From the M5 MacBook Pro to the Acer Aspire 16 AI.

 

By

Haley Henschel

Haley Henschel

Senior Shopping Reporter

Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what’s actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons.

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on December 22, 2025

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Credit: Stan Schroeder / Mashable

The best laptops are fast enough for their primary use cases, well-made, and priced fairly for their specs, and they have enough stamina to last a full workday (but often much longer). Whether your preferred daily driver is a sleek Apple MacBook, a versatile Windows laptop, or a simple Chromebook, a reliable PC is a solid investment that feels worth it for years to come.

Mashable has been testing laptops for over 10 years, and I took the category's helm in 2023. More recently, I established the meticulous testing procedure that our team currently uses to review laptops. Over the past 12 months, we've researched dozens of models and tried 33 of the most promising configurations that are available for 2025 buyers. I've settled on 12 top picks based on our findings.

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Table of Contents

What is the best laptop of 2025?

My answer ultimately boils down to your operating system preference: Windows or Mac?

As of December 2025, I think the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4) is the best MacBook for most people. It's a sleek-as-ever notebook featuring impressive performance, open-lid support for two external displays, a great 12MP Center Stage camera, and an extremely reasonable starting price of $1,199 (making it $100 cheaper than its M3 predecessor).

The best Windows laptop we've tested is the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, a sophisticated and snappy Copilot+ PC boasting a stellar battery life of nearly 23 hours. Note that Microsoft makes an Intel version that may appeal to users wary of Windows on ARM for app compatibility reasons, but it's a business-oriented model with a significant markup.

Why you might not want to wait until 2026 to buy a new laptop

Over the past 12 months, laptop prices have remained largely reasonable and stable despite a tumultuous economic climate. This spring's tariff-related price increases wound up being minimal, and we saw affected models go on sale frequently throughout the year. In one impressive anomaly, Apple managed to release faster-than-ever MacBook Airs that were $100 cheaper than their 2024 predecessors, and ever since they turned five months old, they've enjoyed regular $200 discounts at major retailers.

Unfortunately, 2026 is probably going to look a lot different. As Mashable's Alex Perry reports, the global surge of AI data centers has created huge demand for DDR5 RAM and SSDs. Laptop manufacturers who want to put those same components in their PCs are now facing a shortage, and experts say this could lead to significant laptop price hikes or more limited configuration options. (Read: We might be going back to the days of 8GB RAM in mid-range laptops. It's so over.)

AI isn't going away anytime soon, so as things currently stand, I think those due for an upgrade should strongly consider buying a new laptop within the next couple of months. Equip it with as much storage and memory as you can comfortably afford, too. Fortunately, good laptop deals are plentiful this time of year as retailers move to offload their stock of current-gen PCs ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, where most manufacturers unveil their latest models. Think of it as a last stand for value hunters.

• Very competitively priced

• M4 chip is incredibly powerful

• Super quiet

• Supports two external displays with its lid open

• Nice new 12MP Center Stage camera

• Same premium design as always

• Also available in 13-inch size

• Can get hot under heavy workloads

• New Sky Blue finish is a little too subtle

Apple didn't reinvent the wheel in its latest 15-inch MacBook Air, but a blazing-fast processor, a few fresh features, and a new lower price make it one of the best current-generation laptop deals — if not the best. It's a fantastic pick for students, professionals, and anyone else in need of a polished, relatively portable laptop, especially those ready to give up an Intel or M1-era MacBook. (It officially feels like a big-enough jump to justify an upgrade.) MacBook Pros are nice, but they're overkill for non-specialty users, realistically.

Note that the M4 MacBook Air also comes in an even cheaper 13-inch size with a slightly lower resolution and two fewer speakers (four instead of six, sans force-cancelling woofers). We like it best for students and budget shoppers — it's often on sale for just $749.

Read Mashable's full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4).

Same tried-and-true formula, new fixings. Let's start under its hood: Apple has refreshed its 2025 MacBook Air with an M4 processor, which notched a Geekbench 6 multi-core performance score of 14,992 in our testing. It's 24 percent faster than the M3 version and 85 percent faster than all of the laptops that are currently in our testing database; Mashable Senior Editor Stan Schroeder called it "almost overkill" in his review. All that power means it does get a little hot when you work it hard, but it does stay whisper-quiet, at least.

Less exciting but still notable are the MacBook Air's new open-lid support of two 6K external displays and upgraded 12MP camera, which now has Apple's auto-framing Center Stage and top-down Desk View feature. It also comes in a new sky blue finish, which I've seen aptly described as "like looking at a gray MacBook and someone shouting 'blue' from a hundred yards away"... which is to say, it's subtle. Schroeder requested "real colors" from Apple the next time it revisits the MacBook Air. (A smoother 120Hz display would also be nice if we're making a wish list — we've wanted a refresh rate bump for the Air since the M2 era.)

The real game-changer here is the M4 MacBook Air's price. Our review unit with 1TB of storage costs $1,599, but the base model with 256GB of storage is only $1,199. You might recall that the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air started at $1,299. "Apple doesn't do this often, so enjoy it while you can," Schroeder wrote. It's a genuinely shocking move for any laptop manufacturer at a time when price hikes are way more common, and it's one of the big reasons why the MacBook Air has reclaimed its Mashable Choice Award-winner status.

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• Solid performance

• Fantastic battery life

• Stylish well-made design

• Bright, vibrant touchscreen display

• 120Hz refresh rate

• Some app compatibility issues

• Gets pricey fast (but easy to find on sale)

The Mashable Choice Award-winning Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition is an exceptional all-rounder — the ideal blend of performance, power efficiency, build quality, innovation, and overall value. We recommend it for nearly any Windows user who's due for an upgrade; the only reason you should pass on it is if your go-to apps aren't compatible with Windows on ARM. (An Intel-powered business edition is available, but it'll cost you: The base model is $300 more expensive than the starter Snapdragon version.)

Read Mashable's full review of the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

Microsoft's flagship machine ticks most of the boxes on our "best laptop" checklist. Our Snapdragon X Elite testing unit went nearly 23 hours per charge, making it the third-longest-lasting laptop we've ever tried. In a Geekbench 6 benchmark, our main performance test, it got a multi-core score of 11,875, making it speedier than 54 percent of the models in our laptop testing database. That's not half bad, but if you put it in Performance mode instead of Balanced, it gets as fast as an M4 MacBook Air.

If all that feels like overkill, or its premium price tag gives you sticker shock, know that it starts at $999.99 with a lesser Snapdragon X Plus chip and 256GB of storage. (Note that this configuration is only available through Amazon and Best Buy, not the Microsoft Store itself.)

The Surface Laptop 7's Snapdragon CPU is both a blessing and a curse: As an ARM chip, as opposed to an x86 chip from Intel or AMD, it's not going to be compatible with certain specialty apps and programs. This is a dealbreaker for students, gamers, and certain creative professionals. (The design app AutoCAD is a no-go, for example.) But if this is a non-issue for you, personally, move this machine to the top of your list.

Design-wise, the Surface Laptop 7 has a modern aluminum chassis that comes in four colorways and doesn't cling to fingerprints. Its bright display can hit a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and its snappy keyboard is paired with a haptic touchpad. You can take your pick from two sizes, too: 13.8- or 15-inch, the latter of which includes a microSD card reader.

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• Good performance for a Chromebook

• All-day battery life

• Nice speakers

• Good mix of ports

• Excellent build quality

• Comfy keyboard

• Fan runs constantly (but quietly)

• Doesn't come with a stylus

• Trackpad and touchscreen could be smoother

Chromebooks have all the software you might need for a basic everyday workload, and many of them have better hardware than the cheapest Windows laptops. The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is a well-made hybrid model that will serve most people well, and it's not too pricey.

Read Mashable's full review of the Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus.

The build quality of the Flex 5i Chromebook Plus wowed Mashable Contributor Sarah Chaney, our reviewer. "The laptop feels solidly constructed, with practically no give when pushing on the chassis, sturdy hinges that don’t creak or stick, and a cool-to-the-touch aluminum lid that resists fingerprints well," she wrote. Its sharp screen flips 360 degrees, so it can sit in tent mode or be used like a tablet. For a $600 machine, it also has a nice, bouncy keyboard, well-rounded speakers, and plenty of ports (including a microSD card reader).

The Flex 5i Chromebook Plus got a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 7,024, which means it's about 28 percent slower than the Acer Aspire 16 AI, my favorite cheap Windows laptop. Still, it's peppy for a Chromebook: Only three models we've tried are speedier, and the No. 1 fastest Chromebook only beat its score by nine percent. Also, all three models are $50 to $150 more expensive.

The Flex 5i Chromebook Plus tends to run its fan all the time, but Chaney said the noise is "mild (and not noticeable at all with music playing)." Plus, it keeps the machine very cool.

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• Fastest laptop under $900

• Awesome battery life

• Clean, minimalist design

• Relatively portable for a 16-inch laptop

• Vibrant anti-reflective touchscreen

• 120Hz refresh rate

• Wide variety of ports

• Poor speakers

• Hinge it a bit wobbly

• Webcam isn't great

• Fan turns off and on constantly (though it's quiet)

• Some app compatibility issues

Acer's Aspire 16 AI is the best laptop for folks who want a competent Windows laptop that doesn't break the bank. It's fast and long-lasting and doesn't make too many build quality compromises in order to cost $700.

"Cheap laptop" doesn't always equate to "crappy laptop" — not when the Aspire 16 AI exists. It's faster than all other laptops under $900 that we've tried, and it lasts over 17 hours on a single charge. (That's longer than some M4-era MacBooks.) Its fan ran almost constantly in my testing, but you'll hardly notice it. It's incredibly quiet.

Unlike the latest MacBook Airs and other pricier Windows laptops, the Aspire 16 AI also has an anti-reflective touchscreen with a silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. It's a premium spec I don't see on many budget laptops, aside from models that are meant for gaming. What's more, the display is vibrant and intense enough to use in direct sunlight if you crank its brightness all the way up.

The Aspire 16 AI's port selection is just as impressive. It comes with an HDMI port and a microSD card in addition to pairs of USB-C and USB-A ports. Surprisingly, it's still not super bulky: At 3.42 pounds and 0.63 inches thin, it's pretty portable for a 16-inch laptop.

The Aspire 16 AI's low-quality speakers and webcam feel more like afterthoughts. I also noticed that its hinge wiggled a bit whenever I tapped or adjusted the position of its screen.

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• Good performance for the price

• Stellar battery life

• Unique, durable chassis material

• Ridiculously thin and light

• Gorgeous OLED display

• Some app compatibility issues

• God-awful speakers

The ultralight, long-lasting Asus Zenbook A14 is the ultimate laptop for on-the-go Windows users who want to spend less than $1,000. It's my favorite MacBook Air alternative for Windows users. I do want to note that its speakers suck, so its ideal owner will also have a great pair of headphones on hand.

The Zenbook A14 is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy called "Ceraluminum" that's durable, scratch-resistant, and deceptively lightweight. The Zabriskie Beige base model that comes with a Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage weighs just 2.4 pounds, or 0.3 pounds less than the 13-inch M4 MacBook Air and 0.56 pounds less than the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 (also $1,000 apiece). That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but I was shocked the first time I picked one up at CES 2025. It still feels super sturdy despite its featheriness, fortunately, so I'd have no qualms about toting it to an office, airport, or coffee shop.

You'll want to show it off in public, by the way. That Ceraluminum chassis has a ceramic look and feel to it, and it's adorned with reflective Asus logos that remind me of jewelry. The whole thing is very "organic modern," if you're familiar with that interior design style, and it's a refreshing change from your standard silver notebooks.

In a performance test, the Zenbook A14 notched a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 11,256. It's not quite as speedy as the M4 MacBook Air — it's about 25 percent slower, to be exact — but it has a better battery life, lasting almost 22 hours per charge. It did manage to outrun every thin-and-light Lunar Lake Windows laptop we've tried (with Intel Core Ultra 7 256V or 258V chips), and it outlasts all but one of them.

The Zenbook A14 has a couple other advantages over a MacBook Air, including a prettier OLED display, an extra HDMI port, and double the storage. If you wanted to upgrade the 13-inch MacBook Air (or 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7) to 512GB of storage, you'd spend $1,199.

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• Best battery life of any MacBook we've ever tested

• Beautiful mini-LED 120Hz display with optional nano-texture finish

• Great mix of ports

• Awesome keyboard, speakers, and webcam

• Optimized for running AI models locally

• On the pricier side, especially as you add more RAM and storage

• Space black colorway clings to fingerprints

The M5 MacBook Pro isn't quite as zippy as the 16-inch M4 Pro model (below) — literally nothing is — and it lacks Thunderbolt 5 ports. Still, it's an incredibly fast and gorgeous laptop with a ton of stamina and a smaller, more travel-friendly footprint (plus a less eye-watering price). If you're a self-funded creator who frequently works on the go, as opposed to a graphic designer, animator, or video editor at an agency who needs a bona fide desktop replacement, it's a much wiser buy.

Read Mashable's full review of the Apple MacBook Pro (M5).

The MacBook Air is a beyond-fine pick for most use cases, but as I mentioned up top, the MacBook Pro offers some upgrades that are valuable for specialty users — including content creators. (Jools LeBron of "very demure, very mindful" fame told us that she uses a MacBook Pro to edit videos and stay in touch with her fans.)

For one thing, the MacBook Pro is simply better at multitasking. The Air is also really good at chewing through heavy workloads, to be sure, but the Pro proved to be 16 percent faster in our performance benchmark, and it has fans that keep it cooler under pressure. It also outlasted the Air in our battery life test, holding out for 21 hours and 17 minutes before dying. While some Windows laptops still manage to eclipse it, that's still a stellar number. It's the longest-lasting MacBook we've ever tried.

The M5 MacBook Pro has a nicer display than the M4 MacBook Air, too. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, a crisper resolution, and it maxes out at 1600 nits for HDR content. (It has these specs in common with the 16-inch M4 Pro model, and the nano-texture upgrade option is here as well.) It's only a little bit heavier and thicker than the 15-inch MacBook Air, and it crams in more ports. You get an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, and a spare Thunderbolt 4 port.

Chip performance and Thunderbolt technology are really the only major differences between this guy and the 16-inch M4 Pro version. These are going to be bigger sticking points for serious creative professionals, but most content creators are going to do just fine with the M5 model. It also helps that it starts at a much more reasonable price of $1,599 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, though you'll probably want to upgrade those for future-proofing's sake. Be warned that it gets expensive quickly.

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• Insane battery life — best of any laptop we've ever tested (by a lot)

• Pretty OLED display

• Sleek, portable design

• Runs cool and quiet

• Snappy, comfortable keyboard

• Trackpad makes a rattling sound when you tap it

• Basic port selection

• Display is a little dim

• Some app compatibility issues

Many laptops boast an all-day battery life, but the HP OmniBook 5 14 has an all-days battery life. It's a portable, understated notebook that's ideal for chronic charger-forgetters.

Before we reviewed this 14-inch HP laptop, we'd never encountered a machine that held out for more than 24 hours, let alone 30. The OmniBook 5 14 managed to hit a ridiculous 32 hours and 21 minutes before dying, making it the longest-lasting laptop we've ever tested by a wide margin. (The runner-up, Lenovo's Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition, shut down almost nine hours sooner.) Snapdragon-powered laptops tend to be battery life freaks in our experience, but this one's stamina is next-level — especially when you consider its OLED display.

The configuration we tested had a Snapdragon X Plus processor, and it scored almost identically to the same-chipped Asus Zenbook A14 in our performance benchmark. To recap: That means it's not as fast as an M4 MacBook, but it is faster than comparable Intel-powered Windows laptops.

Our $1,269.99 review unit included a non-touch display, a backlit keyboard, and a generous 32GB of RAM with 1TB of storage. That's not a terrible value, but I think the variant with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is more tempting at $1,029.99. (Those are the specs I recommend for the average person's daily driver.) A slightly heavier version with added touchscreen functionality is only $700 at Best Buy, but it will likely have worse battery life.

While the OmniBook 5 14 isn't as flashy, unique-looking, or as premium-feeling as some of the other laptops on this list, it's a sleek and solid laptop for the most part. Its island-style keyboard is snappy and easy to get used to. Its speakers and webcam aren't amazing, but they're above-average and fine for most people's usage purposes. Its display is a little dim, but still pretty and vivid. I do have active beef with its touchpad, though: It makes a hollow rattling noise every time you tap it.

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• Decent performance, runs very cool/quiet

• Great battery life

• Beautiful and bright 3K OLED touchscreen

• Sleek and elegant look

• Lightweight

• Satisfying keyboard

• Meager port selection — no headphone jack

• Some app compatibility issues

• Chassis is a fingerprint magnet

We probably won't get an OLED MacBook until late 2026 at the earliest, so for now, Windows laptops run this category. I think the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x offers the best combination of sharpness, brightness, and smoothness for the money, making it my top pick for most people who want an OLED laptop.

The display on the Yoga Slim 7x dazzled me the first time I saw it. I stopped what I was doing to stare at it. It's simply that good. Compared to other OLED laptops I've tested, it has a higher 3K resolution and a higher peak brightness of 1,000 nits. Its refresh rate isn't as high as some of its peers', which hit 120Hz, but at 90Hz, it's above-average in the silkiness department. It also has touchscreen capabilities, if you prefer to interact with your laptop that way (though it's not a 2-in-1, so you won't be able to draw or take notes on it).

The Yoga Slim 7x feels like a premium laptop from top to bottom — its extremely reasonable price covers a lot more than just a nice display. Its lightweight, thin design involves a sleek all-aluminum chassis, decent speakers, a satisfying, "thocky" island-style keyboard, and a crisp webcam (provided you take your video calls in good lighting). Its port selection is its only miss: It just has three USB-C ports. There's not even a headphone jack, so wireless headphones or earbuds are mandatory.

Like most Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops I've tried, this one is just as peppy and long-lasting. It earned a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 11,938, making it just as fast as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7. (It runs incredibly cool, too. I couldn't get its fan to turn on or its base to heat up during an intensive stress test.) The Yoga Slim 7x didn't last quite as long as the Surface Laptop 7 in our battery life benchmark, but at 19 hours and 55 minutes, its stamina is still very admirable: It outlasts 90 percent of the laptops we've tried, even with that OLED display.

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• Very good battery life

• Big, bright display

• Decent mid-range performance for a Chromebook

• Great build quality

• Often on sale for as little as $299

• Not super portable (but on the lighter side for a 16-incher)

• Tinny speakers

This 16-inch Chromebook is a durable, practical, and fast-enough laptop for casual users — namely, those who don't need a ton of power or care about bells and whistles. Its large, bright screen is especially good for watching movies and TV shows.

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 is nothing special, but it has no major flaws and doesn't feel like a clunker. As an extra bonus, it's often on sale for as low as $300.

I'll kick things off by noting that it's the fastest sub-$500 laptop we've tried. That's not saying much, but its Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 5,670 beats the competition by 16 to 38 percent. Its battery life is also better than any of your other options: It clocked in at just over 14 hours per charge, so it can keep up with many newer Windows laptops. You won't have to worry about it dying in the middle of a movie or a homework session. (It's actually the third-longest lasting Chromebook we've ever tried, and Nos. 1 and 2 are newer premium models that cost upwards of $700.)

The Chromebook Plus 516 isn't particularly portable — 16-inch laptops rarely are — but at 3.75 pounds, it's relatively lightweight for its size. (The 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro on this list is almost five pounds.) Its huge 2K matte display is rated at only 300 nits, but we found that it looks much brighter in person. Its plastic design is pretty boring, but it feels durable and doesn't have any issues with hinge strength or annoying fingerprint smudges. Its keyboard has a satisfying feel (and a numpad!), and it comes with an HDMI port if you want to hook it up to a monitor or TV.

While its speakers and 1080p webcam aren't fantastic, I don't consider those dealbreakers at this ultra-low price point. (I'd be shocked if they weren't mediocre, to be honest.) Put your savings here towards a good pair of cheap headphones or a separate webcam if either of those specs are going to hinder your productivity.

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• Incredible performance

• Attractive design that isn't overtly "gamey"

• Pretty 2.5K display with easy-on-the-eyes matte finish

• 240Hz refresh rate

• Great keyboard

• Good mix of conveniently located ports

• Grainy, noisy webcam

• Chassis holds onto fingerprints

• Runs warm and loud

• Heavy and bulky (especially when you factor in its charger)

The Alienware 16X Aurora with RTX 5070 graphics is my top pick for shoppers who want to upgrade to a current-gen gaming laptop. It's a very powerful mid-ranger with a stunning display and plenty of future-proofing.

The 16X Aurora can handle any AAA game you throw at it. Its Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU got a stupidly good Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 19,774. It's only three percent slower than the fastest gaming laptop we've ever tried, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 OLED (Gen 10), which had the exact same elite CPU — yet the 16X Aurora costs $1,600 less. Compared to its predecessor, the Alienware m16 R2 with an RTX 4070 GPU, its graphical processing power is 15 percent better.

The tradeoff is that the 16X Aurora runs warm all the time. It also got quite loud when I plugged it in to run Cyberpunk 2077. You can always play games on battery, of course, but you'll have to be mindful of its limited stamina: In my testing, it only lasted about five and a half hours per charge (and that was with its dedicated GPU and RGB backlighting turned off). If you don't have a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones, you'll have to let its charging cycle dictate the frequency of your gaming sessions.

The 16X Aurora makes up for this with a slew of premium components, including a satisfying keyboard, a nice mix of ports (mostly located on its rear for easy cable management), and an absolutely amazing 2.5K display, which has a high-end 240Hz refresh rate and a comfy matte finish. The only thing on it that probably won't age well is its grainy 1080p camera, but I don't think crisp video calls are high priorities for most gamers. If you stream, get a fancy webcam.

The 16X Aurora is pretty clunky and heavy — it closes in on eight pounds when you factor in its 280W charger — but I'm not too phased. That's a powerful gaming laptop for you.

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• Ridiculously good battery life

• Premium, portable design

• Beautiful OLED display

• Bouncy keyboard

• Includes Yoga Pen

• Chassis clings to fingerprints

• Worse speakers than its predecessor

• Not a beastly performer

This luxe laptop/tablet hybrid is the primo pick for those who value build quality, battery life, and processing power in that exact order. It's not cut out to handle demanding tasks like photo and video editing, but it will carry you through a couple workdays' worth of everyday productivity without needing to recharge. It's very pretty to boot.

Read Mashable's full review of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition.

First and foremost, this is just a really gorgeous, well-made convertible. It has a strong 360-degree hinge and an all-aluminum chassis that comes in a striking cosmic blue finish, helping it "[stand] out in a world full of gray and black laptops," said Chaney, our reviewer. She also praised its matching keyboard, noting that it mimics the feel of a mechanical keyboard with "slight travel and noticeable actuation," she said. This sits right above a silky glass trackpad.

But "perhaps my favorite thing about this laptop" is its OLED touchscreen, Chaney wrote. It has a crisp 2.8K resolution, a max brightness of 1,100 nits for HDR content, and a 120Hz refresh rate. "Whether I was catching up on Bridgerton, organizing my weekly tasks in Trello, or streaming lo-fi music on YouTube while working, the colors popped off the screen and made my overall laptop experience better and brighter," she said. As an added bonus, you get a free Yoga Pen for drawing and taking notes on this display — a $58.99 value.

And its battery life? Outstanding. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition lasted 23 hours and 34 minutes in our video rundown test, cruising past every other laptop in our database except for the HP OmniBook 5 14. It's the longest-lasting x86-based model we've tried.

The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition does lack comparatively in the performance department. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor got a Geekbench 6 score of 10,765. That makes it a tad faster than an M2 MacBook Air from 2022 (10,146) and a smidge slower than the Asus Zenbook A14 and HP OmniBook 5 14, both powered by the Snapdragon X Plus chip. Suffice to say, it's not built for turbocharged multitasking like similarly priced MacBook Pros. Still, Chaney said it was able to tackle her "typical daily workload with ease" (think web browsing and typing in documents). It's also peppy enough to support a couple of unique "Aura Edition" software features that can check your posture and block distracting websites.

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• The most powerful laptop we've ever tested

• Great battery life

• 12MP camera with Desk View feature

• Gorgeous mini-LED 120Hz display with optional nano-texture finish

• Snappy keyboard

• Amazing speakers

• Thunderbolt 5 ports

• Laughably expensive as tested

• Heavy

A majestic piece of modern machinery, Apple's jacked new 16-inch, M4 Pro-fueled MacBook Pro is a future-proofed investment for creative professionals who run intense multimedia-editing apps and software on a regular basis.

Read Mashable's full review of the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M4 Pro).

Put simply, this MacBook Pro is a beauteous behemoth. With a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 22,758, it's the fastest laptop we've ever tested by a not-close margin. (The runner-up, Lenovo's $3,599.99 Legion Pro 7i 16 OLED Gen 10, scored a 20,369.) It "can handle heavy workloads without a single stutter," said Kimberly Gedeon, former Mashable tech editor. It's also incredibly long-lasting, surviving for nearly 21 hours in our battery life benchmark. Out of all the MacBooks we've ever tested, it has the second-best battery life. That's amazing considering how powerful it is.

While it may look like a pretty standard MacBook on the outside — minimalist, relatively thin, made from aluminum — Apple's tacked on a few subtle but noteworthy design upgrades from the previous generation. For one, it comes with three next-gen Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports for zippy data transfer speeds. (These accompany an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 charging port, and a headphone jack.) Two, it can hit up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, a bump from 600 nits in its M3 Pro predecessor. There's also an option to add a glare-reducing "nano-texture" display finish, which wowed Gedeon when she took the laptop into her backyard: "I didn't have to squint, adjust angles, nor play hide-and-seek with shadows," she wrote. And three, the new MacBook Pro's camera is now a 12MP Center Stage shooter (up from 1080p) with support for Desk View, a feature that produces an overhead view of the user's desk.

Its high-fidelity six-speaker sound system is the same one you'll find in the M3-era Pros, but no complaints there. Gedeon likened its audio quality to a "gourmet apple pie ... piping hot, golden, and worth every sinful calorie."

And by calories, we mean dollars. It's tempting to recommend the M4 Pro MacBook Pro to anyone who values power efficiency in a laptop, but its price point keeps it firmly in "experts-only" territory. (Our upgraded testing unit with 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and a nano-texture display came in at $3,649; the base configuration goes for $2,499.) Don't bother with the splurge unless you'll make full use of it on the daily. For what it's worth, we also really like the new 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro for those with less strenuous workloads; that one starts at $1,599.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Ultimately, your budget should reflect your laptop's primary use case(s) and your preferred operating system. Here's what you can expect at different price ranges:

• Laptops that cost $300 to $600 are budget Windows notebooks and Chromebooks reserved for word processing, web browsing, and email sending. Models on the lowest end of this price range tend to be clunkers with pokey Intel Celeron N Series CPUs and eMMC storage; spending a little extra can get you a sleeker machine with a better entry-level processor, more battery life, SSD storage, and a backlit keyboard.

• Laptops that cost $600 to $1,000 are mostly Windows models and high-end Chromebooks with crisper displays and mid-range CPUs that are good for schoolwork, streaming, and casual gaming.

• Laptops priced at $1,000 to $1,500 are peppy Windows ultrabooks and MacBooks with plenty of storage space, brighter and prettier displays, enough power for light photo and video editing, and great graphics.

• Laptops that cost more than $1,500 are beautiful, beefy, and blazing-fast MacBooks Pros and Windows desktop replacements that can handle professional content creation and intense gaming.

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If you commute daily or travel often, a lightweight, slim, and compact laptop in the 11- to 13-inch range will serve you best. If you're a huge movie buff, a gamer, or a creator who doesn't normally take their laptop on the road with them, think about bulking up to a 15- to 17-inch model with heft that affords it more power.

How we tested

Mashable has been writing about laptops for over a decade, and I've personally been covering them since 2023. I also helped develop the rigorous hands-on testing process we currently use to review every model. This methodology revolves around four key criteria:

Performance

The laptops we review get put to work as our primary computers. This includes trying any unique software or use cases they support. We also subject all of our loaners to a multi-app/tab stress test and Primate Labs' Geekbench 6, which measures CPU performance in common tasks. Gaming laptops get put through additional graphical benchmarking.

Battery life

To gauge a laptop's stamina, we conduct a battery rundown test that involves playing a looped 1080p version of "Tears of Steel," a short open-source Blender movie, at 50 percent brightness and 50 percent volume. Ideally, we hope to get at least 16.5 hours of battery life from MacBooks, nine hours from Windows laptops and Chromebooks, and one hour from gaming laptops. (They're notoriously power-hungry.)

Design/build quality

As we're using a laptop, we zero in on certain components to evaluate its build quality. These include the display, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, speakers, and ports. We also assess its overall aesthetic and portability.

Value

We determine the ultimate value of a laptop by comparing its performance, design/build quality, and battery life to other laptops with similar pricing, specs, release dates, and use cases. We consider any accessories it comes with, any upgrades from its predecessor(s), and its future-proofing.

Senior Shopping Reporter

Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what’s actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons.