Intro
we’ve tested over $100,000 worth of laptops all in the past 12 months and when you use these laptops side by side just like we do it becomes so obvious which are exceptional and which are not so today I’m going to tell you the best laptops that you can buy right now let’s
Budget Shoppers
start with budget Shoppers if you’re strapped for cash and shopping for anlaptop there are two that just punch well above their weight the HB Pavilion plus 14 and the Asus mbook 14 I got two different colors here both these laptops can regularly be found for less than $800 often much less both come with Intel or AMD laters processors which deliver plenty of performance for school office work and browsing the web even for some performance tasks like coding
Pavilion Plus 14
the paviliion plus offers a ton of configuration options that are very reasonably priced including a high resolution fast refresh rate OLED display its main downside though is that the laptop looks and feels a bit cheap and on occasion you will hear some fan noise the Zenbook 14 on the other hand
Zenbook 14
gives you a more premium laptop experience which is rare at this price point it’s chassis feels high quality and it comes with an OLED display by default but this year’s zbook is not a pure step forward from last years the new models do have better performance however the older models had a more comfortable keyboard and their cheaper configurations came with a higher resolution display so you may actually want to consider saving some money and buying an older 2023 zbook on sale now
Website
what I’m giving you today is a snapshot of why these laptops made this list if you want to see our full rationale including all the pros and cons you’ll find it on our website along with links to any videos that we talk about these laptops in value Shoppers if you’re
Value Shoppers
looking to stretch your dollar as far as possible the idead Pro 5 is the ultimate
IdeaPad Pro 5 16
bank for your buck laptop for around $1,000 you get a powerful Intel or AMD processor 16 gig of memory and dedicated graphics up to a respectable RTX 4050 you’ll get a choice of two quite decent 16in panels the one I recommend is the 2560 x600 display the keyboard is also comfortable and the laptop is Compact and feels well built its main downsides are that it can do everything well but
it’s not great at any one thing for example if all you’re doing is gaming you’d be better off buying a laptop with a more powerful RTX 4060 which you can find at this price point that being said that laptop will likely have morematerial downsides in other areas so if
you want to do a bit of everything at a reasonable price the idad pro five is the way to go but you may want to get an external webcam as the one in this laptop just sucks casual users if you’re
Casual Users
looking for the best laptop for light use like school work office work or browsing the web the HP Spectre 14 or the MacBook Air is what you want the HB
Spectre x360 14
Spectre 14 looks and feels premium and it comes with an excellent OLED display it has one of the most satisfying
keyboards on the market and it doesn’t have an overabundance of fan noise or heat you feel yet its performance is good for a laptop this size you’ll be able to enjoy some Esports games as well as aler titles due to this laptop’s solid integrated GPU and if you want to
convert your laptop into a tablet and draw in it this one has you covered finally its pricing is extremely competitive the 16 gig of RAM 1 TB model has an MSRP of around $1,600 and the 32 gig of memory 2 TB model goes for 1,900 but these laptops are notorious
for going on massive sales so make sure you check our website regularly as that’s where we post the best deals now
when it comes to cons of the spec the trackpad does have occasional Palm rejection issues your cursor May randomly jump to a location that you didn’t intend and other than that it is noticeably heavier than the next laptop the MacBook Air the MacBook Air is the
MacBook Air 13
laptop you buy and just don’t have to worry about in contrast to other laptops there’s no fan noise at all it never gets warm to the touch and it has long battery life this is of course due to Apple’s excellent M series of processors which are not only power efficient but
very powerful particularly in graphical tasks where the air runs circles around its Windows competitors this makes things like programming and video editing very possible on this laptop so long as your projects are simple the main issue with the air though is that the Basse version is deceivingly well priced at $1,100 but it only comes with 8 gig of memory and 256 gig of storage which is
very restrictive and if you don’t upgrade at the time of purchase there’s nothing you can do about it as Apple laptops you can’t upgrade them after you buy on the flip side if you do upgrade this lap laptop quickly becomes expensive finally the keyboard feels low travel which means it isn’t the most comfortable and the display is still stuck at 60 HZ for gamers we spent more
Gaming
time debating our picks for you than every other category combined that’s because there is just no clear winner right now you see every gaming laptop has material cons so it’s about picking one that has issues that you can live with with that said here’s our short
Omen Transcend 14
list if you’re searching for a portable gaming laptop we’ve tested them all shoving High powerered components inside
a small Windows laptop just doesn’t really work right now you get a combination of Heat fan noise or poor battery life the only laptop that bucked this trend is the HB Omen transcend 14 but what it does to achieve this you may
not like it feeds its dedicated graphics less power than other competing laptops this results in around 75% performance of what its GPU is capable of we think the trade-off is worth it but if you
Legion Slim 5 14
don’t the legion slim 514 is the one I’d recommend instead but it is a much bigger and heavier laptop so you do lose out on portability now if you want a
16 Inch Gaming
substantially better gaming experience and you don’t need that much portability
Legion 7i
the legion 7i is the one to get the Legion 7i in glacia white it looks stunning it has an extremely powerful CPU inside and its RTX 47 is fed plenty of power it has a stunning looking screen which gives you all the gamer bells and whistles its keyboard is one
of the most comfortable to type on and its memory and storage is upgradeable finally at an MSI RP of $2,000 for a fully loaded version with 32 G memoryyou get a lot for your money its biggest downside though is that it is a very warm filling laptop even in light use that’s what happens when you put Intel’s most powerful laptop processor in a chassis this size Lenovo really should
have used Intel’s more efficient core Ultra processor you would have got less
CPU performance but it would have been a more comfortable experience and on that
Zephyrus G16
note if you don’t like a warm filling laptop and you want excellent portability without sacrificing much gaming performance the new Asus safarisg16 is the one to get this laptop is very slim and portable its OLED screen is stunning and it feels premium we didn’t recommend it in the past due to its excessive fan noise in light use with the new bios though this issue has been resolved however this laptop is
still loud in gaming with high-pitched fan noise so you will notice it more than others and we only recommend the 4080 and 4090 versions they use a vapor chamber cooling solution the 470 and 40 60 versions have a third fan and that makes the fan noise significantly worse it seems the air flow to that fan is constricted causing a light high pitched whistling sound now the only powerful
Max Gaming Performance
gaming laptop that solves both heat and fan noise is my favorite the Alienware
Alienware x16 R2
x16 R2 the Alienware is the coolest and quietest gaming laptop which makes it a delight to game on and in light use itis dead silent and feels cold this is made possible by its beefy four fancooling solution combined with Intel’s core Ultra processor also its optional
Cherry MX keyboard unlocks a god tier typing experience but this laptop is not for everyone its screen is ridiculously dim for a laptop at this price point and it is ludicrously expensive it’s also an unusually large laptop so it won’t fit in a standard laptop sleeve or a backpack and that cherrymx keyboard is loud and it has an annoying ring to it this is solvable though if you just buy the base keyboard it is still very good and it will save you $100 all right
Professionals
if you’re looking for the best laptop for professional use say you’re creating or coding our favorite laptops are the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 and the yoga Pro 9i the MacBook Pros are still the best
MacBook Pro 14 & 16
laptops for anyone who wants to get real work done and is okay with Mac OS its M3 Pro and Max chips are immensely power ful and due to their efficiency they have less fan noise don’t feel as hot to the touch and they have significantly longer
battery life than Windows competitorsnot only only this but the MacBook screens are fantastic their high resolution and brightness enables you to see a ton of information on screen without needing to squint the speakers
and trackpad are still the best in the industry the keyboard is comfortable and the ports are fast look everything just
works as intended which can’t be said for any other laptop on this list but
there are still cons the MacBook Pros are expensive especially with the upgrades and the M3 versions are not a pure step forward from the M2 two models they do perform better in benchmarks yes but many real world performance tasks
will not that is because they’re limited by other factors that haven’t changed with this latest iteration I’ve have several videos specifically on this topic which I’ll link below and before you buy avoid the MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 chip and only 8 Giga memory
you’re going to want to upgrade the memory and then your mass well buy the M3 pro version that laptop is better on
several Dimensions which we’ve documented on our website lastly the M4 MacBook Pros will likely be here by the
end of the year so only buy this laptop if it’s on sale or if you’re buying an older M2 version finally we have the
Yoga Pro 9i
yoga Pro 9i it is a laptop that just can do everything well to very well with no major con it has strong CP performance
combined with a bright high resolution fast refresh rate display similar to the
macbook’s small text on screen looks very sharp and is easy to read but unlike the MacBooks you’ll be able to play the full catalog of PC games using its dedicated Nvidia graphics and you can even run Linux compared to other
Windows laptops with this kind of performance the yoga Pro n i it never gets warm to the touch and it’s fans they only come on when you expect them to and once the task is complete they turn off but we’re not done the yoga PR I price is very good for what you get at $1,900 you get a Core Ultra 9 processor an RTX 460 32 G memory and 1 tab of storage that is well over $1,000 cheaper than the base MacBook Pro 16 with similar specs its only real con is that here in the USA you can’t buy the config
with an RTX 4070 and 64 gig of memory and it looks a little dated well that is
Conclusion
our list did we miss any of your favorites if we did try searching for that laptop that you’re looking for on
our website you’ll either see why we didn’t feel it was worth making this list or if we haven’t reviewed it yet there is an easy way for you to request one or you could just yell at me on the comment section and on that note before
