WIRED Recommendations: An M3-powered MacBook Air (7/10), a Compact, High-Performance Ultra-High-Resolution Laptop
The M3-powered MacBook Air (7/10, WIRED Recommends) isn’t all that different than the M2 model, but it’s a great choice, specifically if you want a reliable laptop for everyday tasks and slightly more. The screen has a 1366 x 768 resolution, and the camera has a high definition resolution. The M3 will give you a increase in performance compared to the original M1. The older chips have only one external display support, which is an upgrade from the two external displays you can use with it.
The 18-inch Mini LED display with a 300-Hz screen refresh rate and G-Sync compatibility is one of the reasons that the WIRED recommends the Razer Blade 18. It also packs Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card and a Thunderbolt 5 port for faster data transfer speeds.
WIRED’s Choice for the Best Chromebooks, and the Acer Nitro V (8/10, WIRED Recommendations): A Purely Gaming Laptop
The WIRED recommends the best Chromebooks, and they have the title of Best Battery Life. We got at least 10 to 11 hours of juice every day. It does come with a few trade-offs. It has a low-end MediaTek 520 processor and only 4 GB of RAM so it is hard to keep up with a lot of tasks. The 64 gigabytes of storage isn’t great and the display is not great at all. But if all you care about is not having to constantly plug it into a charger or breaking the bank, it’s a solid choice—especially at this price.
The Surface Pro is expensive and is our favorite 2-in-1 Surface. It performs great as a Tablets, but we recommend the Flex keyboard to make for a more comfortable experience. We don’t suggest buying it for full price, though, so if you’ve been eyeing it for a while, then you should certainly snag it while it’s on sale.
The Acer Nitro V (8/10, WIRED Recommends) has been replaced in our guides by newer, fresher picks, but we still think it’s a great laptop. It is not the most powerful gaming laptop out there, but it does have enough power to handle most games. The model we tested had an older GPUs and a newer one in this version.
The 2024 Asus Zenbook Duo Laptop is on sale at Amazon and Best Buy for $299 off a laptop with an xph processor
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Amazon isn’t known for its cheap laptops, but it has a few good deals on top of Best Buy’s 48 hour sale. If you want a new Macbook, Windows productivity machine or even a gaming laptop, we have a number of great options for you.
It comes down to personal preferences if you want a larger screen. The 15-inch also has much better speakers, but if you’re the type to always wear headphones, it quickly becomes less of an advantage.
The 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro with 512GB of storage is on sale for $1,299 at both Amazon and Best Buy. Or, you can step up to more RAM and storage with 16GB / 1TB for $1,699 ($300 off) at Amazon. That may be a steeper cost, but the extra RAM is especially worth it in the long haul.
A 16inch gaming laptop has a 1920 x 1200 display with a 165Hz refresh and has 16GB of ram, a graphics card, and 512 gigabytes of storage.
We haven’t tested the 2024 Asus TUF A16, but at $699.99 ($400 off) at Best Buy, it seems like a solid value for some midrange gaming needs. While not the highest-resolution for a 16-inch panel, the TUF has a nice 165Hz display with 1200p resolution that should be fine for casual use. The graphics are powered by an all-amd setup with a chip and a card. It is the same video card that we put through its paces in the Framework Laptop 16. The modular laptop had more issues with glitch and cooling than poor graphics performance.
The 2024 Asus Zenbook Duo laptop is on sale for $1,201.74 (around $298 off) at Amazon. Spec-wise, it’s got an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD. One of the features that differentiates it is its ability to bring anywhere a multi-screen desktop-like setup, thanks to the removal of the wireless keyboard deck.
You can bring with you to the coffee shop the Zenbook Duo which has 19.8 inches of screen real estate, but it looks a bit crazy. Talk about a power move. Read our review.
Asus’ dual-screen laptop has a pair of 14-inch OLED touchscreens, each with 2880 x 1800 resolution. The removable keyboard can cover one of the screens for conventional single-monitor laptop use or be used wirelessly with the laptop propped up in dual-screen mode via its kickstand.
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is on sale in both its 14-inch configuration for as low as $799.99 (a massive $550 off) at Best Buy and in its 16-inch configuration for as low as $1,249.99 ($200 off) at Best Buy. Either model has a processor that is based on an Arm platform, and 512 gigabytes of storage. It doesn’t have the outright best performance of the recent crop of Windows Copilot Plus PCs running Arm chips, but it’s definitely one of the prettiest to look at with its thin-and-light frame and excellent OLED screen. The power-sipping processor helps it last longer than a modern MacBook. Read our review.