It’s getting harder to buy a bad laptop, but what separates the best laptops from good laptops is how they balance power, efficiency, portability, and comfort. The best laptop (High end laptops for cheap) should have a fantastic keyboard and trackpad — after all, those are the two biggest reasons you’d choose a laptop over a smartphone or tablet. Its display should be easy on the eyes, bright, and sharp enough that you aren’t distracted by jagged edges and visible pixels. It should be powerful enough for most anything short of intensive video editing and advanced gaming. It should be easy to carry around from place to place, and it should be able to last all day without needing to be plugged in.
That’s why our pick for the high end laptops for cheap of 2020 is the Dell XPS 13. It’s a device that does just about everything right. While it’s certainly not a perfect device, there are no major flaws. It’s a great pick for productivity, browsing, and even light gaming.
In our view, the best laptop for Mac users is the MacBook Air (2020). Apple fixed the Air’s biggest problem — the keyboard — and upgraded to more modern processors.
Our other picks for the best laptops of 2020 include the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, the MacBook Pro 16, and the HP Elite Dragonfly. Check out the full list of High end laptops for cheap below.
If you’re looking for a laptop that does just about everything right, we recommend Dell’s latest XPS 13. It features a sturdy build, 10th Gen Intel processors with powerful integrated graphics, and a nearly bezel-free 16:10 panel.
The display is what you’ll likely notice first. It has a 91.5 percent screen-to-body ratio with a bottom bezel of just 4.6mm. You can configure the XPS with a 1920 x 1200 pixel or 4K display, but the lower-resolution model should be adequate for anyone who’s not doing creative work. It delivers up to 500 nits of brightness (plenty for working in a bright room or even outdoors) and accurate, vivid colors. It’ll also give you significantly better battery life, in addition to the lower cost.
You can customize a number of other specs; the current base model has a Core i5-1035G1, 8GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 1920 x 1200 non-touch display. (There’s allegedly a model with a Core i3 and 4GB RAM floating around, but it’s not currently listed on Dell’s website. You should avoid it if you see it.) We recommend this base model to anyone who just wants to browse; if you plan on gaming or creative work, it’s worth upgrading for more storage and RAM.
The Ice Lake processor features Intel’s new Iris Plus integrated graphics, which delivered exceptional performance for an integrated GPU. You’ll still want a discrete graphics card for serious gaming, but you’ll have no problem running lighter fare like Overwatch and Rocket League. On those games, it delivers comparable performance to some lower-tier graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s MX150 that came in older versions of the Razer Blade Stealth. It is one of the high end laptops for cheap.
When it comes to the other basics, the XPS beats its competition in just about every way. We got an acceptable seven hours of battery life and even three hours of light gaming. (League of Legends was playable for about 85 percent of that time.) The keyboard and touchpad are among the best in their categories as well. And at just 2.8 pounds and 0.58 inches thick, it’s quite portable.
The biggest knock against the XPS 13 is its limited port selection. With just two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot, it’s getting into MacBook territory (though it does ship with a USB-C to USB-A dongle). The 720p webcam is also pretty terrible, though, in Dell’s defense, it had to squeeze the thing into a 2.25mm top bezel.
These are legitimate concerns that may drive some users to look elsewhere. But for most users, they won’t be as important as the fundamentals: build quality, keyboard, touchpad, display, and performance. The XPS excels in all of those areas, earning it our top recommendation.
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The 2020 MacBook Air is the best option for most people who prefer the Apple ecosystem. The Air comes with 10th Gen Intel processors (though in a lower power variation than the XPS 13), a sharp Retina display, and a new scissor-switch keyboard. The base configuration (including a Core i3, 8GB RAM, and 256GB storage) comes in under $1,000, but we recommend that you go for, at minimum, the upgraded model with a Core i5 processor. It is popular high end laptops for cheap.
MacBook keyboards have been almost universally maligned for the past few years. But the 2020 Air inherited the new-and-improved keyboard from the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro, which brings back the “inverted T” arrow layout and keys with 1mm of travel. There’s no Touch Bar, but that’s a controversial feature already, and most users should be fine with the standard top row and function keys. It does retain the Touch ID fingerprint scanner for easy logins and payment authentication.
You can configure the Air with three different Y-series chips, maxing out at a 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7. We had no problem with the 1.1GHz Core i5, though; it handled Chrome, Slack, Zoom, and Lightroom just fine, and had single-threaded Geekbench scores in line with those of the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Where you might run into trouble is with heavy workloads that need to run for long periods of time, such as rendering graphics or exporting video. We witnessed some thermal throttling in these cases, and clock speeds were capped at less than half of the processor’s boost. That means if you’re doing heavy creative work or other tasks that really push the CPU, you’re likely to experience slowdown and a very loud fan.
Despite those downsides, though, the MacBook Air will serve as a competent and reliable device for most users. It has the excellent design, display, performance, and (finally) keyboard that we expect from Apple. Power users who need the Pro probably know who they are; everyone else should be just fine with the Air.
Needs for laptops can vary widely. Some people need to do intense video editing and should pony up for a pro machine. Others just need a reliable keyboard and a few windows, so something less powerful will do. Some might want a super light laptop that can sometimes double as a tablet. Some will want a portable gaming machine capable of running all of the latest titles. Others want a tall aspect-ratio screen, which is much more comfortable to use than a cramped 16:9 display if you primarily do your work in Office documents or a web browser. Below, we’ve got recommendations for all of those use cases and more.
There are plenty of great options in the Windows PC world, complete with the latest processors and designs, and Apple’s MacBook lineup has been recently refreshed entirely with new keyboards and upgraded performance.
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The Zephyrus G14 is an astonishingly powerful gaming laptop for a low price (relative to other notebooks with comparable hardware). It pairs AMD’s new Ryzen 9 4900HS with an Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU and a 120HZ display, and it can run demanding games at their highest settings without a problem. It’s also quite light for such a powerful laptop, weighing just over 3.5 pounds. Its battery life is also impressive for a gaming rig; we got almost nine hours of multitasking. It is one of the gaming high end laptops for cheap.
But you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate the Zephyrus G14. It’s also a great notebook for business and everyday multitasking with a unique retro design. Plus, the keyboard and touch pad are exceptional and quiet enough not to bother office mates. On the flip side, if you need to use your laptop for video conferences, the G14 would not be a great choice, as it lacks a webcam.
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The 16-inch MacBook Pro is the best Apple laptop for power users. Apple dealt with the biggest complaints that people have historically had about MacBook Pros, and if you can stomach the price, there’s not a lot else to complain about.
Most importantly, the keyboard is good again. The keys have a full millimeter of travel, and while the typing experience isn’t exceptional, it’s a world away from the maligned butterfly keyboard of MacBooks past. It’s fairly quiet, too. It is another one of trending high end laptops for cheap.
This MacBook also features the best sound you’ll find on a laptop. Apple has crammed three speakers into each side, including two woofers. The result is balanced audio with audible bass and great stereo separation. For those who need a laptop that can crank through editing video, working with multiple audio tracks, or processing large batches of photos, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is the king of the hill.
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If you’re a business professional and money is no object for you or your company, you can’t do better than the HP Elite Dragonfly. The 2020 model is the first Dragonfly that features HP’s super-secure SureView Reflect technology, which tints the screen so that snoops can’t see what you’re doing while you’re working in public. When it’s not tinted, the display gets quite bright (over 700 nits) and has great viewing angles.
The new Dragonfly is also the first laptop to include a built-in Tile tracker. That means if you lose the device, you can use the Tile smartphone app to set off an alarm (if it’s in Bluetooth range) or locate it anywhere in the world using Tile’s crowd-finding network. The tracker can work for a limited time even when the laptop is off.
Almost everything else about the Dragonfly is good; it has some of the best battery life of any laptop on the market (we got over 11 hours), a sleek and stunning 2-in-1 design, and an exceptional keyboard. Plus, it incorporates sustainable material, including ocean-bound plastics and recycled DVDs.
The Dragonfly is pricey, and there are cheaper business laptops that will suit the needs of most professionals just fine. But if you’re looking for the best of the best, it’s the unambiguous winner.
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Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet is a great convertible laptop for kids, or anyone who wants a reliable secondary driver for browsing and games. It’s a nice-looking, well-made 10-inch device that comes with a detachable keyboard and kickstand.
The Duet is tailor-made to be used around the house and on the go, weighing just 2.03 pounds and delivering over 11 hours of battery life. Its MediaTek processor isn’t designed to shoulder heavy loads, but it’s just fine for browsing in a couple tabs, watching Netflix, or playing Android games — it even handles photo editing pretty well. The Duet also features a new “tablet mode” for Chrome OS, which supports an Android-inspired gesture navigation system and a unique Chrome layout optimized for tablet use.
The Chromebook Duet is an absolute steal for its low price, and is the Chromebook to buy if you’re on a tight budget.
The Spectre x360 is a premium-level 2-in-1 Windows laptop with the latest processor options from Intel, a vibrant touchscreen, and more port options than are found on other laptops in this segment.
The x360 weighs less than three pounds and is about two-thirds of an inch thick when closed, which makes it very easy to travel with. The latest model has a smaller footprint than before, thanks to shrunken bezels above and below the screen, but it still maintains a full-size keyboard and spacious trackpad. In addition, it provides both facial and fingerprint biometric authentication, so you can choose which way you prefer to log in.
HP updated the trackpad drivers it uses in the latest model to Microsoft’s Precision set and the experience is improved over the older versions to the point where it’s no longer an issue. The x360’s trackpad is now right up there with the best Windows trackpad options (which are still a tick behind what you get on a MacBook) in terms of scrolling, multifinger gestures, and palm rejection.
The biggest argument against the x360 is that it has a 16:9 display, as opposed to the 16:10 or 3:2 screens you’ll find on Dell or Microsoft’s computers. Those taller aspect ratios are much better for productivity work, whether that’s working in two documents side by side or researching on the web without having to scroll as much. But unless you are very particular about your screen’s aspect ratio, most people won’t find this to be a deal-breaker.
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If you’re looking for a MacBook that’s more powerful than the Air, but isn’t as pricey as the 16-inch Pro, the MacBook Pro 13 hits the sweet spot in the middle. It has a bright 500-nit screen, excellent speakers and — finally — a keyboard that’s actually reliable.
There are two models you can consider depending on your needs: the “base” model has 8th-Gen Intel processors and two Thunderbolt 3 processors, while the pricier version has 10th-Gen processors and four Thunderbolt 3 ports (as well as 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD). If you can afford it, we recommend stepping up to the pricier version, as the performance difference between the two generations is noticeable.
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The LG Gram 17 is one of the best 17-inch laptops you can buy. Its main calling card is its weight: at just 2.95 pounds, it weighs less than even some 13-inch laptops.
The Gram has a surprisingly robust port selection for such a thin device, including a Thunderbolt 3, two USB 3.0 Type-A, an HDMI, a microSD slot, a headphone jack, and a Kensington lock.
There are some drawbacks to a 17-inch screen. For one, you might have trouble fitting it into smaller backpacks and bags, and it may be ungainly to use on crowded trains and flights. It’s also on the pricey side, and if you don’t need all 17 inches, you can get similar performance and portability with a smaller screen for significantly less.
But if you’re set on a large display, you can’t do better than the Gram 17 for its price. And you’ll be able to see a heck of a lot in split-screen view.
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The Gigabyte Aero 15 is a colorful, powerful laptop for creative professionals. This 15.6-inch workstation pairs a bright OLED screen with an eight-core i7-10875H processor and Nvidia’s cutting-edge GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q GPU. It also comes with a laundry list of ports, including a full SD-card slot, so you’ll be able to plug in all kinds of projectors, monitors, and other equipment without a problem. We also found that it was able to run demanding games on their highest settings at acceptable frame rates, and export 4K video as fast as any other laptop we’ve tested.
This is an expensive machine, and if you just want to play games, it’s probably not worth spending so much money on an OLED screen. But if you need the combination of the high resolution and the high-powered specs, the Aero 15 is for you.
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You can configure the XPS 15 with up to an eight-core Core i7 processor, Nvidia’s GTX 1650 Ti graphics, and a 3840 x 2400 touchscreen. Those specs are overkill for most people, but they’re ideal for anyone who needs to edit video or do other heavy creative work with Adobe Premiere. We recommend that anyone who’s just browsing and streaming go for the 1920 x 1200 screen and a Core i5, which will save you significant money. (We also experienced some heat management issues and disappointing battery life with the i7 unit.)
The XPS 15 isn’t a serious gaming rig, but the GTX 1650 Ti can help out with creative tasks. Our model was able to export a five-minute, 33-second video in Adobe Premiere Pro in just four and a half minutes — which is faster than we got with the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
If you’re looking for a large, attractive Windows laptop that packs decent power, this is the one for you.
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If you’re looking for a laptop with a screen that pops off and becomes a tablet, you don’t have a ton of options. You could go for Microsoft’s Surface Pro line or some of Lenovo’s smaller detachable, or you could set up an iPad or other large tablets with type covers. But if you want a full high-end ultrabook that combines a GPU, a unique 3:2 aspect ratio, a standout keyboard and touchpad, and stellar battery life, the Surface Book 3 is really your only option.
The Book 3 is far from perfect, and far from cheap. But it’s the only laptop with its convertible form factor that’s competitive at the highest end of the ultrabook market in just about every category.
Microsoft also sells a 15-inch version of the Surface Book 3, which you can configure with a much more powerful GPU. We don’t recommend this model over other 15-inch laptops at the moment, because we experienced significant glitches with the screen’s detaching mechanism during our testing, the price is significantly higher than other, better-specced models, and because the 15-inch screen is much less practical to use as a tablet.
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Microsoft’s Surface Line includes a number of innovative, quirky products at a variety of prices. The 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 3 is its most “traditional” option, and it’s the best one for most people.
It features an outstanding keyboard and touchpad as well as a sturdy and attractive chassis that’s fairly portable at just 2.89 pounds. And it packs great everyday performance, with enough horsepower to handle Lightroom and Photoshop, and even graphic-intensive tasks in Premiere Pro. The biggest issue it has is the ports that are available: there’s just one USB-C and one USB-A port and no support for Thunderbolt 3.
While the Surface Laptop 3 isn’t a budget product, it’s an all-around excellent device that still won’t break the bank for most shoppers — especially if you can find it on sale.
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You don’t need to break the bank to get a solid Windows laptop. There’s no better proof of that than the Lenovo Yoga C740, which is an all-around solid, reliable device for less than $800.
There’s nothing particularly exceptional or groundbreaking about the C740, but there also aren’t any significant flaws; you’ll get adequate performance, a sturdy convertible chassis, good audio, competent cooling, and decent battery life. In all of these categories, the C740 is one of the best value laptops on the market. It’s a reliable, low-risk option for students, office users, or someone who doesn’t want to pay an arm and a leg.
Microsoft was an early innovator in mobile-friendly hybrid PC hardware. It’s hard to find a PC-maker today that doesn’t ape Surface’s kickstand-packing, detachable-keyboard-rocking design. It’s hard to find a nicer Windows experience than what Surface offers. But which one is better? Get our Microsoft Surface laptop comparison 2020 to select as per your needs. Microsoft’s […]
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