Other Good Laptops We’ve Tested
Dell 14 Plus for $700: 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, as low as $700, which makes it an incredible value.
Microsoft Surface Pro 12 for $730: 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.
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 $600: 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. Try to avoid the $1,000 MSRP.
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Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Edition, 2024) for $1,150: 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.
Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus for $500: This was one of the first “Chromebook Plus” devices we tested, and it’s still among the best. While the newer Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is a higher-quality device, the Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends) comes in a couple hundred dollars cheaper, which makes it attractive, especially for a Chromebook. You’ll still get 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, too.
Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED
Photograph: Dan Thorp-LancasterAsus Vivobook S 14 OLED for $760: 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.
Dell XPS 16 for $1,900: Dell’s XPS laptop of 2024 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is aimed at Windows users with MacBook jealousy. The design, specs, and sizes line up perfectly with Apple’s offerings. The XPS 16 has a gorgeous, sleek design, a wonderfully bright and sharp OLED screen (with a 120-Hz screen refresh rate), and is plenty speedy for everyday tasks. The XPS 16 uses the more powerful RTX 4070 graphics card and fared well in our tests, but it costs more than a similarly powerful MacBook. It has since been replaced by the Dell 14 Premium and Dell 16 Premium, though we’re still testing these models.
Acer Chromebook Plus 515 for $359: 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 $2,500: 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.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Copilot+ PC for $800: 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.
Laptops to Avoid
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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