MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo for $1,300: This ultralight Windows laptop (7/10, WIRED review) offers a great balance of price, performance, and portability. This price gets you an Intel Core 7 processor and a 2,880 x 1,800 pixel OLED display. The keyboard and trackpad aren’t the best, but if that doesn’t bother you, this is a solid laptop at a good price.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra for $3,000: There’s a lot to love here (7/10, WIRED review), but that price. Oh. At least you get what you pay for, with the new Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the current top-of-the-line processor in Intel’s Core Ultra CPU lineup, paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. The touchscreen is great to work with 16-inch 2,880 x 1,800 pixel AMOLED and the performance surpassed anything we’ve tested. But that price.
Acer Swift Go 14 for $800: This is very similar to the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, our highest budget laptop. We found the Asus to be a bit faster and have much better build quality, but the Swift Go still offers exceptional performance, especially considering the price (7/10, WIRED review). It also boasts an impressive 15-hour battery life. The downside is the speakers, which aren’t very good and overall the body feels a little plasticky. But this is the cheapest Intel Core Ultra laptop we’ve tested for just a few dollars, so if the budget is tight, the Swift Go is worth considering.
Lenovo Slim Pro 7 AMD for $900: Lenovo’s Slim series are solid laptops. This AMD model (8/10, WIRED recommended) is particularly good with good battery life and impressive performance, especially in graphics-intensive tasks. It has a bright 2.5K, 16:10 display, aluminum construction, and a variety of ports. This one is frequently on sale; Don’t pay more than $1,000.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 for $800: The look of the machine has barely changed since its inception, and it’s most evident with its obscenely sized bezels. That’s a shame, as the Laptop 5 has a nice keyboard and the exterior design is still stylish, if a little dated. It’s hard to justify the price of the new model given its shortcomings, but it has started going on sale for around $800, which makes it a little more reasonable.
