The Best Laptops in 2025: Top Picks for Gaming, Work, and School

Apple's MacBook may just be the most ubiquitous laptop of all time, and year after year, it earns top marks for performance, portability, and battery life. This year, the company released its latest iteration on the ultra-portable MacBook Air, featuring its latest and most powerful processor, the M4. This new chip powers the experience, allowing users to do everything from crank out projects for work or school to creative work, and it does these things faster, using less battery than competing Windows laptops around its price.

All of the most appealing qualities of the MacBook Air line make their return here. We once again see Apple challenge convention by offering reliably great performance and battery life in such a thin and light body. Apple even managed to shave a smidge of weight off of this year's release even while improving its capability. It only weighs 2.7lbs, too, making it almost effortless to carry.

As we've come to expect from Apple, the Air is all about evolutional refinement. In her review, our own Jackie Thomas dubbed it an "oldie but a goodie" in the most loving way possible. It has the same fanless internal design that relies entirely on passive cooling (in part through its metal frame). This allows it to run completely silently while also adopting a clean aesthetic, unbroken by fan vents.

This does mean that it won't compete with the MacBook Pro in the kind of performance it's able to put out, which does have active cooling, but you wouldn't expect it to. The MacBook Air is about being a daily companion and all the computer that you'll need this side of being a creative professional or gamer.

That doesn't mean it's a slouch in the performance department. The prior M3 MacBook Air, released in March of last year, already offered impressive performance in benchmarks and real world use, and the M4 chip is a step ahead by roughly 20%. Groundbreaking? No, but it does mean that the MacBook Air can handle just about anything you might throw at it on an average day.

Like many of its other qualities, the display is very similar to its predecessor, but that's not a bad thing. While I would have loved to see an upgrade, it's 13- or 15-inch screen offers a 2560x1664 resolution which translates to high pixel density and a crisp, color-rich image – another point Jackie loved.

On the flip side of things, it offers limited connectivity. Sad as it is to say, it's one of the things you just have to accept with the MacBook Air series, at least so far. (It's never too late to change, Apple!) It offers two USB Type-C ports on the left, a MagSafe connector, and a headphone jack on the opposite side. If you have lots of accessories to connect, you'll need to invest in a dock.

The MacBook Air so nails the basics of being silent, satisfying, and delightfully responsive, that it truly begins to feel like a natural part of your daily life. It's no good for gaming, sure, but as a daily driver, it's the best choice for most people.

The Asus VivoBook S 15 has a temptingly low entry point for all that it offers. Beginning well below $1,000, this laptop offers many of the same benefits of the ZenBook S 16 featured later in this list. Its screen is fantastic, and its thin and light design makes it easy to slip into a bag and carry throughout the day. Just as importantly, you're not sacrificing performance for its cost.

Asus's VivoBook line is all about balancing value with accessible pricing. Looking at its overall design and spec sheet, it's clear to see the shared DNA between this year's VivoBooks and ZenBooks. While the latter has a lot to offer, there's no mistaking that you're paying extra for its more elegant design. If you don't mind losing a few frills and still getting a good-looking, high-performing laptop, the S 15 might just be the budget laptop you've been waiting for.

Coming in at just over 3lbs, it's the kind of laptop you can easily slide into a bag and forget it's there. Since it is only a touch over a half-inch at its thickest point, you won't have to worry about it taking up a lot of space in your bag.

It's not all about form factor, though. The S 15 comes with 16GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD. It's powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P processor, which expertly blends power efficiency with performance.

At this price, you would expect it to skimp on its screen, but Asus has done anything but. The VivoBook comes with a gorgeous high-resolution OLED touchscreen display. It runs at 120Hz for smooth animations and scrolling long websites and has an ultra-crisp 2880x1620 resolution. All of this culminates in outstanding picture quality for productivity and entertainment alike.

I've been testing this laptop in preparation for a full review and have been impressed that it's able to offer more than 16 hours of battery life in normal use. Used intermittently, I've been able to get away with charging only twice a week instead of nightly like most Intel and AMD laptops that I've tested.

That's the benefit of the Snapdragon processor, but it also comes with a drawback: app compatibility. It uses a fundamentally different architecture, which means that app support isn't a given. Granted, it's been out long enough that most major productivity and creative apps should work fine, but it's worth taking a look at the Windows on ARM compatibility list to ensure that it will work for the actual applications you'll be using.

As long as it checks that box, this is a great value that's bound to impress most people.

This year's Razer Blade 16 is easily the best laptop the company has ever released, and I don't say that lightly. That's because it blends fantastic performance with a form factor that's more thin and light than what was previously possible. It features the latest Nvidia graphics and a powerful AMD Ryzen CPU. In sheer fps, it's not the most powerful, but when viewed as a whole package, it's nothing short of outstanding.

The Razer Blade 16 is a premium laptop in every way. It comes with a fully aluminum chassis that's been CNC milled to create its form, offering improved durability while still keeping the overall weight reasonable at only 4.7 lbs. It's lighter than you would expect a high-performance gaming laptop to be, and paradoxically, it's nowhere near the loudest either.

In my review, I was incredibly impressed at how well-balanced the system is. Running an RTX 5090, it opens the door to gaming at ultra settings, but its thinner, lighter design made it much nicer to actually use than the vast majority of other gaming laptops I've tested, despite trading some performance to get there.

To pull off its form factor, Razer decided to limit the wattage of its graphics card. Given the high price of the laptop, it's easy to be dismayed by this. Indeed, if you're looking for the highest possible fps and don't care as much about portability, this probably isn't the laptop for you. But make no mistake: At this laptop's native resolution, it's beastly.

Which brings me to its other high point in its display. The Blade 16 uses a 16-inch, 2560x1600 OLED screen. Razer could have gone for 4K here, and on paper, that may have even been better. In practice, however, its RTX 5090 is much better suited to driving 1,600p at triple-digit frame rates without needing to lower many, if any, settings in many games. Its screen is also able to clock all the way to 240Hz, so you can enjoy exceptional responsiveness and motion clarity in the process.

The overarching impression it leaves is extraordinary. It might lag a few fps behind the heavier, louder competition, but the balance of design features and performance Razer went with simply makes it a much better laptop. I didn't find myself missing that handful of extra frames. If you can afford it, the Razer Blade 16 is the best gaming laptop overall so far this year.

For productivity, portability, and even some light gaming, the Asus ZenBook S 16 is one of my all-time favorites. Between its spacious 16-inch OLED touchscreen, elegant and overtly premium design, solid battery life, and impressive performance, it should be high on your consideration list as your next laptop for work.

Compared to the majority of productivity laptops, the ZenBook S 16's screen is ever so slightly larger and uses a 16:10 aspect ratio to maximize its space. This is perfect for work because it can simply fit more on the screen, whether that's to benefit you hammering out a report or a colleague that you're showing a presentation to. It's also a touch screen for intuitive navigation in either of these tasks, allowing you to easily integrate it into your workflow or enhance what you're already doing.

When I reviewed this system, I couldn't help but make comparisons to Apple's MacBook lineup. In fact, it's pretty obvious that Asus is courting the same aesthetic with some unique and elegant touches of its own, like the durable and stylish Ceraluminum lid. This new material has the appearance of ceramic but actually blends that material with aluminum alloy to create a robust, fingerprint-resistant finish. Open it up, and you'll find a large vented area above the keyboard milled with more than 1,000 individual holes that frankly make the laptop look more expensive than it actually is.

Inside, it's running AMD's Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 CPU. It's a high-performance AI-enabled processor with 12 cores and 24 threads to easily handle demanding tasks and multitasking. While it's not quite as powerful as Apple's M3 or M4 chips, it's more than capable for the vast majority of tasks, including video editing. It's also fairly power efficient, offering around 15 hours of usable life between recharges.

As an added bonus, it's also capable of some light gaming, so long as you're willing to lower the settings or play at 1,200p resolution. The HX 370 processor is the same chip driving the majority of Windows gaming handhelds available at the time of this writing. It still won't compete with a dedicated gaming laptop like the Razer Blade 16, but it's nice to know that you'll be able to load up and play some games without needing to rely on the cloud for the privilege.

It's a great laptop overall, but it does have one drawback worth keeping in mind. After it's been running intensive tasks for a while, it can become quite warm. Some users have found that it's best to use it on a desk or with a laptop cooler to avoid that heat making its way to your legs. I didn't hit this point myself, but if you're sensitive to warmth or live in a warmer climate, it's worth considering. That said, in day-to-day productivity use that you'll typically be engaging with, this isn't a big concern. It's only when the S16 is running in its highest performance mode and processing demanding tasks over time.

Until I was forced to trade it out, this was my personal daily driver due to its great balance of form factor and performance. For work, there's little it can't do.

The Microsoft Surface Pro 11 is the best laptop for students for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest among them are its versatility and ability to deliver a great experience in a range of different situations. It's able to blend handwritten note-taking, deep work in productivity applications like Office and Google Drive, and entertainment for when the day is done, all into one compact, exceptionally portable package.

This year's Surface Pro is an impressive reinvention of Microsoft's 2-in-1 tablet PC. As I remarked in my review, the company always seemed to sacrifice performance in exchange for the form factor with the Surface line. That's just not the case any longer. The Surface Pro 11 is a high-performance PC with solid battery life, a great screen, and the ability to transform for the different facets of student life.

Inside this laptop is running your choice of a Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X Elite processor. Like the Asus VivoBook S 15 above, its use here results in a responsive experience that didn't lag or stutter throughout my entire testing period – at least with the X Elite version, which I definitely recommend choosing if your budget can stretch that far.

While I'm confident that the Snapdragon X Plus will also offer satisfyingly responsive performance, based on my experience with the chip in other laptops, opting for the Snapdragon X Elite also gets you an upgraded OLED touchscreen display with a crisp resolution of 2880x1920.

For entertainment and even just general viewing, it's a big upgrade. Both versions of the Surface have similar specs on the screen. So even if you go for the LCD variant, you can count on crisp visuals, 500 nits of brightness, and a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth motion. The infinite blacks of the OLED, like the more expensive variant, offer much better contrast, dynamic range, and more vivid colors. If you plan on watching movies or shows on this laptop, it offers a significantly better viewing experience that I really enjoyed.

It's worth noting that by default, the Surface Pro only comes with the tablet and doesn't include its keyboard folio case or Surface Pen. These do add significantly onto its price. But if you'd rather not spend as much, you can easily pick up a third-party keyboard case and stylus. If you do opt for the official accessories, you can count on a satisfyingly integrated experience. The keyboard case connects magnetically with a reassuring snap and stays in place well. It also includes a compartment to hold and charge the Surface Pen, so both are always ready to go.

Like the other recommendations on this list that use Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, app compatibility is a concern, and you'll want to double-check that the programs you use are compatible. For academic and creative use, it's not likely to be an issue, however, as app support has continually been on the up-and-up since its launch last year. At this point, it seems like the vast majority of common apps, even across specific fields, are reported to be working well. It's not Windows, though, so verify your apps before pulling the trigger.

If you're a college student, you probably want to play games every now and again too. Since this tablet is coming directly from Microsoft, you can count on easy compatibility with Xbox Cloud Gaming. In my testing, Nvidia GeForce Now also worked well. Running games locally on the Surface Pro is usually disappointing, if the games open at all, but streaming is a viable alternative if your internet can support it.

Microsoft really aimed to impress with this generation's Surface Pro 11 and stuck the landing. It's a great choice for any student that needs a versatile laptop that can last a whole day of learning and still be ready for fun at home or in the dorm.