1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best value
4. Best 2-in-1
5. Best dual-screen 2-in-1
6. Best for DIYers
7. Best for gaming
8. Best 13-inch
9. Best 14-inch
10. Best 16-inch
11. Best 17-inch
12. Best for business
13. Also tested
14. How to choose
15. How we test
The best Windows laptops are light enough to carry all day, powerful enough to tackle your daily workload with ease and power-efficient enough that you don't need to worry about unplugging to get work done on the go.
Sure we also have a full list of the best laptops overall, which includes MacBooks and Chromebooks, but this is the list for Windows diehards who want a new laptop running Windows 11. If you're ride-or-die for Microsoft's OS, this is the list for you.
And you can trust these recommendations because here at Tom's Guide we review dozens of laptops from the top manufacturers every year, and only recommend the best. We know because we evaluate every system in our testing lab and in the real world, running benchmark tests, display tests and battery life tests as well as using it in day-to-day work and play.
Based on our testing, these are the best Windows laptops you can buy, and you can read our full review of each machine to help you make a buying decision.
Not sure a Windows laptop is the best fit for you? Make sure to check out our best Chromebooks page and best MacBooks list for some more recommendations!
The quick list
In a hurry? Here's a brief overview of the laptops on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever laptop catches your eye.
The Dell XPS 15 hits the sweet spot of price, performance and portability better than just about any other Windows laptop on the market. The slim design looks and feels great, and if you pay for the OLED display upgrade and the best internals this is a surprisingly powerful, good-looking Windows 11 ultraportable.
The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a great Windows laptop for those on a tight budget since it delivers a solid 1080p display, a comfy keyboard and good battery life for $300. It's not fast or powerful, but it's fine for writing papers or web surfing.
The Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is one of the best 2-in-1 laptops if you love Windows 11 because it looks and feels great, offers lots of ports, enough power for work or play and a lovely 2.8K OLED panel. The webcam isn't amazing, but it's good enough!
The Framework Laptop is a truly unique Windows ultraportable that's remarkably repairable and upgradeable. It's basically the anti-MacBook, designed to be easy to upgrade and repair while delivering style and performance without compromise.
The Yoga Book 9i is a compelling alternative to foldable screen laptops because you get two 13-inch displays in one package you can use in multiple modes. There are some clever software gestures and multitasking features here, too.
While neither the fastest nor the biggest gaming laptop around, we love to recommend the Asus Zephyrus G14 because it has the chops to run most games at solid framerates, the power efficiency to be used as a work laptop in a pinch, and a slim, elegant chassis that's more portable than most gaming laptops.
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The Dell XPS 13 (2024) is an excellent Snapdragon X Elite laptop that delivers the goods thanks to its fast performance and phenomenal battery life. In fact, it's the longest consumer-grade laptop we've ever tested! Though it sports a controversial design, this is arguably the best 13-inch Windows laptop out there.
Stylish, lightweight, and powerful, the Acer Swift 5 is a truly impressive Windows 11 laptop that rivals the latest MacBooks in size, style and speed. This mid-range Windows laptop delivers compelling value thanks to its power and vivid 14-inch 1600p touchscreen. The latest model is competitive with the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13, yet costs less.
With its fast Intel CPUs, powerful Nvidia graphics card and lovely 16-inch 120Hz AMOLED display the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra has brains and beauty in equal measure. The fact that you can get one for less than a new MacBook Pro should have Apple worried.
The shockingly light 2-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano lasted 12 hours on our battery test, making it a great Windows laptop for a long day at the office. With the latest Intel CPUs inside and a nice, punchy keyboard (replete with that classic red ThinkPad nub) this is a great ultraportable for getting work done.
The best Windows laptops you can buy right now
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The best Windows laptop overall
The Dell XPS 15 OLED isn’t an innovative or revolutionary laptop. Aside from its updated internals, the 2023 model is virtually identical to its predecessor. But while this machine isn't shaking things up, it's still one of the best laptops you can buy.
The refreshed Dell XPS 15 offers the latest 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs and Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series laptop GPUs. You can also get one configured with an Intel Arc graphics card, and all models come equipped with Windows 11. As with earlier models, Dell offers a 3.5K OLED touchscreen that makes this 15-inch laptop feel premium.
Not only is this a stellar laptop for everyday use, it’s also a competent gaming machine when kitted out with high-end internals — though that's admittedly pricey, and the XPS 15 OLED we reviewed lasted a disappointing 9 hours in our battery life test.
Even if it isn’t shaking up the computing world with never-before-seen features, the XPS 15 remains an all-around solid machine that offers versatility and style in a range of prices.
Read our full Dell XPS 15 (2023) review.
The best value
The Acer Aspire Go 15 isn't an amazing laptop, but it doesn't have to be when the asking price is $300. At that price, you can make peace with the fact that the Go 15's low-powered CPU and paltry complement of 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage aren't good for much else besides browsing the web, writing and editing, and maybe some very light gaming.
But that's fine for folks who just need a cheap laptop to browse the web or write emails. What the Acer Aspire Go 15 lacks in features or charm it more than makes up for in utility, as it offers 10 hours of (tested) battery life and a keyboard that's surprisingly comfy to type on. And while its 15.6-inch 1080p screen looks a bit washed-out and won't make colors pop, it's more than good enough for web surfing or working with documents.
The Acer Aspire Go 15 doesn't look, feel or sound as fancy as the other laptops on this list, but it's a serviceable workhorse with a $299 price tag, making it the best Windows laptop for those on a budget and looking for great value.
Read our full Acer Aspire Go 15 review.
The best 2-in-1
The Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED has a few key weaknesses, including a disappointing 720p webcam and under ten hours of tested battery life, putting it behind best MacBooks in terms of power efficiency. But if you can live with those drawbacks, you get a lot of great stuff in this Windows 11 2-in-1.
The beautiful 2.8K OLED screen makes whatever you do on it look nice, and the keyboard is comfy and nice to use. Performance is plenty fast, and factor in the svelte and beautiful chassis sporting plenty of ports, and it's a wonder you get all this for $1,199.
If you’re in the market for a dependable 2-in-1 with a svelte design and eye-pleasing OLED panel, this is a great laptop to get!
Read our full Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED review.
The best dual-screen 2-in-1
The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i unites a pair of beautiful 13.3-inch OLED displays in one device, delivering you a unique laptop that can turn into a variety of unique-looking configurations to fit your needs. This laptop can stand in as a traditional Windows 11 laptop or tablet, plus it can go into tent mode for presentations.
While the design itself can feel a little flimsy and less than sturdy, when you get the hang of using it you may appreciate how versatile and useful this two-screen machine be. Type right on one display or use the separate Bluetooth keyboard to bang out emails on your lap in one screen while you watch movies on the other, and you'll start to appreciate how this laptop starts to feel like a Swiss Army knife.
Though it’s expensive at $1,999, this oddball laptop offers enough singular value to be included in this list.
Read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i review.
The best laptop for DIYers
The Framework Laptop is the anti-MacBook, a modular laptop that promises to let you customize, repair, and upgrade it to an unprecedented degree, all while remaining affordable and ultraportable. Each Framework laptop comes with a screwdriver included, so you can open the case (it's easy, I promise) and replace parts yourself, with everything from the memory to the screen bezel to the mainboard being user-replaceable.
If you're the DIY type and love the idea of being able to tinker with your laptop's innards this is the best laptop for you. The Framework laptop is currently only available for purchase from the Framework website, and the price tag starts at $1,099 — though you can pay as low as $849 for the DIY Edition if you're willing to assemble your laptop yourself and provide your own memory, storage, operating system, and Wi-Fi card.
The best gaming laptop
One of the trickiest challenges gaming laptop manufacturers face is creating a machine that packs in enough power and cooling for true gaming performance, yet is also actually slim and light enough to be easily transported around and used on your lap. In this respect, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 really shines; it achieves a great balance between power and portability by making use of the AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor, a new laptop-grade CPU that comes with AMD’s latest tech to efficiently deliver power. Add-in the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU and you’re looking at a very powerful 14-inch laptop.
It delivers the goods when you're gaming but also delivers over 10 hours of battery life when you’re not, making this a decent workhorse machine as well. And at a price that ranges from $1,049 and ranging up to $1,999, the ROG Zephyrus G14 is pretty affordable depending on the spec you opt for. Even when it's fully kitted out, it’s still cheaper than many other gaming laptops.
Read our full Asus ROG Zephryus G14 review.
The best 13-inch Windows laptop
The Dell XPS 13 (2024) looks identical to the Dell XPS 13 Plus but it sports a Snapdragon X Elite chip that gives it excellent performance and insanely long battery life (nearly 20 hours in our testing). Right now, it's the longest-lasting consumer laptop we've ever tested at Tom's Guide.
If you can get past this laptop's controversial design, which features a function row of capacitive LED-lit keys and no visible touchpad, you'll find a reliable ultraportable that can handle almost anything you throw at it. Its 13.4-inch display delivers good picture quality, and once you get used to the tightly packed keys, you'll find a pleasant typing experience. Best of all, this laptop starts at $1,299, which is an excellent value for what you get.
Read our full Dell XPS 13 (2024).
The best 14-inch Windows laptop
The Acer Swift 5 (2022) offers a lovely fresh design with gold accents wrapped around a speedy Intel CPU, a gorgeous 14-inch display, and a startlingly swift 1TB SSD onboard. While it has some drawbacks, including bad speakers and annoying software, the Acer Swift 5 remains a strong choice.
It's a great Windows laptop that offers plenty of power for everything save serious gaming. And while the speakers and pre-installed bloatware leave room for improvement, the striking 16:10 1600p display and the power of Intel's Core i7 chip make this a great (and great-looking) Windows laptop for getting things done on the go.
Read our full Acer Swift 5 (2022) review.
The best 16-inch Windows laptop
The Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra is a powerful laptop sporting a gorgeous 16-inch OLED display that makes viewing content and playing games a pure joy. The fact that it packs components powerful enough to rival some gaming laptops means it can handle just about any work you throw at it, making it a great Windows laptop.
The most notable competitor is the MacBook Pro 16-inch, but while Apple's big-screen Pro is impressive Samsung’s laptop is lighter and comes equipped with an OLED display, something no MacBook can match. Plus, the Book 3 Ultra is a better choice for playing PC games thanks to its discrete Nvidia laptop graphics card.
While it can't beat Apple's laptops in terms of battery life, the Book 3 Ultra is a killer 16-inch Windows laptop and is deserving of the Ultra name.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra review.
The best 17-inch Windows laptop
The LG Gram 17 Pro ($1,999 to start) is a low-key beast of a laptop, which is what you hope to get from LG's decision to slip a 13th Gen Intel CPU and Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics card into the thin black chassis of the 17-inch Gram. Put simply, no other laptop crams this much power into such a lightweight (at 3.2 pounds it's lighter than the smaller Dell XPS 15) big-screen machine.
Adding that kind of graphical horsepower gives the Gram a bit more muscle, allowing you to get more demanding work done and play many of the best PC games, though you'll need to dial down the settings if you want to achieve the high framerates this laptop's 144Hz display can deliver.
While it still can't match the best gaming laptops in terms of power, the LG Gram 17 Pro is lighter and won't look as out of place in a coffee shop or conference room. The full keyboard and large display make working and browsing the web a very comfortable experience, and when it's time to relax the display and speakers make movies and TV a treat. The 12 hours of tested battery life is nothing to sneeze at, either!
Read our full LG Gram 17 Pro (2023) review.
The best business laptop
When we hear a laptop is incredibly thin and light, it makes us worry about how long it can last on a charge. But there's nothing to worry about with the shockingly light 2-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, which lasted 12 hours on our battery test, making it competitive with some of the very best Windows laptops on the market today.
Lenovo didn't sacrifice on performance or usability, as the X1 Nano's Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors provide the speed you need for tons of productivity. Plus, the keyboard provides a snappy and comfortable typing experience that lives up to the ThinkPad brand. If you absolutely must have the lightest Windows laptop this is a great choice; you just might need to pack a USB-C hub, as this ultra-light ultraportable is a little light on ports.
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano review.
Also tested
We test and review dozens of laptops every year, and just because they don't all make this list doesn't mean they aren't good machines.
No, there are loads of great laptops that don't quite achieve the level of excellence needed to be leaders of the pack. Below we've gathered all the good laptops we've tested which don't quite make this list, but are still great alternatives well worth considering if they meet your unique needs, or if you can't find your first choice on sale.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 ($999 to start) is the first Surface Laptop to ship with a Qualcomm CPU inside, and the extra power and battery life it affords make this the best Surface Laptop yet.
While there's not a lot of flash to this workhorse, those in need of a straightforward no-frills Windows 11 laptop will be well-served by the Surface Laptop 7. Available with your choice of a 13-inch or 15-inch 120 Hz touchscreen, these laptops offer good performance and a comfy typing experience for not too much money.
Admittedly, the port array is sparse at best (all you get is USB-C) and you won't be doing much hardcore gaming on this portable PC. And while its Snapdragon X chipset qualify this as one of Microsoft's first Copilot+ PCs, the AI features on offer feel frivolous and fun to have at best.
But that may change down the line, and even if you don't care a bit about AI this remains a great ultraportable for Windows fans.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 review.
How we tested these laptops
How we test to find the best Windows laptops
The best Windows laptops rise to the top in our lab tests, in which we run every machine through a rigorous suite of benchmarks and real-world tests to gauge how it will perform during everyday use.
For example, we carefully measure the average brightness and color quality of each laptop's display using our in-house light meter and colorimeter. To evaluate overall performance we run our machines through tests that include Geekbench 5 (CPU performance), as well as various 3DMark tests to measure graphics capabilities. We also run a file transfer test to measure how fast a machine's hard drive is, and a custom battery test that has the machine browse the internet over Wi-Fi until it runs out of juice.
When testing all laptops we benchmark gaming performance running Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. For testing dedicated gaming laptops, we also run benchmarks for a number of other popular games, such as Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption 2.
All of these lab tests are complemented by our hands-on review process, in which reviewers spend time putting each laptop through its paces while working, watching movies, listening to music, and playing games.
For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test products at Tom's Guide.
How to choose the best laptop for you
How to choose the best Windows laptop for you
Performance: If performance isn't important to you, say because you only need a laptop for browsing the web, you can save a lot of money by choosing a cheap Windows laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM. Most of the laptops we've suggested here can't be bought with anything less than a Core i5, so we recommend you check out our guide to the best laptops under $500 if performance isn't your priority. But if speed and performance are important to you, pick a laptop with starting specs such as a Core i5 CPU, 8 to 16GB of RAM and at least a 256GB to 512GB SSD.
Size: Consider how mobile you want your Windows machine to be. Notebooks like the Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano are incredibly light and slim, while gaming-focused laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and Alienware m15 R4 have real weight to them — but offer real power in exchange.
Flexibility: The 2-in-1 category of Windows laptop is a relatively new but exciting market of devices with hinges capable of rotating all the way around to lay the screen flat on the back of the laptop, turning it into a Windows tablet. If the idea of having a laptop that doubles as a tablet is exciting to you, Windows notebooks like the Lenovo Yoga 9i or HP Elite Dragonfly are a great choice.
Graphics and gaming: Most Windows laptops feature integrated graphics as part of the CPU, which means they can handle old or undemanding games like Minecraft or World of Warcraft, but they won't be great at running the latest games or any intensive graphics applications (think: photo and video editing). For that, you'll want a laptop with a discrete graphics card, like Nvidia's RTX 30-series or AMD's Radeon RX 5000 series cards.
Whatever system you choose, it's always a good idea to complement it by investing in the best mouse for your particular work situation.
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.
