the funny thing is this topspec MacBook Pro 16 is about £75,000 this assus vbook go 15 is £400 so obviously when it comes to buying a laptop you can spend an awful lot of money or you can spend not much at all and you’ve got a lot of different options so in this video I’m going to walk you through my 12 top tips for helping you figure out what’s the right laptop for you what to look for and also how to avoid wasting your money I’ll also leave a link to some of my favorite laptops in the description below also let me know what laptop you’re using right now and if you’re thinking about upgrading and if you enjoy the video a cheeky like And subscribe will be fantastic all right tip number one pretty straightforward what are you going to be using your laptop for I mean if it’s just basic home office stuff or something to take to school or college with you just for watching Netflix browsing the web doing a bit of work you know a good allrounder as they say something cheap and cheerful then yeah certainly consider something like this it’s the assus Via book go 15 you know the keys don’t feel particularly nice it’s not the most powerful laptop in the world but it hasn’t only screen uh and it does everything you’d want a laptop for and it costs about 400 quid and you really can’t beat that value but then of course spending more money will get you better performance nicer screen smarter designs the latest connectivity but even cheap and cheerful laptops like this will do the basics although I would say if your budget is under £250 or $300 or you want something specifically perhaps for school then consider a Chromebook although more on that in a second for you Gamers out there though even budget machines with can of iy performance can still play demanding games via GeForce now or Xbox cloud gaming these are of course subscription services so you’ll have to pay for them and you’ll need a pretty fast and reliable internet but it does mean you can get away with some gaming even on a pretty basic laptop oh if you do have a little bit more money to spend then you can’t argue that a MacBook Air is arguably the best all round laptop you can buy uh this M3 model starts at about £1,100 you can get the M2 for £999 they’ve discontinued the old M1 and yes that is quite a lot of money and of course not everyone wants a Mac but I would argue there isn’t really a better combination of design performance battery life webcam the ports the software there isn’t a better allinone laptop option really than a MacBook Air there’s a reason these are so popular and I would probably pay the extra 100 quid for the M3 version as it is a good deal faster and it means it should last you even longer before you feel the need to upgrade or if you prefer Windows 11 then there’s plenty of Premium thinner light options but like Max versions can cost upwards of £1,500 quid £2,000 and more it can all get very expensive so until recently you basically had three options you had your Chromebooks you have your Intel and AMD powered Windows laptops and you got your MacBooks well now there’s a new player in town it’s kind of shaking up the Windows PC market a little bit we have Snapdragon powered laptops the same guys who put the chips in most of the Android phones are now making laptop chips we’ve got the X+ and the X Elite this is the Asus fever book S15 I’ve also got the Samsung Galaxy book 4 edge here just a couple of like the dozen or so first wave of Snapdragon powered laptops including the new Surface laptops from Microsoft and these are finally giving the M1 M2 M3 powered MacBooks and MacBook airs a proper run for their money in terms of performance battery life and also just running more coolly and quietly they’re much nicer experiences however these are brand new Chips it is very early days and as they use a different kind of architecture to the traditional Intel and AMD chips some apps and programs will have compatibility issues they either simply won’t run or they may not run as well unless they’ve been optimized to run on this new hardware which will take time so it could be worth just holding out a little bit on buying a Snapdragon power laptop until there’s more drivers and updates and optimized apps just worth a thought okay that was a very long and waffly tip number one let’s move on to tip number two different form factors most of these are traditional clamshell laptops you know they open like this some of them even have 180° hinges and if you do need a little bit more flexibility literally in this case then maybe consider a two-in-one flip where you can literally flip the screen and transform it into a touchscreen tablet handy for your doodling and drawing or making notes with a stylus or just your finger or even propping it up to watch a movie or review some documents or how about a twin touchscreen laptop like this Asus zenok Duo OLED which gives you double the screen size we’ve got two 14in displays here or how about something like a Surface Pro with a detachable keyboard and I particularly like two-in-one Chromebooks as they’re still incredible value and just gives you some extra flexibility and then of course there’s the iPad it’s not for everyone and it’s not a full laptop replacement mainly due to iPad OS being a bit constrained you’re not getting proper desktop apps really although if you’re tempted then have a watch of my latest iPad buying guide video which I’ll leave a link to in the top right corner tip number three which operating system which software do you want you’ve established hopefully uh what you’re actually going to be using your laptop for and then potentially the kind form factor you want and to be fair most people just end up with a regular clam shell uh but then do you want Chrome OS on a Chromebook do you want Mac OS on a MacBook or do you want Windows 11 on a well Windows laptop chances are you already know the one you want because you’ve been using it forever but it’s worth considering if one of the others may be a better fit Windows 11 laptops have by far the most options with the most choice for different budget options for different form factors different sizes you’ve got gaming laptops workstations plus its windows so chances are you’ve used it your parents have used it your kids and your dog are using it and it’s compatible with literally millions of apps and programs although as I say if you do go for a Snapdragon powered Windows laptop then you may run into some app compatibility issues right now as I’m filming this premere Pro can’t be installed a lot of games simply don’t work on arm yet so just be wary of that then you’ve got Mac OS on MacBooks which does a similar job but kind of goes about it in a different way and it can feel a little bit jarring if you’re coming from Windows but I would argue generally it’s a simpler smoother more premium experience that’s mostly bug free and almost everything will run on it well except for games it’s getting a little bit better but mostly if you are going to play a lot of games then Windows laptops are your best bet plus if you have an iPhone you can take advantage of iMessage and airdrop and screen mirroring coming with the new software but given the cheapest MacBook Air starts at about £1,000 that might make your decision for you and then there’s Chrome OS which is Google’s operating system for Chromebooks which as I say are some of the best value laptops for as little as like 2300 Chromebooks aren’t for everyone because basically everything is running in the cloud Not A lot’s happening locally uh but they found a huge audience with schools and colleges they’ve been massive for Education mainly because they’ve been so affordable the downside of Chromebooks is that they need to be connected to the internet they’re sort of cloud books if you will and they won’t be for everyone myself included I’ll be sticking with either a Windows or a Macbook tip number four let’s talk about the hardware and this can will get a bit complicated don’t worry if a lot of it goes over your head uh but basically there’s a few components you have to think about we’ve got the processor the CPU the graphics the GPU the ram aka the memory and the storage all I would say is if you want a cheap PC cheap Windows laptop get 8 gigs of RAM 256 storage and an Intel Core Ultra 3 or 5 processor or M one from last generation uh and you’re good to go for a mid-spec PC basically double the RAM and storage 16 gigs 512 happy days and then maybe a more recent or the latest Intel Core Ultra 7 or equivalent AMD ryzen processor or even indeed the Snapdragon X Elite laptop or MacBook Air M3 at that point we’re looking at between sort of £1,000 and ,500 but if you want a performance laptop then consider a MacBook Pro and I think the uh MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Pro and also 16 gigs of unified memory is the sweet spot for MacBook Pros if I was going to buy one again uh in terms of PCS then maybe a dedicated graphics card like an RTX 4050 uh 16 or 32 gigs of RAM terabyte storage but do be careful because particularly with Apple products when you start specking more RAM and storage it does start to get very expensive also keep an eye out for amd’s new ryzen AI processors code named STX point there are a bunch of new laptops coming out this summer which should outperform the current Intel chips at least until their lunar Lake refresh comes later this year and it will also give the Snapdragon chips a run for their money in the AI Department boasting 50 tops for the mpu beating the snap dragon X Elites 45 not that anyone really knows what that means but between Intel AMD and Qualcomm with their snam dragon chips this is a really exciting year for laptops tip number five and let’s talk about graphics cards proper graphics cards we talked about integrated graphics on all these processors many higher-end laptops will come with a dedicated graphics card option which will be a big step up in terms of your frame rating games and just the performance in any graphically demanding task as an entry level option you’ve got nvidia’s RTX 4050 or maybe amd’s radon RX 7600 s or M and that will be perfectly fine for 60 FPS 10tp gaming although right now I would say the sweet spot for a gaming GPU as this laptop key keeps turning a screen off um would be the RTX 4060 or 4070 the downsides are it’ll cost you more and also uh when you are using the graphics it’s going to drain your battery life much faster these kind of laptops will be best used plugged in although some of the more recent ones do have what they call Advanced Optimus so they can just turn off the graphics card or use a hybrid mode so you’re not always using it uh and so you’ll get much better battery life but a 4060 or a 4070 will be perfect for like 1440p 60 or 120 FPS gaming with high settings but for real highend 1440p gaming or if you’re going crazy and have a laptop with a 4K display then something like an RTX 480 is your best bet we are expecting nvidia’s new 5000 series of cars but they won’t come to laptop straight away it’ll be first for desktop PCS so you’d probably have to wait until mid 2025 before you’ll get a nextg card coming to a laptop so don’t let that stop you if you are considering it but also be reminds that almost all gaming laptops will have a higher refresh rate whether it’s 144 165 24 4 or even 360 HZ but then of course to take advantage of your super smooth High refresh you will need a high frame rate and that’s why this balance between hardware specs and performance and the display comes in which brings me very neatly to tip number six get a good screen this is the thing you looking at all the time it makes such a difference in terms of sizing well the most common is 13 14 15 and 16 bigger sizes of course give you more space which is great for multitasking games and movies are more immersive and perhaps having a couple of apps side by side and I reckon a 14 or 15 in is the best size for most people this is a 14 these are both 14 the MacBook Air this is the 13 uh We’ve also got a 14 here this Samsung’s actually a 16 let me open that up so this is one of the bigger screens and you may also notice if I bring in the Viva book next to it while yes they are also different sizes this is very awkward to hold you can also see the Samsung has a taller screen so this actually has a 16 by10 aspect ratio 16x 10 traditionally older and also generally cheaper laptops like this have a 16×9 aspect ratio but I really do like a 16 by10 it just gives you a little bit more height uh and while you will get more letter boxing if you’re watching videos and movies it’s just better for web browsing having two apps side by side and it’s a lot more common these days and it’s also the aspect ratio that you’ll get on a MacBook what I would say though is that outside of higher end maybe uh productivity color based workloads that people may have avoid a for K screen the higher resolution will kill your frame rate in games it’ll drain your battery faster and most of the time you have to scale up to like two or 300% uh resolution anyway because everything’s so small The Sweet Spot really is somewhere between a 1080p full HD screen and a 4K so like Quad HD or 3K these sort of halfway houses they like the best balance of sharpness but without being too much of a drain on your system in terms of panel types well we could spend like 20 minutes talking about this and in fact I did in my recent mon binding eyy video video which you can watch up here but most laptops are still like an IPS LED or LCD screen like we have with the MacBook although more commonly we are now seeing OLED and AMOLED screens which for my money that’s what I prefer I love the inky contrasty look of a good OLED or AMOLED panel in terms of brightness you’re looking at probably 4 500 nits of brightness most recent screens also offer some kind of HDR although that is very much tied to the brightness of the screen if it’s 400 nits in SDR but also 400 nits in HDR you’re not really going to get much impact from those bright highlights and things like that if you can get a OLED screen preferably with a high refresh rate like 120 HZ then you’re good to go and that is my biggest issue right now with the macbook’s 60 HZ LED screen these are definitely lacking especially at this price compared to the windows Rivals as you have to go up to a MacBook Pro to get their 120 HZ CHR motion display and once you do it’s kind of hard to go back to regular 60 HZ it feels kind of slow the battery life is one of the most important things to consider and it can very wildly anything from I don’t know 5 to 25 hours but it all comes down to how you use it if you’re just watching YouTube all day that’s obvious going to last a lot longer than if you’re gaming or rendering in blender or something like that generally MacBooks are considered the best for battery life uh at the moment the new Snapdragon powered Windows laptops are giving it some proper competition and actually I just ran an overnight test watching YouTube and this guy lasted Just sh 14 hours uh which was actually a couple hours longer than the Vivo book so I would say macbook’s probably the best for battery closely followed by snapd Dragon Windows laptops and then for regular Windows laptops well your best bet is just read some reviews to see how they perform general rule of thumb though aside from maybe apple is that you can about half what the manufacturer says if they say you’re going to get 22 hours then that’s probably a like almost screenoff local video playback realistically you’ll probably get like 10 or 11 hours of Everyday Use so roughly half what the manufacturer says ergonomics and this is a really quick one but it is actually quite convenient I’ve got the Galaxy book here because look at the size of that touchpad it is ginormous it has no business being that size and actually I kind of hate the ergonomics of it because I actually have to rest my Palms here to use the keyboard which means it digs in here if I’m wearing a watch it scratches the surface I kind of hate how big this tripad is it’s better on the smaller 14-in version of this ideally you want to go into a shop and try it for yourself and what I would suggest is here in the UK uh because we have something called the distance selling regulations if you buy something online you can try it out for a week or two and then return it if you buy it in store once you unbox it you can’t return it although on the whole they’re mostly very good and actually only this really cheap 400 lound one uh did I not particularly like the keys and you can see how awkward this hinges as well these feel really cheap compared to some of these higher end laptops so bear that in mind and that brings us neatly on to tip number eight IO or the inputs and outputs connectivity I think rather than worrying too much about what ports you’re getting because you can always buy adapters you can plug into a type-c and add typas and add SD card readers and HDMI ports and things like that don’t worry too much go for the laptop that you think is best for you in all the other ways all the other regards and it’ll probably have the ports you need although certainly I do appreciate with my MacBook Pro that we have a fullsize SD code reader so I can take my SD card out this camera pop it right in and transfer it no uh adapters required also an HDMI 2.1 Port which is the latest spe for HDMI means I can output to a high-end monitor like that and I’ve got a couple of USB type-c Thunderball ports here as well and also of course there separate mag safe charging so for me the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 has like the ultimate combination of ports but as long as you can get at least one USBC Port ideally let’s Thunder about three or four or USB 4 one of those configurations that’s all you need you can use that for pretty much everything and expand from there we’re almost there I promise tip number nine when should you buy new laptop well there is simply no right answer to this in January we have CES where they announce a lot of new laptops and new hardware but then it comes out sort of March April time and in between that we’ll have discounts on the previous ones uh this year for example is going to be a crazy year with the new AMD chips the new Intel chips we got the new Snapdragon but it also means you can be waiting forever to get the next best thing so really unless you need the latest greatest Cutting Edge stuff wait for a good deal around Black Friday around s Monday or as new laptops are announced then the old versions from last year will hopefully be discounted or people you know will be selling them secondhand and also when it comes to MacBooks who knows this MacBook Air has the M3 chip and this will probably be uh the latest one for the next year or so I suspect we’ll see an M4 Pro and Max chip coming to a MacBook Pro possibly October November time um but in terms of Mac now’s as good a time as they need to buy one but definitely look at refurbished models and also third party retailers like Best Buy and Amazon and curries because they will often have good deals but tip number 10 make sure you still have some kind of warranty Asus have been getting a bit of hot water recently for not being the best with customer service warranties but they have basically been called out for that and they’re changing things and making a lot better but certainly one advantage of buying a new laptop is that you’re going to get uh the best manufacturer and Retail warranty so it will last you longer and also if you can afford to go for a new model and potentially even a higher spec one with you know more RAM more storage a higher in CPU then that will last you longer before you have to upgrade again tip number 11 we’re flying through these now bear in mind particularly with thin and light laptops and especially with Apple laptops you can’t upgrade them so whatever the Ram or storage you go with your set more common on Windows laptops you can upgrade uh the RAM and the storage not always look at the review of the particular one you’re looking at uh but certainly if you can you know whack in a 2 terab SSD or double the RAM and it’s not hard to do then that will certainly give you a lot more life out of your machine but the point is particularly with thin light laptops and very recent ones and from Apple since you can’t upgrade down the road it maybe worth just biting the bullet and getting a little bit higher spec up front so then you’re not constantly running out of storage or having memory issues in two years time and finally tip number 12 read and watch as many reviews as you can ignore all the marketing fluff from companies and how AI is going to change the world and things like that it probably will but just not quite yet and really AI is all about efficiency in battery life right now so maybe once you’ve narrowed it down to two or three options just read a bunch of those reviews you may have realized that talk about AI that much you’re welcome for starters because right now it doesn’t really mean that much this is fight for the most powerful npus and we’ve got co-pilot plus PCS with features like live translation which is actually admittedly quite cool a co-creator recall although they’ve recall that right now to be brutally honest AI doesn’t mean that much it’s mostly about taking the strain off the processor and Graphics running things through the mpu so it can be more efficient give you better battery life in terms of AI specific features locally on device it’s early days we’re going to see apple intelligence come to Mac OS Sequoia later in the year over the next 6 to 12 months we will see a big shift I think towards utilizing some of this AI performance but right now I wouldn’t worry about it too much thank you so much for watching guys hit that like And subscribe button if you enjoyed this video and I’ll see you next time right here on the tech chat