The best laptops in 2024, tried and tested by experts

Dell’s flagship laptop, the XPS 15 combines a sleek design with top-end specifications. From the crisp and bright OLED display to the 13th-generation Intel CPU – backed up with a generous 16GB of memory in the base model – it’s one of the best Windows ultrabooks you’ll find for productivity.

In our full review of the Dell XPS 15, our tester was impressed by the upgraded display and performance, calling it “a high-performance and productivity-focused Windows machine with a spectacular OLED display and a better battery life than ever”.

Build quality is solid, and Dell has even found room to add some touches of character to the chassis, such as the textured carbon fibre palm rest to prevent sweaty palms while working.

At just shy of 2kg, the Dell XPS 15 isn’t the lightest laptop we’ve tested, but it feels nicely balanced to hold. Port selection is generous, with a pair of Thunderbolt USB-C ports alongside a DisplayPort connection for external monitors.

The base model doesn’t use an OLED display – you’ll have to fork out extra to get that impressive screen – but Dell gives you plenty of options to choose between when configuring the Dell XPS 15 to your budget.

The Asus ZenBook pro 14 OLED packs impressive performance into a slim and lightweight 14in ultrabook package. It’s configurable up to a whopping Intel Core i9 processor and a dedicated RTX 4070 GPU, but even the mid-spec models come with a 4000 series GPU, making them capable enough for serious creative work, such as 4K video-rendering and browsing giant Adobe Bridge libraries.

The display is similarly impressive: a 2.8K OLED screen running at 120Hz with a decent 550 nits of brightness. Images and video look great on this display, the OLED tech delivering perfect blacks and rich contrast, while the 100 per cent DCI-P3 gamut makes it suitable for colour work.

Despite its thin profile, the ZenBook pro 14 OLED feels reassuringly sturdy. The keyboard offers a comfortable typing experience with ample key travel. Unique to this laptop – and because Asus loves being weird sometimes – there’s an iPod-style rotary dial on the trackpad that can be customised to control the application you’re using.

The ZenBook pro 14 OLED is as good as a 14in ultrabook gets. During testing, the standard shortcomings of any super-thin laptop came to light: battery life is eaten up by that glorious OLED screen and GPU, and, while the dynamic fan controls work perfectly, performance gets dialled down to prevent overheating when running several demanding processes at once. That’s to be expected in such a compact device, but we rate the ZenBook pro 14 OLED as a top performer in this category all the same.

The newest Dell XPS 13 is the best this series of Windows laptops has ever been. The switch to a Snapdragon X Elite chip gives it a huge boost to battery life and efficiency, the starting configuration of 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 1920 x 1200 display is excellent value, and our benchmarking tests place it among the top performers in this category.

Like other next-generation laptops running on a Snapdragon chip, the usual caveat applies: while things are fast-improving there are still some lingering compatibility issues with software designed for the more widely used Intel and AMD chips. These are quickly being fixed by app designers and most users won’t notice any problems, but specialist users like developers and gamers might find that their software won’t run or their games take a performance hit on the new architecture.

Those techy foibles aside, the Dell XPS 13 is a brilliant little laptop. It’s thin, portable and lightweight at 1.2kg. The new chip delivers truly impressive battery life and performance. The minimalist flat keyboard, haptic function row and invisible trackpad might split opinion, but we think it’s a striking piece of design. In either case, it’s practical and comfortable to use all day. Less practical is the minimalist port selection: you get just two USB-C ports, enough to plug in an external monitor while charging, and nothing else.

The latest MSI Prestige 14 evo switches to the energy-efficient Intel Core Ultra processor with 16GB of RAM, giving it great all-round performance for business users and everyday tasks.

While it lacks the support of a dedicated GPU, it comfortably handles demanding workplace tasks, such as photo editing and some light video rendering without breaking a sweat.

The design is polished, using a lightweight and slim chassis that’s sturdy to the touch. MSI claims the Prestige 14 evo has “military-grade” durability, and while we didn’t feel compelled to try rolling over our test unit in a tank, the laptop feels like it could take a few knocks. The keyboard is particularly delightful to work on all day, with plenty of travel in the keystrokes, though MSI has inexplicably decided to cram the ‘page up’ and ‘page down’ keys into a tiny space surrounding the arrow keys.

The display gets a decent upgrade over the previous model, now a 1920 x 1200 panel running at 144Hz, while the HDMI 2.1 port, a pair of USB-C ports with Thunderbolt and a classic USB 3.1 port gives you plenty of options to connect to external monitors and accessories. Extra touches such as a fingerprint reader and facial recognition via Windows Hello round off a capable and affordable productivity laptop.

Lenovo has been quietly producing excellent laptops and tablets at affordable prices for years, and the Lenovo yoga slim 7 is the manufacturer’s best ultrabook so far. This year’s model sees a refresh, with the newest CPUs from Intel and AMD, making it a great option for productivity-focused users looking for portability and battery life.

The all-metal chassis feels reassuringly sturdy, despite its slim and featherweight design, and the lack of heavy branding gives the laptop a minimalist, MacBook-esque aesthetic. The battery life is equally impressive, consistently lasting us a full workday on a single charge.

You’re also getting a 14in OLED display as standard, which is great to see in a Windows laptop in this price range. The port selection is decent, with a pair of USB-C Thunderbolt ports and the option to connect to an external display using HDMI 2.1. The Lenovo yoga slim 7 is a well-rounded laptop that delivers excellent performance, long battery life, and a comfortable typing experience, making it a strong contender for everyday use.

The Surface Laptop is as near to a MacBook-style experience as you’ll find on any Windows laptop. The minimalist design, unified and streamlined software, and premium build quality all scream top-tier, with none of the usual bloatware and tacked-on apps found in other high-end Windows laptops.

Just as Apple ditched Intel for its own in-house chip, this is the first Surface Laptop to come with an ARM-based Qualcomm chip as standard. You can think of it as the transition from petrol to electric cars: fundamentally a better and more efficient way of running things, but structurally different with a few drawbacks for edge cases during the transition.

The vast majority of users will enjoy truly impressive battery life and supercharged performance with everyday tasks like web browsing, creative work and entertainment, but if you use your laptop for gaming or you’re running older, uncommon software you might notice a drag on battery and performance – or outright crashes – as the laptop works overtime to emulate the older x64 framework.

The latest Surface Laptop feels like the glittering future of Windows devices, though it will take more time for software developers to catch up and take advantage of what’s on offer. For everyday users, it’s a hands-down MacBook Air-beater and the high benchmark of Windows laptops – for anyone who knows what “x64” means, it’s a functional work-in-progress with oodles of promise.

Apple’s premium laptop is still the go-to machine for specialist users, creatives and editors who need every last bit of processing power. Powered by Apple’s latest proprietary M3 chip, the MacBook pro can handle tasks that would have its slimmer cousin wheezing into a brown paper bag. Like the MacBook air, the power button has a built-in fingerprint sensor, the keyboard is comfortable and the trackpad is big and responsive.

The best laptop for productivity and creative tasks – and the only laptop that can reasonably claim to have fashion credibility – the MacBook pro is a masterpiece of design.

Read the full MacBook pro M3 review

Pro-gaming brand Razer continues to produce some of the best premium gaming laptops and accessories around, pairing desktop-grade performance with well-optimised cooling in an understated unibody chassis milled from a single block of aluminium.

The Razer blade is the brand’s range of high-end gaming laptops and comes in 14in, 16in and 18in sizes. The smallest is the cheapest, but still clocks in at a bank balance wrecking £1,949.99 – and that’s just the starting price.

Powering everything is the AMD Ryzen 9 processor with 16GB of RAM, running alongside the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. As with most gaming laptops, cramming a top-end GPU into a device this small is like putting a jet engine in a Ford Fiesta, but the Razer blade 14 manages to balance performance and thermal management well to get the most value out of this expensive little card.

The 2560 x 1600 display runs at a silky smooth 240Hz, but the hardware can easily handle 4K gaming when plugged into an external monitor. The 1TB SSD is plenty for your Steam library, while neat design touches like the expansive glass touchpad, comfortable keyboard and generally minimalist looks mean the Razer Blade 14 can do double duties as a creative work laptop.

Do you really need all this performance in a 14in laptop? Probably not. You can spend half as much on a gaming laptop and still play most modern games without any issues, but if you want maxed-out graphics and cutting-edge, future-proofed specs, the Razer 14 is the one to beat.

Apple’s thinnest, lightest MacBook transcended the tech world to become an instantly recognisable design icon, the profile of which many rival laptops have since followed. If you’ve ever held one of these machines, you’ll understand why it’s such an alluring device: the MacBook air is an elegant piece of engineering, weighing just 1.24kg and measuring 1.13cm thin. The 2024 model is powered by Apple’s latest M3 processor, an ARM-based chip that unlocks notable performance boosts and better battery efficiency over the older Intel CPU seen in previous generations.

Read our full MacBook air M3 review

If you mostly work inside a browser tab, especially on Chrome, you should consider making your next laptop a Chromebook. The Asus Chromebook plus CX34 uses Google’s web-based Chrome OS operating system: a streamlined, simplified and securer alternative to a traditional laptop. That means no regular Windows apps, which can be limiting, but you get an operating system that’s always up to date and secure.

The Chromebook plus CX34 is one of the better examples of the form, pairing a sleek minimalist design with sensible specifications. Developed in partnership with Google, it’s specced to match a decent entry-level Windows laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor backed up by 8GB of RAM. Higher configurations are available if you want even better performance.

Google’s given its entire Chromebook Plus range a big AI upgrade, so the CX34 comes with 12 months of free access to its Google One AI Premium plan, which includes the most advanced version of the Gemini large language model.