The best laptops are fast enough for their primary use cases, well-made, and priced fairly for their specs. Ideally, they also have enough battery power 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.
After testing dozens of different models, we believe these are the top laptops for 2026 buyers.
Overview
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$1,499.00
Amazon
Best Windows laptop for most people
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$1,349.99
Best Buy
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$699.99
Amazon
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$1,149.99
Staples
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$1,499.99
Acer
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These are the tech, tools, and products — from laptops to e-readers, from earbuds to robovacs, and more — that Mashable ranks best in class.
Table of Contents
Mashable has been testing laptops for over 10 years. Over the past two years alone, the team and I have researched dozens of models and tried over 90 of the most promising configurations available. We use a meticulous testing procedure involving real-world stress tests and artificial benchmarks to evaluate our contenders on the basis of performance, battery life, design/build quality, and value.
This regularly updated guide serves as our laptop trophy case, highlighting the best-in-class models we’ve tried across different subcategories. For even more recommendations, check out my dedicated guides to the best MacBooks, the best Windows laptops, the best cheap laptops, and the best Chromebooks.
Why are laptops so expensive right now?
Laptop prices have skyrocketed in 2026 for several reasons. One is the recent boom in AI data center construction, which has caused a global shortage of RAM and SSD storage chips (often referred to as “RAMageddon”). As a result, many consumer tech devices that use these components, including the best laptops, have become vastly more expensive than they would’ve been otherwise. Most PC makers have been affected, including Apple, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer.
The memory crisis is expected to worsen and could last into 2028, driving up prices even further and making good values in the budget and mid-range tiers even scarcer. On top of that, the Trump administration is reportedly mulling new tariffs on semiconductors that would apply to laptops and other electronics.
Further complicating things is that Microsoft reportedly raised its Windows 11 licensing fees by higher-than-usual percentages. In other words, both hardware and software prices have gone up for PC makers this year, forcing them to pass on the extra costs to consumers. Lucky us.
The Mashable team is taking the current state of the market into consideration as we assess and select laptops to recommend to our readers. Moreover, we’ve gone back and re-evaluated several models that have gotten more expensive since we first tested them.
At the time of writing, only two previous top picks have gotten so pricey that we think they’re no longer worth buying. That would be the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, which jumped from an already-high $750 to $1,000, and the Acer Chromebook Plus 516, which went from$479 to $649. We’re currently testing some other Chromebook options and will update this guide with a new top pick soon.
Best MacBook for most people
The Good & The Bad
- Amazing value
- M5 chip is incredibly powerful
- Sleek all-aluminum design with a pretty display
- Excellent webcam, speakers, and keyboard
- Premium haptic trackpad
- Doesn’t have a ton of ports
- Got a $200 price hike in June (but still a solid deal in this market)
Who it’s for
Apple’s latest MacBook Air is a fantastic pick for the everyday macOS user, including most professionals and college students. Anyone needing a polished, relatively portable, and fairly priced mid-range laptop should put it on their shortlist.
Read Mashable’s full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M5).
Why we picked this
The MacBook Air has always been an excellent laptop, but in 2026, it’s become my standard bearer, my touchstone — the all-rounder I compare against virtually every other laptop that crosses my desk. Its M5 chip offers unrivaled performance for the price, whether you’re using it for basic single-core tasks (like web browsing) or more demanding multi-core workloads (like occasional light video editing). Its build quality is also superb. Its 2.8K Liquid Retina display is bright, sharp, and vibrant; its speakers sound incredible; its Magic Keyboard is satisfyingly snappy; and its smooth haptic touchpad gives it a premium feel. It’s actually very rare to see the latter at this price point.
While it’s not what I’d call a battery life overachiever — see: some of the Windows laptops on this list — the MacBook Air still lasts well over two workdays per charge. We got almost 18 hours out of it in a video rundown test.
I think most people will appreciate the larger screen on the 15-inch MacBook Air, but if you’d prefer a cheaper, more portable option, there’s a 13-inch size, too. They’re almost identical; the 15-incher just has two extra speakers and a slightly better GPU in its base model.
Details
The Good & The Bad
- Incredible performance; can keep up with MacBooks in any scenario
- Big NPU for on-device AI workloads
- Amazing battery life
- Super lightweight
- Pretty OLED display
- Creamy keyboard
- A great value
- Some compatibility issues
- Average webcam and speakers
Who it’s for
If you prefer Windows, the 2026 Asus Zenbook A14 is my top choice for almost anyone who needs a new daily driver. It actually makes a great MacBook Air alternative if you want a general-purpose ultraportable with better battery life, an OLED display, and more ports.
Why we picked this
Asus updated my beloved Zenbook A14 with Qualcomm’s fresh Snapdragon X2 Elite processor for 2026. It’s more expensive than the original version from last year, but it’s definitely worth the upcharge. It used to lag behind same-gen MacBooks, but it’s now one of the only devices that can keep up with both single- and multi-core tasks — so things like basic word processing and light video editing, respectively. In fact, in multi-core scenarios, it’s almost 20 percent faster than the M5 MacBook Air. At the time of writing, it was the ninth-fastest laptop in our entire testing database, beating 91 percent of the competition; other stragglers include the latest MacBook Pro and many beefy PCs geared toward gaming and creative work. (This is just in the context of our artificial performance benchmark, by the way. The competition won’t throttle you as much when you’re running demanding software IRL, but the Zenbook A14’s results are amazing nonetheless.)
That impressive performance looks even better when you factor in this 14-inch laptop’s battery life test results. It lasted over 27 hours on a single charge, up from 22 hours in the previous generation. It’s the fourth-longest-lasting laptop we’ve ever tried.
The Zenbook A14 sports a colorful OLED display and a satisfying keyboard. Its tan chassis is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy called “Ceraluminum” that’s durable, scratch-resistant, and deceptively lightweight. It weighs just 2.4 pounds, or 0.3 pounds less than the 13-inch MacBook Air. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but I was shocked the very first time I picked one up. 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 gold Asus logos that remind me of jewelry. It’s very “organic modern” and unique.)
Details
GET IT
$1,349.99
Best Buy
Best budget laptop
The Good & The Bad
- Amazing single-core performance
- Same all-aluminum chassis as nicer MacBooks
- Fun color options
- Pretty Liquid Retina display
- Great speakers
- Not very future-proof
- No keyboard backlighting
- Few ports
- Got a $100 price hike in June (but still a decent deal in this market)
Who it’s for
If you’re trying to spend well under $1,000, and you want a laptop that feels more premium than it really is, Apple’s MacBook Neo is undoubtedly the best budget laptop you can buy.
Read Mashable’s full review of the Apple MacBook Neo.
Why we picked this
Even after a $100 price bump this summer, the MacBook Neo is still an unrivaled value in the budget category. Most cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks have plastic components, but this little guy has the same luxe, all-aluminum build quality as any other MacBook. You miss out on extra fixings like keyboard backlighting, a haptic trackpad, and Touch ID (on the base model, at least), but you still get a pretty Liquid Retina display and great speakers. It’s a little thicker than a 13-inch MacBook Air, but it weighs the same.
The Neo’s A18 Pro processor is technically a pared-down iPhone chip, but don’t be fooled: It’s extremely impressive for a budget laptop CPU. In simple single-core workloads (web browsing, word processing), the Neo is just as fast as a last-gen M4 MacBook Air. In such scenarios, it feels snappier than most Windows laptops we’ve tried lately, including 10 that cost $2,000 or more.
The Neo lasted 14 hours and 50 minutes in our battery life benchmark. It lags behind its M-series peers there — our battery life median for MacBooks was 19 hours before it arrived — but it’s an overachiever at its price point. Our median for other sub-$1,000 Windows laptops and Chromebooks is just 10.5 hours.
Details
Best laptop for battery life
The Good & The Bad
- Absurdly good battery life — best of any laptop we’ve ever tested (by a lot)
- Pretty thin for a 16-inch laptop
- Large, surprisingly colorful display
- Above-average speakers
- Snappy, comfortable keyboard
- Very boring design with a plastic keyboard deck
- Display is a little dim
- Competitors offer better performance
- Expensive for what it is (but easy to find on sale)
- Some compatibility issues
Who it’s for
The HP OmniBook 3 16 is a svelte and understated big-screened notebook that’s ideal for chronic charger-forgetters.
Read Mashable’s full review of the HP OmniBook 3 16.
Why we picked this
Many laptops boast an all-day battery life, but the OmniBook 3 16 with Qualcomm’s base Snapdragon X chip has an all-days battery life. It managed to hit a ridiculous 40 hours and 14 minutesin our video rundown test before dying, making it the longest-lasting laptop we’ve ever tested by a wide margin. (Our previous battery life champ, the OmniBook 5 14 with the Snapdragon X Plus chip, lasted 32.5 hours per charge.) Snapdragon-powered laptops are usually battery life freaks, in our experience, but this one’s stamina is next-level. It lasts almost twice as long as the M5 MacBook Pro, our longest-lasting MacBook.
While the OmniBook 5 14 isn’t as powerful, flashy, or premium-feeling as some of the other laptops on this list, it’s still a sleek and solid laptop. Its island-style keyboard is snappy and easy to get used to. Its speakers are above-average and fine for most people’s usage purposes. Its 1200p IPS display is colorful — and huge.
As a 16-inch laptop, the OmniBook 3 16 comes in at a relatively average weight of 3.65 pounds, but it measures just 0.58 inches thin. It’s not as portable as the Asus Zenbook A16, but still pretty sleek for its size.
Details
Most portable laptop
The Good & The Bad
- Soooo portable; ridiculously thin and light (but still has plenty of ports)
- Gorgeous 2.8K anti-glare OLED touchscreen
- Great battery life
- Velvety keyboard
- A very good deal for plenty of RAM and storage
- No compatibility issues
- Competitors offer better performance
- Feels a little plasticky (even though it’s not made of plastic)
- Mediocre speaker and webcam
- Spotty availability
Who it’s for
If you travel regularly or commute daily, it’s tough to think of a better option than the light-and-lean Acer Swift Edge 14 AI.
Read Mashable’s full review of the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI.
Why we picked this
Forget the MacBook Air: The feathery Swift Edge 14 AI makes Apple’s ultraportable seem bulky in comparison. It weighs 2.18 pounds, or 0.3 pounds less than the 13-inch Air, and it only measures 0.37 inches at its slimmest point. The Air is 0.07 inches thicker despite having fewer ports. (The Swift Edge 14 AI has two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, a pair of USB-A ports, and an HDMI port.) This 14-inch laptop is inconspicuous inside of a backpack, briefcase, or tote bag. Its chassis is made from a magnesium-aluminum alloy, and while it feels a little plasticky, “I was surprised by how sturdy [it] felt,” said Mashable contributor Sarah Chaney, our reviewer. It looks pretty cool, too: It comes in a pearl white finish with gold accents.
Additionally, you get quite a good display for the money here. The Swift Edge 14 AI has a 2.8K OLED touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a matte finish that makes it easy to see in almost any environment. “The picture is sharp, there’s great contrast with rich, true blacks, and colors appear vibrant and realistic, not overly saturated,” Chaney said.
The Swift Edge 14 AI’s last-gen Intel chip isn’t an outstanding performer — it’s geared toward everyday productivity tasks, not heavy-duty content creation software or gaming. But it has an above-average battery life of almost 21 hours per charge, which is probably more important for the on-the-go workers who will be drawn in by its unrivaled portability.
Details
Best laptop for creatives
The Good & The Bad
- Incredibly fast
- 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
- Expensive, especially after a $300 price hike in June
- Space black colorway clings to fingerprints
Who it’s for
Professional creatives like photo editors, video editors, and content creators — anyone who runs intensive apps on the reg, really — will be served incredibly well by the M5 MacBook Pro.
Why we picked this
The M5 MacBook Air is a beyond-fine pick for most use cases, but the M5 MacBook Pro offers some upgrades that are valuable for professional creatives — including content creators. (Jools LeBron of “very demure, very mindful” fame uses a MacBook Pro to edit videos and stay in touch with her fans.) It’s got built-in fans that prevent thermal throttling when you’re running heavy workloads for long periods of time, plus useful extra ports like an SDXC card slot, plusa much nicer display. Its crisp mini-LED screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and maxes out at an ultra-bright 1,600 nits for HDR content. You can further upgrade it with an optional nano-texture finish that minimizes distracting reflections.
Moreover, this is the longest-lasting MacBook we’ve ever tried. It ran for 21 hours and 17 minutes before dying.
Details
Best business laptop
The Good & The Bad
- Stellar performance; runs very cool
- iGPU is powerful enough for AAA gaming
- Beautiful and bright 2.8K OLED touchscreen with matte finish
- Smooth haptic touchpad
- Keyboard has a UV coating so its keys don’t look greasy
- Impossibly thin and lightweight design with plenty of ports (including double-sided charging ports)
- Solid battery life
- Expensive
- Muddy webcam
Who it’s for
The new Asus ExpertBook Ultra is a basically perfect laptop for high-earning business professionals, or really anyone with an unrestricted budget who wants a do-it-all ultraportable.
Why we picked this
On paper, ExpertBook Ultra seems like it shouldn’t exist: A laptop that’s much lighter than a MacBook Air and just as slim, yet as powerful as an entry-level gaming laptop? Not possible… so you’d think! The only catch is that it’s quite expensive, which shouldn’t be all that shocking given its specs.
The ExpertBook Ultra runs on Intel’s new Core Ultra X7 385H chip, an upper mid-range CPU that offers above-average single-core performance and MacBook Pro-level multi-core performance — which is to say, it can easily handle the most demanding professional workloads. The neat thing about that chip is that it comes with the Intel Arc B390, an integrated graphics card (iGPU) that performs as well as a lower-end discrete graphics card. In my testing, the ExpertBook Ultra could run Cyberpunk2077, an incredibly taxing AAA game, well above its 60fps minimum with AI upscaling tech turned on. What’s more, it stayed impressively cool and quiet thanks to the wind tunnel-style thermal setup inside its base.
The ExpertBook Ultra weighs a mere 2.4 pounds and measures 0.43 inches thin at its slimmest point, making it incredibly sleek and portable. (It’s 0.3 pounds lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air and 0.01 inches thinner.) Its magnesium-aluminum body has a matte finish that isn’t prone to smudges and scratches. It features a haptic touchpad, a snappy island-style keyboard with a UV coating that prevents its keys from looking greasy, and a surprisingly nice mix of ports, including double-sided Thunderbolt/USB-C charging ports.
But my favorite thing about its design is its display: It’s a luscious 2.8K OLED touchscreen with a 30 to 120Hz refresh rate, 1,400 nits of peak brightness, and a matte finish that averts annoying glares. I’ve never encountered a nicer display on any laptop — PC, Mac, or Chromebook.
Details
GET IT
$3,599.99
Asus
Best 16-inch laptop
The Good & The Bad
- Ridiculously powerful; the fastest Windows laptop for everyday productivity
- Remarkably light for its size
- Big, beautiful, ultra-bright 2.8K OLED touchscreen
- Creamy keyboard
- Above-average speakers
- Muted webcam
- Some compatibility issues
- Got a $300 price hike (but still an OK deal)
- Spotty availability
Who it’s for
The Asus Zenbook A14 is a smart buy for those who want a big-screened laptop for zippy everyday multitasking and entertainment.
Why we picked this
It should come as no surprise that the 16-inch version of my top pick for Windows users is also very good. The Zenbook A16 doesn’t last as long as its little brother, the Zenbook A14, but it offers way more power and adds an SD card slot in addition to a sharper, brighter, smoother OLED touchscreen. (Its battery life is still decent for a big, fast laptop, for the record.)
The Zenbook A16 runs on the high-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip, which keeps pace with Apple’s M5 chip in single-core scenarios but squashes it in multi-core tasks. It’s 38 percent faster than the M5 MacBook Air and 27 percent faster than the base MacBook Pro on the latter metric. It feels so, so peppy no matter what you’re using it for.
To continue the MacBook comparisons, I think even the biggest Apple fans will appreciate the Zenbook A16’s design. While it lacks the great speakers, crisp webcam, and haptic touchpad of a MacBook, it has way more ports, a nicer display, and a significantly lighter build. It weighs almost half a pound less than a 15-inch MacBook Air. (Who’s airy now, huh?) As with the Zenbook A14, its rigid Ceraluminum construction is the reason it doesn’t feel flimsy.
Details
GET IT
$1,899.99
Best Buy
TopicsAppleDellHPMacBookMemory Crisis
Recent updates to this guide
-
September 2026: I added more information about the various factors affecting laptop prices right now. I also added a new section about some new laptops that shoppers can look forward to in the coming months. Finally, I updated three of our picks in the wake of recent pricing and availability changes. I removed the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 as our top Chromebook because of its value-zapping $170 price hike, and I’m now looking for its replacement. The Asus Zenbook A16got a $300 price bump, but I’m keeping it as our best 16-inch laptop (for now) because it’s still not a rip-off in the current market. Lastly, the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI was out of stock at the time of writing, but may not be sold out for good. I’ll continue to monitor its listings over the next few weeks and will swap it for another model if it turns out it’s actually been discontinued. In the meantime, a refurbished Swift Edge 14 AI is readily available.
-
July 2026: The Acer Swift Edge 14 AI is officially the most portable laptop we’ve ever tested: It only weighs 2.18 pounds and measures 0.37 inches thin at its slimmest point. I added it as a new pick.
-
June 2026: I made the Asus ExpertBook Ultra our new favorite business laptop and named the Asus Zenbook A16the best 16-inch laptop. I also removed the Alienware 16X Aurora as our top gaming laptop because the configuration we tested has been discontinued. We’re currently testing potential replacements.
What to look forward to
In early September, PC makers showed off a slew of new Windows laptops at IFA, an annual tech trade show in Berlin. Among them are the ultralight Acer Swift Blade 14, the very repairable Acer Swift Vero 16, two new Lenovo creator laptops running on Nvidia RTX Spark, and a pair of colorful MacBook Neo competitors: the Lenovo IdeaPad Vibe and the pared-down Dell 14S. The IdeaPad Vibe is confirmed to arrive this October, starting at $699.99, but most other IFA debutants don’t have set prices or release dates just yet.
On the MacBook side, Apple is rumored to be working on a refreshed MacBook Pro with an M6 chip (first seen in this summer’s new Mac mini), as well as a higher-end MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen. The latter might be called the “MacBook Ultra,” if the gossip mill is correct. The M6 model is reportedly coming this fall, while the Ultra could debut at the end of this year or early next.
Read this before you buy a Windows laptop
Many great Windows laptops we’ve tried run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X and X2 series chips, which use ARM-based architecture instead of standard x86 architecture like Intel and AMD chips. The Zenbook A14 and A16 are two great examples of outstanding ARM laptops.
These Qualcomm chips are great because they offer amazing performance and battery life, but they’re not compatible with some specialty software and PC games. Having said that, ARM support is getting better and should dramatically improve in the near future. Right now, I would only avoid ARM laptops if you’re a student or if gaming is the main thing you do on your PC. You can read more about this in my dedicated guides to the best Windows laptops and the best laptops for college.
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Frequently Asked Questions
A laptop with 512GB of storage and 16GB of memory (RAM) is going to be a solid daily driver and a future-proofed investment for most people. That said, if you’re a PC gamer or someone who dabbles in creative work (like graphic design or photo and video editing), I recommend defaulting to 1TB of storage with 32GB of RAM to accommodate your heavier workload.
Many budget laptops start with just 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, which is workable for casual users who mainly browse the web, write documents, and send emails. Just know that it’ll feel pokey if you have too many tabs open and may not be able to run certain software. You’ll also probably have to supplement it with an external hard drive eventually, unless you stash most of your files in the cloud.
There are two huge pros to buying a refurbished laptop, one being that they’re usually sold at a steep discount. By opting for “new to you” (instead of “brand-new, fresh out the box”), you can maximize your budget and score specs that would normally be out of your price range. Secondly, buying refurbished is just plain good for the environment. Every pre-owned laptop purchase keeps a still-usable device out of a landfill.
The key is to make sure any refurbished laptop you buy is in good-enough condition to last a few years and protected by a decent warranty. For more tips, read Mashable’s guide to buying refurbished tech.
The HP OmniBook 3 16 with the Snapdragon X chip is the longest-lasting laptop we’ve ever tried. It held out for 40 hours and 14 minutes in our video rundown test. Coming in second place is the Dell 14S with the Intel Core Ultra 7 355 chip, which lasted 34 hours and 29 minutes on one charge. Meanwhile, the longest-lasting MacBook we’ve tested is the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M5), which died at 21 hours and 17 minutes.
For more on them and other long-lasting models, check out our standalone guide to the best battery life laptops.
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 them. This methodology revolves around four criteria:
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 CPU test, which measures their performance in common tasks. Gaming laptops get put through additional graphical benchmarking.
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-e. Ideally, we hope to get at least 17.5 hours of battery life from MacBooks, 16.5 hours from Windows laptops, 11 hours from Chromebooks, and five hours from gaming laptops. (They’re notoriously power-hungry.)
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.
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.
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.
