The 9 best laptops of 2024, tested by Mashable staff (2024)

Read Mashable's full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air.

Who it's for:

Apple's older M2 MacBook Air remains an excellent laptop despite losing its "best Macbook" title, especially now that its base configuration is only $999. (The arrival of the M3 version prompted a permanent $100 price drop.) But if you're not on a strict budget, the brand-new M3 model is the MacBook most people should buy in 2024. That includes "creatives, professionals, and students who need robust performance that can handle their multifaceted workflows," Gedeon wrote.

Why we picked this:

The new 15-inch MacBook Air deserves way more fanfare than Apple gave it at launch. (Seriously? Just a blog post?) Its M3 chip was about 20 percent faster than the previous-generation M2 chip in our testing, and it brings new support for WiFi 6E as well as two external displays —though its lid has to stay closed when you use it that way. Plus, the midnight finish now comes with an anodization seal to avoid picking up fingerprints.

The M3 MacBook Air is otherwise a carbon copy of its predecessor, but that's actually a plus: Apple didn't need to change anything about its vibrant display, 1080p webcam, rich speakers, or snappy Magic Keyboard. (It could still use more ports and start with a bit more RAM, though.) Its price has also carried over from the M2 era. As a complete package, it's a decidedly "worthy refresh" that continues the MacBook Air line's Mashable Choice Award-winning streak, Gedeon said.

Note that the M3 MacBook Air also comes in a 13-inch size that starts at $1,099; it has two fewer speakers (four instead of six).

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Read Mashable's full review of the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

Who it's for:

The all-new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is an exceptional all-rounder for nearly anyone due for an upgrade— the ideal blend of performance, power efficiency, build quality, innovation, and overall value. The only reason you should pass on it is if your go-to apps aren't compatible with Windows on ARM.

Why we picked this:

Microsoft's new Qualcomm-powered clamshell laptop stunts on almost every other PC we've gotten our hands on this year. Our 13-inch, Snapdragon X Elite test unit went nearly 23 hours per charge, making it the longest-lasting laptop we've ever tried. It also nabbed the second-highest Geekbench 6 performance score in our entire testing database, zooming past every other laptop except for the opulent Lenovo Legion 9i. (That includes all of current Macbooks; the only Apple device that's on par with it is the strapping new M4 iPad Pro.) If all that feels like overkill or its $1,999.99 price tag gives you sticker shock, know that it starts at just $999.99 with lesser specs.

Design-wise, the Surface Laptop 7 has a modern aluminum chassis that comes in four colorways and doesn't cling to fingerprints. Its bright display can hit a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and its snappy keyboard is paired with a haptic touchpad. You can take your pick from two sizes, too: 13- or 15-inch, the latter of which includes a microSD card reader.

As a Copilot+ PC, the Surface Laptop 7 has a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to support a suite of AI features, including "Cocreator," a generative art tool in Microsoft Paint, "Live Captions," and "Windows Studio Effects" that can blur backgrounds and improve lighting on video calls. (There's also the somewhat sketchy history-saving "Recall" feature, which you'll have to personally enable.) You shouldn't buy this laptop for these tools alone, but Mashable tech editor Kim Gedeon found them to be "attention-stealing" fun when she tried them.

The Surface Laptop 7's Snapdragon CPU is both a blessing and a curse: As an ARM chip (as opposed to an x86 chip from Intel), it's not going to be compatible with certain apps and programs. This may be a big problem for students, as some Reddit users have pointed out. But if that's a non-issue for you, personally, move this machine to the top of your list. It easily earned our Mashable Choice Award, and it's not just our new favorite Windows laptop —it's our new favorite laptop, period. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Surface Laptop 7 is the better choice over M3 MacBooks" if you aren't loyal to any particular operating system, wrote Gedeon.

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Read Mashable's full review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3.

Who it's for:

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go 3 is "ideal for students and busy-bee travelers in need of a portable notebook" with major style points, wrote Gedeon. It also goes on sale quite often, which makes it easier to rationalize its outdated internals.

Why we picked this:

Can you fall in love with a laptop based on its keyboard alone? It happened to Gedeon, who called the Surface Laptop Go 3's keyboard "one of the best" she's ever tested. It's the cherry on top of its excellent and ultra-portable design, which has the sort of lightweight, premium feel you'd expect from a higher-end machine. "[It] should be called 'Windows Air,'" said Gedeon.

The specs under the Surface Laptop Go 3's hood are decidedly more underwhelming, mostly because they're largely unchanged from those in 2022's Surface Laptop Go 2, our previous top budget pick (including the same dim touchscreen display and 720p camera). It is powered by a newer 12th-generation Intel Core CPU, but that's now two generations removed in 2024. And while its base model does have double the storage space and memory of the previous model, it's also more expensive. If you can, try to find it on sale for at least $100 off. (Fortunately, that happens frequently at Amazon and Best Buy.)

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Read Mashable's full review of the HP Chromebook Plus 15.6-inch.

Who it's for:

HP's Chromebook Plus 15.6-inch is a low-cost, large-screened laptop for those who work in the Google productivity ecosystem and watch a lot of YouTube in their free time. If you like numpads, all the better.

Why we picked this:

This HP Chromebook Plus is helmed by a huge, vibrant display that blew me away when I reviewed it: "The colors are intense, with good contrast and rich blacks, and an anti-reflective panel preserves that quality at most viewing angles," to quote my write-up. I loved using it for movie-watching and light gaming (via Xbox Game Pass). On the clock, it was fast enough to handle my daily workflow, which involves a lot of Gmailing and Google Meeting, though its battery life disappointingly drained before the end of my eight-hour shift. I also found it hard to listen to anything playing on it while naked-eared: Its speakers stink.

As one of eight new Chromebook Plus devices, this puppy comes with some interesting new software extras like File Sync, AI-powered webcam settings, and support for some multimedia tools (including Google Magic Eraser and Adobe Express). None of them felt revolutionary in my testing, but they're decent value-adds for such a cheap machine.

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Read Mashable's full review of the Lenovo Legion 9i (Gen 9).

Who it's for:

Those hunting for the most cutting-edge, future-proofed gaming laptop out there should make Lenovo's luxury Legion 9i their white whale. Calling it a splurge is an understatement, so this would be a good one to bookmark for Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. (Snag it if you see it dip under $3,000, said Gedeon, our reviewer.) If you can afford it, all the power to you —lots and lots of power.

Why we picked this:

The Legion 9i is a formidable and flashy 16-inch gaming laptop that starts at $3,839.99; our upgraded review unit with 32GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU came in at an excruciating $4,484.99. Wait, don't go: It does its best to justify that sticker price with premium specs, including a rich, punchy Mini LED display with a 165Hz refresh rate and a self-contained liquid-cooling system that prevents it from overheating while it's plowing through AAA titles. (Lenovo said it's the first 16-inch gaming PC with such a system, which is normally reserved for desktops.) Our loaner unit featured an Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU that earned it a higher Geekbench 6 score than any other laptop we've tested to dateby a not-close margin. It also packs a decent keyboard with customizable per-key RGB lighting and a metric boatload of ports. It's really just about as good as you can get if you keep up with AAA games.

...Well, almost. The Legion 9i is a run-of-the-mill PC gaming machine in the sense that will absolutely shackle you to an outlet: It clocked in at just 41 minutes per charge in our testing. It also weighs in at a hefty 5.64 pounds, so forget about taking it on the go (though it is relatively slim for its size, measuring 0.89 inches thick). It's best to think of it as an ultra-compact gaming rig.

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Note: We'll soon review the next-gen Framework Laptop 16. Preorders for it are now live.

Read Mashable's review of the Framework Laptop (2021).

Who it's for:

DIYers, tinkerers, and anyone sick of buying a new laptop every few years will consider the Framework Laptop a sweet buy (or a sweet relief). We've also pegged it as a good budget laptop, as its long-term value is unrivaled.

Why we picked this:

Repairability doesn't seem like a big deal until your MacBook's battery dies and you have to haul it into the Genius Bar to replace the entire bottom half of the machine. The Framework Laptop 13 is the current version of a previous Mashable Choice Award-winning device that's specifically designed to be fixable at home, even if you have zero prior repair experience, with replaceable CPUs, memory, storage, keyboards, displays, and even expansion cards for ports. What's more, these components can all be individually upgraded whenever Framework introduces new ones — it doesn't get more future-proof than that.

The pre-built, ready-to-use Framework Laptop 13 features a 13.5-inch matte display, improved hinges, and a better battery life than the previous iterations, and it starts with a 13th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage space, and Windows 11 Home. You can also opt for the DIY Edition, which can be customized with the specs (even operating system) of your choosing.

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Read Mashable's full review of the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro. Read our deep dive into the differences between the M3 MacBook Pro and the M3 MacBook Air while you're at it, too.

Who it's for:

The M3 Apple MacBook Pro is probably overkill for casual users, and it can get expensive fast once you start adding more memory. That said, it's a great investment for creative professionals who run intense apps and software on a regular basis.

Why we picked this:

The M3 chipset in the current MacBook Pro "translates to an uptick in performance" over the previous M2 generation, wrote Gedeon, "whether you're diving into photo retouching, video editing, [or] other tasks." Its 10-core GPU features hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing so that games can render more realistic-looking lighting effects. And it's incredibly power-efficient: We got over 16 hours of battery life out of it.

On the outside, you're looking at a pretty standard MacBook Pro — albeit one with a bright and gorgeous 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display; that's Apple-speak for a mini-LED screen with ProMotion technology, aka a 120Hz refresh rate. Gedeon called the accompanying speakers "immaculate," adding: "I see why the MacBook Pro is highly recommended for music producers, podcast hosts, and other audio-focused professionals." There's also a good array of ports built into its base, including an HDMI port and an SDXC card slot.

We do think Apple should add more RAM and a USB-A port the next time it revisits the MacBook Pro, but this was another Mashable Choice Award shoo-in.

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Read Mashable's full review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2.

Who it's for:

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 is an unconventional and versatile machine for deep-pocketed professional artists. Gedeon also "[recommended] this laptop for differently abled users who could take full advantage of [its] adaptive touch trackpad feature."

Why we picked this:

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is, as its name suggests, a laptop. But the unique pull-forward design of its 120Hz, 14.4-inch touchscreen display means it can also "transform into a digital easel and a tablet," said Gedeon, "[making] it an artist's playground." Just like its predecessor from 2021, it's fine-tuned for drawing, sketching, and other creative work —though it still doesn't come bundled with a stylus, which feels like a silly omission on Microsoft's part. (It does have built-in storage and charging for the Surface Slim Pen 2, at least.) Notably, though, its silky-smooth haptic touchpad has an adaptive touch mode for users with limited mobility; it's the same one on the Surface Laptop 7.

Things start looking more familiar once you move inside the Surface Laptop Studio 2, as far as higher-end laptops go. There's a desktop-grade Intel Core H-Series processor and an Intel Iris Xe graphics card in the base model, which you can opt to upgrade to a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU for more oomph. It's not technically a Copilot+ PC, since it doesn't have a Snapdragon X Series CPU, but it does have an NPU that equips its 1080p webcam with Windows Studio Effects. It also counts a microSD card reader among its ample array of ports. All that machinery means it's quite a bit heavy and doesn't last very long away from a power supply, so it'll probably pass on plein air doodling sessions in favor of staying parked on a desk.

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Read Mashable's full review of the Asus Zenbook Duo (2024).

Who it's for:

Asus' latest Zenbook Duo is the tops for zealous multitaskers who need more screen real estate than a standard laptop can provide, but don't want to haul around a separate monitor. It'll also appeal to those who simply appreciate a good, fair value: It looks (and performs) like a machine that costs more than $1,500, a number that includes useful accessories to boot.

Why we picked this:

The Mashable Choice Award-winning Zenbook Duo features two bright OLED displays stacked on top of one another, a detachable Bluetooth keyboard that works with both of them, and a built-in kickstand that allows it to shift into different positions. This design could feel suuuper gimmicky if it wasn't executed smartly, but Asus nailed it —and for well under $2,000. "[Single]-display laptops are now cancelled," said Gedeon, who confessed to feeling "spoiled" after testing this one in her everyday workflow. "How can I work on my MacBook Air, my daily driver, without missing the masterful app-juggling capabilities of the Zenbook Duo?"

Speaking of MacBook Airs: The Zenbook Duo comes with a new Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, which was as swift as Apple's M2 chipset in testing. (That's the one powering our current favorite "budget" MacBook.) Its quiet speakers and dull webcam won't wow anyone who's defecting from Team Apple to Team Windows, but those are minor gripes in the grand scheme of things. For productivity pros, the Zenbook Duo shines where it matters most: screens, speed, and selling price.

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How we tested