Introduction:
Buying a laptop has never been more confusing. There are so many different ones— which should you buy? Well, today I’m going to make it super easy. When picking the perfect laptop, the first thing that you need to decide is what kind of user you are. Do you have light computing needs, do you need some performance, or do you need the most performance possible?
I’m going to recommend laptops for all three today, but before I do, I have a favor to ask. Only 17% of our Reader are subscribed. We want to make high-quality Content for you, and we want to make more of them so we can cover all the tech that you are asking us to. You can make a real difference by just clicking that subscribe button. The entire team and I would appreciate it. Now, we're going to start with laptops for people with light computing needs. This means you primarily use your laptop for browsing the web, working on Office documents, studying, and that sort of thing. This doesn’t mean.
Best Laptops For Programming
These laptops won’t allow you to do something more demanding, for example, some programming, creative work, or even some gaming. However, as long as your projects or games are simple, these laptops have you covered. Let's start with Apple's MacBook Airs and even their base MacBook Pros. These are laptops that you buy, enjoy, and just don’t have issues with.
They are very stable, and the integrated graphics are very powerful, particularly the MacBook Pro 14 with the M4 chip. This will allow you to do some creative work like video editing, as long as your projects are simple, as I said. As with all Apple devices, if you're using them for light use, you won’t be annoyed by things like heat and fan noise, as there just isn’t any.
Macs also have the best battery life. You may see Windows laptops reporting long battery life, but this is usually for the most basic of tasks, like playing a movie back. In the real world, when you're using a variety of applications, MacBooks have the longest battery life.
They also just don’t cheap out on the little things—you get better quality webcams, better sounding speakers, and more accurate haptic trackpads. But what happens if you just don’t want a Mac and prefer Windows or even Linux? Look for an Intel laptop with one of their new Lunar Lake processors.
Features:
Processors, they're also known as Core Ultra 2 processors. Laptops with these processors give you snappy performance for everyday tasks and long battery life—not quite as good as MacBooks, but better than Windows laptops of old.
Where they outshine the Mac, though, is the variety of laptops available and their broad application support, particularly for gaming. This is relevant as these laptops have strong integrated graphics, making playing light games very viable.
The main downside of these new Intel laptops is their poor multicore performance, which is what demanding applications need. But don’t fear, this won’t get in the way of basic multitasking between applications like Office and Chrome.
You’ve got plenty of performance for that. Although I don’t love poor multicore performance, it’s a sacrifice that I think is fine for light users. My favorites are the HP Omnibus Ultra, the Yoga Slim 7i or Edition, and the Zen Book S14.
The Flip is an all-around premium 2-in-1 with an OLED display and a haptic trackpad. The Yoga Slim 7i or Edition is a light and portable laptop that has a large 15.3-inch display. The Zen Book S14 is the one to get if you want maximum portability.
It’s very light and has long battery life. Links to all the laptops I mentioned, by the way, will be in the description and on our website, Just Josh. Tech. In fact, our website has a built-in price tracker to ensure that you're getting the best deals on them. It also lists specific pros and cons of
OmniBook:
The OmniBook Ultra Flip that I just mentioned—if you see Intel laptops with even older processors like their 13th gen, be careful.
These are very inefficient. Either you get slow laptops from the U-series range, or they feel very warm with fan noise and terrible battery life
. Only buy one of these if you're getting it at a steep discount. Now, when you're shopping, you may find laptops with Intel's older Core Ultra Series 1 Meteor Lake processors. I'd only buy one of these at a steep discount, as they can feel warm to the touch, have some fan noise, and worse battery life.
Our website's deal page tracks laptops on massive discounts, and one of the ones I recommend watching out for is the HP Spectre 14. It's a very good all-around laptop, and they are on monstrous discounts.
Next, let's talk about the new breed of laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors. These burst onto the scene in mid-2024 with a ton of hype, some of which came from sponsored videos that Qualcomm themselves paid YouTubers to create.
To cut a long story short, these processors solved a lot of issues that Windows laptops had at the time—heat, fan noise, and poor battery life.
I feel like I’m mentioning these three a lot, but they’ve seriously been such a big issue for Windows laptops of old. Anyway, Snapdragon laptops went a big way in solving these, but unfortunately, they introduced a new issue.
Snapdragon laptops use the ARM architecture, which requires a different version of both Windows and the applications you run on it.
For light users, office, web browsers, and communication tools have all been updated, but if you ever venture out and use more specialized software, say you.
Snapdragon laptops:
Snapdragon laptops are a bit dead on arrival, at least for light users who just don't need the better multicore performance that these chips bring.
That being said, you should buy a laptop based on the sum of its parts and whether it's a good deal, not just the processor inside.
So long as the software that you want to run will work, there are a couple of good Snapdragon laptops out there.
The Surface Laptop 7 is my favorite for light users. It is a very solid all-around premium laptop and it has a reasonable price.
You can save some money by buying the X+ variant. We bought both the X+ and the X Elite versions, and we have a video out comparing them, which we’ll link below. Finally, we have AMD. They haven't released any new processors for light users; their fantastic M5 chips are only available in their higher-end Ry zen 9 range.
These deliver performance that is a bit unnecessary for light users. I'll be discussing these laptops in the next section, which is for those who want performance. Anyway, just like laptops...
Conclusion:
There are significant price differences between these generations, so you may be able to save big by buying one of the older models now.
I haven’t talked about how much memory or storage you should get, but luckily, that decision is a bit simpler for people with light computing needs.
16GB of memory and 512GB of storage is what you should aim for. That being said, if all you can afford is 8GB of memory, do not panic—applications will run just fine.
In fact, if you’re on a tight budget, I’d prefer you buy a better laptop like the MacBook Air with the M1 chip with a lesser amount of memory and storage than a worse one with more.
For performance users, 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage is probably what you should target as a baseline. Well, that's it.
I hope that I helped you pick your next laptop. Before I go, I can't say this enough—check out our website, Just Josh. Tech. We scour the internet for the best...
