Dell and HP are a bit more conservative, though they aren't without their notable designs as well. Interestingly, the companies have both gone through a significant laptop rebrand in the past year. HP has introduced “Omnibook” as a replacement to the Spectre and Envy subbrands in 2024, while Dell started 2025 by removing its well-known subbrands entirely, including Inspiron and XPS.

Other laptop makers in the mix include Microsoft Surface, Samsung, Acer, LG, and MSI, though none of them have as big a footprint globally as the top four.

Apple

Amazon (13 Inch)

Amazon (15 Inch)

B&H

Apple

The MacBook Air (9/10, WIRED Recommends) has been terrific for years now, offering an incredible combination of performance, battery life, build quality, and portability. They’re fanless machines, meaning they’re the quietest laptops you can buy, and last year, Apple even upped the starting memory to 16 GB.

There were still a couple of hang-ups, like lackluster external display support, but with the new M4 chipset, that has been addressed. The M4 MacBook Air now supports two 4K external monitors right out of the box—and you can even leave your laptop lid open. Secondly, the M4 chip includes noteworthy capabilities, including significantly improved graphics and CPU performance, as well as the on-device AI processing we’ve come to expect in modern laptops to work with Apple Intelligence. The new, high-resolution 12-megapixel webcam is the cherry on top.

Apple dropped the price of the larger 15-inch model (9/10, WIRED Recommends), which starts at $1,199 MSRP. Regardless of which size you get, it’s a pretty killer deal. Just be careful with the storage upgrades, as they get pricey. Those changes (plus a pretty new blue color) make the MacBook Air the laptop most people should buy. It's not just the best MacBook, it's the best laptop. Read our Best MacBooks guide for more Apple recommendations. Not a fan of macOS? Don't worry, we have plenty of options below.

Asus

Best Buy

Asus (32 GB RAM)

Amazon

The reality is that there is no such thing as a “best” Windows laptop. Every user needs something a little bit different. More power. Better portability. All-day battery life. Low price. And so on. Asus’s 16-inch dazzler (8/10, WIRED Recommends) comes as close as anything on the market right now to meet all those needs and more. It’s got an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU and Radeon 880M graphics, plus a hefty 24 GB of RAM. In combination, they give the system considerably more power than most other machines in both its price and weight class, even on AI tasks like real-time translation and AI image creation. Better still is the laptop’s battery life. With over 14 hours of running time, you won’t readily find this kind of longevity elsewhere on the market.

With the Zenbook S 16, Asus has also rolled out a material used for the laptop’s chassis. Ceraluminum is the company’s name for a hybrid of ceramic and aluminum, which makes for an incredibly thin but very durable material that feels like plastic but has the rigidity of metal. It’s only on the top lid for now, but it helps keep the laptop to a svelte 3.4 pounds. As an all-around workhorse, I love the machine, but if the 16-inch model is too large for your bag, the Zenbook S is also available in a 14-inch size, which sports the same gorgeous design and performance, just in a more compact package.

My only complaint is that Asus doesn’t offer a cheaper starting configuration with less storage or memory. Fortunately, Best Buy has been heavily discounting the 16-inch model, making it a killer deal.

Razer

Not only does the Razer Blade 16 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) feature the latest RTX 5090 Laptop graphics card, but it’s also one of the thinnest gaming laptops you can buy, at just 0.59 inches at its thinnest point. Cutting thickness while adding performance in the same year feels like a bad idea, but the Razer Blade 16 pulls it off. The surface temperatures feel cooler, and the keyboard even feels snappier, with a longer 1.5-mm key travel.

I've written in-depth about the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU here, but its main feature is a Tech called multi-frame generation, which uses AI to generate artificial frames between real, rendered frames in video games. I wasn’t always convinced, but it produces very high frame rates, allowing you to take full advantage of maxed-out ray tracing graphics in a way most gamers have never experienced. It’s expensive, but that’s nothing new for Razer Blade laptops.

Asus

Amazon

Asus

Best Buy

Poor battery life and performance are common in budget laptops. Once prices get below $800, companies tend to rely on slow, lackluster chips. The entry-level Snapdragon X processor from Qualcomm changes that for the better. It’s not as fast as the Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite, but the resulting battery life is almost as good, as tested on the Asus Vivobook 14 (6/10, WIRED Recommended). That’s a huge upgrade for laptops at this price. Now, $700 might not seem cheap, but this configuration comes with 512 GB of storage and 16 GB of memory. The Vivobook 14 is otherwise a fairly basic laptop—a bit thicker and blander than I’d want it to be—but with enough ports and a snappy keyboard.

The major downside is the display. The resolution is fine, but it’s dim, and the colors are pretty awful. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a laptop screen this poor, especially in color accuracy. There’s no way around that, especially compared to laptops that are just slightly more expensive. But a snappy laptop with lots of storage and memory might be enough to overlook the screen woes.

Apple

Amazon (14 Inch)

Amazon (16 Inch)

Apple

The MacBook Pro is the ultimate video editing machine. In the fourth generation of Apple’s homegrown silicon, the M4 continues to push the performance envelope, pouring out the juice for the upper tier of power people that will take as much as they can get. Regardless of whether you choose the 16-inch or 14-inch size, the latest MacBook Pro (7/10, WIRED Review) will probably look familiar: The iconic chassis hasn’t changed a bit, and that’s not a bad thing. The mini-LED screen is color-accurate and HDR-ready, and now even comes with the option for a gorgeous nano-texture screen that effectively reduces glare to nil. It’s a perfect fit for video editors. There are plenty of ports too, even support for Thunderbolt 5.

But for video editors or content creators, it’s really about the performance. We clocked the system up to 7 percent faster on CPU-centric tasks than the M3 Max from 2023, though the M4 Pro lacks the abundance of GPU cores that powered the M3 Max to record-breaking graphics frame rates. To save cash, you can still pick up a renewed M3 Max model on Amazon for a huge discount. If you want bleeding-edge video editing performance, the M4 Max has become the top dog. Too bad the price will set you back more than a bit. This has always been the case with the MacBook Pro, but the M4 Max starts at $3,499 (or $3,199 for the M4 Max 14-inch model)—tough to swallow. Still, for professional video editors and content creators, it’s the laptop that will get you the performance you need most.

Lenovo

Best Buy

Amazon

The Lenovo Yoga 9i immediately earned its street cred upon release in 2020, making a name for itself as one of the most versatile laptops on the market. These 2-in-1 laptops—or convertibles—are distinguished by their ability to fold completely open and then keep on folding until the screen is flat against the underside of the laptop. This lets them do double-duty as a tablet or be folded into various shapes for use as a presentation device. I tested the new 2025 model, which doesn't make any significant exterior changes, but loads it up with a new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip inside. As a result, the latest Yoga 9i gets significantly longer battery life, making an already great 2-in-1 laptop even better.

Framework

Most laptops don’t let you upgrade or replace basic components like RAM or storage. So, if you want to buy a laptop you can keep for five, maybe 10 years, look no further than Framework's Laptop 13 or 15 (8/10, WIRED Recommends). The user-repairable and upgradable Framework Windows laptop comes in many flavors (it's Linux-friendly too), but we're fans of the DIY build options, which allow you to assemble the machine yourself, screwing in SSD, RAM, screen bezel, and even more. The intuitive system is incredibly easy to use and even works as a great teaching tool for young DIYers.

There’s a hot-swappable port system that lets you add and remove ports according to your needs. The newer AMD AI 300 series chipset offers improved performance and battery life. That’s where the true benefit comes through—these can be purchased through Framework’s marketplace to upgrade the internals without needing to scrap your entire laptop. It’s a more affordable and sustainable way to keep your machine up to date, and that's starting to pay off.

Framework has a more affordable 12-inch model coming out soon, which promises the same upgradability. We'll be testing it soon.

Lenovo

Amazon

Lenovo

Best Buy

Do you think of a laptop as metal framing around a web browser? Consider a Chromebook with ChromeOS. Google rolled out a big upgrade called Chromebook Plus in 2023. The “Plus” stands for better performance—faster processors, more memory, more storage, and better video cameras. Our favorite of the models we've tried is Lenovo's Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends). It's among the fastest Chromebooks we've tested for the money. It features a 3.75-GHz Intel Core i3-1315U CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash storage.

The Flex 5i has two USB-C ports (one is used for charging) plus one USB-A port. You also get a microSD card slot for expanding the storage capability, making this a good choice for those who don't want to keep everything in the cloud. The 14-inch touchscreen uses a 2-in-1 design, making it ideal for media streaming. As on most Chromebooks, the screen isn't the best, with mid-level brightness and a standard 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution.

Read our Best Chromebooks guide for more recommendations.

Dell

Best Buy (OLED)

Amazon

The Dell XPS 13 has been a controversial laptop design for years, thanks to its lack of function row keys and “invisible” haptic trackpad. Setting that aside, it’s always been the best compact laptop you can buy. (Get the best Dell laptop deals with our Dell coupon codes.) It’s not quite as thin as the MacBook Air, but its overall footprint is tiny. It weighs only 2.6 pounds and measures 11.6 inches wide—perfect for coffee shops and flights.

Dell's most recent XPS 13 comes in two flavors: regular (Intel) and bubblicious (Snapdragon). I strongly suggest the Snapdragon unless you're a gamer. The combination of performance and battery life makes the Snapdragon XPS 13 the best XPS 13 I've tested. It's good enough that I didn't care about the lost function keys or the edgeless trackpad, though those are divisive design choices to bear in mind.

I tested the HD screen version (1920 X 1200 pixels) with a 60 Hz refresh rate, but you can upgrade to a 3K OLED (2880 X 1800) touchscreen for a little more. The keyboard is surprisingly nice to type on once you get used to it. There's almost no space between keys, but they are very responsive and easy to type on. As for battery life, I averaged about 17.5 hours for everyday tasks, though this dropped to more like 14 hours when pushing the machine and around six hours when rendering 8K video. That excellent battery life combined with the top–notch portability makes it the go-to laptop to travel with. —Scott Gilbertson

Asus

Amazon

Asus

B&H

Adorama

Asus has refined its Zenbook Duo again for 2025, further cementing its position as the best dual-screen laptop. Dual-screen laptops all work about the same way: Instead of a keyboard, you’ll find a second 14-inch display, giving you two full displays on which to work. You can use that display as a touchscreen, pop a magnetic physical keyboard on top of it and simulate a standard laptop, or break the components apart so the two screens sit side by side (or one above the other) with the keyboard fully separate.

The sky’s the limit, and Asus’ upgrade to the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU mostly improves performance across the board vs. the 2024 edition of the machine, particularly on graphics and AI tasks. The 32 GB of RAM, a 1-terabyte solid-state drive, and 2,880 X 1,800-pixel resolution screen remain standard, all of which will be plenty for most people. The best upgrade, however, is what Asus has done for battery life, more than doubling the run time to nearly 14 hours when streaming video to a single screen. No longer tethered to a power outlet, the Duo now makes the case all the more effective that two screens are better than one.

Acer

Amazon

Newegg

With a screen that measures 17.3 inches diagonally, Acer’s Nitro 17 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) offers the largest screen you can comfortably tote with you, even with an oversized bag or backpack. Not that we’d recommend it: At 6.3 pounds, this is a laptop that best moves from desk to desk rather than from country to country.

What you lose in portability, however, you gain in power. This AMD- and Nvidia-equipped monster can chew through anything you throw at it: video games, AI jobs, and, yes, even spreadsheets. Features like tunable color backlighting on the keyboard and endlessly tweakable system settings (including things like fan speed control) make this a hacker’s dream system, though you’ll need to stay close to a power outlet, as the full-tilt experience will drain the battery in less than three and a half hours. The price is what seals the deal for us: You can often find it for under $1,000, and you won’t get a better price for performance from any other laptop on the market.

Apple

Walmart

Amazon (Renewed)

I don’t normally recommend tech that is four and a half years old. In almost all cases, you should be able to find something newer that’ll last longer. But the M1 MacBook Air (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was a special laptop, and unlike many other MacBooks, it’s been kept around at a discounted price. Walmart has been selling the M1 MacBook for $649, a few hundred bucks cheaper than its original MSRP. While the M1 isn’t as impressive as it used to be, it still gets great battery life and has sufficient performance for an average student, so long as you’re not studying to be an engineer.

Despite its age, the M1 MacBook Air has a few things you won’t find in other laptops at this price. The battery life, build quality, trackpad, and display quality are all a big step up over most $649 laptops, especially when you consider its portability. There are downsides, such as the limited external display support, port selection, and internal storage. But for a student who wants a MacBook or a solid starter laptop for school, the M1 MacBook Air is still the best option.

System76

Not into Windows 11? Try Linux. System76's Lemur Pro (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is a thin, light 14-inch Linux laptop that strikes the best balance between power and portability. It's based around an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 500-gigabyte SSD. You can configure the Lemur Pro with a Core Ultra 7 chip if you want more power, as well as up to a whopping 8 terabytes of storage and 56 GB of RAM. The port selection is good, with one USB 3.2 Type-C port, 1 Thunderbolt 4 port, two USB-A ports, a 3.5-mm headphone/microphone combo jack, a microSD card reader, and HDMI 2.0.

The battery life is fantastic, lasting all day in most use cases, and the keyboard is pleasant enough to type on. It's not the best for gaming or video editing, but for everything else, this is a beast of a Linux machine. Read our Best Linux Laptops guide for more recommendations.

Dell 14 Plus

Dell 14 Plus for $1,100: This is the first laptop in Dell's major rebranding effort, and this one is a follow-up to the Dell Inspiron Plus 14. The Dell 14 Plus (6/10, WIRED Review) is a solidly midrange laptop, meaning it sports a clean but generic design and solid performance, without some of the bells and whistles that make laptops feel premium. The IPS screen is decent, as is the performance and battery life. The only real problem is that all available configurations come with 1 TB of storage, which is why there are no starting configurations under $1,000. Despite being new, however, I've already seen it drop in price significantly, making it better value.

Surface Pro 12

Microsoft Surface Pro 12 for $770: While it’s a tablet, the Surface Pro 12 (6/10, WIRED Review) is designed to be a true laptop replacement as well, which is why it's on this list. Its $779 price would be excellent for a fanless machine running on the Snapdragon X chip, but it doesn't come bundled with a keyboard. Once you add that in, this becomes more of a premium laptop. Still, for the right person, it's a killer travel device for taking your work on the road with you.

ROG Flow Z13

Asus ROG Flow Z13 for $2,100: It's too expensive for most people to take a chance on, but I found a lot to like about the ROG Flow Z13 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). This gaming 2-in-1, a design no one asked for, works surprisingly well. The performance isn't full throttle, but the Z13's use of surprisingly powerful AMD integrated graphics makes it far more powerful than you might assume, all while keeping the heat away from your hands.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (Copilot+ PC) for $1,300: The first Intel-based Copilot+ PC (7/10, WIRED Review) we tested is a winner on all fronts, boasting outstanding AI and graphics performance and some of the best battery life we’ve ever seen on Intel hardware. With its slightly oddball 15.3-inch screen, it hits its high points without breaking the bank, though the fan is loud and the system may weigh you down more than you’d like.

Asus Zenbook A14 for $750: This is one of the lightest laptops we've ever tested, thanks to Asus' Ceraluminum material. The Zenbook A14 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is also the first A-series laptop from the company, and it employs Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X chipset, which is the weakest and supposedly the most affordable of the Snapdragon X series. While this laptop excels in build quality, portability, and sports excellent battery life, the chipset is lackluster, only suitable for average web browsing tasks. It has dipped as low as $750 during sale events, so try to avoid the $1,000 MSRP.

Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Edition, 2024) for $1,200: Want a Windows laptop straight from the horse's mouth? Buy the 7th Edition Surface Laptop (7/10, WIRED Review). Performance is solid, as is battery life, and you get a smooth 120-Hz display. It's just way too pricey for what you get, so try and catch it on sale. Read our Best Surface Laptops guide for more.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (2024) for $1,050: We've been pleasantly surprised to see more lower-cost laptops that still incorporate some measure of artificial intelligence-focused performance tuning. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (7/10, WIRED Review), the latest in the company's line of affordable, no-nonsense laptops, is under $1,000 and uses the new AMD Ryzen 7 CPU (model 8840HS). This is a small, portable machine (3.1 pounds and 19 mm thick), and it packs in plenty of ports despite the slim form. There are two USB-C ports (one of which is needed for charging), one full-size USB 3.2 port, a full-size HDMI output, and a microSD card reader. The keyboard has small arrow keys but is otherwise nice to type on.

Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED for $950: Not unlike the Zenbook 14 OLED, this 14-inch machine sports an OLED panel for a reasonable sub-$1,000 price. The Vivobook S 14 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 1 chipset with 16 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD. It can handle most daily tasks with no problem, though the screen could stand to get brighter. Battery life is OK, hitting up to 12 hours with average use. Unfortunately, the machine is a fingerprint magnet, so you'll constantly be wiping it down. It has plenty of ports.

Galaxy Book4 Edge

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge for $1,750: Listen. I’m not saying you should buy a Copilot+ PC. These are laptops with a new designation from Microsoft, running Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets, tuned for several new artificial intelligence features. If you decide you need one, Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 Edge (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is our king of the hill. Yes, it suffers from the same problems that impact most Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PC hardware—middling graphics performance and compatibility issues—but these are largely overcome by the many other strengths of the device. For starters, it has some of the best overall performance of any Copilot+ PC laptop we’ve encountered to date, and the larger, 16-inch AMOLED screen even affords you room for a numeric keypad without making the keyboard feel cramped. At AI-driven tasks like Microsoft’s real-time Live Captions, the Galaxy Book4 Edge kept up with rapid-fire dialogue in ways other Copilot+ PC devices we’ve tested weren’t able to do. It also stayed cool and quiet while cranking out a battery life of 14 and a half hours while playing full-screen YouTube videos. It’s a bit pricier than the competition, but you can save some cash by opting for the smaller 14-inch model.

Dell XPS 14 for $1,200 and XPS 16 for $1,700: Dell's two XPS laptops of 2024 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) are aimed at Windows people with MacBook jealousy. The design, specs, and sizes line up perfectly with Apple's offerings. The XPS 14 and 16 both have a gorgeous, sleek design, wonderfully bright and sharp OLED screens (with 120-Hz screen refresh rates), and are plenty speedy for everyday tasks. Unfortunately, when it comes to more intensive tasks like video editing, the MacBook's benchmarks run circles around the XPS 14. The larger XPS 16, which uses the more powerful RTX 4070 graphics card, fared much better but costs more than a similarly powerful MacBook. The XPS 14 and 16 are both beautiful, well-designed machines. They're plenty capable for most use cases, though heavy gamers and video editors will want to look elsewhere. They're expensive for what you get, but if you don't mind paying a premium for first-class build quality with clean, eye-catching design, then the XPS 14 and 16 are solid laptops.

Acer Chromebook Plus 515 for $399: This is a 15-inch Chromebook Plus model (8/10, WIRED Recommends) with the same internal components as the Lenovo we recommend above. The battery life for this one is a solid 8.5 hours of full-screen video playback time. The Acer offers an HDMI 1.4 output jack in place of the Lenovo's microSD card slot, making this one a better choice if you frequently need to give presentations or otherwise use the HDMI port. There's also the smaller Chromebook Plus 514 ($380) that's equally great.

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra for $3,000: There's much to love here (7/10, WIRED Review), but that price. Ouch. You get what you pay for, at least, with the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The 16-inch AMOLED 2880 x 1800 pixels touchscreen is magnificent to work on, and performance blew everything else we've tested out of the water. But that price.

Acer Swift Go 14 for $1,000: This one is very similar to the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, our top budget laptop. We found the Asus to be a little faster and have a much nicer build quality, but the Swift Go still offers outstanding performance, especially considering the price (7/10, WIRED Review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren't great, and overall, the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the least expensive Intel Core Ultra laptop we've tested by a few dollars, so if the budget is tight, the Swift Go is worth considering.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Copilot+ PC for $1,200: Lenovo's svelte Slim 7x (7/10, WIRED Review) isn't exciting, but it offers the best price-to-performance ratio of the many Copilot+ PCs we've tested. Battery life and performance are standouts, though the fan does tend to run loud.

Amazon is filled with laptops you shouldn't buy. Just type in “best laptop” into the Amazon search box, and you'll find plenty of cheap laptops that no one should buy. That includes most of the Windows laptops under $500, which all use CPUs from three or four generations ago.

It gets worse when you search for “gaming laptops” on Amazon, which presents some cheap laptops that don't even have discrete graphics. Regardless of what companies or retailers try to say, you shouldn't expect a laptop without a discrete GPU to be able to play modern games. Some of these include laptops from knockoff brands you've never heard of, like this one. There's just no reason to buy something from an unknown brand.

When it comes to gaming laptops in general, I wouldn't recommend buying anything RTX 30-series or older in terms of graphics. You should still be able to find some decent RTX 40-series laptops that are a better bang-for-your-buck than the new RTX 50-series laptops.

Lastly, there's the topic of refurbished laptops. Online retailers are full of older laptops that are marked as refurbished or “renewed.” These can be good options, especially if they come heavily discounted, such as this M1 MacBook Air. But there's always some risk with buying refurbished. Make sure you read the retailer's return policy. With models that are only a year or two older, however, pay careful attention to the specs, especially when it comes to RAM capacity. For example, some older M3 MacBook Air models will show up with only 8 GB of RAM, not reflecting the increased base memory in the price.

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