If you’re in the market for a new laptop, TechRadar’s best laptops Australia is the definitive summary of the absolute best laptops available.
All devices on this list have been benchmarked and tested directly, to ensure you get consistent, first-hand picks of the best laptops in each category.
Whether it’s Apple’s freshest M2-powered MacBook Air, the latest in the Dell XPS range, or one of the new budget-friendly 16-inch OLED laptops, we’ve painstakingly compared and contrasted each one in order to give you a rundown on the laptop with the best value.
We’ve taken into account Ultrabooks, gaming laptops, 2-in-1s, and every other shape and size that laptops come in these days – so don’t worry if you’re in it for work or play, we’ve got you covered.
For those that aren’t sure what type of laptop would suit their needs best, jump down to the How to Choose section at the bottom of the page.
Joel Burgess
Joel is the go-to laptops and systems reviewer for the Australian TechRadar team, reviewing over 250 laptops for the website (and APC magazine) since 2014. All this experience means you can be sure these laptop recommendations are the best-of-the-best and come from first hand-experience with the devices.
Keep an eye out for all the exciting OLED options at affordable price points that will populate this list in 2023.
The quick list
Want to cut to the chase and find out what the best laptops are? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices, and you can jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
1. MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
The best laptop overall
Apple’s MacBook Air M2 is a whole new kind of device. It’s more expensive than its predecessors, nabbing all the premium features and performance you’d expect on Pro models while keeping the ultra, thin and light profile.
Read more below
2. Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX530)
Most Portable
The Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is the classic Ultrabook: Slim, lightweight and packing enough power to do professional workloads on the go, but there’s a couple of things that make this 2023 release a little different to earlier ultra-portables. A more affordable price, a 1kg chassis and a 2.8K 13-inch OLED display make the Zenbook S 13 OLED the pick of the Windows ultra-portable laptops this year.
Read more below
3. Acer Swift Go 14 or 16
The best value laptop
The Acer Swift Go 16 is a 16-inch Ultrabook offering a 3K OLED panel, a 13th Gen Intel i7 CPU and solid supporting specs for AU$500 to AU$1,000 less than anything we saw in the premium Ultrabook space last year. A fast and generous SSD, powerful i7-13700H CPU and generous screen will have you questioning how Acer managed to put all this into a budget-friendly laptop.
Read more below
4. Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (2023)
The best value workstation
If you need to edit video content on the fly in your day-to-day role then the great battery life during intensive workloads of the MacBook Pro 16 makes it a uniquely competent laptop for creative professionals.
Read more below
5. Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M2 Pro, 2023)
The most portable workstation
If you need to edit video content on the fly in your day-to-day role then the great battery life during intensive workloads of the MacBook Pro 16 makes it a uniquely competent laptop for creative professionals.
Read more below
6. Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2
The best laptop for students
The Surface Laptop Go 2 is an excellent lightweight laptop that is capable of doing all the essential web browsing, media consumption and document processing tasks you’re likely to be needing while studying and working. The thousand dollar-ish price point is a major drawcard for anyone who needs a professional device that won’t bankrupt you.
Read more below
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7. Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop
The best 2-in-1
The Surface Studio Laptop introduces the drawing-table like drawing features of the Surface Studio to a device you can take anywhere. Add to this a discrete GPU and a powerful CPU and you have a powerful and versatile convertible for anyone that likes their laptop to also be a tablet.
Read more below
8. Dell XPS 13 Plus (9320)
The best OLED display laptop
If you’re happy to spend a little more for all the latest tech then the Dell XPS 13 Plus offers more powerful Intel 12th Gen. processors, an optional OLED display, a sleek glass palm rest with integrated touchpad and a capacitive touch bar.
Read more below
9. Asus ROG Zephyrus m16 (2023)
The best gaming laptop
With a powerful 13th Gen. Intel i9 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 140W Nvidia GeForce 4070 this is a fully-fledged gaming laptop that fits into a compact 2.2 cm thick Ultrabook package. Add to this a 240Hz, 2.5K screen with DCI-P3 professional colour and you have an exceptionally well equipped laptop for work and play.
Read more below
10. Razer Blade 14 (2023)
The best gaming Ultrabook
With a powerful 13th Gen. Intel i9 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 140W Nvidia GeForce 4070 this is a fully-fledged gaming laptop that fits into a compact 2.2 cm thick Ultrabook package. Add to this a 240Hz, 2.5K screen with DCI-P3 professional colour and you have an exceptionally well equipped laptop for work and play.
Read more below
The best laptops in 2024
Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Below you’ll find full write-ups for each of the best laptops in our list. We’ve tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best laptop overall
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Apple has switched around the status quo on its latest laptop range. Not only is the MacBook Air now more expensive than the new MacBook Pro 13 offerings, it’s also got a bigger, brighter screen and offers a raft of updated features that the M2 MacBook Pro 13 misses out on.
Apple is going to continue to sell the late-2020 MacBook Air with an M1 processor alongside the new MacBook Air for those that are price sensitive.
The new M2 MacBook Air offers up to 16 percent faster CPU and 35 percent faster GPU performance against it’s predecessor, which puts it roughly in line with what you’ll get from Ultrabooks running Intel’s i7-1260P CPUs.
The new all aluminium design brings it in line with the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros by swapping out the wedge profile to have a more boxy rectangular shape. This makes it 20 percent smaller in volume overall and just 11.3mm thick.
Despite being more compact, Apple seems to have found enough space to make the screen slightly bigger at 13.6-inches. And while it technically offers slightly more pixels (2560×1664), the main difference in the new screen is that it now offers a 500 nit peak brightness (instead of 400nit), and you can turn the display down to as low as five nits when working in particularly dark environments.
This new design means it also gets a Magsafe charger, a FullHD FaceTime webcam, a new quad-speaker Spatial Audio array and a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID.
Battery life was almost identical to the last MacBook Air, lasting 19 hours and five minutes in 1080p movie playback, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to get two days of light work out of it, which is still way more than any other laptops we’ve tested.
Read the full review: MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
The Most portable
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A 13.3-inch OLED screen and great price aren’t the only thing this lightweight laptop has going for it, since it’s also packing an updated 13th generation Intel Core i7-1355U CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe SSD on the AU$3,399 model.
The Intel Core- i7-1355U CPU is only a 10 core, 12-thread processor, so it’s up to 80 percent behind Intel’s 13th Gen H series i7 in heavy tasks on devices like the Acer Swift Go 16, but it’s got a high 5GHz boost frequency which allows it to be as capable in a lot of everyday office applications. This low-power processor is also still around 15% behind the Apple M2 performance on a MacBook Air, but it means the Asus Zenbook S can last for 13 hours and 12 minutes in light work tasks, which is much closer to the lifespans of current MacBook Airs.
The integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics might still be 35 percent off Apple’s M2 10-core offering, but you’ll still get playable 45fps framerates on older titles like Sid Meier’s: Civilization VI when using Low 1080p graphics settings.
This is a well rounded set of specs that combine with the ultra-compact 1.2cm-thick, roughly A4-page sized chassis to make an exceptionally portable 1 kg package. The Zenbook S 13 OLED offers an additional HDMI and USB-A port over the Macbook Air (M2), you’ll get an SSD that’s roughly twice as fast, the screen is brighter and offers rich OLED contrast, you’ll get faster Wi-Fi 6E (rather than just Wi-Fi 6), and it’s 24% lighter than the Air 13-inch, so there’s plenty of reasons to choose this Windows Pro alternative.
Read the full review: Zenbook S 13 OLED
The best value laptop
Occasionally there is a major shift in technology that causes an entire overhaul of the types of laptops available for consumers… And in 2023 that means anyone buying a mid-range laptop can now get an impressive OLED screen without bumping up the price.
The Acer Swift Go 16 is the first out of the gate with a generous 16-inch 3K OLED panel that comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, a full DCI-P3 colour gamut and a 500 nit peak brightness. The range starts at just AU$1699 (or $1,599 on sale) for an i5-13500H Processor, 16GB RAM allocation and 512GB PCIe SSD.
The model tested had an i7-13700H CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for AU$1,999 (AU$1,799 on sale) and outpaced both the Macbook Air 13-inch (M2) and the Asus Zenbook S 13 in CPU benchmarks considerably. This supercharged device does unfortunately chew through its battery allocation in just 5.5 hours for both light work and 1080p movie playback, o you will have to be willing to carry your charger everywhere. If you can live with that however, this is an exceptional feature set for a device under $2K.
The best value workstation
The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is a 16-inch creative workstation that prioritises power over an ultra-portable thin and light form factor. Don’t get us wrong, the Vivobook weighs a very manageable 1.9kg, but at 2.2cm thick it’s half a centimetre thicker than devices like the MacBook Pro 16 and this combines with a lightweight plastic keyboard surround to give it a gaming laptop look.
It might be more than capable of firing up your favourite games after work, but the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is designed for work – a fact highlighted by the Windows 11 Pro bundling and the Studio Driver pre-installed on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. That serious discrete graphics is capable of pushing graphical benchmark performance over 20 percent more than a much more expensive top-spec MacBook Pro 16.
The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED has an equally impressive 105W, 24 core Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU that can boost to 5.6GHz and can push between 25 and 90 percent performance bumps over the M2 Max – A pretty serious performance achievement in a similarly sized laptop.
This performance is facilitated by a much bigger power draw of 245W on the Vivobook compared to around 35W on the MacBook Pro. This means that while you’ll get around 4 hours and 35 minutes of battery using the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED for light work tasks, you won’t be able to really push the device with heavy workloads unless you’re close to a powerpoint.
Supporting these powerful components is an impressive 16-inch, 120Hz, OLED display. This larger 3200 x 2000 pixel display has a peak 600nit brightness, Vesa DisplayHDR True Black 600, 100 percent DCI-P3 colour validated by Pantone and an ultra-fast 0.2ms response rate. It’s undeniably another contender for the most impressive laptop screens to work on.
Read the full: Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED review
The most portable workstation
The new M2 updates of the MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch laptops come with new M2 Pro or M2 Max processors, which will bring respectable upgrades to overall performance to the powerful creative devices. The MacBook Pro range offers serious performance in an ultra portable package that uses RISC smartphone processors to achieve impressive performance without using as much power as traditional laptop processors. This means you can do demanding work on the go without having to rely on access to power for a full work day.
New Wi-Fi 6E networking capabilities, an updated Thunderbolt spec, a faster AI chip and greater memory bandwidth round out some of the other conservative upgrades to this standout performer.
The 14.2-inch or 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR displays are still top of their game with high 3K-plus pixel resolutions, bright 1000 nit sustained screen brightness, 120Hz dynamic refresh rates and full DCI-P3 colour reproduction capabilities.
The devices also offer industry leading SSD disk speed tests at 7700/5727 MB/s read and write speeds, respectively, and you’ve got a wide range of interface options including an HDMI and an SD Card reader, so you really don’t have to sacrifice anything.
Entry level 14 and 16 inch devices start at $3,199 and $3,999, respectively. A much more approachable price point will net you a device with a M2 Pro chip, consisting of a 10 or 12-core CPU, 16 or 19-core GPU and a 16 Core Neural Engine; 16GB of Unified Memory; and a 512GB SSD. If we look at offerings from Razer and Dell these entry level units are by no means underpowered and offer competitive advantages over both the Blade 15 and XPS 15 devices.
For anyone predominantly looking to use their laptop for work, especially graphically demanding creative work, the MacBook Pro’s ability to share memory between CPU and GPU and the generous battery capable of reaching peak performance without attached power are some pretty convincing drawcards.
This battery lasted over 20 hours in our 1080p movie playback benchmark. That’s well over what you’d really need for a remote work day and should include enough overhead to actually do some demanding creative work while on the go, which isn’t offered by other professional laptops on the market.
Read the full review: Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M2 Pro, 2023)
The best laptop for students
The original Surface Laptop Go was an impressive budget-conscious device and the Surface Laptop Go 2 has made some major improvements to make it even better. It keeps the 12.4-inch PixelSense display, and offers a similar compact and ultralight profile, but has updated the processor, keyboard and storage options.
The new processor is 15-30 percent faster and the Gen 3 PCIe storage offers read and write speeds over 3000/1500 MB/s respectively. The device also offers a full work day battery lifespan, a fingerprint reader, and solid audio and web -conferencing capabilities.
While a lot of the best features remain the same, there’s also few major improvements to be found, including: the 11th Gen Intel processor that brings performance forward a generation.
There’s no option for small eMMC storage this year, which means the entry model is more expensive, but it actually brings the cost of the middle offering down by AU$50 and you get a Gen 3 PCIe SSD with 3,000MB/s read and 1,600MB/s write speeds, which is much faster than the original Surface Laptop Go.
This new processor offers between 15 and 30 percent performance improvement over the original Surface Laptop Go on general work tasks and is a more efficient chip overall. This means you’ll get an extra two hours of battery life from it when using general office tasks like those in the PCMark 10 Home Battery benchmark. With a total lifespan of 8 hours and 52 minutes you can safely leave your charger at home for a full work day.
The updated 11th Gen chip also comes with Intel’s Iris Xe Graphics which offers over 2.5 times the GPU performance and means you could do a bit of light gaming on this device using low graphics settings at sub 1080p resolution.
The overall keyboard feel has improved, making it hard to distinguish form more expensive Surface units and the dual studio microphones and HD camera have had some attention in this update too. It doesn’t have the infrared camera for Windows Hello facial recognition, but there is a fingerprint reader on both 8GB units that makes signing in still really fast.
Audio quality is really good, especially for a budget laptop, and the touchscreen 148 PPI display looks great for something that isn’t quite FullHD. The Surface Laptop Go 2 also comes with full Windows 11 Home, by default, which marks the first time a Go device has entirely ditched the Windows S confined OS. A set of USB-C, USB-A, 3.5mm audio and Surface Connect Port interface options round out a pretty amazing offering for something a little over $1K.
Read the full review: Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2
The best 2-in-1
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Instead of offering a detachable tablet experience like the Surface Book, the Surface Laptop Studio has a screen that can fold into a drafting table shape to make it easy to draw on. The design (and title) is clearly borrowed from the company’s desktop all-in-one the Surface Studio and it works exceptionally well with the recently updated Surface Slim Pen 2.
The laptop has a recessed edge that we originally thought was to make the powerful 1.9cm device look a little less bulky in photos, but this unusual shadow line edge design actually creates an inverted shelf that can store the Slim Pen 2 and makes room for unimpeded thermal vents on either side. This does have the downside of constraining the space for ports so you’ll have to be content with a pair of Thunderbolt ports, the Surface Connect port and a 3.5mm audio jack.
The 14.4-inch PixelSense display looks really impressive, even when sitting next to an OLED display. Sure it’s a little more glossy and doesn’t have the same depth in the blacks, but the 2400 x 1600 pixel touchscreen has a 1500 to 1 contrast ratio and a vibrant 201 PPI pixel density. It only just scrapes in to achieve 100 percent sRGB colour reproduction though, so you can’t really use it for colour grading work, even if it does look great. It’s also a 120Hz display that makes the already responsive Surface Slim Pen 2 seem even more silky, and opens up interesting gaming potential when you pair it with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050Ti.
While the entry level Surface Laptop Studio comes with an Intel Core i5-11300H CPU and integrated Iris Xe Graphics, you can configure it with an Intel Core i7-11370H CPU and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050Ti GPU for AU$3,149. Both models come with 16GB of RAM and will be fine for a wide range of workloads, but the latter is going to have slightly more overhead for using design software. It’s not bad at gaming either, with the i7 unit we tested racking up 49fps averages on games like F1 2021 using Ultra 1080p settings.
Battery life isn’t amazing at seven hours and four minutes of PCMark 10 Work benchmarks, and a little over six hours of movie playback, but it’s not horrible for an ultraportable with a discrete GPU.
You’ll get a similar laptop experience from the Asus VivoBook Pro 15 OLED for AU$2,299 if you don’t mind a three hour battery life, but there’s not really anywhere else you can get this kind of touchscreen and drawing interface.
Read the full review: Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review
The best OLED display laptop
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Dell’s XPS 13 has always been a leader in the ultra premium laptop market, but as the new Plus naming convention might give away, the new range of XPS 13 Plus devices are adding even more to the overall experience. Some of the update’s headline features include a notably more powerful Intel 12th generation CPU, an optional OLED touchscreen panel, an integrated glass touchpad palmrest and a neat capacitive touch bar.
The range starts at AU$2,599 and comes with a 13.4-inch FullHD display, a 12-core i5-1240P CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The unit we tested came with a 400nit, 3.5K, OLED panel, an i7-1260P CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD with an RRP of AU$3,799, but it’s often on sale for around 20 percent less than that.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus i7 scored between seven and 12 percent better than the Late 2020 MacBook Pro 13 (M1), which puts it within 3 percent of the MacBook Air M2. Graphically Intel’s Iris Xe isn’t as advanced as Apple’s integrated SSD so the Dell XPS 13 Plus was 36 percent behind the MacBook Air M2.
Battery life also doesn’t look overly impressive next to Apple’s devices lasting just 6 hours and 6 minutes during 1080p movie playback, but it’s not too bad for a Windows Ultrabook.
The Gen 4 PCIe is as fast as any we’ve seen, capping out at 7,000MB/s Read and 5,000MB/s write speeds, and the quad speaker array is generous and compliments the capable screen in media playback. With a choice of Platinum or Graphite colouring, a HD webcam, a Windows Hello IR cam and dual microphone array, there really aren’t too many things wrong with the XPS 13 Plus.
Read the full review: Dell XPS 13 Plus
The best gaming laptop
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The ROG Zephyrus M16 is a refresh that sticks pretty close to its predecessor, other than swapping out the AMD CPU for a choice of Intel’s 12th generation 14-core CPUs. It’s got a 16-inch display in a 15-inch form factor, with the same optional 16 by 10 QHD+ screen, wrapped in an almost identical 2kg chassis.
The updated 2022 Zephyrus M16 comes with either an Intel Core i7-12700H or an Intel Core i9-12900H processor. The former is paired with a 165Hz FullHD+ 16:10 display, 16GB of RAM and a choice of a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti (100W) GPU for $2,799 or a RTX 3060 (120W) GPU for AU$3,199. If you opt for the i9 model, you’ll get that higher res 2560 x 1600 165Hz screen, a larger 32GB RAM allocation, and an RTX 3070 Ti (120W) GPU for AU$4,499.
For a reduced range, the configurations are pretty nicely balanced, even if we do wish that all of them got the QHD display. In addition to being higher resolution the QHD+ display also offers a professional level DCI-P3 wide colour gamut for colour grading or high-fidelity HDR gaming, rather than the standard 100 percent sRGB colour on the 1200p monitors.
The metal chassis with ‘soft-touch’ coating gives a premium feel to the device and the generous trackpad, quiet keyboard, and subtle colour on the top shell continue a level of sophistication that is often missed on gaming laptops.
The Zephyrus M16 may be design conscious, but it’s also got good performance stats for a gaming ultraportable. It’ll be able to tackle the heaviest of workloads and no matter what GPU you choose it’s going to offer notably more power than your average work ultrabook.
The Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti GPU that we tested was allocated a 120W max power draw, which is a reasonable middle ground offering 90fps+ on modern titles using 1080p Ultra settings and around 60fps+ when using ray tracing or at higher resolutions. Expect about half this graphical performance if you opt for the 3050 Ti GPU or about 20 percent less for the 3060 GPU.
For general work tasks and 1080p video won’t get you more than 3-4 hours respectively.
Read the full review: ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16
The best gaming ultrabook
The Razer Blade 14 has long been one of the best ultraportable gaming laptops around, but a close partnership with AMD and Nvidia in 2023 means the latest device is even more powerful than you might expect.
AMD has made it its business to go after the Apple M2 Pro and Max processors with the Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU. The 7940HS has a traditional 8-core 16-thread structure that uses high-frequency 4.0-5.2GHz cores and combines with a lower 35-54 Watt power draw, significantly under what you’d usually see in a gaming laptop, to make a chip that is more efficient, while maintaining certain performance levels.
This means the Blade 14 can outpace a MacBook Pro (M2 Max) in Cinebench R23 image rendering benchmarks and it doubles the performance of the 13th Gen Intel U series processors we’ve tested in some CPU performance. The Blade 14 still is paired with discrete Nvidia Graphics to provide impressive gaming performance of between 60 and 100+ frames per second on modern games in 1080p Ultra.
The two processors combine to mean battery life is only 5-8 hours, but you will get a 14-inch 2560 x 1600 pixel, 240Hz display that is well balanced for gaming and work thanks to a 500 nit brightness and DCI-P3 professional-video colour.
The new range of AMD chips offer an on-board AI processor that has the potential to be a really useful feature moving forward, but for now there’s only really a couple of handy features like improved Photoshop auto-removal and blurring the background of online meetings.
For anyone keen on gaming this unit offers more than double the graphical performance of the MacBook Pro 14 with an M2 Max processor, but you’ll lose out considerably on battery life and the creative benefits of Apple’s Unified Memory. Still that’s a trade off many will be willing to make.
Read the full review: Razer Blade 14 (2023)
The best dual-screen laptop
One of the best touchscreen laptops – and naturally, among the best 2-in-1 laptops – we’ve tested in 2023 (so far), the Yoga Book 9i is an incredible dual-screen laptop that actually uses the second screen well. The Yoga Book 9i sees you through your productivity and multitasking in a seamless and time-saving way without the extra weight. It’s also a capable piece of kit with cutting-edge mobile components powering it – but it also comes with a very high price.
Design: We completely fell in love with the Yoga Book 9i when we reviewed it, and you’d hard-pressed to find a dual-screen setup that’s as seamless or as versatile as this one. Lenovo has designed the Yoga Book 9i not only to give you that extra bit of screen real estate but also to offer several different modes. You can mount it on its included stand so that the screens are either stacked one on top of the other or side by side like a book – and you can use it as a normal laptop as well.
Performance: The Intel Core i7-1355U that’s powering the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is specifically designed for ultra-thin portables. That means it’s certainly powerful enough for most day-to-day tasks, but as it has been built to keep cool and not drain the battery too fast (more on that below), it’s best used for general productivity and lighter creative workloads, rather than intensive video editing or gaming. In our tests we found the Yoga Book 9i to perform extremely well when photo editing in particular, and the dual OLED screens looked brilliant.
Battery life: Thanks to its efficient processor, the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i lasted a respectable 9 hours and 18 minutes in our tests. Considering that unlike most laptops, it’s powering two OLED screens, that’s not bad at all. If you turn off one screen, the battery life leaps to 12 hours and 13 minutes in our battery life benchmark – beating the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 and Dell XPS 13 Plus.
Value for money: There’s no getting away from it: this is an expensive laptop. It launched at a hefty $1,999 / £2,299.99 / $4,299, and we can’t imagine we’ll see any big price cuts any time soon. The design, quality of the dual screens and versatility of this laptop goes some way to justifying the price, but if you’re not going to use the second screen, look elsewhere.
Read the full review: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i
The most eco-friendly
The Acer Aspire Vero 15 (2023) might be the first laptop to embrace the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” slogan by reducing the amount of material used, reusing a lot of recycled material, and is made to be easy to recycle at the end of its life.
More importantly, unless you absolutely need one of the best Ultrabooks for maximum portability, you’ll probably be happy with this everyday laptop, even if ti comes with a few caveats.
Being cutting edge – at least in carbon footprint if not design – comes at a cost. If you’re willing to pay that price for the environment, you’ll find some issues here and there but no deal-breakers, as long as you don’t need a more specialised machine.
It has 50% post-consumer recycled material in the keycaps, 40% in the chassis (up from 30% in the previous generation), and 50% in the power adapter. The trackpad is composed of ocean-bound plastic. The chassis is completely paint-free. And, the packaging, made up of 90% recycled paper, is 100% recyclable. Plus, part of the inner packaging can be reused as a laptop stand, even if it is kind of meh.
With a 13th-Gen Intel Core i7 and 16GB RAM, it can handle multiple tabs open at once, streaming, and even light gaming. This laptop’s performance is somewhat helped by the fact that it doesn’t need to power a demanding display. The screen has a 1080p resolution so it’s not going to impress next to the new laptops coming out with OLED screens with HDR support. And, its color coverage is, like a lot of aspects of this laptop, good but not great as it has 112.5% sRGB and only 79.7% DCI-P3.
As far as the speakers go, they get loud enough and are more than serviceable for general use. There is a bonus 1440p webcam and some software for features like auto-framing and background blur to make the most of it.
In our Battery Informant benchmark, the Acer Aspire Vero 15 (2023) achieved an 11-hour-and-23-minute result, which isn’t quite Apple level but is great for a Windows-based laptop.
Read the full review: Acer Aspire Vero 15 (2023)
How to choose the best laptop for you:
What are the best laptop brands? The best brands for laptops include Apple, Dell, Lenovo and HP, and they all have their strengths. For example, Apple make brilliantly-designed slim and light laptops, while Dell does a great range of high-end ultrabooks, as well as affordable devices and Chromebooks as well. Lenovo’s well known for making solidly-built business laptops (and some great 2-in-1 laptops as well), and HP’s also been making some gorgeous laptops recently that are some of the best laptops in the world.
When it comes to gaming, the best laptop brands include Alienware, Asus and Acer.
How much RAM does a laptop need? RAM (Random Access Memory) is an important specification to look for in a laptop. You’ll want 4GB at the very least for a Windows laptop – though we’d actually recommend for many people to go for 8GB. That will ensure that the laptop runs well for years to come. Budget Chromebooks can get away with less RAM, such as 1GB or 2GB.
Battery life considerations Finally there’s battery life. This is likely to be one of the most important considerations you have when choosing what laptop to buy. The best laptops need to be able to let you work – and play – for hours on end without you having to scramble for a power adapter. Modern laptops are getting ever more power-efficient, which has led to longer battery lives. For a laptop to be included in our best laptops list, it needs to offer a battery life of five hours or more.
Which type of laptop is best for you?
General laptops: This broader category is dedicated to devices that focus more on practicality than style, portability or power. That’s not to say they can’t be fast, but you’ll typically find a non-Ultrabook clamshell laptop with an HD screen and spinning drive-based storage for less than AU$1,500, although the lines are blurring between the laptop and ultrabook markets, with the latter becoming more readily available at lower pricepoints.
Ultrabooks: Where you’ll find thin-and-light notebooks sporting SSD storage and display resolutions that exceed 1080p. Paired with powerful, albeit mobile-centric components and especially long battery life, the best Ultrabooks will cost a pretty penny – closer to AU$1,500 to AU$3,000.
2-in-1 laptops: Where notebooks that double as tablets are located – the best 2-in-1 laptops offer a versatility not typically found in more conventional laptops. Outfitted with both detachable and 360-degree rotating hinges, these hybrids are the most versatile way to experience Windows 10 (or Chrome OS) on a touchscreen.
Chromebooks: Where you’ll find the best Chromebooks running Chrome OS. These do much of what Windows and macOS can in the browser, focused on cloud storage over local, while recently getting Android app support for touchscreen models. They generally cost less than AU$500.
Gaming laptops: Need a laptop to play games (almost) just like a shiny desktop PC can? Then you’ll want one of the best gaming laptops. These machines generally cost more than AU$2,000 and can quickly get into the AU$4 – 5,000 range for the beastlier models.
How we tested these laptops
How we test the best laptops
We know that buying a new laptop can be a huge investment, so every laptop in this list has been extensively tested by us. When we test laptops, we use them in our day-to-day lives to see how they perform. We look at their design, including how stylish they are, or if they are thin and light enough to carry around, and how comfortable they are to work on.
When it comes to performance, we use a mix of real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks to see how powerful (or not) these laptops are. This means using Windows 10 (or Chrome OS on Chromebooks and macOS on MacBooks) and running various apps and seeing how fast they load, noting down any problems.
These days, the webcam and microphone in a laptop is also incredibly important, so we take time to test out these as well. When it comes to gaming laptops, we’ll run more benchmark tests, as well as fire up games to play on them as well (it’s a hard job, isn’t it?)
Battery lives are also important, so we’ll keep track on how long we can use the laptop without needing to charge. We also run our own battery life benchmark that plays a looped 1080p movie until the battery dies. The PC Mark 10 battery life benchmark replicates real-world usage, such as web browsing and document creation. These tests give us an excellent idea of how long the batteries in these laptops last.
We then take everything we’ve learned about the laptop and compare it to its price, to see if it offers the best value to customers.
Latest Updates
October 25, 2023
Added a number of new entries including best value workstation and best dual-screen.
August 22, 2023
Removed devices no longer sold. Added Acer Swift Go 16 as best value device.
June 28, 2023
New 13th gen devices added creating changes to the gaming laptop and best value offerings. There were also two new categories added; Most Portable and Best Student Mac in order to better suit audience preferences. The order of some devices was also changed to reflect the devices most searched for.
April 6, 2023
Updated buying guide to new format for easier navigation. Includes quick links.
