The Best Laptops: Premium Laptops, Budget Laptops, 2-in-1s

The spring shower of new laptop technologies—AMD’s Ryzen 5000 and Intel’s Tiger Lake CPUs, plus Nvidia’s RTX 30-series mobile GPUs—are bringing a welcome flowering of faster, better portable PCs, the latest of which we’ve just started reviewing. It’s still a tight market, as pandemic-fueled sales remain strong.

BEST LAPTOPS CHEAT SHEET:

Best thin-and-light laptop:HP Spectre x360 14 1Q881AV[HP Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best laptop under $500:Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L[Acer Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best 14-inch/15-inch workhorse:Dell XPS 15 9500[Dell Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best budget convertible:Lenovo Yoga C740 14[Lenovo Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best 2-in-1/hybrid Windows tablet:Microsoft Surface Pro 7+[Microsoft Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best gaming laptop:Gigabyte Aorus 17G[Gigabyte Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best budget gaming laptop:Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44-R99Q[Acer Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best portable gaming laptop:MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 9SD[MSI Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best luxury laptop:HP Elite Dragonfly[HP Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best overall Chromebook:Google Pixelbook Go[Google Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best budget Chromebook:HP Chromebook x360 12b-ca0010nr[HP Laptop Replacement Battery]

Best 2-in-1/tablet/hybrid laptop:MacBook Air (M1, 8‑core CPU, 7‑Core GPU, 256GB storage)[Apple Laptop Replacement Battery]