Best Laptops (2026): My Honest Advice Having Tested Hundreds

I've been reviewing laptops for well over a decade, sometimes testing over 30 devices per year. As you can probably guess, they aren't all winners, and many should be avoided—no matter how cheap the discount is. Good news—it's my job to recommend laptops that fit your budget and won't make you regret your purchase six months later. So, don't fall for the marketing, fake sales, or knock-off brands on Amazon. These are my favorite laptops that I've tested myself and would highly recommend you buy.

For more guidance, also see my recommendations in specific categories, such as Best MacBooks, Best Gaming Laptops, Best Chromebooks, Best Budget Laptops, Best Windows Laptops, and Best 2-in-1 Laptops. My guide to How to Choose a Laptop may also help if you're undecided.

The Laptops I Recommend Most

When friends or family ask what laptop to buy, I always start with the MacBook Air. This little laptop is far more powerful than most people realize. With the update to the M5, its GPU is now as powerful as the M3 Pro MacBook Pro, speeding up everything from games to video renders. That's not at all what the MacBook Air is designed for, but the performance is there when you want to dabble. It's what makes it feel like a do-it-all machine, all contained in a fanless chassis that's still one of the thinnest laptops you can buy. Oh, and did I mention it'll last well over a full work day away from the wall and perform as well on battery as when plugged in? In almost every aspect, it's the gold standard.

You might dissuaded from the MacBook Air for the attractive price of the new MacBook Neo. But if you work in front of a computer for eight hours a day, the performance, extra memory, super fast storage speed, and Thunderbolt ports make the MacBook Air the right option. Unlike with the Neo, you'll never have to stop and wonder if you've got the right computer for the job. (If you don't already know that you need a MacBook Pro for your work, you probably don't.)

I know not everyone wants a Mac. Not everyone wants to submit to walled garden of Apple, or maybe there are specific applications you rely on that require Windows. Windows has a really solid alternative to the MacBook Air: the Surface Laptop 13.8 (also known as the 7th Edition). It's almost as good as the MacBook Air in many different areas, and it even surpasses it in others. The MacBook Air might be slightly thinner, but the Surface Laptop comes with an additional USB-A port. There are lots of little tradeoffs like that. My favorite aspect of the Surface Laptop 13.8 is the screen, though. This is easily the superior screen compared to the MacBook Air, offering a touchscreen, a 120-Hz refresh rate, and a taller 3:2 aspect ratio. Like the MacBook Air, there's a 15-inch version as well that's otherwise identical.

My one caveat with this current version of the Surface Laptop is that it came out in mid-2024, and we've been waiting for the update to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips with improved performance. These are rolling out on other laptops, but Microsoft has yet to announce a refreshed Surface Laptop. My best guess would be an announcement around the Microsoft Build developer conference in early June, but we'll have to wait and see.

Lastly, I'll point you in the direction of the Asus Zenbook S 16. I've always appreciated this laptop for its stunning design. That all-white aesthetic, oversized trackpad, and those thin bezels make it stand out. There's also the fact that it's only 0.48 inches thick, which is very close to as thin as the MacBook Air. My only problem with this laptop has been that the pricing refused to drop throughout much of last year. It was hard to justify at over $1,500, regardless of how polished it felt. These days, the price is hovering around or under $1,000, making it much easier to swallow. What you get is an absolutely stacked laptop, with more memory and twice the storage as the MacBook Air. The OLED display is also gorgeous. It's high-resolution at 2880 x 1800 and has a 120-Hz refresh rate. It doesn't get much more high-end than that.

Buy one of those three laptops, and you'll find very little to complain about. But not everyone has $1,000 or more to spend on a laptop. And even though a good discount will never raise a decent into the category of the three laptops listed above, you'll likely be surprised by just how good laptops have become that falls under $800.

Cheap Laptops That Are Actually Good

Everyone has a different idea of “cheap," but conventionally, these are laptops that land below $750 or so. This is where Windows laptops really shine these days, as they often offer great specs for less money. And in case you haven't been paying attention, the latest silicon from Qualcomm and Intel have dramatically improved battery life, and can now play in the same ballpark as Apple. The best deal of them all has to be the HP OmniBook 5. For just $500, this little laptop offers a Snapdragon X processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. It even has an OLED screen! It'd be a bit harder to recommend at the full retail price of $800 (if only because the resolution of the screen is just 1920 x 1200), it's an unbeatable deal at $500.

The Dell 14 Plus is one step up from there, with a current starting price of $650. The specs are comparable, as is the battery life and performance. You'll get a bit more graphics thanks to the switch to Intel, but they otherwise feel similar in quality. The major upgrade you get with the Dell 14 Plus is the display, which is higher-resolution at 2560 x 1600. It's not OLED like the OmniBook 5, but the sharper screen results in an overall better experience that's worth the $150 in my book.

Speaking of better displays, that's where the MacBook Neo really shines. This is Apple's new entry-level device, which starts at $599. It has the best display on a laptop you can buy at this price, and gets you the macOS experience at an unprecedented price. Apple prioritized its front-of-screen experience to give it a premium feel, whether that's in the display, the build quality, or even the keyboard. The 8 GB of RAM is a major drawback, as is the slower ports and SSD performance. As I said above, the MacBook Air is the better choice for most remote workers. But for students, travelers, or anyone whose use of a laptop is a bit more minimal, the MacBook Neo is the most premium-feeling laptop you can buy at this price.

Given how good some of these other budget laptops are, it's a bit harder to find a place for Chromebooks. The best of the bunch is still the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, which is the most premium Chromebook ever made, sporting an OLED screen, 16 GB of RAM, and competitive battery life with the MacBook Neo. $649 is probably more than what most people want to spend on a Chromebook, that has more to do with the perception of Chromebooks and less to do with the quality of this particular laptop.

There are much cheaper Chromebooks out there, of course, but once you get under $500, they usually come with some considerable drawbacks to the quality of the screen and touchpad. The one exception is the Acer Chromebook Plus 516. While it's a bit thick and the screen isn't the sharpest (especially for a 16-inch laptop), it's the best laptop you can buy under $300.

Powerful Laptops for Those Who Need It

The M5 Max MacBook Pro is the real deal. Not only is it immensely powerful, it's also surprisingly portable and gets fantastic battery life. Those three things don't seem physically possible, but the 16-inch M5 Max MacBook Pro pulls it off. That's been true of the “Max” chips for years, but with the M5 generation, it's never been more impressive. Not only does this year's M5 Max greatly expand the capabilities of the GPU again, it also significantly bumps up this laptop's on-device AI processing with a more efficient Neural Engine, AI accelerators in each of the 40 GPU cores, and faster memory bandwidth. It's one of the most powerful AI laptops you