The best new laptops of 2023

PC and laptop sales began to sink in 2023, but it wasn’t for a lack of great new laptops to choose from. On the contrary – this was a strong year for new releases, exploring new designs, chips, technology, and form factors. Many of them ended up making our list of recommendations for the best laptops overall that you can buy right now.

Of all the dozens of laptops we reviewed this year, these were the best ones we came across the laptops that really stood out from the crowd and impressed us.

Apple MacBook Pro M3 Max

Apple launched its new M3 chip this year, but not with a MacBook Air or Mac mini. No, this year, it was all about the MacBook Pro. The company rejiggered the lineup, and despite some funky details around configurations, I came away from my time with the M3 Max MacBook Pro extremely impressed. The new GPU performance is a big deal, even giving me a way back into gaming – for what it’s worth.

Everything else that was already great about this laptop is in place, including the XDR display, the great speakers, and excellent keyboard. It’s an expensive laptop, but for creative pros who need the best, the M3 Max MacBook Pro is as good a MacBook as we’ve ever had.

Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8

We don’t give out 10/10 scores very often. In fact, this was the only laptop of the year to earn that score. It’s not that the Legion 9i Gen 8 is a flawless laptop. I wish it had better battery life, and the trackpad is a bit too small.

But it earns a 10/10 because the Legion 9i perfectly achieves what it sets out to do and be. The performance is off the charts, the mini-LED display is world-class, and it’s surprisingly portable given what this is. It’s quite simply the best gaming laptop you can buy right now, assuming you can afford the price.

HP Spectre Foldable

The HP Spectre Foldable wasn’t the first laptop with a foldable screen, and it won’t be the last. It’s also not the most affordable of the bunch. But none have convinced us of the benefits of the form factor quite like the HP Spectre Foldable.

Thanks to the exquisite attention to detail in the design, the Spectre Foldable goes beyond just experimental project. This is the real deal, and functions well enough as a basic laptop when it needs to be. Hopefully we’ll see prices on foldables go down over the next few years, as devices like the Spectre Foldable inspire more and more iterations on this futuristic form factor.

Apple MacBook Air 15-inch

The 15-inch MacBook Air has just a single trick up its sleeve. It’s a larger version of the 13-inch MacBook Air. The keyboard isn’t different – neither are the ports, the image quality of the screen, or the performance of the M2 chip inside.

But the larger screen really makes a difference. For those that will sit in front of this laptop and work on it all day, having the extra screen real estate over the 13-inch model will make a huge difference in your enjoyment of using it. Not to mention the fact that a laptop this thin is even more startling with a screen this large. It might not be the most compact MacBook in the world – but for the right audience, it’s the ideal kind of MacBook.

Apple MacBook Air 15-inch

Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8

Lenovo has slowly been iterating on its Yoga designs over the years, and it’s reached its peak in what is now its eighth generation. The OLED display is fantastic, allowing you to choose between a higher resolution or a higher refresh rate. I’ll take the 90Hz refresh rate anytime – but either way, you’re getting one of the better screens you’ll find on a laptop this price.

Battery life has always been an Achilles’ Heel for the Yoga line. It’s no longer bad as it used to be, but it’s not a strong suit either compared to some of the competition. The Yoga 9i makes up for it with just about every other aspect of the device, fortunately.

HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook

Even ahead of Google preparing its new Chromebook Plus program for premium devices, the HP Dragonfly Chromebook was leading the way. It brought a number of firsts to the Chromebook platform, including RGB backlighting, a haptic feedback trackpad, and a great display. It just doesn’t get any better than this when it comes to Chromebooks.

It’s an unusual device for sure, at least for the current perception of Chromebooks. This definitely isn’t for students or kids. But there’s no question it was one of the most impressive laptops we reviewed this year. The fact that it happened to run Chrome OS made it even more of a standout.

HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook

Editors’ Recommendations