The best laptops in 2025 could see a shakeup in the coming months when the new chips from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia that were announced in early January at CES 2025 arrive in new laptops. Some are starting to ship already, while others, like Nvidia Geforce RTX 50 series gaming laptops, aren’t expected until March.
If you need the best laptop of 2025 right now, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 remains the best choice for most people. For an affordable price, this laptop delivers enough computing power for most users, and it has a durable build and a long-lasting battery. Prefer Windows? The Asus ZenBook 14 OLED checks the same boxes at a similar price, while the Acer Swift Go 14 is an even more affordable option. If you have more specialized needs, like a gaming laptop, business laptop, or 2-in-1 laptop, don’t worry; I’ve got recommendations for you, too.
Over the last year, I saw a massive leap forward in two critical categories: performance and battery life, so even if you’re upgrading after just a few years, you can expect a dramatic boost from any of the laptops in this guide. As the managing editor of Laptop Mag, I oversee our expert testing and reviews of over one hundred laptops annually. These days, the market is more complex than ever before, but I can help make your search easy.
Our two-pronged review strategy gives a complete picture of each laptop. The Laptop Mag testing team runs a series of rigorous tests on every laptop: Geekbench (synthetic CPU test), Handbrake (video encoding CPU test), 3DMark (graphics tests), display tests (brightness, color gamut), battery tests (custom battery rundown), and more. Laptops are then turned over to our reviewers to use in real-world situations.
The best laptop for most people:
Weighing a mere 2.7 pounds, Apple’s smallest laptop features the M3 chip, which delivers a power and efficiency boost over its predecessor. This makes it my pick as the best laptop for most people.
The MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch display is one of the brightest laptops around, and True Tone ensures excellent color accuracy, but its vibrancy falls short of some of the OLED competition. Rumors of Apple moving to OLED in the future abound, but not yet.
Like the M2 Air, the MacBook Air M3 is one of the thinnest laptops at only 0.4 inches. However, unlike many ultraportable laptops, it can keep up with an impressive workload thanks to the M3 chip. Whether it was our benchmarks or real-world usage, the Air M3 was up for any task.
Looking at the benchmarks, the MacBook Air M3 scored 12,087 on Geekbench 6.2, well above the category average. Our Handbrake video transcoding test took 7 minutes and 54 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p. Again, this beats the average, but it’s worth noting that some of its Intel Core Ultra-powered competition is passing the MacBook here. Apple also addressed the slightly slower SSD read/write performance of the Air M2, jumping from 2,800.1/2,210.6MBps on the M2 to 3,030.7/3,058.8MBps with the M3.
All that performance prowess doesn’t hurt its battery life, either. If finding an outlet can be a challenge during your day, never fear. The Air M3 powered through over 15 hours of battery life testing in our lab.
If that’s not enough, you also get a 1080p webcam with Apple’s latest software tricks helping to boost the hardware to higher heights. So what are the downsides? If you have a lot of peripherals, the pair of Thunderbolt/USB-C ports may be challenging, but at least you have MagSafe 3 to keep both ports free while charging.
Starting at $1,099, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 isn’t cheap but remains a solid value, and Apple made it an even better value on October 30, 2024, by bumping up the base RAM to 16GB, previously a $200 upgrade that we recommended most people buy.
If you want to save money, the 13-inch MacBook Air M2 sticks around at a new $999 starting price, and I expect to see it regularly discounted to $899 or less, so look at the best MacBook deals before picking one up.
Need more screen real estate? Look no further than the 15-inch MacBook Air M3. It mirrors all of the strengths of its smaller sibling but with a larger 15.3-inch display. The new MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 and MacBook Pro 16-inch M4 Pro may sway Apple fans with more high-performance needs, but rest assured the Air remains the right choice for most people.
Best laptop on a budget
Acer’s Swift Go 14 is the easy choice for the best budget laptop. Starting at $749, the Go 14 isn’t the cheapest laptop, but its value is incredible. We reviewed the slightly upgraded $999 configuration, but you will often find it for less than $700 today. The main trade-off is moving from an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H to a Core Ultra 5 125H, so if you stick to productivity work, browsing, and other general computing, it will be a negligible difference if you find a great deal on the Ultra 5 125H model.
The design remains the same at either price, with the Go 14 coming in at just 2.9 pounds. The metallic all-aluminum chassis gives off a faint sparkle that looks and feels far more premium than its price. Popping it open, the contrasting black chiclet-style backlit keyboard looks and feels excellent. Acer also gives you ports aplenty on this portable laptop with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI port, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot.
The display lands just below the mainstream average for color at 79.1 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut (85.2 percent is average), but it beats the category average in brightness at 374 nits (354 is average). Again, factoring in the price, these are strong results. You could also opt for the 2.8K display configuration if you value a sharper image.
Performance with our review model was everything we’ve come to expect from the latest Intel Core Ultra. Our Geekbench 6.2 overall performance test scored 12,434, overtaking more expensive options like the MacBook Air M3 (12,087). It also scorched the competition for our Handbrake video encoding test at 5 minutes and 18 seconds, almost four full minutes under the category average (9:07), again besting the MacBook Air M3 (7:54).
So what are the drawbacks? The battery life isn’t bad, at 9 hours and 50 minutes in our testing, but it is well below top options like the MacBook Air M3 (15:21) or the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (15:52). If you frequently travel or otherwise have difficulty plugging in, this could impact your decision. The built-in speakers are also less than stellar, so plan on some wireless headphones or earbuds.
Best laptop for students
Asus has been on a roll with the Zenbook 14 OLED line for a few years, so while it is no longer a surprise, this early 2024 Zenbook takes yet another significant leap forward.
This is in no small part due to the new Intel Core Ultra chipset inside, which puts the Zenbook 14 OLED on par with any productivity and light content creation laptops on the market. It also absolutely blew the roof off our battery life test, with 15 hours and 52 minutes in our test. That’s the longest a traditional Windows laptop has lasted in recent memory.
Divining into some of the specifics on performance, it overtook the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 in multi-core Geekbench 6.2 (12,707 vs. 12,087). That wasn’t its only win against the much-vaunted MacBook. The Zenbook also beat it in our Handbrake 1.6 test by converting a 4K video to 1080p in 6:36, over a minute faster than the Air M3’s 7:54.
The OLED display looks excellent in person, but the benchmarking put it in the middle of the road when it comes to the DCI-P3 color gamut at 79.8 percent, that’s below the mainstream average of 85.2 percent and just slightly ahead of the MacBook Air M3 (77.8 percent). It is extremely color accurate with a Delta-E of 0.21, relevant for content creators. Display brightness is a weak point against its competition at 339 nits, which is not a terrible result, but it’s something we want to see Asus address for the next model.
The Zenbook weighs 3 pounds, not exactly an ultralight, but not something that will weigh you down too much going from class to class or while commuting. Overall, the Zenbook 14 OLED ticks just about every box we like to see for a student laptop while going above and beyond with its performance and battery life. This laptop should comfortably hold up through four years of college or for a high school student preparing to head to college in the next year or two.
Best ultraportable Windows laptop:
The Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) is currently our pick for the best AI PC laptop, but it deserves more praise than that. It features the new Intel Core Ultra 200V series processor and even at its full price of $1,499, you are getting a compelling balance of performance, almost 14-hours of battery life, a stunning 14-inch OLED display, plus 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Run whatever AI, productivity, or creative software you want and the Zenbook S14 should remain a multi-tasking machine on the go.
In our review, staff writer Madeline Ricchiuto said, “From its stunning design to its vivid OLED display panel, there’s plenty to appreciate about the Asus Zenbook S 14.”
In our Laptop Mag battery test the Asus Zenbook S 14 lasted 13 hours and 51 minutes, which should let you leave the charger at home even for your worst day of work, school, or play. Speaking of on the go advantages, the Zenbook’s scratch-resistant Ceraluminum ultralight chassis should keep it looking brand new even if you tote it everywhere with you.
If you care about your laptops visuals, the Zenbook S 14’s 3K (2,880 x 1,800) OLED display is going to leave you very happy. It is vividly colorful, capturing 82% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is an excellent result for the typically low-scoring OLED, and at 342 nits of brightness it will hold up well in brightly lit environments.
Unlike many ultraportables, the Zenbook S 14 doesn’t skimp on the port selection with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone/mic jack. That should cover most people’s needs and throws down the gauntlet for ultrabooks that went USB-C/Thunderbolt-only.
If you have greater performance needs then something like the MacBook Air 13 M3 may be the answer at a similar size and weight, or if you are looking for a business focused ultraportable the Asus ExpertBook P5 is a strong choice. However, for a solid blend of performance, battery life, and price in a compact package the Zenbook S 14 is a standout choice.
Best high performance laptop:
We haven’t had the opportunity to test an M4 Max configuration of the MacBook Pro yet, but the M4 Pro proves that few would need to look beyond it. Our mid-tier configuration of the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro delivered performance and battery life results beyond the 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, offering 7% better overall performance and almost 3 extra hours of battery life! All of that in a configuration that with matching storage would cost $900 less.
Our $3,499 review configuration of the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro featured the base 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU, paired with 48GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but you can max those out with the M4 Max at up to a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, up to 128GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD. Maxing out all of the options would put you at $7,349, so you’ll want to consider your upgrades wisely.
In almost every performance metric, the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro is at the top of the charts. It’s Geekbench 6 score of 22,822 is more than double the premium laptop average. Turning to our Handbrake test which has the laptop transcode a 4K video to 1080p, the MacBook Pro finished in 2 minutes and 38 seconds. That’s more than twice as fast as the premium laptop average and over 30 seconds faster than the creator-focused Asus ProArt PX 16 2024. If you do creative work professionally and value your time, the MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max is the way to go.
Battery life remains the most mystifying trick that this powerhouse of a laptop has up its sleeve. Achieving 20 hours and 46 minutes in the Laptop Mag battery test, that’s over 7 hours longer than the premium laptop average and more than double its Windows content creation rivals like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 (9:51) or the Asus ProArt PX16 2024 (9:32). If you need are regularly working away from an outlet, this should make for an easy choice.
Is there any reason to avoid the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max? Price and macOS are the two big reasons. The M4 Pro configurations start at $2,499 and the M4 Max configurations start at $3,499. That’s at the upper end of premium for anything other than a workstation or gaming laptop, but considering the performance, efficiency, and build quality it’s not outlandish. As for macOS, it’s a smooth and well-supported operating system, but if you need Windows-only apps or your work just doesn’t support macOS, you’ll either is a great operating system, but if you have Windows-only apps that you need to use or you’re business doesn’t support macOS, it could be a deal breaker. Finally, Apple continues to improve its gaming support, but it remains distantly behind Windows for gamers. As long as none of these concerns spoil things for you, the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max is in a class by itself when it comes to a mainstream high-performance laptop.
The best gaming laptop overall:
The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 9) kicks the old challengers to the curb with its powerful Intel Core i9-14900HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU with 12GB of VRAM. While performance is a big factor for a great gaming laptop, it isn’t the only factor, the bright and vivid display, loud audio, and responsive keyboard make for an unbeatable combo. Did I mention you can often find it for less than $2,500 directly from Lenovo.
In our review, staff writer Madeline Ricchiuto said, “The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i is a gamer’s gaming laptop,” which nicely sums up this outstanding, but not overpriced choice for gamers.
Let’s dig into the details and our extensive testing of this laptop a bit. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i averaged 105 frames per second on the Far Cry 6 (Ultra, 1080p) benchmark, which was enough to inch past the MSI Vector 16 HX (98 fps) and its own previous gen (97 fps), but blew past the Alienware X16 R2 (88 fps). The Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium, 1080p) benchmark kept things closer, with the Pro 7i at 96 fps, the Vector 16 at 104 fps, the X16 R2 at 90 fps, and the Pro 7i Gen 8 at 69 fps.
Don’t ignore the display when buying a gaming laptop, it’s almost as much of the experience as the performance. Lenovo certainly heeded our guidance there with the glorious 16-inch, 2560 x 1600, 240Hz panel delivering an amazing 108.7% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 456 nits of brightness. This is as immersive as it gets without putting on a VR headset.
If you are regularly gaming on the go then a good keyboard is crucial as well, and the widely spaced keys combined with a crisp and springy actuation force will allow you to avoid packing a cumbersome gaming keyboard.
While the best gaming headset is still worth purchasing for online gaming, if you are strictly worried about audio output, the Legion Pro 7i offers the Harman Super Linear Speaker System. Packed with two woofers, two tweeters, and a smart amp, it’s a strong standalone acoustic experience.
At nearly 6 pounds the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9 is a little heavier than we’d like and the 4 hours and 29 minutes of battery life aren’t going to win any awards either, but if you want maximum performance you’ll need to keep it plugged in anyway.
Best 2-in-1 laptop:
The Intel Core Ultra version of the HP Spectre x360 14 takes everything we’ve loved about this laptop line in recent years and turns it up a notch. Beyond the useful 2-in-1 form factor, you have a gorgeous 2.8K OLED touchscreen display for creating or viewing content.
The laptop weighs 3.2 pounds, pretty light for a 14-inch 2-in-1, but thanks to that power-sipping CPU from Intel, it still crushed our battery life test with over 11 hours on a single charge! That’s one of the best results we’ve ever seen from a 2-in-1. Despite its frugal battery usage, the Intel Core Ultra and Arc GPU blew our reviewer away, putting up better Geekbench and 3D Mark results than many heavier clamshell laptops.
So why isn’t it perfect? While the display is bright and colorful, we’ve seen better benchmarks from competitors. However, the rest of the package makes it impossible to argue with the HP Spectre x360 14 as the best 2-in-1 around, which is why the notebook earned 4.5 stars and our coveted Editor’s Choice award.
| Header Cell – Column 0 | HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) | MacBook Pro 14 M3 | Acer Swift Go 14 (2023) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 (Higher is better) | 12,358 | 11870 | 12434 |
| Handbrake time (Lower is better, (MM.SS)) | 7.3 | 5.38 | 3.18 |
| Battery life (HH.MM) | 11.01 | 17.16 | 09:50 |
| DCI-P3 Color Gamut (Higher is better) | 85.80% | 81.30% | 79.10% |
| Display Brightness (Nits) | 366 | 558 | 374 |
Best Chromebook overall:
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus gives you a premium laptop experience at a more affordable price than a comparable Windows laptop. It features better specs than the typical Chromebook with an Intel Core 3 100U 14th gen processor, Intel integrated graphics, 8GB of memory, 256GB of SSD storage, and a 15.6-inch FHD AMOLED display.
In our review, James Pero said, “While Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus isn’t the first premium Chromebook, it’s probably the best.”
The Galaxy Book boasts enough computing power to get the most out of ChromeOS and Google Gemini AI, without unnecessarily weighing the laptop down or adding to its cost. You can run Android apps or juggle Chrome tabs without any slowdowns.
As we would expect from a Samsung device, the display is one of the highlights, with a 15.6-inch AMOLED that puts most other Chromebooks to shame. Measuring 108.5% on the DCI-P3 color gamut, the Galaxy Chromebook plus outperforms many Windows laptops and MacBooks. Brightness again dramatically outperforms its category at 377 nits of average peak brightness, which is enough to overpower lighting in most environments.
Lasting 11 hours and 12 minutes on the Laptop Mag web surfing battery test, the Galaxy Chromebook Plus isn’t among our longest-lasting laptops, but it beats most modern Chromebooks and is enough for all-day usage.
The $699 price may feel expensive for a Chromebook, this is superior hardware to the typical Chromebook, and still more affordable than a comparable Windows laptop. If you want an affordable and easy-to-use laptop a Chromebook is an excellent choice, and Samsung gives you the best Chromebook experience possible at only a slight premium.
Best battery life:
The Dell XPS 13 9345 is one of the first generation of Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chipset. This gives you access to a variety of AI-fueled Windows features that promise to enhance work and play on your laptop. Even if you aren’t sold on the AI revolution just yet, this laptop serves up a potent combination of features.
The battery life is the undeniable star of this show, coming in at 19 hours and 1 minute and an even more astounding 20 hours and 51 minutes after we installed the BIOS 1.7.0 update. The average premium laptop makes it to 11 hours and 13 minutes in this test. If you are a student or a frequent traveler who needs to stay powered up on the go, the Dell XPS 13 9345 is unmatched.
Lest you think that battery life comes from a power-sipping processor, the Snapdragon X Elite also delivers an incredible 14,635 multi-core score in the Geekbench 6.3 overall performance test. That obliterates the premium laptop average of 8,927 and its nearest competitors like the MacBook Air M3 (12,087) or Zenbook 14 (12,707).
It’s not the perfect laptop, though. Two ports will leave some users running for a docking station or USB-C hub. At just 66.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, the display is rather dull, and our reviewer found the keyboard to be cramped.
While the Dell XPS 13 9345 remains the longest-lasting laptop that we recommend to most people, if you are in the market for a business laptop the Lenovo ThinkPad T14S Gen 6 did narrowly outlast it at 21 hours and 3 minutes. Prefer macOS? The 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 delivered an impressive 18 hours and 32 minutes
The best business laptop:
The Asus ExpertBook P5 is a near-perfect business laptop that covers the needs of 99% of business users at an affordable price. The feature list includes a fast and efficient new Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, over 14 hours of battery life, a 144Hz display, all the RAM a multi-tasker could need, and enough ports for you to skip the USB-C hub or docking station.
In our review of the ExpertBook P5 (P5405), our managing editor, Sean Riley, said: “The 144Hz refresh rate is the most eye-catching spec…if you spend all day on your laptop, it is easier on your eyes as it reduces the almost imperceptible flicker of your laptop display.” Combine this with the 465 nit of brightness and you have one of the most formiddable business laptop displays around.
The new Intel processor and ample RAM make the Asus ExpertBook P5 a productivity workhorse if you use a typical combination of office apps and browser-based tasks. If you need more robust performance for photo or video work, 3D rendering, on-device LLMs, or similar tasks, you may want to consider an affordable workstation like the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 or one of the best laptops for Photoshop.
To put the ExpertBook P5’s performance in perspective, it scored 11,259 in the Geekbench 6 overall performance test performed by our lab. That’s roughly 9% higher than the average premium laptop’s score of 10,308 but 7-12% behind some of its competitors like the Asus Zenbook S 14, MacBook Air M3, and HP EliteBook Ultra. That’s close enough that performance alone shouldn’t tip you to them over the ExpertBook P5.
Another highlight of the ExpertBook P5 is the webcam. If you are regularly on video calls, you’ll appreciate its color accuracy and sharp focus. No more toting around one of the best webcams in your bag.
The ExpertBook P5 also has excellent thermal management, so it won’t scorch you if you need to work from your laptop or on a plane. After playing back a video for 15 minutes, the hottest temperature recorded on it was 95.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The HP Elite x360 1040 G11, by comparison, reached 103.1 degrees on the underside. The Zenbook S 14 and Zenbook S 16 reached 97.7 and 105.5, respectively, and the Dell XPS 13 reached an alarming 120.