The Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-51T-75AF) lasted 20.5 hours in our battery life test, but it comes with a ton of bloatware, its speakers are awful, its webcam looks blurry, and it has a distracting and unnecessary illuminated AI logo on its trackpad.
The Asus ExpertBook P5 (P5405CSA)‘s display had a blue cast and poor viewing angles, and its loose hinge caused the display to sag when we moved the laptop.
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425MA-U71TB) is similar to our budget pick, but we experienced aggressive throttling on this laptop’s processor in our testing.
The Dell XPS 13 (9340) has a finicky touchpad and a limited port selection. Dell confirmed that the XPS 13 (9350) has the same trackpad and ports.
The HP Envy x360 14-Inch 2-in-1 (14t-fc000) had short battery life in comparison with our picks.
In our tests, the lid of the LG Gram 14″ (14Z90S-G.ARW3U1) flexed under light pressure. This laptop is not available with 16 GB of memory at this writing, and it comes loaded with bloatware.
The LG Gram 14″ 2in1 (14T90S-G.AAB4U1) is a decent thin and light laptop with excellent battery life, but its lid has a concerning amount of flex. It also has a ton of bloatware, and it’s more expensive than our picks at $1,300.
The build quality of the MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo failed to match that of our top pick. On top of that, its display is smaller and lacks touch, and its keys are small and cramped.
Budget options
The Acer Aspire Vero (AV14-51-59UW) is heavy, its screen has a sickly greenish cast, and the chassis material feels rough and cheap.
Compared with our budget pick, the Acer Swift Go 14 (SFG14-72-53BP) costs more and lasted five hours less in our battery tests.
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q415MA-U5512) costs as much as our budget pick but has less memory, and we experienced aggressive throttling on the processor in our testing.
The HP Pavilion Aero (13z-bg000) had poor battery life, falling six hours short of our budget pick. And although it’s super light at 2.2 pounds, it feels flimsy.
At 3.55 pounds, the Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 (14″ AMD) is very heavy. And its display doesn’t get as bright as those of our picks.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 has a small, low-resolution display, and its battery life isn’t long enough to survive a full day of work or classes.
Upgrade options
The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405) is similar to our budget pick but has an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor and 32 GB of memory. We experienced aggressive throttling on this processor, and this laptop had about four hours less battery life than our recommended AMD model.
The HP Spectre x360 (14t-eu000) is heavy at 3.19 pounds. It falls hours short of our picks in battery life, and it’s expensive. We experienced intermittent throttling on this model as well.
For such an expensive laptop, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 (14″ Intel) has abysmal battery life, lasting just 9 hours 25 minutes in our battery test. (We test laptops at 60 Hz, and the Yoga 9i’s default refresh rate is 120 Hz, which takes another hour or so off.) The Yoga 9i has an excellent screen, superb build quality, a 5-megapixel webcam, impressive speakers, and a 360-degree hinge. But none of those features are useful if your laptop dies in the middle of your workday.
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro (14″) is a perfectly cromulent laptop, but it costs hundreds more than our top picks and isn’t an upgrade in any meaningful way. Compared with our picks, its battery life is hours shorter, it comes with a ton of bloatware, and its speakers are mediocre.
Snapdragon options
The HP OmniBook X lasted 14 hours 20 minutes in our battery tests, plus it has a responsive keyboard and trackpad, a useful variety of ports, and an excellent 5-megapixel webcam. But it costs a couple hundred dollars more than the Surface model we recommend, its speakers aren’t great, and its display doesn’t get as bright.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x has a vivid, bright 14.5-inch OLED display and is still svelte and sturdy—the whole laptop weighs just 2.82 pounds and offers excellent build quality. It also had superb battery life of 17 hours 10 minutes in our tests, and it provides a comfortable keyboard and a spacious trackpad. But it lacks a headphone jack and USB-A ports and doesn’t come with any dongles for its three USB-C ports.
The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus (7441) has excellent battery life and is a decent laptop, but compared with the other Snapdragon-based laptops we tested, it’s heavier, it doesn’t feel as premium, and its speakers aren’t great.
The Acer Swift 14 AI (SF14-11T) has similarly excellent battery life, but its keyboard and trackpad feel mushy, it comes with a ton of bloatware, and it has a distracting and unnecessary illuminated AI logo on its trackpad.
The Dell XPS 13 (9345) has ridiculous battery life—it lasted 21 hours 31 minutes in our tests—and it’s a thin and light laptop with excellent build quality. But its haptic trackpad continues to be finicky (an issue we’ve experienced on other recent iterations of the XPS 13), and it still lacks a headphone jack.
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge (14″) is more expensive than comparable Snapdragon-based laptops we tested, and its 11.5-hour battery life was no match for the superb results we saw from other Snapdragon machines. We also experienced throttling on this model, something that we didn’t encounter on other Snapdragon-processor ultrabooks.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 14Q8X9 (83GH0002US) has shorter battery life compared to the Surface Laptop 13, and the Acer Swift Go 14 AI (SFG14-01-X006)’s display lacks touch and has a yellow tint. Both models also have a slower Snapdragon X Plus XIP-42-100 processor than our recommended Surface Laptop 13 configuration. It’s fast enough for everyday tasks, but these models aren’t inexpensive enough to justify the drop in performance.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.
