Best Laptops of 2024 – CNET
There are plenty of laptops on the market at any one time, and almost all of these models are available in a variety of configurations to suit your performance and budget needs. If you’re feeling overwhelmed when looking for a new laptop, it’s understandable. To help simplify things for you, here are the main things you should consider when you start looking.
price
For most people, the search for a new laptop starts with price. If the statistics thrown at us by chipmaker Intel and PC makers are correct, you’ll be holding on to your next laptop for at least three years. If you can afford to stretch your budget a little to get better specs, go for it. This is true whether you spend $500 or over $1,000. In the past, you could spend less upfront and upgrade memory and storage with an eye toward the future. Laptop manufacturers are increasingly moving away from making easily upgradeable components, so it’s best to buy as many laptops as possible from the get-go.
Generally speaking, the more money you spend, the better the laptop is. This could mean better components for faster performance, a better display, sturdier build quality, a smaller or lighter design with higher-end materials, or even a more comfortable keyboard. All of this adds to the cost of your laptop. For example, I’d like to say that $500 can buy you a powerful gaming laptop, but that’s not the case. Currently, the best prices for reliable laptops capable of handling general work, home office, or school tasks range from $700 to $800, while reasonable models for creative work or gaming run upwards of $1,000. The key is to look for discounts on models across all price ranges so you can get more laptop features for less.
operating system
Choosing an operating system depends partly on personal preference and partly on budget. For the most part, Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS do the same things (except gaming, where Windows is the winner), but they do it differently. Unless you need an operating system-specific app, choose the one you’re most comfortable using. If you’re not sure which one it is, head to an Apple Store or local electronics store to test it out. Or ask a friend or family member to let you test theirs. If you own an iPhone or iPad and like it, there’s a good chance you’ll like MacOS too.
When it comes to price and variety (and PC gaming), Windows laptops win. If you want MacOS, then you can choose MacBook. Apple’s MacBooks often top our best lists, with the cheapest being the M1 MacBook Air at $999. It’s often discounted to $750 or $800, but if you want a cheaper MacBook, you’ll have to consider an older refurbished machine.
Windows laptops can cost as little as a few hundred dollars and come in a variety of sizes and designs. Granted, it’s hard to find a $200 laptop, but if you need a laptop for online shopping, email, and word processing, they exist.
If you’re on a tight budget, consider a Chromebook. The ChromeOS experience is different from Windows; make sure the apps you need are available Chrome alloyAndroid or Linux apps, and then take the leap. They’re great if you spend most of your time surfing the web, writing, streaming videos, or using cloud gaming services.
size
Remember to consider whether having a lighter, thinner laptop or a touchscreen laptop with good battery life will be important to you in the future. Size is primarily determined by the screen—hello, laws of physics—which in turn affects battery size, laptop thickness, weight, and price. Keep in mind other physics-related characteristics, such as that ultra-thin laptops are not necessarily lighter than thick ones, you can’t expect multiple connections on small or ultra-thin models, etc.
Screen
There are a lot of factors to consider when deciding on a screen: how much content you need to display (surprisingly, resolution is more important than screen size), what type of content you’ll be viewing, and whether you’ll be using it for gaming or creative work.
You do want to optimize for pixel density; that is, the number of pixels per inch your screen can display. Although other factors can affect clarity, higher pixel density generally means text and interface elements are rendered sharper. (You can easily calculate the pixel density of any screen DPI calculator If you don’t want to do the math, you can find the math you need to do there too. ) As a rule of thumb, I recommend a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per inch.
Because of the way Windows and MacOS display scaling, you’ll often end up using a higher resolution than you think. You can always make things larger on a high-resolution screen, but you can never make them smaller (to fit more content in view) on a low-resolution screen. That’s why a 4K, 14-inch screen sounds like unnecessary overkill, but if you need to view wide-format spreadsheets, it probably isn’t.
If you need a laptop that’s relatively color-accurate, can display as many colors as possible, or supports HDR, you can’t simply trust its specs—not because the manufacturer lies, but because they often fail to provide the necessary context to understand The meaning of the product. The specs they quote mean. You can find lots of details on the considerations for using different types of screens in our monitor buying guide universal monitor, creator, Gamers and HDR Watch.
processor
The processor, also known as the CPU, is the brains of your laptop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU manufacturers for Windows laptops, with Qualcomm Arm-based Snapdragon X processor. Both Intel and AMD offer amazing mobile processor options. To make things even trickier, both manufacturers have chips designed for different laptop styles, such as energy-efficient chips for ultraportables or faster processors for gaming laptops. Their naming convention will let you know what type to use. You can go to Intel’s or AMD’s Websites that provide explanations so you can get the performance you need. Generally speaking, the faster the processor and the more cores it has, the better the performance.
Apple makes its own chips for MacBooks, which makes things a little easier. As with Intel and AMD, you still need to pay attention to naming conventions to understand what performance to expect. Apple uses its M-series chipsets in Macs. The entry-level MacBook Air is powered by the M1 chip, with an eight-core CPU and seven-core GPU. Current models feature the M2 series of chips, starting with an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, all the way up to the M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and 38-core GPU. Also, generally speaking, the more cores, the better the performance.
Battery life has less to do with core count and more to do with CPU architecture (Arm vs. x86). Apple’s Arm-based MacBook and the first Arm-based MacBook Copilot Plus Computer The battery life we ​​tested lasted longer than laptops based on Intel and AMD x86 processors.
graphics
The graphics processor handles all the work of driving the screen and generating display content, and accelerates many graphics-related (and increasingly artificial intelligence-related) operations. For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated (iGPU) or discrete (dGPU). As the name suggests, iGPU is part of the CPU package, while dGPU is a separate chip with dedicated memory (VRAM) that communicates directly with it, making it faster than sharing memory with the CPU.
Because the iGPU separates space, memory, and power from the CPU, it is limited by these factors. It supports smaller, lighter laptops, but is far less powerful than a dGPU. Some games and creative software will not run unless a dGPU is detected or sufficient VRAM is available. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing, and other non-professional applications will run fine on an iGPU.
For more power-hungry graphics needs, such as video editing, gaming and streaming, design, etc., you’ll need a dGPU; there are only two real companies making them: Nvidia and AMD, with Intel offering some Xe-based GPUs in its CPUs brand (or the older UHD Graphics brand) iGPU technology products.
memory
For memory, I highly recommend 16GB RAM (8GB is the absolute minimum). RAM is where the operating system stores all the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up quickly. After that, it starts swapping between RAM and SSD, which is slower. Many laptops under $500 come with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, which combined with a slower disk can result in a Windows laptop that runs frustratingly slow. Additionally, many laptops now have the memory soldered to the motherboard. Most manufacturers will disclose this, but if the RAM type is LPDDR, assume it is soldered and cannot be upgraded.
Some PC manufacturers will solder in the memory and leave an internal slot empty to add a RAM stick. You may want to contact your laptop manufacturer or look up your laptop’s full specifications online to confirm. Check the user experience of the network, as the slot may still be difficult to reach, it may require non-standard or hard-to-get memory or other traps.
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 fast, and cheaper laptops often come with slower drives; if your laptop only has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, it may end up switching to that drive, and system speeds may change quickly while you’re working. slow.
Buy what you can afford, and you can always add an external drive or two if you need to use a smaller drive, or use cloud storage to support a small internal drive. Gaming laptops are an exception: I wouldn’t recommend an SSD smaller than 512GB unless you really like offloading games every time you want to play a new one.
