With more chips and choices than ever, it can be downright puzzling to pick the right laptop processor. We make sense of the latest mobile CPUs to help you land the best notebook for your budget.
Does your notebook need a Core Ultra 5, a Ryzen AI 9, or something in between? Today, picking which processor is right for you is a baffling choice that can add a bundle to a laptop’s price. So is the cost worth it? Do you need big-time processing power, or can you make do with a cheaper choice? Our guide to today’s mobile CPUs will help you get the most powerful machine for your money.
Just as with desktops, at the heart of every laptop computer is a central processing unit (CPU), commonly called a processor or simply a « chip », responsible for nearly everything inside. Today’s laptops use a big array of different CPUs designed by AMD, Apple, Intel, and Qualcomm—seemingly endless options with byzantine names. But choosing one is easier than you think, once you know a few ground rules.
This article will help you decrypt the technical jargon that haunts every laptop specification sheet—from core count to gigahertz, and from TDP to cache—to help you pick the one that suits you best. With almost no exceptions, a laptop processor can’t be changed or upgraded later, unlike most desktop chips, so making the right choice is essential. (With that in mind, also check out our guide to the best CPUs for desktops.)First Up: Some Basic Laptop CPU Concepts
The CPU is responsible for the primary logic operations in a computer. It controls everything: mouse clicks, the smoothness of streaming video, responding to your game commands, encoding your family’s home videos, and more. It’s your PC’s engine, the most critical piece of hardware inside.
Computer processors comprise super-tiny rows of super-tightly fitted semiconductor materials that make up transistors, measured in nanometers, which amplify or switch electronic signals at extreme speeds. These clusters of transistors make up a processor’s cores, each tailored for specific types of data processing, such as central processing (user-based PC interactions), graphics processing (displayed images), and neural processing (AI-based algorithmic functions). These cores are arranged together on a die, sliced from a wafer of silicon-based semiconductor material.
Before we get into specific CPU recommendations, let’s build an understanding of what differentiates one chip from another by focusing on the main traits that laptop processors have in common.Laptop Processor Architecture: The Silicon Underpinnings
Every processor works on an underlying design called an instruction-set architecture (ISA). This blueprint determines how the processor understands computer code. Since developers write operating systems and applications to work on a particular architecture most efficiently—often solely—this is probably the most critical decision point regarding your next processor.
Modern laptop processors use either Arm or x86 ISA. Intel created the x86 ISA in 1978, and it today dominates the PC industry, with Intel and AMD battling for market-share supremacy. On the other hand, hundreds of companies produce Arm-based chips under license from the British firm Arm Limited, which is majority-owned by Japan’s Softbank.
Arm chips are in billions of devices from smartphones to supercomputers, but until not too long ago, they had minimal PC presence. (That is, some Chromebooks and a handful of Qualcomm-based Windows laptops.) Then Apple dropped Intel processors for its own Arm-based M1 chips in late 2020. Apple’s M series of laptop chips, now in its M4 generation, is a leading reason Arm chips are seeing wider acceptance as an alternative to x86 for mainstream computing. (See our Apple M4 CPU tests.)
If you’re an Apple user, your architecture choice is preordained, since all modern MacBooks now use Arm-based M-series processors. However, Microsoft Windows, ChromeOS, and many Linux operating systems are compatible with both Arm and x86. Although we weren’t smitten with the initial round of Qualcomm Windows machines, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 SQ3 tablet and the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Gen 1, we’ve seen significant improvements with the latest generation of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus laptops and tablets that debuted starting in 2024, among them the HP OmniBook X 14 and the Dell Latitude 7455.
Regardless, software compatibility on Arm machines remains an issue. While software written for x86 can operate on Arm chips via an emulation layer, the process slows performance compared with native code. (Microsoft claims to have largely solved this problem with its latest Prism emulation tools, which we’ve tested.) Similarly, the non-Snapdragon Arm CPUs (notably from MediaTek) that we’ve tried in low-cost Chromebooks have proved much less peppy than the Intel and AMD processors in midrange and premium models.
With that, why would you consider an Arm-based Windows laptop? For one, these laptops have recorded extremely competitive, if not dominant, battery life figures in some matchups—even against Apple’s MacBooks. Also, as offices worldwide demand more use of AI techniques in employee workflows, Qualcomm has ensured that its Snapdragon X chips are in line with the best in terms of their AI processing performance. Finally, Arm’s system-on-chip (SoC) approach to laptop processors, particularly for fanless designs, means the thinnest and lightest laptops could increasingly become Snapdragon-based.Core and Thread Count: Firing on All (CPU) Cylinders
Current laptop CPUs are composed of two or more physical cores: essentially, the chip’s logical brains. All else being equal, more cores are better than fewer, though there’s a ceiling to how many you can take advantage of in any given situation. A popular and much-simplified analogy is the number of cylinders in a car engine.
Core counts between Intel and AMD CPUs vary drastically, and newer Intel chips containing multiple core types (what the company calls Performance versus Efficient cores) have further complicated their distinctions. Intel has also introduced Low Power E-cores with its Core Ultra chips, designed to stretch battery life by taking on the PC’s lowest-lift tasks. (More about those later.)
We recommend a six- or eight-core AMD processor or an Intel chip with six or more Performance cores for processor-intensive applications such as video editing and gaming. CPUs of this caliber are typically found in midsize and larger laptops rather than ultraportable compact laptops, since they demand extra cooling. (We’ll discuss different CPU tiers briefly when we get into Intel and AMD chip specifics.)
Then you also run into the issue of thread count. We’re not talking about linens and sheets here but processing threads—tasks, or portions of a task, for the computer to perform. Computers routinely juggle hundreds or thousands of threads (tasks or subtasks), though a processor can work on only so many threads simultaneously. That number equals its thread count, often (but not always) double its core count (two threads per core).
Most of today’s CPUs support thread-doubling technology that lets one core work on two processes simultaneously via threading. An eight-core chip, for example, might have 16 threads handling processes at any given instant. Intel calls this tech Hyper-Threading; the generic term is simultaneous multithreading (SMT). While AMD uses multithreading technology across its product line, Intel has pursued performance improvements differently with its latest Core Ultra Series 2 chips, which lack Hyper-Threading.
All things considered, core count trumps thread count, so an eight-core CPU without multithreading will generally outperform a quad-core with eight threads, all else being equal. Of course, in the silicon sphere, other factors are seldom equal; that’s why so many varieties of chips exist. (Intel’s recent expansion of possible core types has made processors harder to compare than ever.)Clock Speed: The CPU Stopwatch
OK, a processor with X cores and Y addressable threads can tackle more tasks simultaneously than the same chip with just X number of cores. But how long does it take to finish one thread and move on to the next? A CPU’s operating frequency is known as its clock speed, measured in megahertz (MHz) or, more often, gigahertz (GHz)—a driver of how many instructions or basic operations the processor can crunch through per second.
Higher clock speeds are generally better, though things get muddy when comparing speeds between different brands or between different families of chips from the same brand. That’s because some CPUs are more efficient than others, processing just as many instructions per second despite operating at a lower clock speed. Still, clock speed can be critical when comparing chips within a single vendor’s lineup.
Could this get any more complicated? Sure. Today’s CPUs typically advertise at least two clock speeds: a base (minimum) clock and a boost (maximum) clock. The latter is often dubbed turbo speed, since Intel refers to boost clocks as Turbo Boost technology. The processor runs at its base clock when handling light workloads, typically between 1GHz and 2GHz for mobile CPUs.
When more speed is needed, the CPU accelerates temporarily—often to 3.5GHz, 4GHz, or sometimes nearly 6GHz. Processors don’t always run at their peak or boost clock speeds because they might overheat and damage the system. Also, sometimes, only one processing core operates in overdrive; at other times, only a specific subset of cores might. With Intel’s latest chips, you may encounter ratings for multiple possible peak clocks, depending on how many cores ramp up at once. It depends on the CPU and workload, so comparing clock speeds gets more like apples and oranges as the years pass.
Laptop CPUs’ boost clocks are often as high as their desktop counterparts, but these peak speeds are usually not sustained for as long before the chip ramps down due to power delivery or thermal limitations. This concept is called « throttling », a safety measure built into the processor to keep it running safely within its rated specifications rather than burning out and damaging the system.Watt’s Up: Understanding Processor Power Ratings
A broad overall performance indicator is a CPU’s power rating, usually expressed as a single number—thermal design power (TDP)—in watts (W). TDP is less of a measurement of power consumption than a guideline for PC designers when they choose a cooling system to dissipate heat. TDP represents the amount of thermal energy the system must be able to dissipate so that the processor can operate without overheating.
