The Best Laptop You Can Buy in 2025: A Comprehensive Guide

Choosing the best laptop is a daunting task given the wide variety of models, sizes, and specifications available. Fortunately, laptops today are more advanced and efficient than ever before. Whether you're looking for a powerful AI-powered laptop, an ultra-thin device for travel, or an economical option for daily tasks, the market offers something to suit your needs. Modern computing systems combine enhanced performance, long battery life, and smart features, all in sleek, lightweight designs crafted to meet both work and entertainment demands.

Best Overall Laptop: MacBook Air M4

Among all the laptops: recently tested and reviewed, the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air M4 stands out as the ideal choice for most users. This laptop boasts enough power to handle most tasks, including light video editing, and features a superb display and excellent built-in speakers. It also offers a battery life exceeding 18 hours (depending on usage). The MacBook Air M4 is also among the lightest and thinnest systems reviewed, and it operates completely silently thanks to its fanless design.

Best Overall Windows Laptop: Dell 14 Premium

For 2025: Dell has rebranded the XPS 14 as the Dell 14 Premium, equipping it with updated specifications. Despite its new name, its reputation remains impeccable, allowing Dell's flagship 14-inch device to retain its title as one of the best Windows laptops. It features a sleek and futuristic design that includes a hidden touchpad and innovative multimedia controls, along with powerful performance and good battery life, with desirable optional upgrades such as a 3.2K OLED display and a dedicated RTX 4050 GPU.

Best Overall Gaming Laptop: ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14

The appeal of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14: lies in its all-new unibody aluminum chassis, its vibrant 120Hz OLED display, powerful performance, and abundant ports – all at a price hundreds of dollars less than its competitor, the Razer Blade 14. It even includes a built-in microSD card reader and multiple color gamut presets, making it ideal for photo and video editing tasks. Its audio also surpasses the average thanks to powerful stereo speakers that deliver clear and loud sound. Battery life is excellent, with the Zephyrus lasting nearly eight hours in runtime tests. Moreover, the G14 weighs about half a pound less than competing laptops with similar designs.

Best Chromebook: Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook: is our top choice, described by Engadget's Chrome OS expert Nathan Ingraham as "a tremendous value." This laptop masters the basics, thanks to its 14-inch Full HD touchscreen, a great backlit keyboard, and a 13th-gen Core i3 processor. The latest model features an upgraded 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which, when combined with the Core i3 CPU, makes it a fast and capable device. It's also good to have one USB-A and two USB-C ports, six hours of battery life, and a 360-degree hinge that makes the Flex 5 easy to use as a tablet. This might be the perfect laptop for Chrome OS enthusiasts, and it will meet the needs of many other buyers, offering a level of quality and performance rarely found in this price range.

Best Budget Laptop: HP Pavilion Aero

If you're looking for a budget laptop: around $800, your best bet is the HP Pavilion Aero 13. At around $799 (or often less during sales), you get a Full HD display with an astonishingly thin 16:10 aspect ratio, a comfortable keyboard, and a spacious touchpad. Most importantly, the Aero 13 offers robust performance and relatively durable components compared to others in this price range, with an AMD Ryzen 5000 series processor and Radeon graphics. Plus, this top budget laptop option boasts a generous array of ports and all-day battery life.

Best Premium Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch

The M5 update: for the 14-inch MacBook Pro makes an already great laptop even better. The M5 chip provides a slightly faster CPU, but the big upgrade is the revamped GPU, which performed significantly better in games and benchmarks compared to the MacBook Pro M4.

Best 2-in-1 Laptop: HP Spectre x360 14

If you want a laptop: that can sometimes transform into a tablet, the new HP Spectre x360 14 is our top pick for the best 2-in-1 laptop. It's a beautiful notebook that can rotate its screen in a variety of orientations: tent mode for propping it up in bed or on a table, and tablet mode with the keyboard neatly folded behind the lid. While it won't entirely replace something like an iPad, the x360's rotating hinge makes it more versatile than a traditional notebook. It's perfect for diving into a long article or PDF or using the included pen to jot down some notes. The Spectre x360 14 is also a powerful laptop in its own right, with an excellent keyboard, an extra-large touchpad, and some of the best industrial designs for computers on the market.

Best Copilot+ PC Laptop: Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition

After more than a decade: of testing and experimenting with Arm-powered Windows computers, Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 seems like a breakthrough. It's fast and quiet, and thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip, it offers significantly above-average performance and battery life. Internally, Microsoft's Prism emulator has almost entirely broken down the barrier between Arm and x86, so, with the exception of gaming, almost all your favorite applications work. Add a bright 120Hz refresh rate display and excellent build quality, and you have something very close to a perfect ultra-thin laptop.

Features to Look for in a New Laptop:

• Operating System: Choose between leading operating systems: Apple macOS, Windows, or Chrome OS, based on your preferences and needs.
• Price: Prices typically range from $1000 to $1800 for most devices, and can exceed $2000 for professional and high-performance machines.
• Laptop Size and Weight: 13-inch devices (around 2-3 pounds) are an excellent starting point for portability, while 14-inch and 15-inch devices offer larger screens (3-4.5 pounds) for a better viewing and productivity experience.
• Ports and Connectivity: Most modern devices come with versatile USB-C ports, and you might find a MagSafe port on Apple devices and dedicated power connectors on some Windows laptops for easy connectivity and charging.
• Battery Life: Expect a modern laptop to provide at least 8 hours of usage, while Mac devices offer an impressive battery life of 18 hours or more for continuous productivity.
• Refresh Rate: 60Hz is the minimum acceptable, but a screen with 120Hz or higher provides a smoother visual experience, especially when scrolling or gaming.
• Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): Look for the latest generations of Intel or AMD processors to ensure optimal performance. If you plan for intensive gaming or creative work, a dedicated GPU is essential.
• AI-Powered PCs, Neural Processing Units (NPUs), and Copilot+: These features are becoming increasingly important in 2025.
  AI PCs: is a broader term referring to any computer designed to handle AI workloads, and it may not adhere to strict specifications.
  Copilot+ PCs: is a new category of Windows 11 AI PCs from Microsoft, featuring a powerful Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of executing over 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), at least 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD storage. These devices are optimized for running AI tasks locally with superior performance, and offer exclusive experiences such as Recall and Cocreator features, and come with a dedicated Copilot key. They are often powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series processors. (Source: Microsoft Blog, Published: May 20, 2024)