Best laptop 2021: 19 laptops for every budget | WIRED UK

August 23,2021 Relinda Linda

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15

　　The best gaming laptop selector UK you can buy right now

　　While ultrabooks are great – from being impressively thin to offering high-end design – they don’t do the job when it comes to gaming and more demanding creative tasks. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (from £1,892) is our pick for the best gaming laptop around, offering tremendous horsepower in a portable form – and it manages to still look good doing it.

　　The shining star of the Zephyrus G15 is its combination of AMD’s top-of-the-range mobile processor and Nvidia 30-series mobile GPUs. The team-up leads to strong results, with the top specs Ryzen 9 and RTX 3080 model allowing for 80-100fps at QHD resolution on a range of triple-A titles. For competitive shooters, like Apex Legends you can take full advantage of the 165Hz refresh rate by tweaking a few settings but you won’t have to sacrifice the 1440p resolution to get it. The panel may not quite reach the vibrant colour heights of its closest rival – the Razer Blade 15 – but it’s gorgeous and accurate, nonetheless.

　　To gain any accolades as a strong gaming laptop, a device needs a good keyboard – the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 is one of the best. There’s a ton of feedback here, often absent on gaming laptops, and an impressive level of travel. While most gamers will look to add a USB or wireless mouse for serious gaming sessions, the trackpad is large and responsive for regular daily use.

　　Despite its power-hungry components, the battery life of the Zephyrus G15 isn’t that far off ultrabook levels – hitting between 8 to 9 hours under productivity workloads. You’ll get the best performance when plugged in but, if you do game on the go, you can manage around two hours.

　　The G15 does lose some credit when it comes to convenience, with the perennial issue of AMD laptops lacking Thunderbolt ports as well as the decision to not include a webcam. Convenience aside, this laptop remains the best option around for portable gaming and mid to high-level creative workloads. A device to remember.

　　Also consider: The G15 is a phenomenal piece of kit but you shouldn’t forget about its smaller sibling either – the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (from £1,299). If you’re after extra portability while still being capable of remarkable battery life and gaming/creativity performance, the G14 remains a great pick.

　　Pros: Stunning QHD performance; great gaming keyboard; bold design; strong battery life

　　Cons: No webcam; no Thunderbolt ports

　　Price: From £1,892 | Check price on Amazon | Currys | Asus

　　Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360

　　The best 2-in-1 laptop

　　For many years, Samsung has failed to hit its stride in the laptop space. A couple of years ago, it remerged with the eye-catching Galaxy Book Ion and Flex models – but the price wasn’t right. With its latest laptops and, in particular, the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (from £1,049), the popular manufacturer focuses and what it’s good at… and it works.

　　The Galaxy Book Pro 360 is immediately striking due to its extremely thin 11.9mm body. The 15-inch model is surprisingly light too – at just under 1.4kg – for its size. Despite this lightweight, the materials still feel high quality – with the entire shell featuring aluminium. Samsung’s latest 2-in-1 takes much of what the LG Gram series has done well – extremely thin and light devices – and gave it an extra bit of finesse.

　　This laptop’s performance isn’t hindered by its trimmed down dimensions though. Intel’s latest 11th Gen processors and between 8 and 16GB RAM make productivity tasking a breeze. The fans do get going rather early and it's a godsend for Samsung to have included custom silent and no fan modes as they keep the noise to a minimum without really affecting performance – you’ll want the fans on when doing sustained work.

　　Where the Galaxy Book Pro 360 really shines, and earns its position as our top 2-in-1 recommendation, is when you take full advantage of its 360 hinge. Tent mode works great for watching movies – aided by a gloriously colour-rich 1080p AMOLED display. Then, in tablet mode, this device has few equals for how comfortable it is to use. Its thin build means it comes tremendously close to simply feeling like you are using a tablet – except for the unavoidable feel of keys on the back. The S Pen is much of a delight to use as you’d expect if you’re familiar with its phone equivalents of recent years – unnoticeable lag and comfortable to hold. The slim build does mean there’s no room to slot this pen into the device but it’s not a huge miss.

　　The quality of this laptop is rounded out with a keyboard that has decent travel and good feedback, a large and responsive trackpad and impressively bassy speakers. If you’re considering a 2-in-1 laptop right now, there’s no better.

　　Also consider: While the Galaxy Book Pro 360 absolutely nails the key aspects of a 2-in-1, it is missing one thing that takes a lot of ultrabooks to the next level. A 16:10 or 3:2 display. A squarer display like this is great for productivity, providing added screen real estate. Our previous top 2-in-1 pick, the HP Spectre x360 14 (from £1,100), does come with one of the displays – as well as a stunning OLED panel for all your movie-watching needs.

　　Pros: Best-in-class 1080p display; comfortable in tablet mode; great speakers; large trackpad; S Pen

　　Cons: No 3:2 or 16:10 display; overeager fans

　　Price: From £1,049 | Check price on Amazon | John Lewis | Samsung

　　Acer Swift 3X

　　A good MacBook alternative

　　The Acer Swift 3X (from £799) is an unusual laptop. It’s slim and light, part of a series usually focused on low weight and portability. But performance is the main goal here. This is one of the first laptops with an Intel Xe Max graphics chipset. And this isn't like the average graphics card, made for boosting frames per second in games.

　　The Acer Swift 3X is no gaming master, beaten by laptops with an Nvidia MX450 GPU. But it does perform almost extraordinarily well in more CPU-led jobs. Intel’s Xe Max cares more about “content creation” style tasks like video editing than gaming.

　　Intel’s special sauce in a feature called Deep Link, which lets the CPU and GPU function as a more efficient team than the usual combo of an Intel processor and Nvidia graphics card. Our tests showed exemplary results even with the lower-end Intel Core i5 version.

　　Here’s where the low weight and portable design factors comes back in. The Acer Swift 3X offers great general performance in a form you can comfortably take anywhere, which may appeal if you like the sound of Apple’s revolutionary M1 chipset MacBook laptops, but do not want a MacBook.

　　Acer kitted out the Swift 3X with an unusually punchy cooling system to make the most of the additional power features. You really can hear those fans go under pressure, unlike a MacBook Pro.

　　The Swift 3X is not the most impressively made £1,000 laptop, though. There’s a bit of keyboard flex, the touchpad is plastic and alternatives from Lenovo and HP beat it for style. However, you can’t knock its real-world performance, which for once doesn’t boil down to how well it can play games — something no thin and light laptop is really geared-up for.

　　Pros: Excellent performance per kilo; slim and light

　　Cons: Intel Xe Max does not excel at gaming; so-so build in parts

　　Price: From £799 | Check price on Amazon | Acer | Currys

HP Envy 13

　　A portable mid-ranger with decent graphics

　　The HP Envy 13 (from £649) is one of the best mid-range style laptops. It sits below HP’s Spectre series but still comes across a top-end design as the casing is an aluminium alloy, which actually feels better than the magnesiumn-rich metals used in some more expensive laptops.

　　A small footprint sets the Envy 13 apart. Slim display borders and a 16:9 aspect display mean this laptop is significantly less deep than most rivals. It has a portability angle you can’t appreciate by looking at the thickness and weight numbers. The HP Envy 13 weighs around 1.3kg and is 17mm thick, both of which are perfectly respectable in this class.

　　It’s something of a looker too. The all-silver appearance is MacBook-adjacent, although HP’s style is somewhat more angular than Apple’s. There’s more key travel here than in many top-end laptops too, a significant benefit if you spend much of your work day typing.

　　The HP Envy 13 also offers much more for your downtime than most style laptops. Even the “entry-level” version has an Nvidia GeForce MX450 graphics card. This is around twice as powerful as the integrated graphics chipset most slim and light Intel-powered laptops rely on.

　　While it may not satisfy the hardcore crowd, it makes even highly demanding games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 playable if you optimise the graphics settings enough.

　　The HP Envy 13 is a surprisingly versatile little laptop. It doesn’t have a glass touchpad, which HP reserves for its higher-end models. But this is the one obvious compromise in a laptop that offers an awful lot at its £900 starting price, which nets you a Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 512GB storage and real-world battery life of around nine hours.

　　Pros: Small footprint; beats rivals for gaming; attractive aluminium casing; good value

　　Cons: Plastic touchpad

Price: From £649 | Check price on Currys | HP

Razer Blade 14

　　The best laptop for mobile creators

　　While the new Razer Blade 14 (from £1,800) has its sights on gaming rival, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, its immense portable power makes it appealing far beyond that. In particular, the Blade 14 is a strong candidate for those who are getting tired of waiting for a new more powerful MacBook Pro – with boosted M1X or M2 chip. Intense productivity, high-end gaming or demanding creative work – it’s a true all-rounder.

　　The Razer Blade 15 is a feat in its own right, enabling AAA gaming in a chassis that more closely resembles a MacBook than many chunky and vent-laden gaming-focused competitors. The new Blade 14 takes this a step further, trimming down in size but still managing performance beyond what you’d expect for such an unassuming machine. There’s no revolution in looks though, with the new 14-inch model still sporting the Blade 15’s signature green and black design. It still attracts fingerprints galore but remains immensely stylish in the process. Despite its small size, it manages to offer a decent range of ports, including two USB-C ports, two USB-A, headphone jack and an HDMI.

　　When it comes to performance, there are few questions to raise regarding what this pocket rocket can achieve. In its most comfortable wheelhouse, it’ll stretch beyond 60fps at 1440p for titles offering visual delights, like Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and Borderlands 3. This laptop’s 165Hz panel can be topped out by dipping down to 1080p or just about stretched to on very low settings in fps-focused games like Apex Legends. Away from gaming, no productivity task is too much for the Blade 14, if you are using this for intense browsing or productivity multitasking then it’ll barely blink. For creatives, it’s easily the best you’ll find in a device so portable – advanced work is well within its reach. However, you will be limited by the 16GB RAM – meaning true creative professionals may still have to look to the Blade 15 or elsewhere.

　　Pros: Unrivalled combo of portability and performance; luxuriously sleek and stylish; versatile keyboard

　　Cons: Middling battery life; sub-par webcam; no lower-cost options

　　Price: From £1,800 | Check price on Amazon | Razer | Ebuyer