Laptops

Laptop Comparisons

Most laptop comparisons come down to one question: how much machine do you actually carry around every day, and how much of it do you really use? Two laptops can share a screen size and a price tag and still behave very differently once you open a big project, unplug for a day of classes or plug in two monitors at your desk.

Start with the processor and memory, because on most thin laptops, including every MacBook with Apple silicon, memory and storage are soldered to the board. What you buy is what you keep for the life of the machine. A chip name alone tells you little; the CPU and GPU core counts, the base memory and the maximum memory a model can be ordered with tell you far more about how it will age.

Then look at how the laptop is cooled. Fanless designs are silent and simple but slow themselves down under long, heavy loads such as video exports or large code builds. A fan lets the same class of chip hold its speed for longer, at the cost of a little noise and thickness.

Battery figures deserve care. Every “up to” rating on this site is the manufacturer’s own number, and brands measure differently (video playback, web browsing or a mixed workload), so compare ratings from the same brand with more confidence than across brands. Weight, port selection and the included charger matter just as much once the laptop leaves your desk.

Finally, the operating system shapes everything. macOS, Windows on Intel or AMD, Windows on Arm and ChromeOS each run a different mix of apps, so check that the software you depend on runs natively before you compare anything else.

24 comparisons