We tested dozens of laptops to find the best for every budget. That includes the M4 Apple MacBook Air and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.
What is the best laptop of 2025?
As always, the answer depends on your answer to an age-old question: Windows or Apple?
As of December 2025, I think the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4) is the best MacBook for most people. It's a sleek-as-ever notebook featuring impressive performance, open-lid support for two external displays, a great 12MP Center Stage camera, and an extremely reasonable starting price of $1,199 (making it $100 cheaper than its M3 predecessor).
The best Windows laptop we've tested is the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, a sophisticated and snappy Copilot+ PC boasting a stellar battery life of nearly 23 hours. Note that Microsoft makes an Intel version that may appeal to users wary of Windows on ARM for app compatibility reasons, but it's a business-oriented model with a significant markup.
