The best Windows laptops run an impressive gamut, from Qualcomm-powered workhorses that refuse to die to dual-display stunners and subtle gaming stations. (Some of them, dare we say, will tempt even the most devoted Apple Macbook disciples.) Users who need a new laptop for everyday productivity, creativity, or entertainment have no shortage of options. And that’s for better or worse.
To help you pick out your next PC from the crowded Windows market, we’ve broken out our best laptops rundown into this separate guide to the best Windows machines of 2024. All of these laptops have been thoroughly hands-on tested by members of the Mashable team for performance, build quality, and battery life, and we stand by their value — or at least think they’re worth hunting down on sale.
Our top picks
As of February 2025, Mashable’s favorite Windows laptop is the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, an elegant workhorse powered by the impressive Snapdragon X series processor. It’s got high-end power, a premium design, interesting AI features, and an incredible battery life. It’s actually the longest-lasting laptop we’ve ever reviewed: Even the brand-new M4 MacBooks can’t keep up.
For almost as much Snapdragon oomph at a lower price point, opt for the HP Omnibook X 14, the best mid-range Windows laptop. It’s not much to look at, but it’s plenty power-efficient and equipped with a great keyboard. It also comes with the same AI tools as the Surface Laptop 7.
The best laptops for 2025, tested by experts
Those on an even tighter budget should look into the Lenovo Yoga 7 14 (Gen 9): Solid performance, a good amount of ports, and a versatile 2-in-1 design have made it our new favorite cheap Windows laptop. It dethrones our previous pick, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3, a pretty ultraportable with specs that are too dated for 2025 buyers.
If you’re shopping for a convertible across all price points, Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 (Gen 9) is our top 2-in-1 laptop overall, earning praise from our reviewer for its gorgeous 2.8K OLED touchscreen, its peppy (albeit piping-hot) CPU, and its clear Bowers & Wilkins soundbar. For a twist on the hybrid form factor, we also highly recommend the 2024 Asus Zenbook Duo, a beautiful dual-screener.
We’ve got additional picks for specialty users — the Alienware m16 R2 is the best gaming laptop we’ve tested thus far, and the Acer Swift X 14 is our go-to Windows laptop for photo and video editing.
What’s on deck
We’ve got several newer Windows laptops in hand for testing, including a Lunar Lake Dell XPS 13 with a tandem OLED display and the upgradable, repairable Framework Laptop 13. We’ll update this guide in the near future if we think any of them are worthy picks.
We’re also waiting on a review unit for the new Asus ZenBook A14, which debuted in January at CES 2025 as the “world’s lightest Copilot+ PC” and supposedly lasts up to 32 hours on a single charge. (It wound up winning our Best of CES award in the laptop category.) Having briefly tried it in Asus’ private CES showroom, I’m extremely eager to run it through some thorough benchmarking.
What we’ve tested lately (that didn’t make the cut)
I’m fresh off testing the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14, a slick new convertible with awesome build quality, a great battery life, and a beautiful design that includes a 3K OLED touchscreen. It’s a knockout, but its weird port placements, lousy speakers, oversaturated webcam, and middling Geekbench 6 multi-core score kept it from earning a Mashable Choice Award. (I rated it a 4.2/5 overall.)
To give more context to the latter point, my $1,899.99 testing unit had an Intel Core Ultra 258V processor with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. (That’s a brand-new upper mid-range CPU.) In our Geekbench 6 benchmark, it scored slightly worse than the 15-inch M2 Apple MacBook Air from 2023 and significantly worse than its predecessor, last year’s HP Spectre x360 14, which had a mid-range Intel Core Series 1 CPU as tested. For nearly $2,000, I wanted way more from the OmniBook.
I do think the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is a decent splurge for future-proofers, but it’s not well-rounded enough to be one of our top picks. Stick with the Yoga 9i 14 if you’re looking for the best hybrid laptop out there, or look into the Spectre x360 14 if you want to stay within the HP family — it offers better performance and audio quality for about the same price as the OmniBook model.
Read on for Mashable’s in-depth guide to the best Windows laptops of 2025. FYI: We’ve listed the pricing and specs of our testing units, which may not apply to each laptop’s base model.
How we tested
Mashable staff subjected all of the laptops on this list to rigorous hands-on testing, which involved inspecting their build quality and using them as part of an everyday workflow for several weeks at a time. This included working in different kinds of documents, checking emails, watching videos, taking photos on their webcams, participating in video calls, listening to music (via Spotify), playing games (if possible), and experimenting with any unique software features or use cases they claimed to support.
Additionally, all of the laptops featured here were made to run industry-standard benchmark software. We run these benchmarks because they replicate real-world tasks to produce scores we can use to easily compare different laptops’ performance. We recently started implementing these benchmarks in our testing, and you can expect to see them in all of our new laptop reviews going forward.
Performance benchmarks
We evaluate Windows laptops’ overall performance by having them run the Windows version of Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6, which measures processor performance in a handful of common tasks. We record each of their multi-core scores in our reviews — the higher the score, the better.
To get a sense of gaming laptops’ graphical prowess, we also play Cyberpunk 2077 on them. We picked this game because it’s a graphically intense Triple-A title that pushes many systems to their performance limits. If the laptop has a discrete/dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card (as opposed to an integrated GPU that’s built into the CPU), we play Cyberpunk once with its DLSS tech off and again with DLSS on using the High preset without ray tracing. This tests the machine’s raw GPU power and its performance with AI upscaling, respectively.
We follow this up with 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark for gaming PCs and record their scores. Again, higher is better.
Battery life benchmarks
We look to see about nine to ten hours of battery life in the Windows laptops we review, with 12-plus hours being ideal. Gaming laptops are a different story: They only need to last at least two hours per charge to get our approval, earning extra brownie points for reaching the four-hour mark.
We’ve assessed laptops’ stamina a couple different ways in the past. (More on that shortly.) On the Alienware m16 R2 and the Asus Zenbook Duo, we ran UL Solutions’ PCMark 10 battery life test. This benchmark has the machine complete a series of apps and functions until it conks out.
On the Acer Swift X 14, HP OmniBook X, Lenovo Yoga 9i 14, Yoga 7i 14, and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, we conducted a video rundown test that involved playing a looped 1080p version of Tears of Steel, a short open-source Blender movie, at 50 percent brightness.
In order to standardize our battery life testing methodology, we will only be using the Tears of Steel rundown on all Windows laptops going forward. We’ll stick with PCMark 10’s battery life test for gaming laptops.
Final thoughts
After evaluating a laptop’s hands-on performance and benchmark testing results, we make our final recommendations based on whether we think they offer a good overall value for the money. A too-expensive laptop will sometimes get a pass if we think it looks and works so great that it’s worth the trouble of finding it on sale.
It bears mentioning that these aren’t the only Windows laptops we’ve tried — we’re constantly testing and assessing new models across different categories, and many don’t make the final cut. With that in mind, you can expect this guide to evolve on a pretty continuous basis. We’re always on the lookout for new top contenders.
