Best HP Laptops of 2025
HP sells a variety of laptops, with many models available in a variety of configurations to meet your performance and budget needs. If you need help finding the right HP laptop, we can help. Here are the main considerations to keep in mind when buying a new laptop.
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. But laptop manufacturers are increasingly no longer making components that can be easily upgraded, 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 buy more laptops for less. Like other vendors, HP sells laptops on a rotating basis on its website.
size
If you take your laptop to class or work most mornings, or just to the local coffee shop, you’ll want a smaller, lighter laptop—one with a 13-inch or 14-inch screen. If you’re buying a laptop for home or work and don’t plan on traveling with it often, you might be better served by getting a larger 15-inch, 16-inch, or even 17-inch display that gives you more for work, entertainment, and more. and multitasking space.
exhibit
There are a lot of factors to consider when deciding on a monitor: how much content you need to display (surprisingly, resolution is more important than screen size), what type of content you’ll be seeing, and whether you’ll be using it for gaming or creative effort.
You do want to optimize for pixel density; that is, the number of pixels per inch your screen can display. Although there are other factors that 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 math, you can find the math you need to do there, too. ) As a rule of thumb, we recommend a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per inch.
Because of the way Windows scales your display, it’s often better to use 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.
On lower resolution displays, text and image edges may appear blurry. Look for at least a Full HD 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution, or 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution on laptops with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is higher than a traditional 16:9 widescreen monitor and offers more Vertical screen real estate works without significantly increasing floor space. Quad High Definition (QHD) resolution of 2,560×1,440 pixels (2,560×1,600 on a 16:10 display) will produce sharper text and images and may be sufficient for a 13- or 14-inch laptop display – You don’t necessarily need a 4K monitor.
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.
However, 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 processing unit (or GPU) 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. In fact, some games and creative software won’t run unless a dGPU is detected or sufficient VRAM is available. However, 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, STEM and design applications, and games, 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, we highly recommend 16GB RAM, with 8GB being 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.
However, 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. And 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 pitfalls including voiding the warranty.
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. But not all SSDs are equally fast, and cheaper laptops often come with slower drives; if your laptop only has 8GB of RAM, it may end up switching to that drive, and the system may slow down quickly while you work.
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: We don’t recommend an SSD smaller than 512GB unless you really like offloading games every time you play a new one.
