Test method
Mashable staff has conducted varying degrees of field testing on most of the laptops on this list (with the exception of the Framework Laptop 13, which we previous version). At a minimum, this includes inspecting the build quality and using it for a variety of real-world tasks for weeks at a time. This includes working with different types of documents, checking email, watching videos, taking photos with your webcam, joining video calls, listening to music (via Spotify), and playing games (if possible). (if any), and experimentation with unique software features and usage. The case they claimed to support.
Additionally, several new laptops featured here are built to run industry-standard benchmarking software (these are the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3, HP Chromebook Plus 15.6-inch, and Acer Nitro V 15 ). We've just started implementing these benchmarks in our tests, and you can expect to see them on all new laptops. review from now on:
Windows laptop benchmarks
Run the Windows version of the test unit to evaluate the overall performance of the test unit. Geekbench 6 by Primate Labs, measures CPU performance on several common tasks and records multi-core scores. The higher the score, the better.
Next, assess the lender's stamina. PCMark 10 for UL Solutions Battery life stress test. This will run a series of apps and functions until your laptop dies. As a point of reference, you can expect battery life to be around 9-10 hours on the Windows laptops we tested, but anything over 12 hours is exceptional.
Gaming laptop benchmarks
The gaming laptops we tried were tested at the same performance pace as standard Windows laptops. However, it only needs to last at least two hours on a single charge to be approved by the battery life department. (Get extra brownie points when you reach the 4 hour mark.)
To get a feel for the graphical capabilities of your gaming laptop, you'll also: play cyberpunk 2077 on them. If you have a separate/dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card (rather than an integrated GPU built into the CPU), do this once with that card. DLSS Turn off the technology, turn on DLSS, and turn it back on. This tests raw GPU power and AI upscaling performance respectively. Track this with his 3DMark's Time Spy benchmark for gaming PCs and record your score. Again, the higher the better.
Chromebook benchmarks
The main performance benchmark test for Chromebooks is the Android version of Geekbench 6 by Primate Labsundergoes a similar multi-core score evaluation.
To test your Chromebook's battery life, do the following parts: Principled Technologies' CrXPRT 2 standard. 8 hours is a baseline, but 9-10 hours is ideal.
After evaluating each laptop's performance on these tests, we made our final recommendations based on whether we think they offer overall value for money. For this guide, we defined a „cheap“ laptop as one that costs less than $1,000. We made one exception to this rule for Framework Laptop 13 ($1,049). This requires a large upfront investment, but will save you years of repair and replacement costs.