The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 is our upgrade pick if you need a business laptop — it’s nearly perfect but expensive. It’s lighter than our top pick, it’s available in a variety of configurations depending on your needs, and it has a more comfortable keyboard. We haven’t tested the base model with an IPS display, though we expect it to have longer battery life than the higher resolution OLED option. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 is still very expensive; we recommend the newer Gen 13 over this model.The Asus Zenbook 14 (UM3406KA-PS76T) has a 14-inch OLED touch display, a comfortable backlit keyboard and a reliable trackpad, and around 14.5 hours of battery life. This laptop doesn’t have the latest version of Wi-Fi or Thunderbolt 4 ports, but it’s still a good option if our picks are unavailable.The HP OmniBook Ultra (14-fd000) is expensive, it’s heavy at nearly 3.5 pounds, and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 version we tested lasted 12.5 hours in our battery-life tests.The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip (14-fh000) has a haptic touchpad that is occasionally slow to register clicks, its speakers are mediocre, and it comes with a lot of software cruft.The Asus Vivobook S 14 (M5406WA-BS99) comes with a bulky charger and has shorter battery life than our top pick, lasting 13 hours 15 minutes in our tests.Although the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition (14″ Intel) has the best haptic trackpad I’ve tested in a Windows laptop, it lacks a webcam cover and USB-A ports, it’s heavier than the similarly priced ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and its keyboard isn’t as spacious.The Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Edition, 13.8 inch) is available with Intel’s Lunar Lake processors, but it’s too expensive: It starts at $1,500 for a configuration with 256 GB of storage.Compared with the Intel model, the AMD version of the HP Omnibook X Flip 14 (fk0053xx)’s battery doesn’t last as long — it died after just 9.5 hours in our tests — and it costs more.The HP OmniBook 7 Aero weighs just 2.2 pounds, but its battery lasted only 10 hours in our tests. Its hinge doesn’t open far enough, and its build quality doesn’t match that of our top pick.The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (DB04250) weighs 3.55 pounds, and its screen is mediocre for its price. The Dell 14 Plus (DB14250) is also heavy at 3.42 pounds.The LG Gram 14″ 2-in-1 (14T90S-G.AAB4U1) and LG Gram 14″ (14Z90T-G.AAB2U1) are thin-and-light laptops with excellent battery life, but in our tests their lids exhibited a concerning amount of flex. Both models come with a ton of bloatware and cost more than our top pick.The Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-61T-R49D) comes packed with excessive bloatware, and in our tests its fans ran constantly at a distracting volume.In our tests, the display on the Asus ExpertBook P5 (P5405CSA) had a blue cast and poor viewing angles, and its loose hinge caused the display to sag when we moved the laptop.The Dell XPS 13 (9350) has a finicky touchpad and a limited port selection.The lid of the LG Gram 14″ (14Z90S-G.ARW3U1) flexed under light pressure. This laptop is not available with 16 GB of memory at this writing, and it comes loaded with bloatware.The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i (14″ Intel) achieves a uniquely thin bezel by hiding its 32-megapixel webcam beneath the display. But this webcam looked worse than equivalent 1080p webcams, and it particularly struggled with light sources in the background. This laptop is also expensive. It lacks a headphone jack, and it’s difficult to open with a single hand.The dual-screen Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406CA) is an interesting experiment, with two displays and a detachable slab that contains the keyboard and trackpad. This design makes it heavy in comparison with our picks, at 3.64 pounds. And its battery life fell far short: When we used only the top display and the attached keyboard, it lasted 11 hours 15 minutes in our battery tests, and when we used both displays — one to browse the web and the other as an on-screen keyboard and trackpad — it died in just 7.5 hours. If you need more display than a traditional laptop offers, pair one of our top picks with a portable monitor instead.Budget optionsThe Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 (DB04255) and Dell 14 Plus (DB14255) are both heavy at 3.51 and 3.35 pounds, respectively. Both models have subpar displays, and their trackpads click when light pressure is applied to the left palmrest.The Acer Aspire 14 AI (A14-52M/A14-52MT) is large and heavy, and its display looks dim and washed out. It also comes with a ton of bloatware.The Asus Vivobook 14 (M1407KA-PS74) is heavy, its display looks washed out, and its battery life was abysmal in our tests.The HP Pavilion Aero (13z-bg000) had poor battery life, and although it’s especially light at 2.2 pounds, it feels flimsy.The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 has a small, low-resolution display, and its battery life isn’t long enough to survive a full day of work or classes.Big-screen optionsThe Lenovo ThinkPad X9 15 Aura Edition has 20 hours of battery life in our testing, a haptic trackpad that feels satisfying and responsive, a 15.3-inch 2880×1800 OLED touchscreen, and an 8-megapixel webcam, all packed into a chassis that weighs just 2.88 pounds. But the touchscreen model starts at $1,500 — the Samsung Galaxy Book5 360 is less expensive, and the 16-inch Galaxy Book5 Pro provides a much larger screen for a similar price.The Samsung Galaxy Book5 has a surprisingly awful screen, with terrible viewing angles that made it difficult to read text according to our panel testers. It also falls short of our pick’s battery life and lacks a touchscreen.The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (15″ Intel) has 16.5 hours of battery life, but its 15.3-inch display isn’t OLED, its trackpad struggled with palm rejection in our tests, and it’s difficult to open with one hand.The HP OmniBook 5 (16z-ag100) weighs nearly 4 pounds and lacks an OLED display. The HP OmniBook X Flip 16 (16-as0001xx) weighs even more, and it’s bulky compared to our pick. It comes with a stylus, but its magnetic attachment mechanism is unintuitive and the display has a tall lip that makes notetaking uncomfortable.The Acer Swift Go 16 AI (SF16-51T-76TG) comes with a ton of bloatware, its build quality fails to match that of our picks, and its display is highly reflective.Lasting around 11 hours in our tests, the Asus Vivobook S16 (M5606KA-PS77) had mediocre battery life. It also had some noticeable flex in the lid and keyboard deck.The LG Gram 15.6″ (15Z90T-H.AAB4U1) has worse build quality and shorter battery life compared with the Samsung Galaxy Book5 360.The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 (16″ AMD) is especially heavy at 4.41 pounds, and its display has a sickly yellow-green cast.The LG Gram 16″ (16Z90TL) posted a long battery life of 18 hours in our tests, but we found a concerning amount of flex in the lid and keyboard deck, and its keyboard felt shallow and mushy. It’s expensive, too.The LG Gram Pro 16″ 2-in-1 (16T90TP-K.AAB4U1) is expensive and had mediocre battery life of 11 hours 22 minutes in our testing.Repairable optionsThe base model of the Framework Laptop 13 (Intel Core Ultra Series 1) has only 8 GB of memory — though adding more is easy — and its battery life isn’t quite as long as our repairable pick’s.The Framework Laptop 12 is the cutest laptop I’ve ever seen in more than a decade reviewing laptops, and I appreciate its repairable design that’s similar to our recommended Framework Laptop 13. But the Laptop 12 has a cramped display with washed out colors and a huge bezel, it lasted just 9 hours in our battery life test, and it’s too expensive to be considered a budget laptop.Snapdragon optionsBecause Snapdragon processors don’t use the x86 architecture that has been standard on Windows PCs for decades, laptops based on these processors are currently in a transition period similar to when MacBooks moved to Apple Silicon processors. Support has improved, and Microsoft’s app-translation layer, Prism, runs x86 apps moderately well but not entirely without hiccups — some apps and peripherals won’t work until developers build an Arm version, and you can get excellent battery life now in a Windows laptop without those limitations.The Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Edition, 13.8 inch) is the best Snapdragon laptop we’ve tested, with a compact design and nearly 16 hours of battery life in our tests. But Microsoft discontinued the base model we recommended, and now the cheapest option starts at $1,200.Compared with the 13.8-inch model, the Surface Laptop (13-inch) has a smaller, lower-resolution display and a weaker processor. It’s still fast enough for everyday tasks, but the 13.8-inch model is a better value.The HP OmniBook 5 (14-he0005xx) is another decent budget option with 15.5-hour battery life, and a good keyboard, trackpad, and display. But its screen is very reflective and doesn’t get as bright as the Surfaces’ displays.The HP OmniBook X lasted 14 hours 20 minutes in our battery tests and has an excellent 5-megapixel webcam. But it’s more expensive than the Surface, its speakers aren’t great, and its display doesn’t get as bright.The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x has a vivid, bright 14.5-inch OLED display and is still svelte and sturdy — the whole laptop weighs just 2.82 pounds and offers excellent build quality and 17 hours of battery life. But it lacks a headphone jack and USB-A ports and doesn’t come with any dongles for its three USB-C ports.The Dell XPS 13 (9345) has ridiculous battery life — it lasted 21 hours 31 minutes in our tests — and it’s a thin-and-light laptop with excellent build quality. But its haptic trackpad continues to be finicky (an issue we’ve experienced on other recent iterations of the XPS 13), and it still lacks a headphone jack.Compared with the other Snapdragon laptops we tested, the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus (7441) is heavier, it doesn’t feel as premium, and its speakers aren’t great.The Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-11T) has a mushy-feeling keyboard and trackpad, comes with a ton of bloatware, and sports an unnecessary illuminated AI logo on its trackpad.The Acer Aspire 16 AI (A16-11MT-X669) has a slower processor and its trackpad is way too big — there’s nowhere to rest your left wrist while typing without clicking the trackpad.The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge (14″) is more expensive than comparable Snapdragon-based laptops we tested, and its 11.5-hour battery life was no match for the superb results we saw from other Snapdragon machines.The Asus Zenbook A14 (UX3407QA-PS76) and (UX3407QA-X1P512) cost more than the Microsoft Surface Laptop for a weaker processor and no touchscreen.The Acer Swift Go 14 AI (SFG14-01-X006)’s display lacks touch and has a yellow tint.This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.
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