There are plenty of laptops on the market at any given time, and almost all of those models are available in multiple configurations to meet your performance and budget needs. So if you feel overwhelmed with options when looking for a new laptop, it’s understandable. To help keep things simple, here are the main things to consider when you start searching.
Price
The search for a new laptop for most people starts with price. If the statistics thrown at us by chipmaker Intel and PC makers are correct, you’ll be keeping your next laptop for at least three years. If you can afford to stretch your budget a little to get better specs, do it. That’s true whether you spend $500 or more than $1,000. In the past, you could get away with spending less up front with an eye toward upgrading memory and storage in the future. Laptop manufacturers are increasingly moving away from making easily upgradeable components, so once again, it’s best to purchase as many laptops as you can afford from the start.
Generally speaking, the more you spend, the better the laptop will be. That could mean better components for faster performance, a nicer screen, stronger build quality, a smaller or lighter design with high-end materials, or even a more comfortable keyboard. All of these things increase the cost of a laptop. I’d love to say that $500 will get you a powerful gaming laptop, for example, but that’s not the case. Right now, the sweet spot for a reliable laptop that can handle average work, home office, or school tasks is between $700 and $800, and a reasonable model for creative work or gaming costs upwards of about $1,000. The key is to look for discounts on models in all price ranges so you can get more laptops for less.
OS
Choosing an operating system is partly a personal preference and partly a budget. For the most part, Microsoft Windows and Apple’s macOS do the same things (except in gaming, where Windows is the winner), but they do them differently. Unless you need an operating system-specific application, choose the one you are most comfortable using. If you’re not sure which one it is, head to an Apple store or local electronics store and try them out. Or ask your friends or family to let you try theirs for a moment. If you have an iPhone or iPad and you like it, chances are you’ll also like MacOS.
When it comes to price and variety (and PC gaming), Windows laptops win. If you want MacOS, you’ll get a MacBook. While Apple MacBooks regularly top our best lists, the least expensive is the MacBook Air M1 at $999. It’s regularly discounted to $750 or $800, but if you want a cheaper MacBook, you’ll have to consider older refurbished ones.
Windows laptops can be found for as little as a couple hundred dollars and come in all kinds of sizes and designs. Of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find a $200 laptop that we’d give a full recommendation for, but if you need a laptop for online shopping, email, and word processing, they exist.
If you’re on a tight budget, consider a Chromebook. ChromeOS is a different experience than Windows; Make sure the apps you need have a Chrome, Android or Linux app before you take the leap. If you spend most of your time browsing the web, typing, streaming videos, or using cloud gaming services, they’re a good choice.
Size
Remember to consider whether it will be important to you in the future to have a lighter, thinner laptop or a laptop with a touch screen and good battery life. Size is primarily determined by the screen (hello, laws of physics), which in turn influences battery size, laptop thickness, weight, and price. Keep in mind other physics-related features, such as an ultra-thin laptop is not necessarily lighter than a thick one, a wide range of connections cannot be expected in a small or ultra-thin model, etc.
Screen
When it comes to deciding on a display, there are a lot of considerations: how much you need to display (which surprisingly has more to do with resolution than screen size), what types of content you’ll see, and whether or not you want it. I will use for games or creative work.
You really want to optimize the pixel density; That is, the number of pixels per inch that the screen can display. Although there are other factors that contribute to sharpness, higher pixel density generally means sharper representation of text and interface elements. (You can easily calculate the pixel density of any screen in DPI Calculator if you don’t feel like doing the math, you can also find out what calculations you need to do there.) We recommend a dot size of at least 100 pixels per inch (ppi) as a general rule.
Because of the way Windows and MacOS scale to the screen, you’ll often be better off with a higher resolution than you think. You can always make things bigger on a high-resolution screen, but you can never make them smaller (to fit more content in view) on a low-resolution screen. That’s why a 14-inch 4K screen may seem like an unnecessary overkill, but it may not be if you need to, for example, view a large spreadsheet.
If you need a laptop with relatively accurate colors, that displays as many colors as possible, or that supports HDR, you can’t just rely on the specifications, not because the manufacturers lie, but because they usually don’t provide the context necessary to understand what the color. specifications they quote mean. You can find plenty of detail on considerations for different types of display uses in our monitor buying guides for general purpose monitors, creators, gamers, and HDR viewing.
Processor
The processor, also known as the CPU, is the brain of a laptop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU manufacturers for Windows laptops. Both offer an amazing selection of mobile processors. To complicate matters, both manufacturers have chips designed for different styles of laptops, such as power-saving chips for ultraportables or faster processors for gaming laptops. Their naming conventions will let you know which type is used. You can head to the Intel or AMD websites for explanations so you get the performance you want. Generally speaking, the faster the processor speed and the more cores it has, the better the performance.
Apple makes its own chips for MacBooks, which makes things a little easier. But, like Intel and AMD, you’ll still want to pay attention to naming conventions so you know what kind of performance to expect. Apple uses its M-series chipsets in Macs. The base MacBook Air uses an M1 chip with an eight-core CPU and a seven-core GPU. Current models have M2 series silicon that starts with an eight-core CPU and a 10-core GPU and goes up to the M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and a 38-core GPU. Again, generally speaking, the more cores you have, the better the performance.
Graphics
The graphics processor (GPU) does all the work of controlling the screen and generating what is displayed, as well as speeding up many operations related to graphics (and increasingly AI). For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated (iGPU) or discrete (dGPU). As the names imply, an iGPU is part of the CPU package, while a dGPU is a separate chip with dedicated memory (VRAM) that it communicates directly with, making it faster than sharing memory with the CPU.
Because the iGPU splits space, memory, and power with the CPU, it is limited by the CPU’s limits. It allows for smaller, lighter laptops, but it doesn’t perform as well as a dGPU. There are some games and creative software that won’t run unless they detect a dGPU or sufficient VRAM. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing, and other non-specialized applications will run fine on an iGPU.
For more power-hungry graphics needs such as video editing, gaming and streaming, designing, etc., you will need a dGPU; There are only two real companies that make them, Nvidia and AMD, and Intel offers some based on the Xe brand (or the older UHD Graphics brand) iGPU technology in their CPUs.
Memory
For memory, we recommend 16 GB of RAM (absolute minimum of 8 GB). RAM is where the operating system stores all data for currently running applications and can fill up quickly. After that, it starts switching between RAM and SSD, which is slower. Many laptops under $500 have 4GB or 8GB, which, coupled with a slower drive, can make for a frustratingly slow Windows laptop experience. Additionally, many laptops now have the memory soldered to the motherboard. Most manufacturers disclose this, but if the RAM type is LPDDR, assume it is soldered and cannot be upgraded.
Some PC manufacturers solder the memory and also leave an empty internal slot to add a RAM drive. You may need to contact the laptop manufacturer or search for the laptop’s full specifications online to confirm. Check the website for user experiences, as the slot may still be difficult to access, may require non-standard or hard-to-get memory, or other inconveniences.
Storage
You’ll still find cheaper hard drives in budget laptops and larger hard drives in gaming laptops, but faster solid-state drives (SSDs) have all but replaced hard drives in laptops. They can make a big difference in performance. Not all SSDs are equally fast, and cheaper laptops often have slower drives; If the laptop only has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, you may end up switching to that drive and have the system slow down quickly while you work.
Get what you can afford, and if you need a smaller drive, you can always add an external drive or two in the future or use cloud storage to bolster a small internal drive. The only exception is gaming laptops – we don’t recommend using less than 512GB SSD unless you really like uninstalling games every time you want to play a new one.
