There are always plenty of laptops on the market, and almost all of these models are available in multiple configurations to suit your performance and budget needs. If you feel overwhelmed by options when looking for a new laptop, you can understand. To help simplify things for you, here are the main things to consider when you start looking.
price
Searching for a new laptop for most people starts with price. If Statistics Chipmaker Intel and PC makers are throwing at us, we’ll be holding our next laptop for at least three years. If you can afford to stretch your budget a little to get a better spec, do it. This depends on whether you’re spending $500 or over $1,000. In the past, we have been able to escape by looking at future memory and storage upgrades and reducing our prepayments. Laptop manufacturers are increasingly moving because they allow for easy upgrades of components, so once again it’s best to get as many laptops as possible from the start.
Generally speaking, the more you spend, the better your laptop will be. This could mean faster performance, better display, better build quality, smaller or lighter designs from high-end materials, and even better components for a more comfortable keyboard. All of these add to the cost of the laptop. For example, I would say $500 will get you a powerful gaming laptop, but that’s not the case. Currently, a reliable laptop sweet spot that can handle average work, home office or school tasks is between $700 and $800, while a reasonable model of creative work and games is around $1,000. The key is to look for discounts on models at all price ranges. This will allow you to get less laptop functionality.
operating system
The choice of operating system is personal preference and some budget. Most often, Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacO do the same thing (except for games where Windows is the winner), but they do differently. Use the most comfortable application unless you have the OS specific application you need. If you’re not sure which one is, try visiting the Apple Store or Local Electronics Store to test it. Or ask friends and family to test it out for a little while. If you have an iPhone or iPad and like it, you might also prefer MacOS.
When it comes to price and diversity (and PC games), the Windows laptop wins. If you need MacOS, I have a MacBook. Apple’s MacBooks regularly achieve the best list. The cheapest one is the M1 MacBook Air for $999. You’ll get a regular discount to $750 or $800, but if you want a cheaper MacBook, you should consider an older MacBook.
Windows laptops can be found for just a few hundred dollars and come in all kinds of sizes and designs. Certainly, we will have a hard time finding a $200 laptop that offers completely inspiring recommendations, but if you need a laptop for online shopping, email, or word processing, they are there.
If you’re on a tight budget, consider a Chromebook. Chromeos is a different experience than Windows. Make sure you have the required applications chromiumAndroid or Linux app before jumping. If you’re walking around the web most of the time, writing videos, streaming videos, or using cloud gaming services, they’re perfect for you.
size
Don’t forget whether you have a lighter, thinner laptop or have a touchscreen laptop with good battery life. It’s important in the future. The size is primarily determined by the screen – halo, laws of physics. This will be battery size, laptop thickness, weight and price. Other physics-related properties, such as ultra-thin laptops, are not necessarily lighter than thicker ones, so you can’t expect a wide range of connections, such as small or ultra-thin models.
screen
There are countless considerations when it comes to making decisions on the screen. How much you need to display (it’s more amazing about resolution than the screen size), the type of content you’re watching, whether it’s used for games or creative work.
You really want to optimize pixel density. In other words, the number of pixels per inch that the screen can display. Other factors contribute to sharpness, but higher pixel density means sharper rendering of text and interface elements. (Easily calculate pixel density for any screen DPI calculator If you don’t want to do math, you can also know what you need to do there. ) As a rule of thumb, I recommend a dot pitch of at least 100 pixels per 100 pixels.
Because of the way Windows and Macos on the display scales, it is often better to have a higher resolution than you think. High-resolution screens can always make things bigger, but lower-resolution screens can’t fit more content into the view. This is why a 4K, 14-inch screen might sound unnecessary excess, but it may not be if you need to look at a wide spreadsheet, for example.
If you want a laptop with relatively accurate colors, display the most colors possible, or if you want a laptop that supports HDR, it’s not because the manufacturer lies, but because it usually can’t provide the context necessary to understand the meaning of the specifications being quoted. Find more details on different screen usage considerations in our Monitor Buying Guide for General Purpose Monitors, Creators, Gamers and HDR viewing.
Processor
The processor, also known as the CPU, is the brain of a laptop. Intel and AMD are the leading CPU manufacturers for Windows laptops, and Qualcomm is the new third option with an arm-based Snapdragon X processor. Both Intel and AMD offer an incredible selection of mobile processors. Both manufacturers have chips designed for a variety of laptop styles, including power saving chips for ultraportables and faster processors for gaming laptops. Their naming convention will let you know which types are used. You can head to Intel or AMD’s You will need an explanation site so you can get the performance you want. Generally speaking, the faster the processor and the more cores the better the performance.
Apple creates its own chip for MacBook, so things become a little easier. Like Intel or AMD, you’ll still want to pay attention to naming conventions and know what kind of performance you’d expect. Apple uses the M-series chipset on Mac. The entry-level MacBook Air uses an M1 chip with an 8-core CPU and a 7-core GPU. Current models include the M2 Series silicon starting with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, then rising to M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and a 38-core GPU. Again, generally speaking, the more cores you have, the better performance.
Battery life is less related to the CPU architecture, number of cores in ARM vs. X86. Apple’s arm-based MacBook and the first arm-based Copilot Plus PCS we tested offer better battery life than laptops based on Intel and AMD’s X86 processors.
Graphics
The graphics processor handles all the tasks that drive the screen, generate what is displayed, and speed up many graphics-related (and increasingly AI-related) operations. For Windows laptops, there are two types of GPUs. Integrated (IGPU) or discrete (DGPU). As the name suggests, IGPUs are part of the CPU package, and DGPUs are separate chips with dedicated memory (VRAM) that communicate directly, making them faster than sharing memory with the CPU.
IGPUs divide space, memory and power into CPUs, so they are constrained by their limitations. It allows for a small, light laptop, but doesn’t have as much performance as a DGPU. There are some games and creative software that won’t run unless you detect a DGPU or sufficient VRAM. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing, and other non-specialized apps run fine on the IGPU.
More power-hungry graphics needs, such as video editing, gaming and streaming, design, require a DGPU. There are only two real companies that create Nvidia and AMD. Intel offers CPUs based on XE brand (or older UHD graphics brand) IGPU technology.
Memory
For memory, we highly recommend 16GB of RAM (an absolute minimum of 8GB). RAM is where the operating system stores all the data of the application currently running, and can fill up at high speed. After that, I will start replacing the RAM and SSD, which is slow. Many $500 sub-laptops come in 4GB or 8GB, which, when combined with slow disks, makes for an annoyingly slow Windows laptop experience. Also, many laptops have memory soldered to the motherboard. Most manufacturers disclose this, but assume that if the RAM type is LPDDR, it is soldered and cannot be upgraded.
Some PC manufacturers leave empty internal slots for soldering the memory and adding a stick of RAM. You may need to contact your laptop manufacturer or check the full specifications of your laptop online. Knowing slots can be difficult, so if you have a user experience, check the web experience. Non-standard memory or other pitfalls may be required.
Storage
You’ll find cheaper hard drives and bigger hard drives for gaming laptops on budget, but faster solid state drives will replace all your laptop’s hard drives. They can make a big difference in performance. Not all SSDs are equally quick and inexpensive laptops usually drive slower. If your laptop only has 4GB or 8GB of RAM, you will end up replacing it with that drive while you’re working, which could cause your system to slow down quickly.
Get something you can afford. If you need to use small drives, you can add one or two external drives on the street, or use cloud storage to enhance the small internal drives. One exception is the gaming laptop. Unless you really like to uninstall games every time you want to play a new game, we do not recommend using an SSD below 512GB.
