The basic essence of laptop design—a screen on a hinge slapped onto a keyboard and trackpad—hasn’t changed for more than 40 years. Even when companies try to break the mold with a folding design, the clamshell reigns supreme. Finding the right one for you is an incredible balancing act—luckily, our 2025 buying guide is here to help.
The big question every laptop buyer has to ask is if they’re beholden to Apple’s comfortable and constrained Mac ecosystem or the open tundra that is the land of PCs. Whether you work within Microsoft’s Windows platform (necessitating you crawl through the ever-more AI– and ad-filled Windows 11) or the wild west of Linux, you’ll find far more choices for laptop types, Intel, AMD, and now Qualcomm chips for an ARM-based Windows experience. You may opt for a discrete GPU for graphics processing and gaming. As much as the PC diehards won’t admit it, Apple’s M-series chips on Mac are still some of the best performing CPUs available today.
Apple fans will stick to the Mac. Gamers are still better off with PC. Everybody else should simply go with whatever is most familiar. Today’s Lunar Lake-based lightweight laptop CPUs have proved to be some of Intel’s best chips, with most featuring all-day battery life. The more-recent Intel Core Ultra HX lineup for higher-end or gaming PCs also maintain solid performance for intensive tasks. AMD’s Strix Point chips are similarly great for smaller devices. Not to mention, the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is one of the strongest we’ve seen for both CPU and GPU performance on a single chip. That power will cost you, and you’ll struggle to find a laptop with one outside of devices like the Asus ROG Flow Z13 tablet. Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X lineup, including the flagship Snapdragon X Elite, offer considerable battery life gains at the risk of some software incompatibility issues. However, the next generation of chips with Intel Panther Lake and Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 will hit the scene starting next year. The next generation of lightweight laptops is bound to get extra exciting in 2026.
