The Best Laptops of 2025
2026 Laptop Awards – Introduction
Welcome. Today is the day that you've been waiting for. At
least it's the day that I've been waiting for. It's the 2025 Laptop Awards.
This year we tested 89 laptops. Some of them were great, some of them were
terrible, and most of them were outright mediocre. Well, today we're going to
be celebrating the winners, the very best in each category. We're going to
start with the non-gaming ones, and then move on to the gaming ones, the
creating ones, and programming. And just an FYI, to be
allegible to win the laptop, it must have been released this
year in 2025. Now, if you are going to buy any of these laptops, the links will
be, of course, down below the video. But what you should really do is just head
on over to our website, bestlaptop.deals. Over there, we track prices right
across retailers, so you know which door is currently offering the best deal.
Well, let's start the show.
Best Budget Laptop (2025)
Winner: HP Omnibook 5
The winner of the 2025 award for the best budget laptop is
HB's Omnibook 5. There's a 14 and a 16in
version. You got a two-in-one as well as a traditional
clamshell. But what really matters is their price. These laptops can regularly
be found for around $400. What distinguishes the Omnibook 5s is their
combination of a well-built chassis, a powerful current gen processor, a decent
screen, 16 gig of memory, and 512 gig of storage. Look, every other laptop that
we've seen under $400, it just fails on at least one of these, if not multiple.
The Omnibook, it isn't perfect, of course. The 14-in
model that we tested, it did get warm while charging, and it
was a bit heavy. But, as I said, we just haven't seen anything near as good at
this price point.
Best Value Laptop (2025)
Winner: MacBook Air 13 & 15 (M4)
Winner of the 2025 award for the best value laptop is the
MacBook Air 13 and 15 with M4. Look, no laptop brings such a powerful processor
packed into such a well-built premium chassis for under $1,000. We've seen the
256 gig storage model as low as 750 and the 512 gig as low as $950. For most
people, the MacBook Air is the laptop you buy and
you just don't have to worry about. Apple, you see, they get
the little things right. Really accurate trackpad, good speakers, great battery
life, decent webcam, and you never hear any fan noise because there is no fan.
Obviously, the Air isn't perfect. We definitely need to see a fast refresh rate
screen in next year's model as well as Wi-Fi 7.
Best Premium Laptop (2025)
Winner: MacBook Pro 14 (M5)
Winner for the 2025 award for the best premium laptop is the
MacBook Pro 14 with M5. The MacBook Pro 14, it's the quintessential laptop. It
is everything you expect a laptop to be. It's well-built, it
is portable, it is extremely powerful, and it has great battery life. Most
laptops with this kind of performance, they weigh a lot more or they have
significantly worse battery life or they have more fan noise. In fact, on its
battery life, some similarly powered laptops, they may look like they last as
long on paper. That's in tests like video playback or office productivity. But
that's just not the full picture. Those laptops, they
significantly throttle their performance when unplugged. And
if you're running intense tasks on the laptop, they drain their battery fast.
Anyway, just like all Apple's MacBooks, you don't have to worry about the
little things. Everything about this laptop, it is premium. From its fantastic
miniledd display to its trackpad to its speakers. Heck, you even get a really
good port selection on this laptop. Our main nit of course with the MacBook Pro
14 is that it lacks Wi-Fi 7. The notch it's
still large, and some people might just not want a Mac.
Best Premium Windows Laptop (2025)
Winner: ThinkPad X1 15 (X915)
If that's you, our winner for the 2025 award for the best
premium Windows laptop is the ThinkPad X915. I'm specifically talking about the
15-in model, by the way, not the 14. You see the 15, it has a much larger
battery and a USBA port. Now, the 15, it is still very lightweight and super
portable, which is just magical considering how large its display is. And boy,
is it a stunning panel. It is bright, it's high resolution, it's an OLED one.
It also
has phenomenal battery life for light tasks. It has this
well-laidout keyboard combined with a haptic trackpad and an excellent webcam.
In fact, if you buy the 7 version, it actually has decent integrated graphics,
so you can enjoy some light gaming. If anything, ThinkPad lovers are going to
be upset because it doesn't have the red track point. But in my opinion, most
laptop buyers, they aren't going to care.
Best Budget Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Lenovo LOQ
Winner of the 2025 award for the best budget gaming laptop
is
Lenovo's LOQ. The LOQ. It is very wellb built. It has a
decent screen with 100% sRGB color gamut, which is really rare for a gaming
laptop at this price point. Anyway, it also has a good keyboard. It performs
very well. You just don't see this combination on other budget gaming laptops.
Many don't feed their GPUs enough power. A lot have lowquality screens, and
some of them, they just feel cheaply built. Heck, some that we've tested just
outright have quality control issues. Our two Asus tough
F-16s, they both had fan problems. One got ridiculously loud
and the other ran so much it actually vibrated the desk. If I was to have a nit
about the LQ, it's probably its weight. It is really heavy.
Best Value Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Lenovo Legion 5i
Winner of the 2025 award for the best value for your money
gaming laptop goes to Lenovo's Legion 5i. No gaming laptop was able to touch
the Legion 5i at its price point. For around $1,000, you're getting a glorious
OLED display. You've got a high wattage mid-range Nvidia GPU paired with a
current gen
processor. In fact, this is why we specifically like the 5i,
the Intel version better. With that version, you can get it with an Intel
Aerolake HX processor that is an extremely powerful chip from their highestend
range, and it's more power efficient than older Rapto chips found in many
gaming laptops at this price point. But it just doesn't stop there. you get one
of Lenovo's signature incredibly comfortable keyboards, and it's very compact
for a gaming laptop because of that 15-in
display. It does, of course, have some cons like bad
speakers, no face recognition, it is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, and it does
have poor port placement.
Best Premium Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Legion 7i
Winner of the 2025 award for the best premium gaming laptop
is the Legion 7i. It is absolutely stunning. I mean, just look at it. And boy
does it have a phenomenal display. You see, most OLED panels, they lack
brightness. They barely go above 400 nits. The Legion 7i goes up to 500.
It has an insanely comfortable and well-laidout keyboard. I
mean, just look at those large arrow keys. Nothing to mispress there. It has a
powerful Intel HX processor, which just makes everything super snappy. And it's
paired with a high wattage mid-range GPU. And if that wasn't enough for you, it
has upgradeable memory.
Best 14-inch Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Asus TUF A14
The winner for the 2025 best 14-inch gaming laptop award
goes to Asus's tough A14. You might be shocked to see it win this award after
our recent video where it came in middle
of the pack amongst high-powered 14-in laptops. But the
reality is this, that was a quantitative analysis. In the real world, all the
other 14-in gaming laptops, they have at least one material issue. Asus's own
Zephris G14. It gets very warm to the touch, even in light use. And my favorite
14-inch gaming laptop, the Blade 14. It doesn't go to sleep when you close its
lid. It just cooks itself in my backpack. The Tough A14. It does not perform
the best. It does not look the best. It isn't the
most premium feeling, but it's got it where it counts. It
has phenomenal cooling, which is really rare for a laptop this size. It's
really light and portable. It's got incredible battery life, and as I said,
it's got no major issues like its competitors.
Best 16-inch Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Asus Strix Scar 16
Winner for the 2025 best 16-inch gaming laptop award is
Asus's Strict Scar 16. If you want the best gaming experience in a 16-in
laptop, this gives you it. It packs in extremely high performance CPU and GPU
up to an Intel Core 9 HX
processor and up to an RTX 5090. But what sets this laptop
apart from all other powerful 16-in ones is how comfortable it is to actually
game on. It is the coolest feeling full powered 16-inch gaming laptop right
across its keyboard deck and palm rest.
Best Portable Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Asus Zephyrus G16
Our winner for the best portable gaming laptop of 2025 is
Asus's Zephorus G16. The G16, it really came into its own this year. It feels
cooler to the touch than last year's model. With Intel's more efficient
AeroLake HCPU, and the fan noise issues of that original model, they've mostly
disappeared. In light use, it is now dead silent. But here's why it really won.
This laptop can do everything good to great.
Best Creator Laptop (2025)
Winner: ProArt P16
The award for the best creator laptop of 2025 goes to the
ProArt P16. This is the creator version of the Zephris G16
that I just talked about. It looks very stylish and understated in its black
finish and does a good job of repelling fingerprints. But what really matters
is what's underneath the hood.
Best 18-inch Gaming Laptop (2025)
Winner: Alienware 18 Area 51
The winner of the 2025 best 18-in gaming laptop is the
Alienware 18 Area 51. The Alienware delivers tremendous performance, but there
are four things that just separate it from all other 18-in gaming laptops.
Best Programming Laptop (2025)
Winner: MacBook Pro 14 (M5)
Finally, the award for the best programming laptop for 2025.
It once again goes to the MacBook Pro 14 with M5. Its screen, it's super bright
with a high resolution, very high in fact, which is really important for coders
as it makes more code look really crisp and easy to make out.
Conclusion
Well, that's all I got for you. Congratulations to all our
winners. It was a really big year for laptops. And big thanks to the ridiculous
amount of testing the team did here. They did a really good job. If you aren't
already subscribed and you do want to help us grow, well, what are you doing?
Get subscribed. It's something free and easy that you can do that
really does make a difference. And as I always say, it does
make my mother very proud. Actually, she always says that. Till next time, go
do something awesome with your day. And I will catch you later.
Post a Comment