I’ve reviewed over 59 laptops, here are the best Windows laptops of 2024

In my career as a technology reviewer, I’ve tested more than 59 laptops. I’ve seen bad Laptops, mid-range laptops (decent devices, but there are better competitors), and phenomenal machines for the money.

Don’t honk – okay, okay, maybe I’ll just honk small Speaking of which – I’m a beast when it comes to reviewing laptops.

I scrutinized the durability of the case, the clickiness of the keys, the visual appeal of the display, how warm it gets when running intensive tasks, whether it slows down when you swamp it with Google Chrome tabs, and more. On top of that, I ran industry benchmarks like Geekbench and PCMark 10 to determine how my review unit (with hard numbers) compared to other competitors.

Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

When reviewing laptops, I always ask myself one key question: “Would I buy this with my hard-earned money?” If the answer is no, there’s no way I can recommend it (unless it’s still a Great laptop, but would be better suited to another consumer segment).

That being said, of the many laptops I’ve reviewed to date, only one Windows machines are the real best Laptops of 2024: Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is the best Windows laptop of 2024: 3 reasons

Stay with me. to make you understand Why Surface Laptop 7 is the best Windows laptop of 2024, and you need some historical context. Because the Surface series is not always That was fine—until now.

When I reviewed the Surface Laptop 5 for another publication a few years ago, I was blown away. I have great confidence in Microsoft. I wanted it to win so badly, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations.

Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Microsoft can be said to be the king of software, but its hardware is very unstable. That’s not to say the Microsoft Surface laptop is bad for himself – They are constantly being outperformed by cheaper, better competitors. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience recommend them.

Now, if you told me that by 2024, I would be recommending a Surface laptop, I would be like, “You’re crazy!” But as a laptop expert, I’m here to actually recommend one to my readers Microsoft laptop. But you know what? I support this. I have evidence It’s the best Windows laptop of the year. Here are my three reasons:

1. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 beats all competition, including MacBook

I don’t want to bore you with too many chipset details, but they’re crucial to helping you understand why the Microsoft Surface line is now receiving positive reviews from testers after a few years of rocky reviews.

Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Long story short, Intel, the most popular Windows chipset maker, is preventing the Microsoft Surface line, as well as other mobile Windows machines, from recovering from laptop nirvana. Even Apple stopped working with Intel a few years ago. In 2020, the Cupertino-based tech giant launched new in-house custom ARM chips, known as M-series processors. Apple has launched very successful With the non-Intel-based M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro laptops, it never looked back. (Apple’s current MacBooks now use M3 series chips, and it is reported that it will release M4 soon).

Now, thanks to Intel rival Qualcomm, non-Apple suppliers are finally jumping on the “Intel is not it” train. Qualcomm has announced a chipset called Snapdragon X Elite processor, which so Well, it beats all M3-based MacBooks. Now, I doubt it, but this Snapdragon X Elite processor is inside the new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 coming out this year – and it blows away the competition.

After turning on “Best Performance Mode” in “Settings”, Surface Laptop 7 got Excellent Multi-core score 14,548 On Geekbench 6.

• 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro – 11,998

• 15-inch M3 MacBook Air – 12,057

Yes, I’m highlighting Apple’s M3 MacBook here specifically to prove the point (that Qualcomm is right). This isn’t just a fluke either. The HP OmniBook XI reviewed this year also had a Snapdragon X Elite chip, which was nearly as good as the Surface Laptop 7, but delivered slightly Low multi-core score 13,888.

2. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 has the best battery life we’ve seen in a long time

When I tested the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 to see how long it lasted on a single charge, only. Won’t. die.

Surface Laptop 7 keyboard works fine. Nothing to write home about.
Photo credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Qualcomm is no joke when it says the Snapdragon X Elite chips are highly energy efficient. To my surprise, the Surface Laptop 7 has a battery runtime of 22 hours and 50 minutes. It’s been almost 23 hours! That’s almost unheard of for today’s Windows laptops.

This is Best battery run time We’ve recorded on Mashable in recent years. Here are some other runtimes from our laptop:

Can you guess what chip the Lenovo Yoga 9 2-in-1 uses? It’s definitely not a Qualcomm chip. (Spoiler alert: This is an Intel chip.

3. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 uses AI to make Windows fun again

Remember when Windows was fun? When I was a kid (I’m now a millennial adult), I used to hang out on Paint, play Microsoft 3D Pinball, and watch the visualizer pulsate to the music I played on Windows Media Player .

I use Cocreator in Paint, which can build masterpieces from your sketches.
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon/Mashable

Now, Microsoft is reigniting excitement with a slew of new artificial intelligence capabilities. From new ChatGPT competitor Copilot to AI additions that draw you back to Paint (like Cocreator), using AI on Windows has me hooked. If Microsoft is using artificial intelligence to lure users away from Apple (although Apple intelligence will be officially coming to supported Mac systems soon), then it’s working – at least for me.

Surface Laptop 7’s AI capabilities are enabled by the NPU, the AI ​​accelerator built into Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite.

The Photos app features a new AI image builder that lets you create AI-generated images based on prompts
Photo credit: Kimberly Gedeon/Mashable

However, as a laptop reviewer, I know better than anyone that no machine is perfect. One flaw I found with the Surface Laptop 7 is app incompatibility. This is what I discovered while trying to install the Apple Music app. I usually do this on other Windows systems without any issues, but it looks like some developers haven’t enabled Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite support for their apps.

The Surface Laptop 7 isn’t a gaming PC by any means (it lacks a discrete GPU), but I admit you could use some Light Play games on it. So keep in mind that based on this list, some games may not work properly on Surface Laptop 7.

But overall, the Surface Laptop 7 has endless battery life, engaging AI features, fast performance, a sturdy fingerprint-resistant chassis, and more. How could it not be the best Windows laptop of 2024?

Surface Laptop 7 sells for $1,599 on Amazon.