Best Laptops for Build Quality (2024)

It's for getting your business tasks and school work done every day.

It's a U series CPU, and it's very thin, so you know that if you push it hard for a long time, there will be some thermal throttling.

The Intel Core Ultra processor is so optimized and efficient that I don't have to worry about battery life.

The display on the X1 Carbon is an incredible 14-inch 2.8k 120Hz OLED display with an anti-reflective and anti-smudge finish.

The fact that it covers 100% of the DCI P3 color space and is HDR 500 certified with 400 nits of brightness is impressive.

There is a slight screen wobble, but that's a trade-off for having a much lighter, thin build like this.

The battery life is really going to vary.

I was getting about six to six and a half hours, which is average for an OLED thin and light 14-inch laptop.

I would expect to get two more hours of use from the IPS display option.

Regarding memory, it has 32 gigs of DDR5, which is very high speed.

It's a one-terabyte NVMe SSD, and it's supposed to be very, very speedy.

The RAM is soldered on, like in just about every slim Ultrabook on the planet these days.

I have never experienced a Windows computer being so snappy when just opening up programs.

The performance is pretty much the same when on battery.

The SSD is actually replaceable here, unlike in a MacBook.

The display received a significant upgrade.

It is so much brighter, and the viewing angles are so much better.

There is one issue with it: the screen is quite reflective.

This is one of the biggest things we were waiting for with the X Elite chip: to get much better battery life.

It doesn't really match up in real-world use.

It is still the best battery experience I've ever had on a Windows laptop.

You still get 16 gigs of RAM as the base.

The SSD is actually replaceable here, unlike in a MacBook.

A supposedly better processor, a more efficient processor, better battery life, and improved graphics.

We compared the benchmarks against the 1360p on the Galaxy Book 3 Pro, and when the difference in Cinebench single-core and multi-core scores isn't that big, it's clear that the new Arc GPU is much more powerful compared to the Iris Xe graphics.

The multitasking capabilities are also very good.

The variant we have features a 14-inch OLED touchscreen with a sharp 3K resolution.

It also has 550 nits of peak brightness when watching high dynamic range content and 100% coverage of the color gamut.

Having a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120 Hz gives you really smooth scrolling.

Well, this has a 75 Whr battery, and you get a 65 Watt Type C PD charger along with it, which is great. What's insane is that we got a battery life of around 10-12 hours in day-to-day usage involving lots of Chrome.

It comes with 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

The M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD certainly has good enough read and write speeds for what you need it to do, and it is certainly fast enough.

Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered into the motherboard and is not upgradeable by the user.

The CPU can use significantly more power if the GPU is idle.

Sadly, it loses out to the Intel HX range of CPUs or the Ryzen HX range of CPUs.

Performance decreases if we unplug the charger and run on battery power instead.

The screen has decent colors for gaming.

It's only 300 nits, and yes, we have been using 300-nit screens for years.

This device right here has a 240 Hz panel and a 1600p resolution.

The battery life was excellent for a gaming laptop during our usual battery test.

Performance on battery was only slightly lower than on mains power.

The laptop ships with a fairly compact 240 W GaN charger.

The upgradeability score is good for a 16-inch laptop, with no major drawbacks.

Both memory slots can be upgraded.

The speeds from the 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD were excellent.

According to Apple, the M3 chip is approximately 20% faster for both single-core and multi-core processing.

It is clearly a more capable chip.

You now also get dual external display support with the lid closed.

It has a bright and beautiful screen.

These computers still run at 60 Hz, so they're a little choppy when it comes to scrolling and moving around.

Apple charges excessively for the most basic upgrades.

The base storage on the M3 is much improved.

There is a significantly more powerful processor and more powerful dedicated graphics inside.

The CPU performance is not significantly different from the previous generation.

The excellent single and multi-core performance during everyday tasks, such as using Microsoft Office, email, and web browsing, all worked really well.

This still features the same gorgeous 17-inch IPS display with a UHD Plus resolution.

It has excellent coverage of the color gamut, it's color accurate, and it's everything you want in a panel.

The display is very bright. They claim it has 500 nits, but I actually measured a little bit above that, at 501 nits.

The battery life is not much different from last year's model, but you get a big battery inside with 97 watt-hours.

It achieved 8 hours and 44 minutes on the PC Mark 10 modern office battery test.

If you're going to do any kind of gaming, it will really drain the battery quickly, lasting about an hour or so.

There are two RAM slots in the center, allowing you to install anywhere from 16 to 64 gigs of DDR5 RAM.

We have two M.2 SSD slots, obviously full height 2280. You can get it with one or two SSDs from Dell.

The Wi-Fi card is soldered on here, so no upgrades are possible there.

The biggest issue is performance. It tries to fit a hot Intel processor into a tiny chassis, which results in it massively underperforming compared to the Air and every other laptop we've tested with the same Intel processor.

When it comes to high-performance use, this laptop is really bad.

The Galaxy Book falls behind all of its competitors.

The processor is maxed out during Cinebench 2024, and it now massively underperforms compared to all its competitors.

This display is stunning; it is a 14-inch 2880 by 1800 AMOLED panel.

The display has a variable refresh rate of either 60 or 120 Hz. It is also very color accurate with a wide color gamut.

The screen also has an effective anti-glare coating, which minimizes glare and reflections.

This laptop actually performs surprisingly well with 68% battery remaining.

The Galaxy Book again performed well, with 69% battery remaining, indicating around 12 hours of runtime for this test.

The memory is soldered, and it maxes out at 16 gigabytes for this 14-inch version.

While you can upgrade the storage, it's going to be difficult to remove the back of the laptop because all the screws are hidden underneath the rubber feet.

The CPU here is the 6900 HS from AMD, and it delivers about 15% better performance than the 5900 HS in last year's model.

The Ryzen 9 7940HS is almost unbelievably better than the 6900HS; it's just a quantum leap forward in a single generation.

The AMD systems can't compete with the Intel ones here, but you also have to remember that these Ryzen processors are much more efficient.

The screen has been updated to a 16 by 10 aspect ratio, and it is a really nice-looking screen.

Brightness is now up to 500 nits, up from 300, and I measured it to be pretty close to that, around 480.

The display has received some tasteful upgrades, such as the shift to the new nebula HDR panel, which utilizes mini LED technology.

I was experiencing slightly longer run times this year, but they didn't change the size of the cell.

Gaming on battery is still pretty rubbish; it slashes your frame rate by at least half.

The MUX switch, which can be set to either the default hybrid mode or the dedicated GPU mode, can make a big difference to your battery life.

We have a single slot of DDR5, which is replaceable, while the rest of the memory is integrated into the motherboard.

The Gen 4 NVMe SSD has received a significant upgrade compared to last year.

The base spec is a hundred dollars cheaper this time, and that's what I have here: a Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU with 16 gigs of memory and half a terabyte of storage.

My TUF laptop has AMD’s Ryzen 7 7735HS processor.

The TUF A16 will also be available with AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS.

CPU thermal throttling occurred at 95 degrees Celsius during performance.

My TUF A16 has a 1920 by 1200, 165Hz screen.

99.7% sRGB and 76.5% DCI-P3 are more than enough for playing games, watching videos, and even video editing.

The peak brightness is not the brightest, so I wouldn't take this anywhere near a window.

It essentially splits up the PCB into three sections, which actually take up less space in the chassis.

The major component is the flexible OLED display.

The display is actually quite impressive.

It's a 14.2-inch flexible OLED touchscreen display with a 3.1K resolution.

This allows for an increase in the size of the battery, fans, and speakers.

The Cloud Falcon architecture essentially splits the PCB into three sections.