What’s new this month
In late July 2026, I updated this guide with one fresh pick. I also replaced or removed three previous picks that were no longer available. The Asus Zenbook A14 remains my top choice for most people.
The Asus ExpertBook Ultra is my new favorite Windows laptop for work: It’s incredibly thin and light yet impressively powerful, and its display is dreamy. The Acer Swift Edge 14 AI succeeds the sold-out Lenovo Yoga 7 14 as the best Windows laptop for college students. Its ultraportable design, decent battery life, and competitive value won over our reviewer.
I’m currently looking for replacements for Acer Aspire 16 AI and the Alienware 16X Aurora, our former picks in the budget and gaming categories, respectively. Both of them were out of stock variation at the time of writing.
As a quick note before we get into the picks, Mashable evaluates laptops on the basis of performance, battery life, design/build quality, and value. We do so using a combination of synthetic benchmarking and real-world usage. You can read more about our testing process below.
What’s on deck
I just finished testing the new Dell 14S and was very impressed by its build quality and battery life. For the average everyday user, it’s a smarter buy than the snazzy-but-splurgey Dell XPS 14. I plan on naming it a new top pick in the next related update term to this list. In the meantime, you can read more about it in my guide to the best laptops for college students.
The Mashable team has several other Windows laptops in hand for testing right now, including the Dell 16S, HP OmniBook Ultra 14, LG gram Max 17, Alienware 16 Area-51, Lenovo LOQ Essential 15, and MSI Prestige 16 AI+. We’re also waiting on a review unit of the new Dell XPS 13, a very promising budget option. (At $599 for students, it’s a direct competitor to Apple’s MacBook Neo.) Stay tuned to see if any of them make the cut.
A note about ARM-based Windows laptops
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series chips use ARM-based architecture, not traditional x86 architecture like Intel and AMD chips. As such, their compatibility differs. ARM-based laptops don’t work natively with certain specialty software (like AutoCAD), nor can they run as many PC games.
ARM compatibility issues are a non-concern for the majority of general-purpose Windows users, but they’ll be dealbreakers for some demographics — PC gamers being an obvious one.
College students should also steer clear of ARM laptops. When I examined the 10 top public universities’ hardware recommendations for the 2026 fall semester, I found that a couple schools explicitly advised their students against getting ARM-based laptops to make sure they can run all of their necessary coursework without emulation. (This is one big reason why I recommend the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI for rising freshmen: It has an x86-based Intel chip.)
The good news is that ARM compatibility has gotten better over the past couple years, and it will definitely continue to do so now that Nvidia is coming out with its own Windows on ARM chips.
Source: https://mashable.com/tech/best-windows-laptops-tested-2026
