I have reviewed over 59 laptops and here are the best Windows laptops of 2024

I’ve tested over 59 laptops during my career as a tech reviewer. terrible Laptops, mid-range laptops (decent devices, but there are better competitors for the price), and great machines that are worth the money.

I’m not bragging, but well, maybe I am. a bit Let me just say this: I am a beast when it comes to testing laptops.

I scrutinize things like the durability of the chassis, how clicky the keys are, how visually appealing the display is, how hot it gets when performing heavy tasks, whether it slows down when loaded with Google Chrome tabs, etc. On top of that, I run industry benchmarks like Geekbench and PCMark 10 to get a hard-to-find sense of how the review unit compares to the competition.

Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

When reviewing a laptop, I always ask myself an important question: “Would I buy this with my hard-earned money?” If the answer is “no”, then I definitely wouldn’t recommend it (unless it’s still a great laptop, but suited to a different consumer niche).

However, among the many laptops I have reviewed, One Truly a Windows machine Best Laptop of 2024: Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

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

Stay with me here for you to understand why To understand why the Surface Laptop 7 is the best Windows laptop of 2024, we need to know a little historical background. The Surface family is everytime It was good — until now.

A few years ago, I reviewed the Surface Laptop 5 for another publication and panned the product. I had a lot of faith in Microsoft and really wanted this product to win, but it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Microsoft was the software king, but its hardware was questionable. It’s not that Microsoft’s Surface laptops were terrible. By itself — kept losing out to cheaper, better competitors, so I couldn’t in good conscience recommend them.

Now, if you told me that I would be recommending a Surface laptop in 2024, I would say, “You’re crazy.” But as a laptop expert, I actually recommend Microsoft laptops to my readers. But did you know? I back this up. There is evidence This is the best Windows laptop this year. Here are three reasons why:

1. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 outperforms all competitors, including the MacBook

I don’t want to bore you with too much detail about the chipset, but it’s crucial to touch on it in order to understand why the Microsoft Surface family is now receiving positive reviews from testers after a few years of a flurry of negative reviews.

Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Simply put, Intel, the most popular Windows chipset manufacturer, was keeping the Microsoft Surface series and other mobile Windows machines from being laptop havens. Even Apple stopped doing business with Intel a few years ago. In 2020, the Cupertino-based tech giant unveiled new custom ARM chips made in-house (the M-series processors). Apple, Very successful Since releasing the non-Intel based M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro laptops, Apple hasn’t looked back (Apple’s current generation MacBooks currently feature M3-series chips, with the company reportedly planning to release an M4 soon).

Now, vendors other than Apple are finally joining the “Intel is no good” bandwagon, thanks to Intel rival Qualcomm, which has announced a chipset called the Snapdragon X Elite processor. So That’s cool, it beats all the M3-based MacBooks. I was skeptical, but this Snapdragon X Elite processor powers the new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 launched this year and it blows away the competition.

When you turn on “Best performance mode” in settings, the Surface Laptop 7 can’t believe it Multi-Core Score 14,548 On Geekbench 6. For reference, here are the multi-core scores of other laptops we’ve tested this year:

• 14″ M3 MacBook Pro – 11,998

• 15″ M3 MacBook Air – 12,057

And yes, I bring up Apple’s M3 MacBook here to prove a point (i.e., that Qualcomm was right), and this is no coincidence: the HP OmniBook XI, which we reviewed this year, also has a Snapdragon X Elite chip, and is roughly on par with the Surface Laptop 7 in performance, but… Slightly Low multi-core score 13,888.

2. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 delivers the longest battery life ever

When I tested how long the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 lasted on a single charge, Just don’t die.

The keyboard on the Surface Laptop 7 is fine. Nothing special.
Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Qualcomm wasn’t kidding when it said the Snapdragon X Elite chip is power efficient. Surprisingly, the Surface Laptop 7’s battery life is 22 hours and 50 minutes. That’s about 23 hours, which is literally unheard of on a modern Windows laptop.

this is Best Battery Life That’s the longest we’ve recorded at Mashable in recent years. Below are some of our laptop’s other runtimes.

Do you know what chip was in the Lenovo Yoga 9 2-in-1 that lasted just 7 hours? It certainly wasn’t a Qualcomm chip.Spoiler Alert: It was an Intel chip.

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

Remember when Windows was fun? As a kid (I’m now a grown-up millennial), I used to play with Paint, play Microsoft 3D Pinball, and watch the visualizers sway to the music I played on Windows Media Player.

I’m using Paint’s Cocreator to create a masterpiece based on my sketch.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Microsoft has cranked up the excitement again with a flurry of new AI features. From the new Copilot, a ChatGPT competitor, to AI additions like Cocreator that lure you back into Paint, I’ve been enthralled playing with AI on Windows. If Microsoft is using AI to lure users away from Apple (Apple Intelligence is coming officially to supported Mac systems soon), it’s working, at least for me.

The AI ​​capabilities of the Surface Laptop 7 are made possible thanks to the NPU, an AI accelerator built into the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite.

The Photos app has a new AI-powered image creation feature that lets you create AI-generated images by following prompts.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

But as a laptop reviewer, I know better than anyone that no machine is perfect. One shortcoming I found with the Surface Laptop 7 is app incompatibility. I discovered this when trying to install the Apple Music app. While it’s usually no problem to do this on other Windows systems, it seems like some developers haven’t enabled support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite in their apps yet.

The Surface Laptop 7 is by no means a gaming PC (it doesn’t have a discrete GPU), but I’ll admit that it’s perfectly usable to some extent. Light Not suitable for gaming: So, be aware that according to this list, some games may not work properly on the Surface Laptop 7.

But overall, the Surface Laptop 7 has limitless battery life, compelling AI features, fast performance, a sturdy and fingerprint-proof chassis, and more. There’s no way it won’t be the best Windows laptop of 2024.

The Surface Laptop 7 is available on Amazon for $1,599.