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- Best laptop: At a glance
- How we test laptops
- The best laptops you can buy in 2026
- 1. Best laptop overall: Asus Zenbook A16 (2026)
- 2. Best MacBook: Apple MacBook Air 13in (M5, 2026)
- 3. Best budget laptop: Apple MacBook Neo
- 4. Best budget Windows laptop: Acer Swift Air 14
- 5. Best Chromebook: Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 Gen 10
- 6. Best travel laptop: Asus Zenbook A14 (2026)
- 7. Best gaming laptop: Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1
- How to choose the best laptop for you
If you’re after the best laptop money can buy, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve collected all of the best laptops in one place to help you find the perfect machine for your needs in 2026, including our current favourite: the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026).
Wondering why you should listen to us? Simple. Every year, dozens of the latest and greatest laptops pass through the Expert Reviews labs – along with plenty of not-so-great laptops, too. Each device is subjected to our rigorous in-house testing, so when we recommend a laptop you can be sure of one thing: it’s a laptop we would be happy to buy ourselves.
Best laptop: At a glance
Price: From £1,999
Screen: 16in 120Hz OLED (3,120 x 2,080)
Internals: Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme | 48GB RAM | 1TB SSD
Battery life (tested): 19hr 49mins
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Price: From £999
Screen: 14in 60Hz Liquid Retina (2,560 x 1,664)
Internals: Apple M5 (SoC) | 16GB RAM
Battery life (tested): 14hr 59min
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Price: From £549
Screen: 13in 60Hz IPS (2,408 x 1,506)
Internals: Apple A18 Pro (SoC) | 8GB RAM
Battery life (tested): 11hr 51min
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Price: £499
Screen: 14in 60Hz OLED (1,920 x 1,080)
Internals: MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 (SoC) | 12GB RAM
Battery life (tested): 14hr 53min
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Price: £1,100
Screen: 14in 60Hz OLED (1,920 x 1,080)
Internals: Snapdragon X2 Elite (SoC) | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD
Battery life (tested): 29hrs 32mins
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Price: £1,199
Screen: 15.6in 144Hz (1,920 x 1,080)
Internals: Intel Core 7 250H | Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD
Battery life (tested): 4hrs 50min
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How we test laptops
We have decades of experience reviewing laptops here at Expert Reviews but we still put every laptop through a series of demanding tests.
That way we can be sure we’re being as objective as possible in our assessment of each laptop sent in for review.
To do that, we spend hours testing and using every machine that is sent in, mixing synthetic and real-world tests to get an overall view of a system’s performance:
- We run our own in-house benchmarking software – this pushes the system as a whole, stressing the CPU, GPU and cooling system all at once
- We run a whole host of third-party benchmarking applications, including Geekbench, Cinebench, GFXBench, AS SSD and GPU/games-focused benchmarks, so you can compare your laptop with the systems we test
- We test the brightness, contrast and colour accuracy of a laptop’s screen (or screens) using the DisplayCAL software and an X-Rite colorimeter to give a completely objective picture of how well a laptop’s display performs
- We monitor system temperatures at all times using CoreTemp, to get an idea of how a laptop is behaving under load. Some systems buckle only a few minutes after running at maximum load, while others keep their cool, and performance levels are high
- Finally, we test battery life by timing how long it takes to drain the battery from 100% to shut down, playing a video on loop and setting the display at a predetermined brightness to ensure a level playing field across laptop models
And, of course, no laptop review would be complete without actually using it for at least part of our working day – to write the review itself, watch video, carry out video calls and more. To find out more about how we test, read our in-depth how-we-test article.
The best laptops you can buy in 2026
1. Best laptop overall: Asus Zenbook A16 (2026)
Price: £1,999 | Check price at Amazon
- Feather light
- Great performance
- Long battery life
- Expensive
- No touchscreen
Reviewed by Alun Taylor
Lightweight, powerful and great battery life: three things that any laptop needs to be considered great, but there’s much more than just that to the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026).
This is a laptop that not only aced all of our performance benchmarking when we tested it earlier this year, and lasted nearly 20 hours in our battery tests, it also has one of the best screens you’ll find on any laptop – a large 16in 3K OLED 120Hz effort – is a pleasure to use and weighs next to nothing.
And when we say next to nothing, we mean it. When our reviewer put his test A16 on the scales, it weighed 1.06kg, which is less than a 13.6-inch MacBook Air. And yet, it doesn’t feel flimsy or insubstantial in any way.
The price of our review sample may give you reason to pause, but with 48GB of RAM on board, a 1TB SSD and Qualcomm’s latest Snadragon X2 Elite Extreme chip powering affairs, even £1,999 looks good value in today’s market.
If that’s still too much for your liking, Asus also sells a version with the older, 8-core Snapdragon X processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for £1,099. This is just as light and lovely, but isn’t as powerful and misses out on the spectacular 3K OLED screen.
Read our full Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) review
Key specs – Screen size: 16in; Screen resolution: 2,880 x 1,800; Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100; RAM: 48GB; Graphics adapter: Qualcomm Adreno GPU; Dimensions: 354 x 242 x 13.8 ~ 16.5mm (WDH); Weight: 1.06kg
2. Best MacBook: Apple MacBook Air 13in (M5, 2026)
Price when reviewed: From £999 (13.6in model) | Check price at John Lewis
- Fast
- Dependable
- Long lasting
- Not as repairable as the Neo
- Pricier than M4 model
Reviewed by Jonathan Bray
The MacBook Air has long been Apple’s marquee laptop and for good reason. It combines plenty of performance with impressive battery life and exquisitely poised design to deliver a product that is, quite frankly, tough to beat – and the M5 continues that trend.
It comes with the M5 processor, ensuring snappy performance, and long battery life. The base model comes with 16GB of RAM and a larger 512GB SSD than last year but the list price has risen to £1,099.
It’s an impressive all-round laptop: beautifully built with a fantastic keyboard and touchpad, a sharp, colour accurate display and near 15-hour battery life. Plus, with prices of new Windows laptops rising exponentially thanks to the RAM and storage crunch, it’s looking more and more reasonable by the day.
Read our full Apple MacBook Air (M5, 2026) review
Key specs – Screen size: 13.6in; Screen resolution: 2,560 x 1,664; Processor: Apple M5; RAM: from 16GB; Storage: from 512GB SSD Graphics adapter: Apple M4; Dimensions 304 x 205 x 11.3mm (WDH); Weight: 1.24kg
3. Best budget laptop: Apple MacBook Neo
Price when reviewed: £549 | Check price at John Lewis
- Great value
- Sturdy and lightweight
- Easy to repair
- Disappointing battery life
- Shrill speakers
- No keyboard backlight
Reviewed by Jonathan Bray
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s first proper budget laptop and, when it launched in April 2026, it created a huge stir. We called it the “best budget laptop money can buy” in our review and we stand by that verdict.
This is a beautifully made machine – its sturdy aluminium chassis has a touch of quality that evades most Windows laptops in this price bracket – and although not the fastest machine (it runs on an A18 Pro smartphone processor and it has only 8GB of RAM), it’s capable of running most of your desktop and basic creative applications without too much trouble.
It comes with a 13in IPS display that’s both bright and colour accurate. It’s available in a nice range of funky colours, and it’s suprisingly easy to fix. Should you break a USB port or the battery goes bad, you can get at those components quickly and replace them.
The only thing we don’t like about it is that the keyboard has no backlight, so typing in dim or dark conditions is harder than it should be. Otherwise, though, this is a stonkingly good budget machine and we have no hesitation in recommending it.
Read our full Apple MacBook Neo review
Key specs – Screen size (in): 13in; Screen resolution: 2,408 x 1,506; Processor: 6-core Apple A18 Pro; RAM: 8GB; Storage: 256GB or 512GB SSD; Graphics adapter: 5-core Apple A18 Pro; Dimensions: 298 x 206 x 12.7mm (WDH); Weight: 1.2kg
4. Best budget Windows laptop: Acer Swift Air 14
Price when reviewed: £500 | Check price at Currys
- Great value
- Long battery life
- Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports
- Keyboard deck is a bit wobbly
- No touchscreen option
- 8GB RAM limits multitasking
Reviewed by Alun Taylor
We weren’t expecting the chief rival to the MacBook Neo to come from Acer’s stable this year, but were pleasantly surprised by how good this laptop was when it arrived in the summer of 2026. And since then we’ve seen the price drop to truly bargain-bin price levels.
Everything about it is really far better than you could realistically expect for the price. Its looks and build quality are top notch. The display and the sound system are great. It’s practical, and the performance is fine. The only catch is that the cheaper model only comes with 8GB of RAM.
Top it all off with decent and battery life and the Swift Air is a very welcome Windows alternative to the excellent MacBook Neo. And it’s cheaper.
5. Best Chromebook: Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 Gen 10
Price when reviewed: £499 | Check price at Currys
- Lightweight and stylish
- Amazing OLED display
- Top level performance
- Only Full HD resolution
- Limited selection of ports
We love a good Chromebook here at Expert Reviews and this Lenovo is one of the very best. It’s one of a select number of Chromebooks to come with the latest octa-core MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processors, which not only gives the laptop lightning-fast levels of performance, but also means it lasts an absolute age on a single charge.
Indeed, in our video playback battery life tests, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 Gen 10 lasted 14hrs 53mins, outlasting every other Chromebook we’ve tested.
Performance is only one aspect of a laptop’s performance, however. Display quality is equally important and, here, this little Lenovo scores big, with a bright, vibrant OLED screen that most laptops at this price can only dream of. Coupled with a fantastically comfortable keyboard and sleek, sophisticated design, it’s our favourite Chromebook since the original Google Pixelbook Go was released.
Read our full Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 Gen 10 review
Key specs – Display size: 14in OLED; Resolution: 1,920 x 1,080;CPU: Mediatek Kompanio Ultra 910; Graphics: ARM Immortalis-G925 MC11; RAM: 12GB; Storage: 128GB UFS 3.1; Dimensions: 314 x 219 x 15.8mm (WDH); Weight: 1.26kg
6. Best travel laptop: Asus Zenbook A14 (2026)
Price: £1,270 | Check price at Box | Tesco
- Epic battery life
- Strong performance across the board
- Supremely colourful and accurate display
- Display still only Full HD and 60Hz
- No touchscreen
Reviewed by Alun Taylor
The A14 has to be one of the most attractive, well-engineered Windows laptops we’ve ever reviewed. Despite having a larger display than a MacBook Air, it weighs less than a kilogram, and its matte, “ceraluminum” finish feels silky soft under the finger.
There are so many other things to love about this laptop, though: the one-finger lid lift lends it an air of understated luxury, the keyboard action is firm and well-damped, the OLED display is bright and vivid and the battery life is super impressive. In our tests, it lasted just shy of 30 hours, which for a laptop this compact is nothing short of incredible.
It’s been updated to include the more powerful, Snapdragon X2 Elite processor since we reviewed the first edition, and the price has (inevitable) risen, but this is still as likeable a laptop as it always has been. And if you can find the original Snapdragon X laptop at the lower price, that’s even better value for money.
Read our full Asus Zenbook A14 (2026) review
Key specs – Screen size: 14in; Screen resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite; RAM: 16GB; Storage: 1TB SSD; Graphics adapter: Qualcomm Adreno; Dimensions: 311 x 214 x 13.4-15.9mm (WDH); Weight: 0.99kg
7. Best gaming laptop: Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1
Price when reviewed: £949 | Check price at Game
- Excellent performance for the price
- Good keyboard
- Two SSD and two SODIMM slots
- Drab display
- No 40Gbits/sec USB-C ports
- Short battery life
Reviewed by Alun Taylor
Such is the crunch on memory prices and GPUs right now, that buying any laptop with more than 16GB of RAM and 50-series graphics punch usually results in a price that’s closer to £2,000 than £1,000. That’s why we liked the Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1 so much when we reviewed it back at the beginning of 2026.
For the money – we reviewed it at £949 but that has risen to around £1,199 – it packs an unusually high level of performance. Its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU is fully capable of taking AAA games in its stride and this is backed up by an Intel Core 7 250H CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.
The Full HD 144Hz display isn’t anything to write home about and battery life is, unsurprisingly, quite short for a gaming machine, but user accessible memory and storage slots make this an easy machine to upgrade, the keyboard is great, and at this price, you can’t be too picky at this price.
Read our full Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1 review
Key specs – Screen size: 15.6in; Screen resolution: 1,920 x 1,080; Processor: 14-core Intel Core 7 250H; RAM: 16GB; Storage: 1TB SSD; Graphics adapter: Nividia GeForce RTX 5060 (8GB vRAM); Dimensions: 361 x 247 x 25.8mm (WDH); Weight: 2.3kg
How to choose the best laptop for you
Buying a brand-new laptop is no easy task. There are so many brilliant devices to choose from each year, with prices ranging from £200 to £2,000 or more. Cost can also vary massively between different configurations of the same laptop, which only adds to the confusion. In this brief buying guide, we will help you make the right choice by outlining the most important factors to consider before you bust out the bank card.
What do you need your laptop for?
Your personal requirements should dictate what sort of laptop you go for. A typical university student will have different tech needs to a professional video editor. Some may need a laptop that can process large files at rapid speeds, while others may just want to use Google Docs or browse the web. Ultimately, it all comes down to what you want your laptop to do.
READ NEXT: Best laptops for kids
What about performance and battery life?
How fast does my CPU need to be?
It can be tricky to tell how fast a CPU is just by looking at its specifications. More powerful CPUs typically have more “cores”, and higher base and turbo frequencies (usually measured in GHz), but modern processors have other strings to their bow, including modules that are targeted at specific workloads, like video rendering (for example, media engines), and local AI processing (NPUs).
Generally speaking, though, you only need to worry about CPU power if you’re running demanding workloads – video editing and rendering or 3D rendering, for example – or you’re looking at buying an older machine. Most modern laptops will be able to run a regular day-to-day workload of word processing, spreadsheeting, photo editing and web browsing.
How much RAM do you need?
If anything, the amount of RAM in your laptop is more important than the CPU when it comes to general performance. So how much do you need?
Ideally, any laptop you buy should have at least 8GB of RAM as a minimum, but we recommend 16GB. This should ensure you have plenty of headroom so you can multitask (ie have many applications open and running simultaneously ) without your laptop slowing down or becoming unresponsive.
It’s always been a general rule of thumb that the more RAM you have, the better, and that’s not going to change any time soon.
Are temperature, overheating and throttling important?
There are other factors at play that can impact overall performance aside from raw specifications. If a laptop doesn’t have good airflow, effective fans and cooling hardware inside, it doesn’t matter how powerful the CPU is, you’ll never be able to make the most of its potential.
That’s because once a CPU gets too hot, the system will cap its performance or slow it down (known as throttling) to prevent irreversible damage to the chip. This is why we benchmark every system we review and compare with similar systems, as this will reveal if a laptop is performing as expected.
There’s not much point spending more money on a laptop that’s more powerful only on paper.
What factors influence battery life?
Obviously, the size of the battery in your laptop (measured, typically, in Watt-hours, or Wh) is important, but other factors come into play here as well, the most important being the relative efficiency of the CPU and GPU.
If those components are too power hungry, battery life is going to be short. Thankfully, chip manufacturers are steadily getting better at this, with the latest Apple, Qualcomm and Intel processors helping laptops last much longer than they used to.
We run a standardised simple video rundown test on every single laptop we review, which allows us to compare laptops across the different platforms easily.
READ NEXT: Best laptop for students
OLED versus IPS: what makes a great laptop display?
When it comes to laptop displays, the key thing to look out for is the panel technology. The best looking screens, typically, are powered by OLED panels, with other technologies (usually IPS/LCD) coming second for quality. That’s the rule of thumb, though; some IPS screens can be great, too.
Don’t get too hung up on resolution. Generally speaking, most laptops, even cheap ones, are 1080p these days which is just fine on a 13in or 14in machine. You’ll only start to see the difference between 1080p and 3K or 4K when you move up to a laptop with a 15in display or larger.
Instead, look for higher refresh rate screens: a 90Hz, 120Hz or 144Hz display will influence how smooth a laptop feels in operation. Other important specifications include colour gamut coverage (DCI-P3 or just P3 is better than sRGB or NTSC) – usually expressed as a percentage close to 100%, peak brightness in HDR, and colour accuracy.
Not every manufacturer puts these numbers in its specifications, though, which is why we measure them ourselves.
How many ports should a laptop have?
In addition to a power socket and headphone jack, most new laptops will come with at least one USB-C and a couple of USB-A ports. When it comes to connections, the general rule of thumb is the more the merrier.
It’s worth paying attention to the type of USB-C ports you’re getting, however; although they might look the same, they often have different capabilities from machine to machine. For the fastest transfer speeds, look for Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports; USB-C isn’t as quick.
And don’t assume every USB-C port on a laptop can carry video, power and data. Although the standard allows for this, manufacturers sometimes limit what each port can do.
It’s extremely useful to have a full-sized HDMI connector for hooking up the laptop to additional monitors, too, although these aren’t particularly common on slimmer laptops. And an SD card reader doesn’t hurt, either – an addition that’s sorely lacking on Apple’s laptops these days.
