The 15 best laptops for gamers, students, Mac enthusiasts and more

Buying a laptop is a smoother experience than it used to be, with choices for all budgets and needs. But that in itself can be a double-edged sword, with the tyranny of choice leading to a feeling of paralysis.

Fortunately, I’ve reviewed nearly 40 laptops for Telegraph Recommended in 2025, and narrowed the list down to 15 top picks, grouped by category.

Of course, you may just want a recommendation for a really good, general-purpose laptop for everyday use. In that case, I can save you time and point you towards the outstanding Asus Zenbook S16, which remains my top recommendation as the best overall laptop currently on the market.

However, if your requirements are a little more specific, then read on. Here are the categories I’ll be assessing.

• Gaming laptops: As the name suggests, these are laptops optimised for gaming. They come with powerful graphics cards (sometimes referred to as GPUs), displays that can refresh at 144Hz or more and, ideally, will let you add more RAM and storage for upgradability.
• Laptops for students: For students, you’re looking for something not overly expensive, due to the risk of loss, damage or theft. I’d also recommend one running Windows for the sake of maximum compatibility with software and apps. If you plan on carrying it around campus all day, it needs to be small, light and have a decent battery life.
• MacBooks: Though no longer the market leaders when it comes to battery life, Apple’s MacBook laptops still offer a genuinely impressive blend of style, quality and performance. The smaller MacBook Air is a solid value proposition, easily available for under £900 if you shop around.
• Budget Laptops: Not so long ago, buying a laptop for less than £1,000 was a pretty soul-destroying affair. These days, you can get luxuries like OLED screen technology, 24-hour battery life and strong performance for a lot less than that, though trade-offs may still be required.
• Chromebooks: Modern Chromebooks are superb tools for accessing all of your Google-stored files, while also running Android and Linux apps. High levels of security, great value and seamless integration with your Android smartphone and tablet are all good reasons to look beyond the established Windows/MacOS duopoly, though those needing specialist software should look elsewhere.

Finding the right laptop for you requires finding the optimal balance between price, performance, size and weight and battery life. Thankfully, we live in a time when there is a wide variety of impressive machines to pick from, so there’s bound to be something here that fits the bill.

To that end, we’ve tested the best laptops on the market across five main target markets: those who want a gaming laptop, a laptop for school or college, a MacBook, a cheap laptop and a Chromebook. See my recommendations below.

Best gaming laptops

When Nvidia launched its RTX 50-series graphics cards (GPUs) at the start of 2025, it had the same effect as the Royal Navy launching HMS Dreadnought in 1906: instantly, everything that came before was rendered obsolete. That’s because RTX 50 GPUs support the latest upscaling and frame generation systems that deliver gaming frame rates many times higher than their predecessors in supported games. For that reason, I would strongly counsel against buying a gaming laptop without an RTX 50 on board.