We tested the best laptops from Apple, Dell, and more to help you compare battery lives, displays, and storage.
Maybe you’re intrigued by Apple’s new MacBook Pro, or perhaps you’re looking to upgrade your 10-year-old laptop that’s run its course. No matter the reason, any time is a great time to buy a new laptop. Brands like Apple, Acer, and Microsoft offer laptops at various price points to suit almost any budget or use case. Plus, many mid-range and high-end models see frequent discounts, especially around the holidays or big sales events.
MSI Creator Z17 HX Studio Best laptop for content creators
The Creator Z17 HX Studio from MSI is designed from the ground up to be the ultimate machine for content creators and creative professionals. The 17-inch QHD display not only gives you excellent color, detailing, and contrast, but it also supports touch inputs via the MSI Pen 2, which is great for anyone who wants to take notes during client meetings, create digital drawings and paintings, or have more control over your apps and programs.
What’s particularly interesting about the MSI Pen 2 is that it can also directly write on paper via special graphite tips. This means you won’t have to carry around a bunch of pencils or pencils for meetings and work. It can all be done directly on the Creator Z17.
The laptop can house up to 64GB of RAM, an Intel Core i9-13950HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, and a 2TB SSD giving you all of the power and performance you’ll ever need. Plus the device supports Wi-Fi 6 for lightning wireless internet speeds. MSI saw fit to equip their hardware with Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, enabling quick file transferring, battery charging, as well as the ability to set up a secondary display.
Corsair Voyager a1600 Best gaming laptop
The laptop also has Elgato Stream Deck integration, which means you’ll get unprecedented control over your favorite programs as well as your laptop. Additionally, it houses one of the better batteries in a gaming laptop that I’ve seen, providing about six hours of use on a full charge. And while that does sound like it’s on the shorter side, it’s an eternity for gaming laptops where you might only average three hours before you need to plug in.
Review: This laptop with a programmable touch bar is what the MacBook Pro should’ve been
What is the best laptop?
Best laptop Starting price CPU/GPU RAM/Storage
MacBook Pro (M3 Max) $3,299 M3 Max Up to 128GB, up to 8TB
MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo $949 Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Intel Arc Up to 32GB, up to 1TB
Dell XPS 16 $1,899 Intel Core Ultra 7, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Up to 64GB, up to 4TB
Acer Aspire 3 $264 Up to 11th gen Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 5 7000 series, Intel or AMD integrated graphics 8GB, up to 1TB
MSI Creator Z17 HX Studio $2,829 Intel Core i9-13950HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 64GB, 2TB
Corsair Voyager a1600 $1,300 AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, AMD Radeon RX 6800M 32GB, 2TB
Which is the right laptop for you?
The main question when buying a laptop is: „What do you want to do with it?“ Once you’ve established that, you can focus your research on finding the right machine for you.
For example, if you’re on the move a lot, you’ll want a good combination of flexibility, sturdiness, connectivity, security, and a long battery life. However, if you’re a largely deskbound graphic designer or content creator, you should opt for a laptop with powerful hardware. Devices with top-tier processors and graphics cards tend to be heavier than most.
