For more guidance, also see my recommendations in specific categories, such as Best MacBooks, Best Gaming Laptops, Best Chromebooks, Best Budget Laptops, Best Windows Laptops, and Best 2-in-1 Laptops. My guide on How to Choose a Laptop may also help if you’re undecided.

The Most Recommend lsptop

When friends or family ask what laptop to buy, I always start with the MacBook Air. This little laptop is far more powerful than most people realize. With the update to the M5, its GPU is now as powerful as the M3 Pro MacBook Pro, speeding up everything from games to video renders. That’s not at all what the MacBook Air is designed for, but the performance is there when you want to dabble. It’s what makes it feel like a do-it-all machine, all contained in a fanless chassis that’s still one of the thinnest laptops you can buy. Oh, and did I mention it’ll last well over a full work day away from the wall and perform as well on battery as when plugged in? In almost every aspect, it’s the gold standard.

You might be dissuaded from the MacBook Air for the attractive price of the new MacBook Neo. But if you work in front of a computer for eight hours a day, the performance, extra memory, super-fast storage speed, and Thunderbolt ports make the MacBook Air the right option. Unlike with the Neo, you’ll never have to stop and wonder if you’ve got the right computer for the job. (If you don’t already know that you need a MacBook Pro for your work, you probably don’t.)

Microsoft

Surface Laptop 13.8-inch (7th Edition)

$1,700 $1,300 (24% OFF)

AMAZON (15-INCH)

$1,200 $950 (21% OFF)

MICROSOFT

$1,200 $1,100 (8% OFF)

BEST BUY

$1,200

WALMART

I know not everyone wants a Mac. Not everyone wants to submit to the walled garden of Apple, or maybe there are specific applications you rely on that require Windows. Windows has a really solid alternative to the MacBook Air: the Surface Laptop 13.8 (also known as the 7th Edition). It’s almost as good as the MacBook Air in many ways, and it even surpasses it in others. The MacBook Air might be slightly thinner, but the Surface Laptop comes with an additional USB-A port. There are lots of little tradeoffs like that. My favorite aspect of the Surface Laptop 13.8 is the screen, though. This is easily the superior screen compared to the MacBook Air, offering a touchscreen, a 120-Hz refresh rate, and a taller 3:2 aspect ratio. Like the MacBook Air, there’s a 15-inch version as well that’s otherwise identical.

My one caveat with this current version of the Surface Laptop is that it came out in mid-2024, and we’ve been waiting for the update to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips with improved performance. These are rolling out on other laptops, but Microsoft has yet to announce a refreshed Surface Laptop. My best guess would be an announcement around the Microsoft Build developer conference in early June, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Lastly, I’ll point you in the direction of the Asus Zenbook S 16. I’ve always appreciated this laptop for its stunning design. That all-white aesthetic, oversized trackpad, and those thin bezels make it stand out. There’s also the fact that it’s only 0.48 inches thick, which is very close to as thin as the MacBook Air. My only problem with this laptop has been that the pricing refused to drop throughout much of last year. It was hard to justify at over $1,500, regardless of how polished it felt. These days, the price is hovering around or under $1,000, making it much easier to swallow. What you get is an absolutely stacked laptop, with more memory and twice the storage as the MacBook Air. The OLED display is also gorgeous. It’s high-resolution at 2880 x 1800 and has a 120-Hz refresh rate. It doesn’t get much more high-end than that.

Buy one of those three laptops and you’ll find very little to complain about. But not everyone has $1,000 or more to spend on a laptop. And even though a good discount will never raise a decent laptop into the category of our top picks above, you’ll be surprised by just how good laptops under $800 have become.

Cheap Laptops That Are Actually Good

HP

OmniBook 5 14

$880 $500 (43% OFF)

HP

$800

BEST BUY (512 GB)

Everyone has a different idea of “cheap,” but conventionally, these are laptops that land below $750 or so. This is where Windows laptops really shine these days, as they often offer great specs for less money. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, the latest silicon from Qualcomm and Intel have dramatically improved battery life, and can now play in the same ballpark as Apple. The best deal of them all has to be the HP OmniBook 5. For just $500, this little laptop offers a Snapdragon X processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. It even has an OLED screen! It’d be a bit harder to recommend at the full retail price of $800 (if only because the resolution of the screen is just 1920 x 1200), but it’s an unbeatable deal at $500.

The Dell 14 Plus is one step up from there, with a current starting price of $650. The specs are comparable, as is the battery life and performance. You’ll get a bit more graphics, thanks to the switch to Intel, but they otherwise feel similar in quality. The major upgrade you get with the Dell 14 Plus is the display, which is higher-resolution at 2560 x 1600. It’s not OLED like the OmniBook 5, but the sharper screen results in an overall better experience that’s worth the $150 in my book.

Speaking of better displays, that’s where the MacBook Neo really shines. This is Apple’s new entry-level device, which starts at $599. It has the best display on a laptop you can buy at this price, and it gets you the macOS experience at an unprecedented price. Apple prioritized its front-of-screen experience to give it a premium feel, whether that’s in the display, the build quality, or even the keyboard. The 8 GB of RAM is a major drawback, as is the slower ports and SSD performance. As I said above, the MacBook Air is the better choice for most remote workers. But for students, travelers, or anyone whose use of a laptop is a bit more minimal, the MacBook Neo is the most premium-feeling laptop you can buy at this price.

Given how good some of these other budget laptops are, it’s a bit harder to find a place for Chromebooks. The best of the bunch is still the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, which is the most premium Chromebook ever made, sporting an OLED screen, 16 GB of RAM, and competitive battery life with the MacBook Neo. While $649 is probably more than what most people want to spend on a Chromebook, that has more to do with the perception of Chromebooks and less to do with the quality of this particular laptop.

There are much cheaper Chromebooks out there, of course, but once you get under $500, they usually come with some considerable drawbacks to the quality of the screen and touchpad. The one exception is the Acer Chromebook Plus 516. While it’s a bit thick and the screen isn’t the sharpest (especially for a 16-inch laptop), it’s the best laptop you can buy under $300.

Powerful Laptops for Those Who Need It

The M5 Max MacBook Pro is the real deal. Not only is it immensely powerful, it’s also surprisingly portable and gets fantastic battery life. Those three things don’t seem physically possible, but the 16-inch M5 Max MacBook Pro pulls it off. That’s been true of the “Max” chips for years, but with the M5 generation, it’s never been more impressive. Not only does this year’s M5 Max greatly expand the capabilities of the GPU again, it also significantly bumps up this laptop’s on-device AI processing with a more efficient Neural Engine, AI accelerators in each of the 40 GPU cores, and faster memory bandwidth. It’s one of the most powerful AI laptops you can buy, which is only going to appeal to a fraction of the demographic. The MacBook Pro is not for everyone. It’s for professional creatives and engineers that run heavy, taxing applications all day.

There are a number of Windows alternatives to the MacBook Pro, such as the Asus ProArt P16 and Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i. And while these are both powerful, they both use hot-and-heavy discrete graphics cards that significantly reduce the battery life to achieve that level of performance. That’s why the Dell XPS 14takes a different approach, ditching the discrete GPU for Intel’s new X9 chip (also known as B390). The results are seriously impressive, replicating the performance of an RTX 4050 without the downsides of using a discrete GPU. More than that, as a laptop, the Dell XPS 14 has a level of polish really only seen on MacBooks—and I might even say it surpasses it in some areas.

Gaming is the other major thing extra performance is needed for. While you can certainly use something like the Dell XPS 14, you’ll want something dedicated to gaming if you’re playing more than a couple times a week. I’ve tested dozens of gaming laptops over the past year, and the Lenovo LOQ 15 really stands out. So many cheap gaming laptops only come with an RTX 5050, which is an entry-level Nvidia GPU. The LOQ 15 is thick and fairly plain-looking, but it really has the performance where it counts. At the Medium graphics preset, you can get well over 60 fps (frames per second) in almost any game, and up to 113 fps in Cyberpunk 2077. For the price, that’s really impressive.

There’s a whole world of gaming laptopsoutside the budget-tier stuff, though. I’ve tested an assortment of options, and I always come back to the Razer Blade 14and Razer Blade 16. Both are extremely well made, portable, and minimalist, which is how these laptops have earned the reputation of being the MacBooks of PC gaming. That also comes with a MacBook Pro–like prices. But the excellent design means these laptops work just as well for work or school as they do for gaming. You won’t struggle to lug this thing around campus like other gaming laptops. While there are more powerful gaming laptops out there, there’s truly nothing quite like the Razer Blades.

Other Good Laptops

PHOTOGRAPH: LUKE LARSEN; GETTY LEDE

If you stick with one of the laptops above, you will be very happy with your purchase. They’re all laptops I’ve come back to repeatedly over the past year or two. However, there might be an individual feature you’re looking for—or maybe you really are trying to hit a certain price point that isn’t represented above. Below, I’ve included some of the other laptops I’ve recently tested and enjoyed at some level. They each have at least one issue that give me hesitation, but for the right person (and discount), they could be worthwhile options.

Framework Laptop 13 for $899: This unique laptop is fully repairable and accessible, including the CPU and motherboard. There’s nothing else like it out there. The Framework Laptop 16 gets you better performance, while the Framework Laptop 12 is the budget option.

MacBook Pro M5 for $1,599: It’s not a significant step up from the MacBook Air in terms of performance, and it’s quite a bit thicker. The Mini-LED screen and extra ports are what you’re paying for.

Asus Zenbook A14 for $700: This laptop’s calling card is the portability, as it’s a half-pound lighter than the MacBook Air, without making compromises in build quality.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1.

PHOTOGRAPH: LUKE LARSEN

Lenovo Yoga 9i for $1,550: This high-end 2-in-1 laptop is one of the most premium-feeling Windows laptops you can buy, but it’s priced too high to be competitive.

Acer Nitro V 16 for $885: This gaming laptop is one of the cheapest you can buy, and it’s a solid option as a starter. But the 130-watt power supply is underpowered, meaning you don’t get the full performance out of the GPU while gaming.

Asus Vivobook 14 for $610: While it has great battery life, the HP OmniBook 5 14 and Dell 14 Plus both offer better displays and specs for a similar-priced budget laptop.

Lenovo Legion 7i for $1,749: This all-white, high-end gaming laptop is one of my favorites aesthetically, and it performs just as well. But you pay extra for all those bells and whistles.

Alienware 16X Aurora.

PHOTOGRAPH: LUKE LARSEN

Asus CX14 Chromebook for $139: A sub-$200 Chromebook is never going to be compromise-free, but if your budget really is this low, this is as good as you’ll find.

Alienware 16X Aurora for $1,650: Another great gaming laptop, this one with the typical Alienware flair. It has a higher-resolution display, but if price is your concern, the Lenovo LOQ 15 is still the way to