1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best budget
4. Best Ultrabook
5. Best 2-in-1
6. Best business
7. Best gaming
8. Benchmark comparisons
9. Recently reviewed
10. How to choose
11. FAQs
12. How we test laptops
13. Why trust Laptop Mag
14-inch laptops have become one of the most popular form factors in recent years, and for good reason: they hit the sweet spot between a 13-inch laptop's portability and a 15-inch laptop's performance. The best ones handle complicated spreadsheets and dozens of browser tabs with ease while keeping everything large enough to read. I've been reviewing laptops since 2018, so I've been on the front lines of this form factor's rise.
Throughout 2024, we've seen the launch of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, Intel's Lunar Lake, Apple's M4, and AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series — all of which will continue to dominate the majority of new laptops into next year. These chips are the future of mobile computing.
The Laptop Mag testing team runs every laptop through a barrage of tests: Geekbench (synthetic CPU test), Handbrake (video encoding CPU test), 3DMark (graphics tests), display tests (brightness, color gamut), battery tests (custom battery rundown), and more. Then, our reviewers put the laptops to use in real-world situations. Our two-pronged review strategy gives a complete picture of each laptop and allows us to compare them thoroughly.
This page is constantly updated based on our latest reviews to reflect Laptop Mag's current picks for the best 14-inch laptops in 2024.
The Quick list
Best overall
Apple's best keeps getting better. The M3 MacBook Pro is hands down the best 14-inch option available right now, especially if you're not tied to the Windows platform.
Best budget
For $1,000 or less, the Acer Swift AI provides more performance and longer battery life compared to many of its pricier rivals. This Windows on ARM laptop is a win-win!
Read more below
Best ultrabook
Power, price, battery life, and a stellar OLED display make this Asus Zenbook S 14 the best ultraportable laptop we've tested so far.
Read more below
Best 2-in-1
Nothing's perfect, but some things get pretty close. One such thing is the HP Spectre x360 14. Its sleek design, stunning 2.8K OLED display, and superb battery life are hard to rival.
Read more below
Best business
The Asus ExpertBook P5's fast keyboard, slew of ports, bright display, and long battery life help keep deadlines in check — and its price won't set off red flags on your next expense report.
Read more below
Best gaming
The Asus TUF Gaming A14 is a delicate balance of performance, price, battery life, durability, and portability — perfect for gaming anywhere.
Read more below
Joanna Nelius has reviewed laptops and computer hardware since 2018. Her work has appeared in The Verge, USA Today, Gizmodo, PC Gamer, and Maximum PC. She also holds an MFA from Chapman University and works as a creative writing instructor.
The best 14-inch laptops in 2024
Why you can trust Laptop Mag Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best overall
Apple MacBook Pro 14 M3 lets you have your cake and eat it too. It has exceptional performance, stellar graphics capabilities, fantastic power efficiency, and has one of the longest-lasting batteries in a laptop we've reviewed in recent years. It's capable of nearly everything.
✔️ You want a lighting fast, multipurpose laptop. Web browsing, video calls, photo and video editing, and even gaming — if you need a single device that can do all those things quickly and reliably, this laptop has you covered.
✔️ You want seemingly endless battery life. The MacBook Pro M3 lasted over 17 hours in our battery test. If you like leaving your charging cable at home (or constantly forget it), you won't have to worry about this laptop dying in the middle of a presentation or lecture. (Taking notes by hand — the horror!)
✖️ You want to avoid the Apple tax. The base MacBook Pro M3 comes with only 8GB of RAM. If you need a laptop for something like 3D rendering, 8GB will not be enough too see you through your project. It costs hundreds of dollars more to upgrade to just 16GB of RAM, and at that point it might make more sense to get a MacBook with an M3 Pro chip, which comes with way more RAM even at the base version.
✖️ You want to log into your laptop with your face. Unlike the iPhone, the MacBook Pro M3 doesn't have FaceID. If you prefer or rely on facial recognition to log into your laptop, you won't be able to do that here.
As former Laptop Mag Editor in Chief, Sherri Smith, said in her review: "It's hard to look for flaws in a notebook that's consistently rated 4.5 stars." The Apple MacBook Pro M3 sets the standard for other 14-inch laptops. It's the total package and an obvious top pick for anybody looking to pick up a laptop in this category. Beyond the MacBook's iconic style, its M3 chip is a consistent powerhouse for accomplishing computing tasks and a real pioneer in efficiency and battery life.
Beyond the MacBook Pro 14's performance, you'll find Apple's iconic keyboard, plus-sized trackpad, powerful speakers, a fantastic high-resolution webcam, and a stunning 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display.
This MacBook Pro 14 is a multipurpose laptop that can do just about anything, from productivity to creation—and even a little gaming, too. Work or play, the MacBook Pro 14 is a best-in-class option well worth a place on any buyer's prospective shortlist.
On the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the MacBook Pro 14-inch M3 managed a multi-core score of 11,870. This is undoubtedly exceptional, which is no surprise considering the M3's unbelievable processing power. It also took 5 minutes and 38 seconds to transcode a 4K video into 1080p, which blasts past the 7-minute and 51-second category average.
Best of all, the battery life on this thing is unreal. On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing at 150 nits, it lasted 17 hours and 16 minutes before dying. This is phenomenal, making it one of the longest-lasting laptops we've reviewed in years. Look no further if you want a powerhouse that can last more than two full workdays.
If you want OLED, its display will leave much to be desired, but its ability to reproduce 81.3 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut makes it colorful enough for most users. And, of course, Apple never disappoints when it comes to brightness, managing an average of 558 nits. This makes it easy to work on even the brightest days.
See our full M3 MacBook Pro review.
Best budget
Acer Swift 14 AI is a productivity speed machine, outperforming most Intel and AMD notebook processors (even Apple's M3). It has one of the longest battery lives we've seen in recent years (17 hours and 30 minutes), and it also offers the best value compared to other Windows on ARM laptops currently on the market.
✔️ Your main concern is cost, but need something more robust than a Chromebook. This laptop provides still the core Windows experience, but is cheaper than many of its Copilot+ PC competitors, both Windows on ARM and Windows x86.
✔️ You are a heavy multitasker. The Acer Swift 14 AI's processor is an absolute thrasher when it comes to running multiple apps at once — even notoriously resource-hungry browsers. No lag, no stutters.
✖️ A native ARM64 version doesn't exist for your most-used apps. Snapdragon laptops run Windows on ARM, while Intel and AMD machines run the x86 version. While Windows on ARM can emulate many x86 apps, that doesn't mean they will run reliably — or at all.
✖️ You want powerful graphics. The Snapdragon X's integrated graphics are far less capable than Intel, AMD, and Apple chips. Don't try to game on this laptop; it averaged 21 frames per second during our Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (Medium, 1080p) benchmark, below our 30 fps threshold.
The Acer Swift 14 AI is part of the first wave of Copilot+ PCs to feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor. These laptops are particularly known for their speed and battery life, even against well-established competitors. However, they are also known for delivering the goods at lower prices, which makes the Swift 14 AI the best budget 14-inch laptop for anyone who wants a robust operating system (not a Chromebook) and the power of a full-fledged laptop.
We've seen the Swift 14 AI go on sale for as low as $900 — a steal considering its commendable CPU performance compared to the MacBook Air M3 and other Windows laptops, including other Snapdragon machines. On the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, the Swift 14 AI (14,531) is 33% faster than the average premium laptop (9,853). It also surpasses some of its notable direct competitors: the MacBook Air M3 by 18% (12,052), the Zenbook 14’s Intel Core Ultra 7 155H by 13% (12,707), and the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus' Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 by 9% (13,281).
The Swift 14 AI also rocked our real-world transfer tests. It needed only four minutes and 46 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake — nearly two minutes faster than MacBook Air M3 (6:30), Zenbook 14 (6:36), Inspiron 14 Plus (6:23), and the average premium laptop (6:36).
Data transfer? That was a piece of cake for the Swift 14 AI, too: 1,891 megabytes per second compared to the category average of 1,493 MBps, which is 22% faster. It's also much faster than the Zenbook 14’s 1TB SSD (1,236 MBps) and the Inspiron 14 Plus’ 512GB SSD (1,510 MBps).
All that's impressive, but its battery life really highlights the Acer Swift 14 AI's power efficiency. Even with such a speedy processor (the faster the CPU, the more power it needs) the battery still lasted 17 hours and 30 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits. We typically recommend productivity laptops that last between 9 and 10 hours; obviously, the Swift 14 AI goes way beyond that. Even the more expensive MacBook Air 13-inch M3 lasted only 15 hours and 13 minutes!
Where other budget laptops usually trade performance to reach sub-$1,000 prices, the Acer made cuts in other areas, notably to the Swift 14 AI's 2560 x 1600, 120Hz display. Our editor, Rami Tabari, said it best in his review. The display "skirts the line between vivid and dull, between bright and dim [...] but at the very least you get to watch content on a high-res, high-refresh screen." The screen does have a higher maximum brightness compared (367 nits) to our previous best budget pick, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (339 nits), though!
See our full Acer Swift 14 AI review.
Best Ultrabook
Asus Zenbook S 14 has an incredible amount of power inside its equally incredible thin and light chassis. The entire device weighs just 2.6 pounds and is only 0.47 inches thick at its thinnest point. It's also one of the fastest laptops we've recently tested, gets nearly 14 hours of battery life, and has a stunning OLED display.
✔️ You regularly watch movies or stream video on a laptop. Its OLED display produces stunning, vivid colors with great accuracy and clarity. It also has surprisingly good speakers for such a thin laptop. It didn't struggle to produce a good bassline.
✔️ You bring your laptop everywhere you go. It weighs next to nothing and barely takes up space in a bag. You shouldn't have to worry about straining a muscle carrying it around.
✖️ You like tactile keyboards. Its chiclet-style keys have 1.1mm of travel, and a lack of physical feedback made typing feel mushy.
✖️ You need PC games to hit at least 60 frames per second. Even with a new Intel Core Ultra 200V series chip its Arc iGPU averaged 48 fps across the games we tested at Medium graphics on 1080p. This laptop fared the worst in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at just 19 fps.
Laptop Mag's Madeline Ricchiuto sums up the Asus Zenbook S 14 nicely in her review: "This is an impressive launch laptop for Intel Lunar Lake and a win for Asus." Nearly everything about it — its design, portability, performance, battery life, and OLED screen — makes it the best-balanced, thin and light laptop in its class.
On the Geekbench 6 cross-platform CPU benchmark, the Zenbook S 14's Core Ultra 7 258V (Intel's new Lunar Lake chip) is evenly matched in single-core performance with the the Asus Zenbook S 16's AMD Ryzen AI 9 chip, 2,751 to 2,765, respectively — that's about a 0.5% difference, so feel free to load the Zenbook S 14 up to its gills (or grills) with browser tabs and simultaneously running apps. It'll handle that just fine.
Unfortunately, the Zenbook S 14 couldn't best the MacBook Pro 14 M3 (3,163) as it's about 14% slower in single-core. But it's evenly matched with the Dell XPS 13's Snapdragon X Elite chip (2,797, so about a 1% difference), and it's 11.5% faster than last-gen's Asus Zenbook 14 OLED with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (2,435).
This laptop's story is flipped when it comes to multicore performance, though. Against the MacBook Pro 14 M3, it scored 11,157 to 11,968, or about 7% slower — but it trails behind the Asus Zenbook S 16 (13,282, or 16%), Dell XPS 13 (14,635 or 24%), and Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (12,707 or 13%). That's disappointing to see, especially compared to Intel's last-gen Meteor Lake chip.
But the Zenbook S 14 makes up for that with its quick SSD, taking just 17.8 seconds to complete our 25GB File Copy test at a transfer rate of 1,513 MBps. That's three to four seconds faster than the XPS 13 and Zenbook 14 OLED, and almost 12 seconds faster than the Zenbook S 16.
It's OLED display and battery life are this laptop's most impressive features. The glossy, 3K display produces rich and accurate colors. Its peak brightness (342 nits), though dimmer than some of its competitors, is still bright enough to ward off the harsh glare of fluorescent office lighting. The 3K display also helps conserves power, while still looking as crisp and clear as 4K; the Zenbook S 14 lasted just under 14 hours in our web surfing battery test.
While that's not as long as some of its competitors, it's impressive how Asus fit a large, 72Wh battery inside the laptop's incredibly thin chassis. That definitely has a hand in powering this laptop past the 10-hour mark.
See our full Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review.
Best 2-in-1
HP Spectre x360 14 is a marvelous 2-in-1 laptop. It looks beautiful, has pleasantly tactile keys, great speakers, battery life, performance, OLED display — it ticks nearly all the need, want, and nice-to-have checkboxes.
✔️ You have the money. Seems obvious, sure, but it's uncommon to see a convertible laptop have this many fantastic features. Where other brands sacrifice audio or display quality, or even performance, the Spectre x360 14 has nearly everything an ideal laptop should have.
✔️ You regularly use laptops in your actual lap. It stays pleasantly cool, rarely exceeding our 95-degree threshold. The warmest bit was one spot on the underside, but the keyboard doesn't exceed 94 degrees.
✖️ You need a lot of ports. It has one USB-A port, two USB-C ports, and a power port. That's it.
✖️ You need a good drawing tablet. While 2-in-1s are, of course, designed to be tablets as well as laptops, the display color accuracy on the Spectre x360 14 isn't the best. It covers only 85.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is well below what the average premium laptop offers.
Once in a while, we're blessed by the emergence of a 2-in-1 that crushes expectations in every conceivable manner. In this case, the HP Spectre x360 14 is not only the ultimate 14-inch 2-in-1 laptop, but it's the best of the year, period. "It's a star, and a hell of a one at that," as Laptop Mag editor, Rami Tabari, called it in his review.
This is thanks to the culmination of phenomenal battery life, a stunning OLED display, powerful speakers, a sleek design, and solid performance, thanks to the Intel Ultra 7 155H and a satisfying keyboard.
On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits, we saw the Spectre x360 last 11 hours before running out of juice. For context, our previous best 2-in-1, the Lenovo Yoga 9i (Gen 8), lasted 10 hours and 10 minutes before dying.
Thanks to the power of OLED, you don't have much to worry about if you're a fan of a solid-looking display. It features a 2,880 x 1,800-pixel resolution touchscreen with OLED technology, meaning blacks are far deeper and inkier.
On the colorimeter, the HP Spectre x360 covered 86% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is solid but not the best compared to competing laptops like the Lenovo Yoga 9i (136%). However, anything with an 80% or higher DCI-P3 coverage is usually more than enough to enjoy a nice and vivid panel and OLED historically performs lower on DCI-P3 testing. Its brightness of 366 nits isn't super high, but that's unsurprising, considering OLED panels are typically a tad dimmer.
Of course, its Intel Ultra 7 155H performance delivers excellent scores and real-world speeds. On the Geekbench 6.1 overall performance test, the Spectre x360 managed a multi-core score of 12,358. That's stellar and absolutely crushes previous-generation chips, even pulling ahead of the MacBook M3 (11,968).
See our full HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) review.
Best business
Asus ExpertBook P5 has all the essentials (and a little more) that make a great business laptop: extra long battery life, more than enough performance to handle complicated spreadsheets, and a plethora of ports. It offers all that at an affordable price, too.
✔️ You need a lot of ports. Need to connect to an external display? There's an HDMI port for that. Use wired headphones? There's a port for that. Use peripherals with either a USB-A or USB-C connections? This laptop has both.
✔️ Regularly work in productivity apps. This laptop easily runs dozens of open browsers tabs, local software, and streaming music or video at the same time. It also has a fast SSD and exceeded what the average laptop in its class is capable of during our 25GB file transfer test. (1,783.9 MBps to 1,431.71 MBps, respectively.)
✖️ You don't like the design. Some people (like me) put aesthetics high up on their list of laptop must-haves. This laptop looks pretty basic, really leaning into its business side with a simple, all gray chassis. Its only distinguishing mark is the “Asus ExpertBook” logo on the lid, which also looks basic.
✖️ You love using trackpads. Sure, this one has a smooth surface and registered gestures accurately, but actually clicking it feels soft, not crisp or clacky. If you're all about tactile feedback, you might be disappointed by this trackpad.
The Asus ExpertBook P5 has all the essentials of a business laptop and then some: a fast Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, well-spaced and comfortable keyboard, battery life, a 144Hz display, tons of RAM, tons of ports, and even surprisingly good speakers. Its looks are nothing to gawk at but it provides so much at such a great value, it doesn't matter that it lacks panache.
If your day-to-day business tasks mostly comprise of working on the web or using local productivity apps, the Asus ExpertBook P5 is a multitasking champ. It can handle dozens of open Chrome tabs with spreadsheets, music, video, emails and more all at once.
It bore similar multicore results to the Asus Zenbook S 14 in our Geekbench 6 overall performance test, falling behind its main competitors like the MacBook Air M3 and HP EliteBook Ultra, by about 7% to 12%, but this shouldn't be an issue as long as you are not looking for a dedicated photo or video editing machine. (We have other recommendations for that.) Still, the ExpertBook P5 surpasses the average premium laptop by about 9%, 11,259 to 10,308, respectively.
While the ExpertBook P5 performance and battery life is comparable to the Asus Zenbook S 14, it shines in two crucial areas for any business laptop: the webcam and thermals. In a well-lit environment its color accuracy is on-point, whether what's on screen in is the foreground or background.
The ExpertBook P5 also effectively manages the heat it puts out. Our managing editor, Sean Riley, said it's "one of the coolest laptops" he's ever encountered when he reviewed it. All but one spot on the laptop stayed well below Laptop Mag's 95-degree threshold — and the spot that didn't only spiked to 95.4 degrees. The HP Elite x360 1040 G11, by comparison, reached 103.1 degrees on the underside. The Zenbook S 14 and Zenbook S 16 reached 97.7 and 105.5, respectively — and the Dell XPS 13 reached an alarming 120.
See our full Asus ExpertBook P5 review.
Best gaming
Asus TUF Gaming A14 is an excellent, highly portable machine with the best battery life we've seen in a gaming laptop in the last few years. It looks sleek, refined, and its RTX 4060 exceeds way past 60 frames per second in most games we tested. It offers all that at a reasonable price, too.
✔️ You want a thin and light laptop that's also a great gaming PC. Not only do games look fantastic on this laptop's IPS display, they perform great, too. Out of all the games we tested, which included Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Far Cry 6, this gaming laptop averaged 63 frames per second on Medium graphics at 1080p.
✔️ You want the battery to last more than five hours. Gaming laptops are notorious for having short battery life, but this one has double the life of most of them — ten hours compared to an average of five!
✖️ You love to max out the graphics — at the display's native resolution. Nvidia's DLSS and Frame Generation will help a bit, but they can only do so much on a RTX 4060. Especially in a demanding game like Cyberpunk 2077, which averaged just 30 fps in our tests.
✖️ You like gaming with laptops on your lap. The TUF Gaming A14 gets way too hot for that! The underside reached 116 degrees during our testing. Just don't do it.
The Asus TUF Gaming A14 is a 14-inch gaming laptop done right: respectable gaming performance in a thin and light chassis, a brighter and more colorful screen than the average IPS display, and a battery life that makes other gaming laptops weep. The 14-inch ROG Zephyrus may be a long-standing gamer favorite, but the TUF Gaming A14 offers much of the same experience at a more affordable price.
This gaming laptop is ideal for anyone who can still enjoy a game even if its graphics aren't cranked to the max — though the RTX 4060 will still net you higher framerates with Nvidia's DLSS and Frame Generation technology enabled. Without either of those enabled, the TUF Gaming A14 still pulls higher frame rates than last year's ROG Zephyrus G14 and keeps up with some of its similarly-configured competitors.
In Far Cry 6 at 1080p the TUF Gaming A14 averaged 77 frames per second, where the Zephyrus G14 averaged 69 fps and the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 averaged 82 fps. The TUF Gaming A14 fared better in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, averaging 87 fps, equivalent to the Predator Helios Neo 16 and 10 frames ahead of the Zephyrus G14. It's a similar story with more graphically intensive games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077.
While an IPS panel can't match the vibrancy of OLED, the TUF Gaming A14 has one of the more color accurate and brighter ISP displays out there. It showcases the moody and colorful landscapes from games like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree well, and its max brightness (411 nits) ensures characters are still visible even in the darkest of movie scenes.
Gaming laptops generally aren't known for having long battery lives, but the TUF Gaming A14 shatters that stereotype. Where the average gaming laptop lasts around five hours (and some can't even last that long), this one gets twice the amount of battery power: 10 hours! It even ousts Acer's Predator Helios Neo 14, its closest competitor, by a hour and 15 minutes.
To quote our reviewer, Claire Tabari, this the "longest lasting gaming laptop we've seen in over four years." The last time we saw this much battery life in a gaming laptop was when we reviewed the 2020 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (11 hours and 32 minutes).
See our full review of the Asus TUF Gaming A14.
Benchmark Comparisons
Click to view chart data in table format
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Apple MacBook Pro 14 M3 | Acer Swift 14 AI | Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) | HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) | Asus ExpertBook P5 (P5405) | Asus TUF Gaming A14 (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 (Higher is better) | 11,870 | 14,531 | 11,157 | 12,358 | 11,259 | 11,330 |
| Handbrake time ((MM.SS), lower is better) | 05:38 | 04:46 | 08:30 | 07:30 | 07:27 | 04:21 |
| Battery life - Web surfing (HH.MM) | 17:16 | 17:30 | 13:51 | 11:01 | 14:22 | 10:04 |
| SSD transfer speeds (MBps, higher is better) | Not tested | 1,891 | 1,513 | 1,362 | 1,783.90 | 1,339 |
| DCI-P3 Color Gamut (Higher is better) | 81% | 76% | 82.00% | 85.80% | 77.30% | 82% |
| Display Brightness (Nits, higher is better) | 558 | 367 | 342 | 366 | 465 | 411 |
| Hottest temperature (95 degree comfort threshold) | 81 | 100 | 97.7 | 102 | 95.4 | 116 |
Recently Reviewed Laptops
Not every laptop can make the best 14-inch laptop page. (We wouldn't be doing you that much good if that were the case!) We review new laptops every week and over 100 laptops yearly, so here's a look at our most recently reviewed laptops that didn't make this page either due to a fault, display size, form factor, or something else.
How to choose the best 14-inch laptop
14-inch laptops can be used for any number of reasons, including gaming, productivity, business, and more. So here's what you should look out for when picking a great laptop.
Budget: What you get for your money
You can find decent laptops for under $500, but you will spend up to $1,000 or more for most laptops on this list. If you have no issue with that, you can still save some money with the best budget pick, which manages to stay under that. If you'd like to go above and beyond, you can spend $2,000 or more on some of our other picks.
Design: 2-in-1 or Clamshell?
More and more of today's laptops are 2-in-1s with screens that either bend back 360 degrees or detach so you can use them as tablets. If you like the idea of using your laptop in slate mode for drawing, media consumption, or just standing up, a 2-in-1 could be for you. We even have a foldable laptop on the list for those wanting to get fancy. However, you can often get better features or a lower price with a traditional clamshell-style laptop.
Battery Life: 9+ Hours for Portability
Unless you plan to use your laptop only on your desk, battery life matters. Even within the home or office, having plenty of juice enables you to work on the couch or at the conference table without being chained to the nearest outlet. We recommend getting a laptop that lasted over 9 hours on the Laptop Mag Battery Test for the best portability. The longest-lasting laptops endure anywhere between 10 and 15 hours. If you're gaming, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything that lasts this long.
FAQs
Q: What is a Copilot+ PC?
A: Microsoft has specific requirements as to what it considers a Copilot+ PC. One of those requirements is that a laptop's processor must have an NPU capable of reaching at least 40 TOPS to run more advanced Windows AI features like Recall, Automatic super resolution, and Live Captions.
Copilot+ PCs have a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Plus, an Intel Core Ultra 200V series, or AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processor. However, the advanced AI features are currently only available on Snapdragon laptops. A free update for Intel and AMD laptops should be available to Windows Insiders by December 2024.
Q: How is Windows on ARM laptop different from a regular (x86) Windows laptop?
A: Windows on ARM laptops are configured with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Plus processor. Laptops with the x86 version of Windows are powered by either an Intel or AMD processor. Each Windows version uses a different instruction set (ARM or x86), so it needs a processor that can run it.
For most people, using one versions of Windows or the other shouldn't be an issue. But depending on what apps you use day to day, some might not be compatible with Windows on ARM. App compatibly is growing, but it's best to verify what you need will work before buying one of these laptops.
Q: What graphics card do I need in a gaming laptop?
It depends! If you want high frame rates and stunning graphics, then an RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 are your best bet. Those graphics cards make the most out of high refresh rate, OLED displays. If you are willing to compromise on one or the other, look for gaming laptops with either an RTX 4070, 4060, or 4050.
However, an RTX 4070 gaming laptop usually provides the best balance between frame rate and great graphics. Some are pricier than others, so do shop around to find something that fits your budget.
Q: I already have a stylus; will it work with one of these laptops if it has a touchscreen?
A. That depends! Not all touchscreens have stylus support. The ones that do might not support the same type of pens. We recommend checking the manufacture's website of both the laptop and stylus to be absolutely sure.
This will help you determine what pen protocols the stylus and laptop support. The two main ones are Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) and Wacom AES. They're not intercompatible, but some pens support both, while others only support one.
How we test laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing—both synthetic and real-world—before we send it to our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers, and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the laptop's display's brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut. For performance testing, we run the computer through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 6 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is Sid Meier's Civilization 6 Gathering Storm benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution. For gaming laptops, we test Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6, and others.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 11 laptops, a runtime of over nine hours is considered a good result, whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered longer than five hours deserve praise.
We complement these tests with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers, who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag reviews over a hundred laptops yearly, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.
We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades and continues to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
One of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing, enforces our editorial trustworthiness. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.
