In the age of smartphones and tablets, laptops are still kings. They’re used for everything from gaming to casual Internet browsing and come at every price point. You can select a heavy-duty laptop with a beefy graphics card for intensive video editing or a two-in-one laptop for combining the best of both worlds between laptops and tablets.
Whether you’re a serious gamer or a budget-conscious shopper, we’re covering five laptops to suit every situation and budget.
Best Laptop for Gaming: MSI GS65 Stealth
The MSI GS65 Stealth is an impressive gaming laptop. It measures just over a half-inch thick and features Intel’s Coffee Lake processor. You can ramp up the quality settings in your games with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card and experience speedy performance thanks to the Intel Core i7-8750H processor.
The 15.6-inch display has thin bezels and provides a full high-definition experience with a 144 Hz panel and antiglare technology. The 256-gigabyte (GB) solid-state hard drive makes it quick to load games, software, and other programs. Though it comes standard with 16GB of memory, you can upgrade it to 32GB. The starting price for the MSI GS65 is $1849.99
Pro: It’s sleek, thin, and powerful.
Con: It gets very hot while gaming.
Best Laptop for College: Lenovo Yoga 920
The Lenovo Yoga 920 is a two-in-one touchscreen laptop that can be folded into different configurations. It features an Intel Core i7-8550U processor with 8GB of memory. The 256GB solid-state drive loads software quickly, and the 13.9-inch IPS display has an LED backlight and offers vibrant colors. It weighs about three pounds and measures only a half-inch thick.
This laptop comes with Lenovo’s Active Pen 2 stylus for use with Windows Ink technology. Two cool features are the 10 hours of battery life and the USB 3.0 ports, which never power off and let you charge anytime, anywhere. The starting price for this two-in-one laptop is $1,134.
Pro: It’s thin, lightweight, and speedy.
Con: It doesn’t include a built-in DVD drive.
Best Laptop for Businesses: Apple MacBook Pro
The 2018 MacBook Pro comes in 13- and 15-inch models. The 15-inch model is best for those who need more screen real estate for working on documents, spreadsheets and other business-related tasks. The base MacBook Pro includes the new Touch Bar and comes with a 2.2 GHz Intel i7 processor. It also has a Radeon Pro 555X graphics card with 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
The 256GB solid-state drive provides fast loading times, and the Retina display with True Tone offers a vibrant picture with crisp text. With its four Thunderbolt 3 ports, you can connect various peripherals such as external hard drives and monitors. The starting price for the base MacBook Pro is $2,399.
Pro: It has a fast processor, a great display, and an innovative Touch Bar.
Con: You’ll pay a lot for professional build quality.
Best Laptop for Home: Dell XPS 13
We could have placed the Dell XPS 13 in a few of these categories because of its specs and price. It has one of the best designs of any laptop on the market thanks to an almost bezel-less display with 4K resolution. Though the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 card isn’t the most powerful graphics processor, it’s capable enough to do light video editing and to run modern games on low- to medium-quality settings.
It has Intel Core i5 and i7 processor options with either 8GB or 16GB of memory. The base model comes with a 256GB solid-state drive, but you can expand it to a 1TB hard disk drive for more storage space. Some other useful features include a centered camera, two USB ports, and a MiniDisplay port for connecting an external monitor. The starting price for the Dell XPS 13 is $799.99.
Pro: It has a lightweight build with a stunning display.
Con: It has a costly starting price.
Best Budget Laptop: Acer Aspire E 15
Not everyone wants to spend more than $1,000 on a laptop. If you’re on a budget, you shouldn’t overlook the Acer Aspire E 15. It packs a lot of power, speed, and storage in a budget-friendly package. This laptop has a 15.6-inch display with full HD resolution. It also has an Intel Core i5-8250U processor and a Nvidia GeForce MX150 discrete graphics card, which is good enough for light gaming.
If you opt for the model with 8GB of memory, a discrete graphics card and a 256GB solid-state drive, you’re looking at a laptop that costs around $600. However, you can save even more money by downgrading to the model with 4GB of memory, no graphics card, and a 1TB hard disk drive. This model will only set you back $350 for a complete Windows laptop.
Pro: You can get good performance for a low price.
Con: It’s thick and weighs more than five pounds.