The world of computing has become a rather busy one over the last few years, growing from minor tech talk to one of the biggest conversation points on the planet. From the explosion in PC building popularity to being the bedrock to the AI boom (or bubble, whichever way you look at it), it all starts with a computer and its components.
And in these past few years of leading my team into this bright future, I’ve become pretty adept at reading the tea leaves on what the next big thing will be. Last year, it was GPUs. This year, it is going to be laptops, and it all starts at CES 2026.
The stars are aligning for some incredible notebooks, with breakthrough chip development, innovations in display tech and maybe a revolution in battery capacity. But there’s also a huge, costly obstacle in the way. So let’s talk about how 2026 will be the year of the laptop — based on the many people I’ve talked to and looking at the state of things going into the new year.
Everything will be OLED
So far, a lot of laptops have made the OLED transition. 2026 looks set to be the year when everyone goes all-in. From the rumored OLED MacBook Pro in the fall to the droves of Windows laptops we expect to see at CES, I’d be more shocked if I didn’t see super vibrant panels all around.
It’s becoming clear that the cost of manufacturing OLED is coming down to the point where it’s no longer a special option you can request on a spec page, but rather the default. The Lenovo Legion 5i I reviewed recently is a testament to that — a solid value for money option that comes with that mesmerizing screen.
In short, OLED is not a new standard anymore. It’s the whole thing.
The new chip wars
I’m already following every beat of the great CPU wars as they happen. But to catch you up, the battleground is set for a huge clash in Vegas: Intel vs AMD vs Qualcomm.
Intel Core Ultra 300 series (codename Panther Lake) looks set to bring the performance of Arrow Lake and power efficiency of Lunar Lake into one chunk of silicon that packs a breakthrough GPU at the same time.
AMD’s coming to Sin City with Gorgon Point (AMD Ryzen AI HX 400 series) and a rumored refresh of Strix Halo. Again, two chips that bring massive GPU power alongside renewed CPU cores and improved power efficiency to boot.
And finally, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme will bring a serious Arm-based turboboost. In my own testing, gaming performance is shockingly good, and in benchmarking, it’s faster than Apple M5.
This is going to be a crucial title fight in 2026, and they will be driving a new kind of notebook next year — one that isn’t just great at productivity performance and battery life, but just so happens to also play games rather well.
You can even see that integrated graphics are actually creeping into gaming laptops too, if you look at the leaked Panther Lake ROG Zephyrus G14.
The silicon carbon pivot?
This is more of a tin foil hat prediction rather than something based on rumors and leaks, but something I’ve been envious of seeing my colleagues in the phones team get. Seeing a same-size smartphone like the OnePlus 15 get a ludicrous battery life with a 7,300mAh cell is impressive.
The reason? Silicon-Carbon battery tech — a new kind of cell that uses silicon anodes instead of graphite, which means a 20-30% higher density of energy in the same size. Now, imagine that on a laptop scale...pretty interesting, right?
You could get a full-blown 99Wh battery in something the size of a thin notebook after all! This would tie up nicely with the power efficiency gains of the new CPUs to provide insane multi-day battery life, or even give smaller gaming laptops even more juice.
The real challenge
Pricing is something nobody wants to talk about because they don’t know how bad it’ll become.
But there’s a problem, and it’s a big (and expensive) one. If you’ve been anywhere near a computing retailer recently, you’ll have noticed RAM prices are exploding. Talking to several companies, the tension is apparent — pricing is something nobody wants to talk about because they don’t know how bad it’ll become.
This is an ever-developing situation, and said companies are keeping tight-lipped about how much of a DRAM stockpile they’re sitting on. But one thing is becoming increasingly apparent: the cost of a laptop is going to go up slowly but surely in 2026.
DRAM pricing is even changing how companies may approach the specifications of laptops, too. Faster than you can say “it’s 2015 again,” we may see base models of mainstream systems pack only 8GB of RAM to maintain some semblance of affordability.
Now, there’s a world where this isn’t a problem…before you shout at me in the comments, let me explain. The likes of Windows 11 and macOS are impressive, feature-rich OSes, but in a lot of situations, it’s clear they’re not the most well-optimized for memory consumption. On top of that, certain apps can be RAM killers (looking at you, Google Chrome).
If this is the direction the laptop industry is forced to go, software providers need to follow suit and better optimize their work to be even more lightweight in terms of RAM requirements. If not, this could be problematic.
The buying cycle repeats
I’ll finish by giving you a peek behind the curtain. Tech publications like this one absolutely raked in affiliate revenue in 2020. I wasn’t here at the time, but for the sites I wrote for, turns out all that extra time at home gave people itchy trigger fingers to upgrade all their tech — with laptops being a particular bestseller.
Given people spend an average of three to five years using a laptop before upgrading, that makes this the time you’ll see people looking to buy again. And based on what I’m anticipating will happen in the notebook space in 2026, you’ll be spoilt for choice!
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