I tested more than 59 laptops: this is the best laptop of 2024

So what is the best laptop of 2024?

I have tested more than 59 laptops during my career as a technical reviewer. I saw wrong laptops that I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemies, mediocre laptops that are forgettable, and rare machines that are worth every penny.

Not toot my horn — Okay, maybe a tooth or two won’t hurt — I’m a beast when it comes to testing laptops.

I put laptops through the wringer by checking battery life (if it doesn’t last at least 15 hours, I don’t want it); I fill the laptop with taxing Google Chrome tabs to test performance; I examine the stability of the chassis; I test the speakers to see if they are too quiet; I take out the laptop to see that it is very dark.

I use industry benchmarks from the likes of Geekbench and PCMark to determine how well the review units – which have hard numbers – compare to other similarly priced competitors.

When it comes to reviewing laptops, I always ask myself one important question: “Would my hard-earned money buy this?” If the answer is no, there’s no way I recommend it to you – unless, of course, it’s still a good laptop, but it could fit some other niche.

That being said, among the many laptops I’ve reviewed so far, there is only one one best laptop of 2024: Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.

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

Stay here with me. To understand why Surface Laptop 7 is the best laptop of 2024, you’ll need a little historical context. Because the Surface family was not there always highly recommended – so far.

A few years ago, I was talking about the Surface Laptop 5 when I reviewed it for a different publication. (Surface Laptop 5 i technically speaking the Surface Laptop 7’s truest predecessor. There’s the Surface Laptop 6, but it’s for business, meaning it’s aimed at business customers.) I’ve always wanted the Microsoft Surface laptops to win – but they didn’t live up to my expectations (at the time).

Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

It’s not that Microsoft’s Surface laptops were bad per se – they consistently outperformed cheaper, better competitors. So, in good conscience, I could not recommend them.

Now, if you had told me that, in 2024, I would be recommending a Surface laptop, I would have said, “You’re crazy!” But here, as a laptop expert, I actually recommend a Microsoft laptop to my readers. But you know what? I support this. I have proof that it is the best laptop of 2024 Here are my three reasons.

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1. The best battery life we’ve ever seen

I tested the battery life of a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 and it held up 22 hours and 50 minutes.

The Surface Laptop 7 keyboard is fine. Nothing to write home about.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

That’s about 23 hours! Now that all-day battery life. This is almost unheard of on Windows laptops these days. (Trust me; I’ve tested a lot of them.)

This Best battery life we have always recorded at Mashable. Here are some of the operating times of our laptops:

As you will find out in the next section, the reason for the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7’s success and battery life is its new Qualcomm processor. (I’m sorry, but Intel doesn’t cut it anymore.)

You can guess which chip was inside the Lenovo Yoga 9 2-in-1, which lasted a little 7 hours? It certainly wasn’t a Qualcomm chip. (Spoiler alert: It was an Intel chip.)

2. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 performance beats M3 MacBooks

I don’t want to bore you with too many details about chipsets, but it’s important to bring them up to understand why Microsoft Surface in the end it has positive reviews from reviewers after a tumultuous few years.

Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

Long story short, Intel, the most popular Windows chipset maker, has been holding the Microsoft Surface series back to laptop nirvana. (Even Apple stopped working with Intel a few years ago.)

In 2020, Apple introduced new in-house, custom ARM chips (ie, M-series processors). After Apple released these chips in the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro four years ago, it never looked back. Why? They have been a huge success, delivering unmatched battery life and performance. (Apple’s current generation MacBooks are now rocking M3 chips and the company is eyeing an M4 release soon).

Now, non-Apple vendors are finally jumping on the “Intel ain’t it” train, again, thanks to Qualcomm, Intel’s rival. Qualcomm has announced that it has a chipset, called the Snapdragon X Elite processor, that is therefore well, it beats all M3-based MacBooks. Now, I was skeptical and didn’t believe it at first. But this new Snapdragon X Elite processor was packed inside the new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 – and it blew its competitors out of the water.

With “Best performance mode” enabled in the Settings app, the Surface Laptop 7 noted that wonderful many points of 14,548 on Geekbench 6. For context, here are the multi-core scores of other laptops I’ve tested this year:

• 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro – 11,998

• 15-inch M3 MacBook Air – 12,057

And yes, I purposely highlighted Apple’s M3 MacBooks here to prove a point (ie, Qualcomm was right). This was no riot either. The updated HP OmniBook XI this year, and packed with the Snapdragon X Elite chip, is almost as good as the Surface Laptop 7, but delivered slowly low multi-core scores for 13,888.

3. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 makes Windows fun again with AI

Remember when Windows used to be fun? When I was a kid (now a millennial in context), I used to eat Paint, play Microsoft 3D Pinball, and watch the audience jump to the music I played on Windows Media Player.

I use Cocreator in Paint, which creates art based on your drawings.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Now, Microsoft has renewed that excitement with a series of new AI features. From the new ChatGPT competitor Copilot to the AI ​​add-ons that lure you back to Paint (eg, Cocreator), playing with AI on Windows has intrigued me.

If Microsoft is using AI to lure users away from Apple (although Apple Intelligence will officially come to supported Mac apps soon), it’s working — at least for me.

Photos app as a new AI-powered Image Creator feature that lets you create AI-generated images on cue
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

The Surface Laptop 7’s AI capabilities are made possible thanks to the NPU, the full AI accelerator inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite.

One small flaw that you should consider before buying

As a laptop reviewer, I know better than anyone that no machine is ever perfect. One minor flaw I noticed with the Surface Laptop 7 is the lack of app compatibility. This is what I found when I tried to install the Apple Music app. I usually have no problems doing this on other Windows systems, but it seems that some developers haven’t enabled Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite support in their systems yet.

Mind you, Apple Music was the only app I noticed that didn’t support the Surface Laptop 7 — something I discovered because it’s such an important part of my daily PC tasks.

Another note: The Surface Laptop 7 isn’t a gaming PC by any means (it doesn’t have a dedicated GPU that can handle demanding games), but I’ll admit you can get away with something else. the light playing in it. But remember that some games, according to this list, may not work well on Surface Laptop 7.

Overall, though, the Surface Laptop 7 lacks endless battery life, engaging AI features, zipper functionality, a sturdy, anti-fingerprint chassis, and more. How could it not be the best laptop of 2024?

How much is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7?

The Surface Laptop 7 that I reviewed and highly recommend has a price tag of $1,599 on Amazon.

However, every so often, it is sold. As of this writing, for example, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is $200.