MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo for $1,300: This ultralight Windows laptop (7/10, WIRED Review) offers a great balance between price, performance, and portability. This price gets you an Intel Core 7 processor and a 2,880 X 1,800-pixel OLED display. The keyboard and trackpad are not the best, but if they don’t bother you this is a solid laptop at a good price.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra for $3,000: There’s much to love here (7/10, WIRED Review), but that price. Ouch. You get what you pay for at least, with the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The 16-inch AMOLED 2,880 x 1,800 pixels touchscreen is magnificent to work on and performance blew everything else we’ve tested out of the water. But that price.
Acer Swift Go 14 for $800: This one is very similar to the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, our top budget laptop. We found the Asus to be a little faster and have a much nicer build quality, but the Swift Go still offers outstanding performance, especially considering the price (7/10, WIRED Review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren’t great, and overall the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the least expensive Intel Core Ultra laptop we’ve tested by a few dollars, so if the budget is tight, the Swift Go is worth considering.
Lenovo Slim Pro 7 AMD for $900: Lenovo’s Slim series are solid laptops. This AMD model (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is particularly nice with good battery life and impressive performance, especially in graphics-intensive tasks. It sports a bright 2.5K, 16:10 screen, aluminum construction, and a variety of ports. This one is frequently on sale; don’t pay more than $1,000.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for $800: The look of the machine has barely changed since its inception, and it’s most evident with its obscenely sized bezels. It’s a shame, as the Laptop 5 sports a nice keyboard, and the outer design remains stylish if a tad stale. It’s hard to justify the price of the new model given its shortcomings, but it has started to go on sale for around $800, which makes it a little more reasonable.
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