To say it’s been a busy year for laptops would be a severe understatement. Of all the laptops we’ve reviewed so far, these are the 6 that stood out.
It’s been quite a busy year for laptops, especially with all the talk of Windows on Arm and AI PCs. But cutting through all the hype and fluff, there have been some really fantastic laptops we’ve had a chance to review, some of which will undoubtedly stand as the best laptops of the entire year.
Don’t get me wrong — there are some big ones still waiting in the wings too, whether that’s the M4 MacBook Pro or the AMD laptops coming soon. But now that we’ve arrived at the halfway point of 2024, let’s rank the six best new laptops — out of the 33 we’ve reviewed so far.6. Acer Swift X 14
Let’s be honest: Acer’s Swift laptops have never been lookers. The latest version of the Swift X 14 makes up for that in lots of exciting ways, but it’s the price that really makes it stand out. For $1,700, you can get the high-end configuration, which comes with an RTX 4070, a 3K OLED 120Hz screen, 32GB of RAM, and terabyte of storage. That is quite the deal.
The fact that Acer even allows you to configure this relatively slim 14-inch laptop with an RTX 4070 already puts it in a category of its own. Outside of gaming laptops, that’s practically unheard of. It’s still a bit limited, mind you, given the system’s total thermal design power (TDP) of 80 watts. But in our performance testing, whether that’s in video editing or gaming, the Swift X 14 beats larger 16-inch laptops with the same GPU (except for the laptop sitting at my No. 5 spot).
If you don’t like the idea of wasting some power, the $1,400 RTX 4050 configuration should also be a great value — and a bit more fitting for this laptop’s size. Either way, it’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than the MacBook Pro.5. Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16
A lot of laptops have attempted to be MacBook Pro killers this year, and none have succeeded as well as the Yoga Pro 9i 16. Despite only being 0.72 inches thick, it packs up to a Core Ultra 9 185H and RTX 4060.
That GPU, in particular, is of the utmost importance. The RTX 4060 might not sound like the biggest deal in the world, but these days, a mobile GPU is more than just its name. Many other laptops with the RTX 4060 on board — such as the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra or the Dell XPS 16 — restrict its thermals, allowing for a max of just 60 watts to the GPU. The Yoga Pro 9i 16 cranks that up to 100 watts, letting you get your money’s worth out of this graphics card.
