Apple's MacBook laptops have been generally excellent machines since they started coming with Apple silicon inside, making finding the best MacBook for you more about budget and needs than sorting good from bad.
I know because my team and I have been reviewing MacBooks and other laptops for decades, so we've had front-row seats to the leaps and bounds Apple's laptops have made in recent years. I didn't always love the lightweight MacBook Air, for example, but nowadays the MacBook Air M3 is indisputably one of the best MacBooks for most folks because of its intoxicating blend of speed, portability and battery life.
But if you need something more powerful for heavy-duty work like playing games or editing video, the MacBook Pro M3 Max is easy to recommend. Of course, it's also pretty expensive; luckily, those on a budget can still get the MacBook Air M1 on deep discount and enjoy speedy performance and plenty of battery life.
Read on for more recommendations, fuller explanations and a breakdown of how these top-tier MacBooks fare in our battery life tests.
The quick list
The MacBook Air M3 is the best laptop for the money. The M3 chip is a seriously strong performer, the display is bigger and brighter, and battery life exceeds 15 hours.
The MacBook Air M1 is aging rapidly, but the ol' M1 still has enough pep in its step for basic productivity work. And its still one of the lightest and longest-lasting laptops you can get.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro nails the sweet spot between portability and performance, giving you the power of M3 with the portability of a 14-incher. It's my pick for the best MacBook Pro for most.
The MacBook Air 15-inch M3 is the big-screen MacBook Air, and I recommend it as the best big screen MacBook because while the 16-inch Pros are technically larger, this is nearly as big and far lighter for less.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro kitted out with an M3 Pro/M3 Max chip is one of the most powerful Macs you can buy, so if you can afford to cram it full of RAM and storage it's easily the best MacBook for power users.
If you think you need a bit more than the 14-inch M3 Pro but don't want to splurge on a 16-inch M3 Max, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 Pro is the best mid-range MacBook Pro.
The best MacBooks you can buy today
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The best MacBook overall
The MacBook Air 13-inch M3 shares most of the same features that made its predecessor so great — a vivid 13.6-inch display, a svelte modern design and four color options. That, along with the powerful M3 chip, which delivers strong performance for work, gaming and AI tasks, makes this notebook a winner.
The only true negative point here is that, if you own the MacBook Air 13-inch M2 (which previously topped this list), then you don't need to upgrade. Sure, the M3 chip delivers stronger performance over M2, but unless you're crunching videos or playing demanding games, you likely won't notice a difference with everyday work.
Even if the MacBook Air M2 now starts at $999, you’re still getting excellent value from the new Air M3 for what it offers. As things stand, it's the most affordable M3 MacBook you can buy.
Read our full MacBook Air 13-inch M3 review.
The best budget MacBook
The MacBook Air M1 was a small revolution when it arrived in 2020, and it remains a usable and useful laptop today. While it's been superseded by newer models, this laptop's 14+ hours of battery life (according to our tests) is more than enough to get you through a day at the office, and the aging M1 chip inside still delivers solid performance.
The MacBook Air's webcam also benefits from the M1 chip providing signal processing tricks to improve clarity and color accuracy. Dolby Atmos audio support means that some movies and TV shows will sound even better than before. If you can afford a newer MacBook it will last you longer, but if you're on a budget even a refurbished MacBook Air M1 should still serve you well.
Read our full MacBook Air with M1 review.
The best MacBook Pro overall
The MacBook Pro 14-inch is one of the most powerful portable laptops money can buy, and that’s because of the new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips from Apple, which delivers even faster performance and power efficiency than M2 and M1. Whether you’re editing photos, transcoding videos or multitasking with a dozen apps, the new MacBook Pro can handle any workload with ease.
The M3 model specifically is a stellar replacement for the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which makes that extra $300 investment all the more worth it. This laptop packs a bigger and more colorful display, a sharper webcam, more ports and a big performance boost.
Plus, the FHD camera gets a welcome improvement, thanks to the new Image Signal Processor. Not only that, but the HDMI port now supports up to 8K panels, and that SD card slot is still a super helpful addition for photographers and videographers alike.
The M3 Pro version of the laptop lasted a whopping 17 hours in our Tom’s Guide Battery Test, which beats most Windows laptops. The M2 13-inch version lasted 18:20, which is still very good endurance, but it doesn't have that larger display and more performant chip to power either.
Top it all off with Wi-Fi 6E, and you've got a laptop that's (almost) perfect for creative pros. If you're reading this, Apple, maybe think about adding a touchscreen display, and Face ID into that notch.
Read our full MacBook Pro (M3, 14-inch) review.
The best big-screen MacBook
The MacBook Air 15-inch M3 might be a bigger version of the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 but it’s arguably the best big-screen MacBook for the money. The 16-inch MacBook Pro gives you slightly more screen real estate, but it costs more and is heavier to boot.
Whereas the 15-inch MacBook Air, like its smaller sibling, packs the still powerful Apple M3 chip, a gorgeous Liquid Retina display and the sleek design introduced with the MacBook Pro line in 2021.
Plus, even though it's one of the larger laptops on this list, it's still easily one of the thinnest and lightest laptops out there — combined with jaw-droppingly great battery life.
Read our full MacBook Air 15-inch M2 review.
The best MacBook for power users
Want it all? Apple has done it again with the MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Max). While it retains the same fetching design and gorgeous mini-LED display as the previous M2 Max model, this premium laptop’s performance is currently second to none. The steep $3,499 starting price stings, but professional creatives and even gamers will get their money’s worth.
On top of all that, you get all the same ports you know and love — but with some beefed up specs like 8K-enabled HDMI. That's not just the safety-focused MagSafe 3 charging port, but HDMI-out for connecting to displays and an SD memory reader for connecting memory cards for real-deal cameras.
Oh, and there's the gaming potential too, as the GPU cores of the M3 Max are capable of running AAA games in excess of 60FPS! Plus, you've got a 1080p webcam, a trio of improved microphones and a stellar six-point speaker system.
Read our full MacBook Pro (16-inch) 2023 review.
The best mid-range MacBook Pro
Looking for more performance than the standard M3 MacBook Pro, but don't need the outlandish power of the M3 Max? The M3 Pro model is calling your name, and while we did call it the "awkward middle child" in our review, the other side of that point is just as valid — packing all the good stuff of its more expensive sibling in a cheaper, smaller package.
That list of accolades includes the 20% brighter screen with impressive color accuracy, speakers that stand head and shoulders above any other laptop on the market, and (thanks to that slightly reduced power consumption of M3 Pro compared to M3 Max) a bonkers 17:25 battery life.
Plus, with an up to 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine, it had no trouble whatsoever crushing all of my prosumer tasks like editing multiple streams of 4K video, and super high levels of multitasking demands.
Read our full MacBook Pro with M3 Pro review.
Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who's spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom's Guide, which includes managing laptop coverage and reviewing many himself every year.
Performance test results compared
With Apple silicon inside the modern MacBooks are some of the fastest and longest-lasting laptops around, but when you're trying to pick the perfect one for your needs it helps to know which are the fastest.
Since we test basically every laptop we review in a number of areas, including CPU performance, I have a trunkload of test scores I can share with you to help you decide.
We use Geekbench 6 to test CPU performance in both single-core and multi-core workloads, for example, and it generates a score we can then use to compare the raw speed of different MacBooks.
While single-core scores are often a little more meaningful because not all apps are optimized for multi-core performance, it's still good to consider multi-core performance as well since you never know what apps will take full advantage of that capability.
| Laptop | Single-core | Multi-core |
| MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Max) | 3200 | 21711 |
| MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3 Pro) | 3154 | 14357 |
| MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3) | 3138 | 12018 |
| MacBook Air 15-inch (M3) | 3,093 | 12,025 |
| MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) | 3,082 | 12,087 |
| MacBook Air 13-inch (M1) | N/A | N/A |
Battery life chart
Apple's MacBooks have had great battery life since the advent of Apple silicon, so as long as you get a MacBook with an M-series chip inside you can generally count on being able to carry it through a full day at work or school without carrying a charger.
But various sizes and models do have different battery performance, which is why I've gathered the results of our battery tests here in an easy-to-read list so you can make a smarter buying decision. Knowing how long your laptop will last is key when choosing which is right for you, which is why we run every laptop we review through multiple battery tests.
These tests do not reflect real-world use patterns since we have to set every laptop to the same settings in order to do fair comparisons. Thus, while the times listed here are accurate and useful as a comparison point, your own experience with a laptop's battery life will likely vary.
This is because when we run our battery test we set the laptop's display to 150 nits of brightness and have it endlessly browse the web via Wi-Fi until it dies. However, when you use your laptop you're likely adjusting brightness on the fly, doing all sorts of different tasks and generally putting the machine through more of a workout than it gets in our test.
So while I stand by our testing and the battery life results we compare in the chart below, I want to be clear that your own experience will vary!
| Laptop | Battery life (web surfing hh:mm) |
|---|---|
| MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Max) | 17:11 |
| MacBook Pro 16-inch (M2 Max) | 18:56 |
| MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3 Pro) | 17:22 |
| MacBook Pro (14-inch M2 Pro) | 14:02 |
| MacBook Pro (14-inch M2 Max) | 12:51 |
| MacBook Air 15-inch (M3) | 15:03 |
| MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) | 15:13 |
| MacBook Air 15-inch (M2) | 14:48 |
| MacBook Air 13-inch (M2) | 14:06 |
| MacBook Air 13-inch (M1) | 13:19 |
How to choose the best MacBook for you
Performance: The transition to Apple Silicon breathed new life into the MacBook lineup — pairing seriously impressive performance with peak power efficiency and downright bafflingly low operating temperatures (even under max load). Of course, the question of how much of that face-melting speed you need comes down to individual use cases. Not really doing much beyond casual productivity? The M1 MacBook Air is perfect. Need a little more? Bump up to the M2 Air. If you're a power user with creative tasks, the M3 MacBook Pros are the way to go.
Graphics and gaming: If you want to work by day and play by night on your MacBook, anything with an M3 chip is the way to go. This 3nm chipset packs what Apple calls a "next generation GPU," which enables huge graphical capabilities such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Plus, this additional power means you can breeze through graphically-intense productivity tasks too.
Size and weight: If portability is important to you, the MacBook Airs are a must-buy from this selection. From a weight of just 2.7 pounds for the 13-inch version (and a mere 3.3 pounds for the 15-inch), these are so easy to carry around. If portability isn't the biggest concern, you could go all the way up to 4.3 pounds for the 16-inch MacBook Pro. But as far as dimensions go, all of these models are seriously sleek and carry-able.
Battery life: The 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro is the longest-lasting MacBook there is, posting a Tom's Guide battery test time of 17:25. But the whole M3 lineup hangs around that 17-hour mark if longevity is your primary concern.
How we test the best MacBooks
To find the best MacBook, we run each through our gauntlet of benchmarks and real-world tests, and then use them as our main computer for as well. Only then are we comfortable recommending them (or not) for your purchase.
We use a Klein K-10A colorimeter to test each MacBook's screen to find its average brightness and color quality (so we don't just assume Apple's ratings are correct). When it comes to general performance, we use the Geekbench 5 (CPU performance) benchmark, and time how long the Macs will take to transcode a 4K video to 1080p.
We also run the BlackMagic storage speeds test to see how fast these MacBooks' SSDs are (spoiler alert: they're all pretty fast). Then, we run our custom battery test to see how long each MacBook (at 150 nits of brightness) can last browsing the web over Wi-Fi until it runs out of juice.
We've also tested various computer games on MacBooks, with Civilization VI: Gathering Storm being one of our current favorites to run because it runs well on both macOS and Windows, giving us a good point of comparison.
