Best Windows Laptop for 2025
You'll find a number of Copilot Plus PCs among my favorite Windows PCs. Two have an Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor and deliver strong application and AI performance along with exceedingly long battery life. I love the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 for its slick and sturdy design and awesome haptic touchpad. The Asus Zenbook A14 is a winner for its ultralight yet rigid enclosure and the OLED display it supplies for the price. Again, both are well-rounded performers with jaw-dropping runtimes. And with laptop prices on the rise , the Intel-based Acer Aspire 14 AI is a great budget option .
The best Windows laptops come in all shapes and sizes
If you aren't ready to take the plunge with a Snapdragon X series processor and worry about potential Windows-on-Arm compatibility issues, then we have Intel- and AMD-based favorites, from budget models and two-in-one convertibles to high-powered laptops for gamers and creators. With decades of experience testing and reviewing laptops, our experts conduct performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET labs and perform extensive hands-on tests to assess the design, features and performance of each laptop we review.
You'll find a good number of recommendations here but we also have more specific picks in different categories, starting with the best overall laptop , the best gaming laptop , best cheap gaming laptop , best laptop for college students and best two-in-one laptop . If you narrowed it to a specific brand, check out our picks for the best Asus laptop , best Dell laptop , best HP laptop and best Lenovo laptop . Beyond Windows, we have recommendations for the best MacBook and best Chromebook .
Most recent additions
The Asus ProArt P16 is the newest addition to the list. It's a big OLED laptop for creators that we don't have to think twice about recommending.
The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is the next newest addition to the list. With its trim design, excellent build quality and high-res OLED display, it's our pick for best business laptop.
Other laptops we've tested
HP OmniBook X Flip 16 : While it has a handful of appealing features, this midrange 16-inch convertible ends up being a clumsy assemblage of disparate parts.
Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition : It offers a cheap path to an OLED ultraportable, but is a ThinkPad a ThinkPad without the little red nub in the middle of the keyboard?
HP OmniBook X Flip 14 : This two-in-one laptop offers style, value and configuration options abound, including a 3K OLED display for only an extra $100.
Microsoft Surface Laptop (13-inch) : It's compact, solidly built and great for travel, but the 13.8-inch version is the better choice as your daily driver.
Dell 14 Plus : Skip the two-in-one and opt for the clamshell laptop I tested when it goes on sale.
Acer Swift Go 16 (2025) : Built around a beautiful 16-inch OLED screen, the latest Swift Go 16 improves on its predecessors without significant price inflation.
Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 : This big-screen, mini-LED convertible laptop certainly has some positives, but there are a few too many negatives to give this Plus a full-throated recommendation.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition : It's a great business laptop, but it can get pricey fast with upgrades.
Acer Swift 14 AI : This midrange Copilot Plus PC offers incredible battery life but it's missing one key feature.
HP EliteBook X G1a : X does not mark the spot for this business laptop when the Ultra version costs roughly the same and supplies a far better display inside a slimmer, more compact design.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 Gen 10 : It's ultrastylish and ultracompact, but maybe don't hide the camera behind the display next time?
Acer Chromebook Plus 516 : The 16-inch display provides plenty of room to work but Acer has a similar model that offers more for less.
How we test laptops
The review process for laptops consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our reviewers. This includes evaluating a device's aesthetics, ergonomics and features with respect to price. A final review verdict is a combination of both objective and subjective judgments.
We test all laptops with a core set of benchmarks, including Primate Labs Geekbench 5 and 6 , Cinebench R23 , PCMark 10 , a variety of 3DMark benchmarks (whichever can run on the laptop), UL Procyon Photo and Video (where supported), and our own battery life test. If a laptop is intended for gaming, we'll also run benchmarks from Guardians of the Galaxy , The Rift Breaker (CPU and GPU) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider .
For the hands-on, the reviewer uses it for their work during the review period, evaluating how well the design, features (such as the screen, camera and speakers) and manufacturer-supplied software operate as a cohesive whole. We also place importance on how well they work given their cost and where the manufacturer has potentially made upgrades or tradeoffs for its price.
The list of benchmarking software and comparison criteria we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. You can find a more detailed description of our test methodology on our How We Test Computers page.
Factors to consider
There are a ton of laptops on the market at any given moment, and almost all of those models are available in multiple configurations to match your performance and budget needs. If you're feeling overwhelmed with options when looking for a new Windows laptop, it's understandable. To help simplify things for you, here are the main things you should consider when you start looking.
Price
The search for a new Windows laptop for most people starts with price. If the statistics chipmaker Intel and PC manufacturers hurl at us are correct, you'll be holding onto your next laptop for at least three years. If you can afford to stretch your budget a little to get better specs, do it, which holds whether you're spending $500 or more than $1,000. In the past, you could get away with spending less upfront with an eye toward upgrading memory and storage in the future. Laptop makers are increasingly moving away from making components easily upgradable, so again, it's best to get as much laptop capability as you can afford from the start.
Generally speaking, the more you spend, the better the laptop. That could mean better components for faster performance, a nicer display, sturdier build quality, a smaller or lighter design from higher-end materials or even a more comfortable keyboard. All of these things add to the cost of a laptop. I'd love to say $500 will get you a powerful gaming laptop, for example, but that's not the case. Right now, the sweet spot for a reliable laptop that can handle average work, home office or school tasks is between $700 and $800 and a reasonable model for creative work or gaming is upward of about $1,000. The key is to look for discounts on models in all price ranges so you can get more laptop capability for less.
Operating system
Choosing an operating system is part personal preference and part budget. For the most part, Microsoft Windows and Apple's MacOS do the same things (except for gaming, where Windows is the winner), but they do them differently. Unless there's an OS-specific application you need, go with the one you feel most comfortable using. If you're not sure which that is, head to an Apple store or a local electronics store and test them out. Or ask friends or family to let you test theirs for a bit. If you have an iPhone or iPad and like it, chances are you'll like MacOS too.
When it comes to price and variety (and PC gaming), Windows laptops win. If you want MacOS, you're getting a MacBook. Apple's MacBooks regularly top our best lists, but the least expensive one is the M1 MacBook Air for $999. It is regularly discounted to $750 or $800, but if you want a cheaper MacBook, you'll have to consider older refurbished ones.
Windows laptops can be found for as little as a couple of hundred dollars and come in all manner of sizes and designs. Granted, we'd be hard-pressed to find a $200 laptop we'd give a full-throated recommendation to, but if you need a laptop for online shopping, email and word processing, they exist.
If you are on a tight budget, consider a Chromebook. ChromeOS is a different experience than Windows. Make sure the applications you need have a Chrome , Android or Linux app before making the leap. If you spend most of your time roaming the web, writing, streaming video or using cloud-gaming services, they're a good fit.
Size
Remember to consider whether having a lighter, thinner laptop or a touchscreen laptop with a good battery life will be important to you in the future. Laptop size is primarily determined by screen size, which factors into battery size, laptop thickness, weight and price. Keep in mind other physics-related characteristics, such as an ultrathin laptop isn't necessarily lighter than a thick one, you can't expect a wide array of connections on a small or ultrathin model and so on.
Screen
When it comes to deciding on a screen, there are a myriad number of considerations: how much you need to display (which is surprisingly more about resolution than screen size), what types of content you'll be looking at and whether or not you'll be using it for gaming or creative work.
You really want to optimize pixel density, which is the number of pixels per inch the screen can display. Although other factors contribute to sharpness, a higher pixel density usually means sharper rendering of text and interface elements. (You can easily calculate the pixel density of any screen at DPI Calculator if you don't feel like doing the math, and you can also find out what math you need to do there.) We recommend a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per inch as a rule of thumb.
Because of the way Windows and MacOS scale for the display, you're frequently better off with a higher resolution than you'd think. You can always make things bigger on a high-resolution screen, but you can never make them smaller -- to fit more content in the view -- on a low-resolution screen. This is why a 4K, 14-inch screen may sound like unnecessary overkill, but may not be if you need to view a wide spreadsheet, for example.
If you need a laptop with relatively accurate color, that displays the most colors possible or that supports HDR, you can't simply trust the specs. This is because manufacturers usually fail to provide the necessary context to understand what the specs they quote mean. You can find a ton of detail about considerations for different types of screen uses in our monitor buying guides for general-purpose monitors , creators , gamers and HDR viewing .
Processor
The processor, aka the CPU, is the brains of a laptop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU makers for Windows laptops, with Qualcomm as a new third option with its Arm-based Snapdragon X processors . Both Intel and AMD offer a staggering selection of mobile processors. Making things trickier, both manufacturers have chips designed for different laptop styles, like power-saving chips for ultraportables or faster processors for gaming laptops. Their naming conventions will let you know what type is used. You can head to Intel's or AMD's sites for explanations so you get the performance you want. Generally speaking, the faster the processor speed and the more cores it has, the better the performance will be.
Apple makes its own chips for MacBooks, which makes things slightly more straightforward. Like Intel and AMD, you'll still want to pay attention to the naming conventions to know what kind of performance to expect. Apple uses its M-series chipsets in Macs. The entry-level MacBook Air uses an M1 chip with an eight-core CPU and seven-core GPU. The current models have M2-series silicon that starts with an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU and goes up to the M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and a 38-core GPU. Again, generally speaking, the more cores it has, the better the performance.
Battery life has less to do with the number of cores and more to do with CPU architecture, Arm versus x86. Apple's Arm-based MacBooks and the first Arm-based Copilot Plus PCs we've tested offer better battery life than laptops based on x86 processors from Intel and AMD.
Graphics
The graphics processor handles all the work of driving the screen and generating what gets displayed, as well as speeding up a lot of graphics-related (and increasingly, AI-related) operations. For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated or discrete. As the names imply, an iGPU is part of the CPU package, while a dGPU is a separate chip with dedicated memory (VRAM) that it communicates with directly, making it faster than sharing memory with the CPU.
Because the iGPU splits space, memory and power with the CPU, it's constrained by the limits of those. It allows for smaller, lighter laptops, but doesn't perform nearly as well as a dGPU. There are some games and creative software that won't run unless they detect a dGPU or sufficient VRAM. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing and other nonspecialized apps will run fine on an iGPU.
For more power-hungry graphics needs, like video editing, gaming and streaming, design and so on, you'll need a dGPU; there are only two real companies that make them, Nvidia and AMD, with Intel offering some based on the Xe-branded (or the older UHD Graphics branding) iGPU technology in its CPUs.
Memory
For memory, we highly recommend 16GB of RAM (8GB absolute minimum). RAM is where the operating system stores all the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up fast. After that, it starts swapping between RAM and SSD, which is slower. A lot of sub-$500 laptops have 4GB or 8GB, which in conjunction with a slower disk can make for a frustratingly slow Windows laptop experience. Also, many laptops now have the memory soldered onto the motherboard. Most manufacturers disclose this, but if the RAM type is LPDDR, assume it's soldered and can't be upgraded.
Some PC makers will solder memory on and also leave an empty internal slot for adding a stick of RAM. You may need to contact the laptop manufacturer or find the laptop's full specs online to confirm. Check the web for user experiences, because the slot may still be hard to get to, it may require nonstandard or hard-to-get memory or other pitfalls.
Storage
You'll still find cheaper hard drives in budget laptops and larger hard drives in gaming laptops, but faster solid-state drives have all but replaced hard drives in laptops. They can make a big difference in performance. Not all SSDs are equally speedy, and cheaper laptops typically have slower drives. If the laptop only has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, it may end up swapping to that drive and the system may slow down quickly while you're working.
Get what you can afford, and if you need to go with a smaller drive, you can always add an external drive or two down the road or use cloud storage to bolster a small internal drive. The one exception is gaming laptops: We don't recommend going with less than a 512GB SSD unless you really like uninstalling games every time you want to play a new game.
Laptop FAQs
Which is better: MacOS or Windows?
Deciding between MacOS and Windows laptops will come down to personal preference and budget for most people. Apple's base model laptop, the M1 MacBook Air, starts at $999. You can sometimes find it discounted or you can get educational pricing from Apple and other retailers. In general, it'll be at least $1,000 for a new MacBook, and the prices just go up from there.
For the money, you're getting great hardware top to bottom, inside and out. Apple recently moved to using its own processors, which resulted in across-the-board performance improvements compared to older Intel-based models. The company's most powerful laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, still hasn't been updated to Apple silicon.
Again, that great hardware comes at a price. Also, you're limited to just Apple laptops. With Windows and Chromebooks (more on these below), you get an amazing variety of devices at a wide range of prices.
Software between the two is plentiful, so unless you need to run something that's available only on one platform or the other, you should be fine to go with either. Gaming is an advantage for a Windows laptop.
MacOS is also considered to be easier and safer to use than Windows, especially for people who want their computers to get out of the way so they can get things done. Over the years, Microsoft has done its best to follow suit and, with Windows 11 here , it's trying to remove any barriers . Also, while Macs might have a reputation for being safer, with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad helping to drive Mac sales, they've become bigger targets for malware .
What brands make the best Windows laptops?
The biggest two brands by market share are Lenovo and HP. Each offers a wide variety of models, from thin-and-light ultraportables to larger, more powerful models for gaming content creation. Lenovo's ThinkPads have long been a favorite among business laptops, and its Yoga models are usually highly rated two-in-one laptops.
Dell is third behind Lenovo and HP and is in the midst of a major rebranding effort . Familiar names like Inspiron and XPS are going away in favor of a simplified structure where its laptop will be labeled as Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max. Dell's Alienware line of gaming laptops will continue.
HP is also shaking up its laptop lines . It has shuttered its Pavilion, Envy and Spectre brands in favor of OmniBook consumer models and EliteBook business models. Its Omen brand will continue as the home for its gaming laptops. I liked the first OmniBook laptop I reviewed and look forward to testing more.
Asus and Acer round out the top five among Windows laptops manufacturers, with Asus making many of our favorite gaming and content-creation laptops and Acer dominating the budget space.
How much RAM do I need in a Windows laptop?
RAM is where the operating system stores all the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up fast. After that, it starts swapping between RAM and the slower storage drive. We recommend at least 16GB of RAM unless you are buying a budget laptop for the most basic of tasks. And for mainstream laptops, 32GB of RAM is becoming more common. Buy as much RAM as you can afford up front because most laptops these days do not provide a way to add more memory after purchase.
What is the ideal screen size for a Windows laptop?
For most people, a 14-inch display offers the best balance between portability and productivity. With today's taller 16:10 aspect ratio, a 14-inch display is appreciably larger than the 13.3-inch, 16:9 display on older laptops. A 14-inch, 16:10 display provides enough screen space while still keeping the weight around 3 pounds.
Only choose a 16-inch display if you are looking for a true desktop replacement and will use the laptop primarily at home. And if you need a laptop for constant travel, an ultraportable with a 13-inch, 16:10 display is a good fit, but there are also 14-inch laptops that weigh less than 3 pounds so don't feel as if you need to sacrifice screen size for a lighter travel weight.
In the market for a new laptop? Check out these trusted and hands-on laptop guides from Engadget.
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