Best laptops you can buy 2024 — top picks for February Best Picks

The best laptops are powerful enough to handle your day-to-day work and play, comfy enough to carry all day and efficient enough to ensure you won't run out of juice when you're in the lurch. Not a lot to ask, right? Luckily lots of great laptops are on the market these days, but that abundance also makes finding the best laptop for you awful tricky.

 You can get a Chromebook or a compact, speedy Windows 11 laptop for not a lot of money, and those who can afford to spend a bit more have access to a slew of the best laptops from the likes of Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo and more. That's why we test and review dozens of laptops from top manufacturers every year, then gather the very best together here in one easy-to-read list to help you make a more informed purchase. 

You can count on the fact that every laptop on this list has been tested and reviewed by myself or one of my colleagues, so you know a real person has used it in real life and really likes it. Whether you're shopping for a sleek new ultraportable, a cheap Chromebook, a new gaming laptop or the best MacBook for your needs, you'll find at least one great option here. 

The best laptop for most people The MacBook Air M2

It is the laptop we recommend first to most people because it delivers unbeatable value. You get great performance from Apple's M2 chip, a bright display and more than 14 hours of battery life (according to our testing) in an ultraportable package.

 SPECIFICATIONS

Display: 13.6 inches; 2560x1664CPU: Apple M2GPU: 8-core or 10-core GPURAM: 8GB-24GBStorage: 256GB-2TB SSDWeight: 2.7 pounds

(13.6-inch)

View at Amazon

(13.6-inch)

View at Amazon

(13.6-inch)

REASONS TO BUY

+Fast M2 performance

+Brighter and bigger display

+Great 1080p webcam

+Long battery life 

REASONS TO AVOID

-Notch distracting

-Supports only one monitor