The best 4K laptops in 2024

The best 4K laptops will elevate your viewing experience, whether you're a professional editing photos or video, or a film-buff that is dying to watch their favorites on a gorgeous screen. 4K laptops are often brighter and more colorful as well, so you're getting more than a bump in resolution. 

Resolutions are continuing to climb, especially as media adapts the form, and this has been especially noticeable in gaming. The best gaming laptops typically provide sharp and colorful displays (as long as you can afford it). You'll find the best 4K laptops in nearly every category, including the best laptops and the best 2-in-1 laptops.

More importantly, professionals will see these laptops on the best video editing laptops page. However, professionals and film-lovers alike will have to make some sacrifices for the best 4K laptops. Their battery life usage is the biggest con (consider these 3K laptops that last all day). But there are a few 4K laptops that can blow past the rest in terms of longevity. 

We determined which were the best 4K laptops by measuring the nits of brightness and the percentage of sRGB or DCI-P3 that their panels cover. When (not if) 8K laptops arrive, we'll be ready for a whole new page for you.

The Quick List

Best 4K Laptop Overall

The vivid, colorful OLED display on the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo doesn't eat through battery life like most 4K displays, which makes this a clear winner. So you can binge-watch your favorite movies and shows all day without needing to be chained down to a power outlet.

The 16-inch display is also incredibly color accurate, covering 137.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut which is well above the mainstream laptop average (84.4%). It's also above-average in brightness, with an average of 368.2 nits. 

With 13 hours and 4 minutes of battery life, Intel's latest Ultra 7 155H CPU and integrated Arc GPU, the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo is the perfect laptop for almost any task.

See our full MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo review.

Best 4K Gaming Laptop

Alienware's X17 desktop replacement bruiser raised the bar of what a gaming laptop can and should be. It's only 0.8-inches thick but contains quality hardware including an Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and dual SSDs. The 17.3-inch 4K display covered 116.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and will stand up to most lighting setups with 438-nit max brightness.

Of course it's also seriously expensive at $3,679 ($2,199 starting), so it’s not the laptop for people on a budget. But if you can afford it, the Alienware X17 is a hell of a powerhouse that easily makes its way onto our best 4K laptops page.

See our full Alienware X17 review.

Best 16-inch 4K Laptop

Is 15 inches too small? 17 inches too big? Split it down the middle with this slick 16-inch laptop from Razer. The Razer Blade 16's 16-inch display is the world's first dual-mode mini-LED panel. The Blade 16's 4K+ (3840 x 2400) mode is clocked in at 120Hz, while the FHD+ (1920x1200) mode provides a blistering 240Hz refresh rate.

The dual-mode 16-inch display on the Blade 16 covers 93% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with a Delta-E accuracy of 0.18. And it averaged 467 nits of brightness, which is well above the category average.

While the Blade 16's 5 hour and 29 minute battery life isn't enough to make it through a full work day, it will at least let you untether from an outlet for a few hours of mobility.

See our full Razer Blade 16 review.

Best 15-inch 4K Laptop

The HP ZBook Studio G8 maintains the G7 series' award-winning style, but adds more power to help creative professionals and content creators blaze through their projects. It's a gorgeous, powerful $4,727 system with MIL-SPEC toughness and a 4K OLED touchscreen.

The Studio G8's 15.6-inch Gorilla Glass 6, multi-touch OLED display provides sharp, vivid images and video while editing and gaming. We measured the Studio G8's display at 142.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is well over the premium laptop average of 84.4%. The ZBook Studio G8 is also a stunningly bright laptop with an average brightness of 464 nits.

See our full HP ZBook Studio G8 review.

Best 4K Workstation

The HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 is an absolute powerhouse of a workstation with an Intel Xeon processor and Nvidia RTX A5000 graphics. Of course, all that power comes with a steep price tag. The configuration we tested cost a hefty $6K, and is overkill for most laptop users.

All that power sits just underneath an incredible 4K display, which covers an outstanding 161.7% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. That's some of the best color coverage we've ever seen, and on a 4K display no less. On our brightness test, the ZBook Fury 17 averaged 532 nits which is substantially higher than the premium laptop average.

The ZBook Fury 17 G8's only weakness is battery life. The ZBook Fury 17 lasted 7 hours and 10 minutes, which is just under the standard work day. And with more intensive tasks, that number will drop. So you will need to make sure you have an outlet handy to keep this monster of a laptop going.

See our full HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 review.

Best almost 4K laptop

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 deserves this honorable mention because the 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display is just pixels off from being a proper 4K screen. With powerful performance, a portable design, and incredible battery life it is a fantastic option if you don't need exactly 4K resolutions.

The Macbook's screen covers 81.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is a bit below the premium laptop average (84.4%). However, it does hit an average of 560 nits max brightness, which is far from dim.

The main selling point of the Macbook Pro 16 is its outstanding 18 hours and 5 minutes of battery life, which leaves nearly every other laptop on this list in the dirt.

See our full Apple Macbook Pro 16 (M3 Max) review.

How to Choose a 4K laptop

Choosing the best 4K laptops for you really depends on what you’re using the laptop for. Do you just want to watch movies on a pretty screen? Are you into gaming and want to experience high frames all in 4K? Or are you a professional creator that needs a 4K laptop for video editing and 3D modelling? Once you know what you're buying that dazzling display for, you can work backwards from there.

How We Test 4K Laptops

We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of 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 brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests. 

To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.

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 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise. 

These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.

Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops every year, 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 we continue 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. 

Our editorial trustworthiness is enforced by one of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.