Best laptop 2023 — our top December picks

Cyber Week might be gone, but that doesn't mean the deals are done. December is a great time to purchase a laptop as a gift for someone special or yourself (you've been very good this year, treat yourself!). From super cheap, but reliable Chromebooks to deep discounts on some of my premium faves for every use case.  I've been scouring the web for the best deals so all you have to do is choose your system and hit the buy button.  

Currently, some of my favorite deals include the MacBook Air M1 for $998 at Amazon ($180 off) and the MacBook Air 13 M2 for $949 ($150 off) at Best Buy (with membership). And I can't leave out my Windows fans. Check out these deals on the Dell XPS 13, currently on sale for $799 at Dell for a savings of $300. You can also snag the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook, a device recently featured on this page , for $329 down from $499 on Best Buy. 

After over a decade of testing and reviewing laptops, I still never tire of them. It’s a passion that makes me the ideal guide for your quest to find the best laptop for you. Whether that's a sleek ultraportable for work, a Chromebook for school, a 2-in-1 that doubles as a tablet, or a gaming laptop to lay low your foes, this is the place to find it. This page is constantly updated to reflect the Laptop Mag staff’s current top laptop choices based on our latest reviews. 

My best laptop recommendations are determined by rating, pricing and use case. We put every laptop through rigorous synthetic tests and put them to use in real-world situations, evaluating overall performance, display brightness, keyboard comfort, and much more. We also run our own in-house battery test to let you know how long these laptops last on a charge.

Any laptop that earns a spot on this page is the best of the best and well worth hard-earned dollars. Read on to learn more about our top-rated laptops and we'll find one that is perfect for your needs. 

The Quick List

Chomping at the bit to find your perfect laptop? Not to worry, here's a quick look at all the laptops on the list complete with links to our full review of whichever laptop you're interested in.

Best Laptop Overall

Weighing a mere 2.7 pounds, Apple’s smallest laptop is also the best laptop for most people. There’s a lot to love about the MacBook Air M2, starting with its new look. This is one of the thinnest laptops around at only 0.4 inches thick, and yet it packs a big punch thanks to Apple’s M2 chip. This system handled most of our benchmarks with a breezy aplomb, outperforming most Windows laptops.

Other reasons to buy the MacBook Air M2 include a bright and colorful 13.6-inch display, a comfortable keyboard and over 14 hours of battery life based on our testing. Although the M2 chip won’t pull the numbers that its more powerful brethren (M2 Pro and M2 Max), the silicon is still more powerful than its predecessor. 

Even better, it’s more powerful than the competition. For instance, the Air M2 crushed the Geekbench 5.4 test as well as the Handbrake video transcoding and BlackMagic Read/Write tests. That’s a lot of power for a relatively affordable price –– at least for a MacBook. 

If that’s not enough, you also get a 1080p webcam. So what’s not to like? There’s only two Thunderbolt / USB-C ports, and the SSD is slower than we’d like. Overall, if you’re looking for an ultra lightweight laptop with power, the MacBook Air M2 deserves to sit at the top of your list. 

See our full MacBook Air M2 review.

Best Value

Typically when we review a Chromebook, we expect underpowered performance, solid battery life and limited functionality. This is far from the case with the Acer Chromebook Plus 515. In fact, the Acer Chromebook Plus 515’s 12th Gen Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, with Intel UHD graphics, seriously impressed our reviewer. He stated that the system "powered me through all the tasks I set before it and then some." If that wasn't enough, he actually edited photos and video, a feat that he's never had the ability to do smoothly on a Chromebook until now, despite its seemingly underwhelming specs.

However, combined with Google's impressive A.I., apps like Adobe Creative Suite and Photoshop opened quickly and seamlessly edited stills and video. And the laptop had no problem juggling 30 open Google Chrome tabs. It also excelled on the Jetstream web browsing test. 

However, we were disappointed in the 8:21 battery life as it was significantly short of our Chromebook battery life average. And while the display seemed bright and vivid, lab testing proved that the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 fell short of the mark. Still, for a such an inexpensive system, the Plus 515 has a lot to offer.

See our full Acer Chromebook Plus 515 review. 

Best Laptop under $1,000

This laptop almost makes me feel like I'm stealing from Asus. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q409ZA) comes in under $800, but doesn't skimp out on the feature. For instance, the laptop has Asus' proprietary Number Pad 2.0 which transforms the touchpad into a num pad at the touch of a button. Then you have the stunning 2.8K resolution display with a 90Hz refresh rate that's great for watching movies or videos. Plus, it comes with plenty of ports. 

With its Intel Core i5-1240P CPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 8GB of DDR5 RAM, a 256GB SSD, you can expect middling performance. It isn't bad, it's just not up to a par with a Core i7 CPU. And while the laptop didn't stand out on our benchmark tests, it had no problem tackling real world multitasking as our reviewer had a hard time slowing it down. And the Zenbook 14 has solid power efficiency, lasting 10 hours and 52 minutes on our battery test. 

Outside of the middling performance, the only other gripe we had with the Asus Zenbook 14 (Q409ZA) is the mushy keyboard.

See our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q409ZA) review. 

Best Windows 11

Acer consistently delivers laptops that deliver a great combination of performance and value. Case in point, the Acer Swift 14. It’s easy on the eyes with our reviewer calling out its alluring Mist Green aerospace-grade aluminum with the fashionable bronze accents. At 2.9 pounds and 12.2 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches, it's not the slimmest or lightest laptop out there, but the system is still plenty portable. But the Swift 5 is about more than good looks.

Powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with integrated Intel graphics, the Swift 14 held its own against its competitors during our overall performance and file transfer tests. And it easily sailed past our category average. The Swift 14 had its best showing on the Geekbench 5.5 test where it scored an impressive 11,375. The  notebook also reigned supreme during the Handbrake test, completing the video transcoding testing 5 minutes and 41 seconds. 

We were also surprised at how well the notebook’s integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics performed, notching 28 frames per second on the Sid Meier's Civilization VI benchmark. While it didn’t make our longest lasting laptop page, the Swift 5 still offers nearly 12 hours of battery life. Other reasons to buy include a healthy smattering of ports and a bright, vivid 14-inch display that our reviewer declared "gorgeous." 

But it’s not a perfect system, however, as the laptop has an inordinate amount of bloatware. The speakers also could have been better and the touchpad was finicky at times. However, these are minor issues for an otherwise outstanding Windows 11 laptop. 

See our full Acer Swift 14 review.

Acer consistently delivers laptops that deliver a great combination of performance and value. Case in point, the Acer Swift 14. It’s easy on the eyes with our reviewer calling out its alluring Mist Green aerospace-grade aluminum with the fashionable bronze accents. At 2.9 pounds and 12.2 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches, it's not the slimmest or lightest laptop out there, but the system is still plenty portable. But the Swift 5 is about more than good looks.

Powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with integrated Intel graphics, the Swift 14 held its own against its competitors during our overall performance and file transfer tests. And it easily sailed past our category average. The Swift 14 had its best showing on the Geekbench 5.5 test where it scored an impressive 11,375. The  notebook also reigned supreme during the Handbrake test, completing the video transcoding testing 5 minutes and 41 seconds. 

We were also surprised at how well the notebook’s integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics performed, notching 28 frames per second on the Sid Meier's Civilization VI benchmark. While it didn’t make our longest lasting laptop page, the Swift 5 still offers nearly 12 hours of battery life. Other reasons to buy include a healthy smattering of ports and a bright, vivid 14-inch display that our reviewer declared "gorgeous." 

But it’s not a perfect system, however, as the laptop has an inordinate amount of bloatware. The speakers also could have been better and the touchpad was finicky at times. However, these are minor issues for an otherwise outstanding Windows 11 laptop. 

See our full Acer Swift 14 review.

Best MacBook

Apple's silicon keeps getting better and better as its third series of chips, the M3 debut bringing even better performance than the last two generations. And they're also outpacing most of the Windows PCs on the market by a decent margin. Plus, it's $400 cheaper than M2 predecessor. It's an all-out win for students, mobile professionals, creatives –– just about anyone that calls themselves a MacBook fan. 

Boasting performance that's 20% faster CPU performance than the M1 chip, I saw the MacBook Pro 14 score 11,870 on Geekbench 6, beating the XPS 13 (10,525). But it couldn't top the Acer Swift X 14 (12,118).  But on the Handbrake video transcoding test, the MacBook took 5 minutes and 38 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p, blasting past the 7:51 average. It also left the Swift X (7:46) and XPS 13 (8:14) eating its dust. 

Although Apple has been singing the praises of its new processors, the bigger news lies with the GPUs. Each graphics chip in the M3 series has a much larger GPU than past generations and sport Dynamic Caching, a new technology that includes hardware-accelerated ray tracing (a first for Apple) and mesh shading. The MacBook  Pro achieved 51 frames per second at 1200p, on the Sid Meier's s Civilization VI benchmark, surpassing the XPS 13 Plus’ (Intel Iris Xe graphics) 23 fps. It was just short of the 53-fps premium laptop average however, and the Swift X 14’s discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU notched 92 fps (2.8K). 

And while it has mixed performance in some areas, the MacBook Pro 14 still sports a stunning display, excellent audio performance and an ultra-comfortable Magic Keyboard. And with over 17 hours of battery life, the MacBook Pro can do work or play for almost the entire day.

See our full Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3, 2023) review.

Best 2-in-1 Laptop

Call this the most improved player on the list. When we reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 9i’s predecessor, we dinged it for its middling performance and substandard battery life. The 8th Gen Yoga 9i improves upon both weaknesses starting with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1360P CPU that met the previous best 2-in-1 laptop, the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, stroke for stroke –– many times coming out on top. For instance, the Yoga 9i scored 9,954 compared to the Galaxy Book 3 Pro’s 8,250. And the Lenovo SSD proved it was the speedier of the two with a file transfer rate of 1,669 megabytes per second compared to the Samsung’s 1,173.4MBps.

When we ran the Laptop Mag battery test, the Yoga 9i lasted 10 hours and 10 minutes. Is it the longest battery life we’ve seen? No, but that time is nearly three years longer than the Samsung’s 7:46. But those aren’t the only places, the Yoga 9i excels. Our reviewer was captivated by the 2-in-1’s beautiful 14-inch, 2880 x 1880 OLED display that possess a wider color gamut than the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (142.1% to 85.2%) on the DCI-P3 scale. 

But while the Yoga 9i has definitely improved, it does have a fault. While the OLED display is incredibly vivid, the brightness comes up a bit short with  the Galaxy Book 3 was brighter at 381 nits compared to the Yoga 9i’s 353 nits. Which is why the notebook earned 4.5 stars with our coveted Editor’s Choice award. 

See our full Lenovo Yoga 9i review.

Best Chromebook

I wrote an op-ed on how