Best laptops in 2025: My top 10 recommendations in January

CES 2025 is behind us, with dozens of new laptops announced alongside powerful new chips from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. Some of these laptops will arrive this month, while others, like the Nvidia Geforce RTX 50 series gaming laptops, are months away.

If you need the best laptop of 2025 right now, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 remains the best choice for most people. For an affordable price, this laptop delivers enough computing power for most users, and it has a durable build and a long-lasting battery. Prefer Windows? The Asus ZenBook 14 OLED checks the same boxes at a similar price, while the Acer Swift Go 14 is an even more affordable option. If you have more specialized needs, like a gaming laptop, business laptop, or 2-in-1 laptop, don't worry; I've got recommendations for you, too.

Over the last year, I saw a massive leap forward in two critical categories: performance and battery life, so even if you're upgrading after just a few years, you can expect a dramatic boost from any of the laptops in this guide. As the managing editor of Laptop Mag, I oversee our expert testing and reviews of over one hundred laptops annually. These days, the market is more complex than ever before, but I can help make your search easy.

Our two-pronged review strategy gives a complete picture of each laptop. The Laptop Mag testing team runs a series of rigorous tests on every laptop: Geekbench (synthetic CPU test), Handbrake (video encoding CPU test), 3DMark (graphics tests), display tests (brightness, color gamut), battery tests (custom battery rundown), and more. Laptops are then turned over to our reviewers to use in real-world situations. Dozens of hours go into every review produced for Laptop Mag.

This page is constantly updated based on our latest reviews to reflect Laptop Mag's current picks for the best laptops in 2025.

Curated by

Curated by

Sean Riley

Sean Riley has covered a wide variety of tech during his 15 years as a journalist and product reviewer, including five years reviewing laptops at Laptop Mag. As the managing editor, he has a role in every laptop review published on Laptop Mag, so you can trust his guidance in finding the best laptop for you.

The best laptop for most people:

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Weighing a mere 2.7 pounds, Apple’s smallest laptop features the M3 chip, which delivers a power and efficiency boost over its predecessor. This makes it my pick as the best laptop for most people.

The MacBook Air's 13.6-inch display is one of the brightest laptops around, and True Tone ensures excellent color accuracy, but its vibrancy falls short of some of the OLED competition. Rumors of Apple moving to OLED in the future abound, but not yet.

Like the M2 Air, the MacBook Air M3 is one of the thinnest laptops at only 0.4 inches. However, unlike many ultraportable laptops, it can keep up with an impressive workload thanks to the M3 chip. Whether it was our benchmarks or real-world usage, the Air M3 was up for any task.

Looking at the benchmarks, the MacBook Air M3 scored 12,087 on Geekbench 6.2, well above the category average. Our Handbrake video transcoding test took 7 minutes and 54 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p. Again, this beats the average, but it's worth noting that some of its Intel Core Ultra-powered competition is passing the MacBook here. Apple also addressed the slightly slower SSD read/write performance of the Air M2, jumping from 2,800.1/2,210.6MBps on the M2 to 3,030.7/3,058.8MBps with the M3.

All that performance prowess doesn't hurt its battery life, either. If finding an outlet can be a challenge during your day, never fear. The Air M3 powered through over 15 hours of battery life testing in our lab.

If that’s not enough, you also get a 1080p webcam with Apple's latest software tricks helping to boost the hardware to higher heights. So what are the downsides? If you have a lot of peripherals, the pair of Thunderbolt/USB-C ports may be challenging, but at least you have MagSafe 3 to keep both ports free while charging.

Starting at $1,099, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 isn't cheap but remains a solid value, and Apple made it an even better value on October 30, 2024, by bumping up the base RAM to 16GB, previously a $200 upgrade that we recommended most people buy.

If you want to save money, the 13-inch MacBook Air M2 sticks around at a new $999 starting price, and I expect to see it regularly discounted to $899 or less, so look at the best MacBook deals before picking one up.

Need more screen real estate? Look no further than the 15-inch MacBook Air M3. It mirrors all of the strengths of its smaller sibling but with a larger 15.3-inch display. The new MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 and MacBook Pro 16-inch M4 Pro may sway Apple fans with more high-performance needs, but rest assured the Air remains the right choice for most people.

See our full 13-inch MacBook Air M3 review
See our full 15-inch MacBook Air M3 review
See our full 13-inch MacBook Air M2 review
More like this: Best Macbook 2025

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Best laptop on a budget

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Acer's Swift Go 14 is the easy choice for the best budget laptop. Starting at $749, the Go 14 isn't the cheapest laptop, but its value is incredible. We reviewed the slightly upgraded $999 configuration, but the main trade-off is moving from an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H to a Core Ultra 5 125H. The performance difference will be negligible if you stick to productivity work, browsing, and other general computing.

The design remains the same at either price, with the Go 14 coming in at just 2.9 pounds. The metallic all-aluminum chassis gives off a faint sparkle that looks and feels far more premium than its price. Popping it open, the contrasting black chiclet-style backlit keyboard looks and feels excellent. Acer also gives you ports aplenty on this portable laptop with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI port, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot.

The display lands just below the mainstream average for color at 79.1 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut (85.2 percent is average), but it beats the category average in brightness at 374 nits (354 is average). Again, factoring in the price, these are strong results. You could also opt for the 2.8K display configuration if you value a sharper image.

Performance with our review model was everything we've come to expect from the latest Intel Core Ultra. Our Geekbench 6.2 overall performance test scored 12,434, overtaking more expensive options like the MacBook Air M3 (12,087). It also scorched the competition for our Handbrake video encoding test at 5 minutes and 18 seconds, almost four full minutes under the category average (9:07), again besting the MacBook Air M3 (7:54).

So what are the drawbacks? The battery life isn't bad, at 9 hours and 50 minutes in our testing, but it is well below top options like the MacBook Air M3 (15:21) or the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (15:52). If you frequently travel or otherwise have difficulty plugging in, this could impact your decision. The built-in speakers are also less than stellar, so plan on some wireless headphones or earbuds.

However, these are minor concerns for most users, so if you are looking for the best laptop value, look no further than the Acer Swift Go 14.

See our full Acer Swift 14 Go (Intel Core Ultra) review
More like this: Best budget laptops 2025

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Best laptop for students

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Asus has been on a roll with the Zenbook 14 OLED line for a few years, so while it is no longer a surprise, this early 2024 Zenbook takes yet another significant leap forward.

This is in no small part due to the new Intel Core Ultra chipset inside, which puts the Zenbook 14 OLED on par with any productivity and light content creation laptops on the market. It also absolutely blew the roof off our battery life test, with 15 hours and 52 minutes in our test. That's the longest a traditional Windows laptop has lasted in recent memory.

Divining into some of the specifics on performance, it overtook the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 in multi-core Geekbench 6.2 (12,707 vs. 12,087). That wasn't its only win against the much-vaunted MacBook. The Zenbook also beat it in our Handbrake 1.6 test by converting a 4K video to 1080p in 6:36, over a minute faster than the Air M3's 7:54.

The OLED display looks excellent in person, but the benchmarking put it in the middle of the road when it comes to the DCI-P3 color gamut at 79.8 percent, that's below the mainstream average of 85.2 percent and just slightly ahead of the MacBook Air M3 (77.8 percent). It is extremely color accurate with a Delta-E of 0.21, relevant for content creators. Display brightness is a weak point against its competition at 339 nits, which is not a terrible result, but it's something we want to see Asus address for the next model.

The Zenbook weighs 3 pounds, not exactly an ultralight, but not something that will weigh you down too much going from class to class or while commuting. Overall, the Zenbook 14 OLED ticks just about every box we like to see for a student laptop while going above and beyond with its performance and battery life. This laptop should comfortably hold up through four years of college or for a high school student preparing to head to college in the next year or two.

See our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425M) review
More like this: Best laptops for college 2024

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Best ultraportable Windows laptop:

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The Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) is currently our pick for the best AI PC laptop, but it deserves more praise than that. It features the new Intel Core Ultra 200V series processor and even at its full price of $1,499, you are getting a compelling balance of performance, almost 14-hours of battery life, a stunning 14-inch OLED display, plus 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Run whatever AI, productivity, or creative software you want and the Zenbook S14 should remain a multi-tasking machine on the go.

In our review, staff writer Madeline Ricchiuto said, "From its stunning design to its vivid OLED display panel, there’s plenty to appreciate about the Asus Zenbook S 14."

In our Laptop Mag battery test the Asus Zenbook S 14 lasted 13 hours and 51 minutes, which should let you leave the charger at home even for your worst day of work, school, or play. Speaking of on the go advantages, the Zenbook's scratch-resistant Ceraluminum ultralight chassis should keep it looking brand new even if you tote it everywhere with you.

If you care about your laptops visuals, the Zenbook S 14's 3K (2,880 x 1,800) OLED display is going to leave you very happy. It is vividly colorful, capturing 82% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is an excellent result for the typically low-scoring OLED, and at 342 nits of brightness it will hold up well in brightly lit environments.

Unlike many ultraportables, the Zenbook S 14 doesn't skimp on the port selection with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone/mic jack. That should cover most people's needs and throws down the gauntlet for ultrabooks that went USB-C/Thunderbolt-only.

If you have greater performance needs then something like the MacBook Air 13 M3 may be the answer at a similar size and weight, or if you are looking for a business focused ultraportable the Asus ExpertBook P5 is a strong choice. However, for a solid blend of performance, battery life, and price in a compact package the Zenbook S 14 is a standout choice.

See our full Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review.
More like this: Best ultrabooks in 2024

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Best high performance laptop:

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