How To Buy A Fast Laptop

The majority of laptops you can buy these days run on Windows. Since they are so popular, Windows laptops generally support more apps and features, making them the standard for gamers, businesses, and more.

There are dozens of companies that manufacture Windows laptops. While they range in price, Windows laptops generally offer better hardware for your money than MacBooks, and they are generally cheaper to repair and easier to upgrade.

A CPU (central processing unit) is like the brain of a laptop. This tiny chip has a hand in processing all kinds of different information from your applications, operating system, and more. This makes it one of the most important things to look for when buying a laptop.

So, an Intel Core i7 12700H will be a 12th-generation laptop, while a Core i7-1195G7 would be an 11th-gen laptop. Intel just announced its 13th-generation processors, but most laptops these days will still have 10th, 11th, or 12th-gen CPUs.

Quad-core CPUs are good enough for the majority of users, including gamers. They also allow you to multitask without slowing your laptop down, and you can play some entry-level games at lower resolutions.

Octa-core CPUs are designed for professional gamers, editors, and engineers. These mobile workstations are powerful enough to edit 4K videos or play games while streaming and recording all at the same time. However, since they do not compromise on performance, these laptops often have a significantly shorter battery life.

Clock speed refers to how fast a processor can interpret instructions and complete tasks. In general, higher clock speeds mean applications will load faster, but it only refers to the performance of a single core at a time.

CPU speed is measured in gigahertz (GHz), and you only need 2 to 3GHz for basic tasks. However, if you are looking for a gaming laptop, you might want to buy one with a processor that can reach speeds of 3.5 to 4GHz or more.

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is similar to a CPU, but it mostly processes images, videos, and games. Most laptops these days have integrated GPUs, but gamers and content creators might want to look for a laptop with a discrete GPU instead.

Integrated GPUs are embedded inside the CPU, so they are usually only powerful enough to watch movies and play low-resolution games. Discrete GPUs are separate from the CPU, and they are usually bigger, better, and faster.

If you are a gamer, video editor, or professional content creator, you might want a laptop with a discrete graphics card. Otherwise, integrated graphics cards should be sufficient for most users to perform basic tasks.

The two main discrete GPU manufacturers are Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia has generally been the faster option, especially for gaming. And while Radeon has usually been cheaper, they are somewhat comparable these days.

There are also some laptops with DDR5 RAM, which is the latest generation technology. You might want to consider getting DDR5 RAM if you want to buy a high-end laptop that will last for several years.

Most users these days can get by with at least 256GB of storage space on their laptops. If you have a lot of large files and apps, like games, photos, and videos, you will probably need at least 512GB to 1TB (terabyte) of storage space.

A hard disk drive (HDD) stores data on magnetic spinning disks, and a physical arm sits over these plates to read and write data. The performance of an HDD depends on how fast it is, with most desktop HDDs spinning at around 5,400 RPM (revolutions per minute).

NVME drives are also much smaller than traditional SSDs, and many laptops will have two of these drives installed or available to install. This allows you to use one drive for all your applications, which will free up space on the other drive for all your files.

When you buy a laptop, there are two basic screen types to choose from: TN (Twisted Nematic) and IPS (In-Plane Switching). TN panels are the fastest, so they are good for gamers. On the other hand, IPS laptops have better colors that look accurate from any angle.

Some laptops also have OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays that have also been used in phones and high-end TVs. These expensive displays have self-lighting pixels, which gives the screen nearly perfect contrast and vibrant colors for watching movies.

Once you buy a new laptop, HelloTech can set it up for you and answer any of your questions. We have thousands of experts across the country who can come to your home and help you optimize your computer setup as soon as today.

There are different kinds of speed when talking about laptop performance, some of them intertwined and some not. And it pays to know what kind you need, so you don't overspend. There are also many different use cases across varying types of laptops, and speed does not always mean the same thing in one as in another. Below, we've detailed our picks for the fastest laptops for 2023 in different categories. Check 'em out, then read on for our buyer's guide full of advice on what to look out for when shopping laptops based on performance.

The idea of speed in a laptop can be sliced a bunch of ways, but in practical terms, you can look at it in terms of (1) CPU processing power and (2) graphical prowess for tasks such as PC gaming, 3D rendering, or graphics-accelerated content creation. The two are very different things, and we benchmark-test all of the systems that we review with both kinds of speed in mind.

Some laptops are strong in one area and not the other. For example, it's possible to have a notebook with a top-end processor packing lots of cores and threads, but paired with a minimal graphics solution. (Perhaps that is just the processor's integrated graphics silicon, historically no match for a discrete graphics chip.) A laptop like this would net you great performance on programs and workloads that take advantage of lots of CPU resources, but little in the way of power for gaming or applications that rely on graphics acceleration.

Higher-powered CPUs or GPUs on a given platform tend to (1) cost more, (2) require more electricity when fully engaged, and (3) run hotter when taxed to the max. That's why buffed-up gaming laptops or high-powered mobile workstations tend to be thick, heavy, expensive beasts. Their high-end chips not only cost more, but they require more space and weighty thermal hardware to keep cool.

The fastest laptops, from a raw-CPU perspective, tend to fall into four classes. The first is made up of business machines with top-end processors but integrated graphics. You'll find them under top vendors' business brands, such as Latitude for Dell, ThinkPad for Lenovo, and EliteBook for HP.

The second consists of high-end gaming laptops that pair a powerful mobile GPU, chosen to blaze through the latest games at a level appropriate for the laptop's screen, with a CPU that is at least sufficient not to hamper the graphics chip. (That malady, when it affects a PC game, is often dubbed being \"CPU-limited.\")

Next are mobile workstations, productivity-minded laptops designed for professional content creation and data analysis and often optimized for the specific advanced applications they use. (This is often referred to in workstation marketing lingo as independent software vendor or ISV certification; these laptops cost their premium, in part, because of it.) You can identify these machines either by brand, such as HP's ZBook and Dell's Precision, or by the Nvidia RTX A series (formerly, Quadro) GPUs they carry.

In business laptops, you'll tend to see the H-series chips only in weighty models meant for heavy calculation work or data analysis. However, you'll see the H-series in almost all gaming laptops, and in many mobile workstations. Some high-end workstation laptops make use of Intel's Xeon processors, which are at heart server chips specially designed for the demands of accelerating specialized advanced-calculation and content-creation programs, as well as for running all-out for extended periods of time. But a Core i7 or Core i9 H-series is more common, and definitely the sign of a legitimately high-end configuration.

CPUs ending in \"U\" or \"G3,\" \"G5,\" or \"G7,\" on the other hand, signify an ultramobile processor. These are lower-power chips designed to work in slimmer, lighter laptops that have limited thermal headroom. Now, depending on what you do with your laptop, these can be perfectly fine CPUs. You'll be able to do everyday business or office tasks on a Core i5 or Core i7 of this kind with no complaints, and on the best of them, demanding content-creation tasks will be possible without painful delays. Just know that the H-series is where the real muscle is in laptop land.

Also, starting with its 12th Gen Core CPUs, Intel recently introduced a new \"P\" class of laptop processors, which fall between the U and H classes. These are for mainstream performance systems and employ the company's hybrid architecture, with high-performance and efficiency-minded cores (P-cores and E-cores) co-existing in the same chip. For much more about the nuances of laptop CPUs, see our deep-dive article on how to choose the best laptop processor.

What about Intel's rival, AMD The company's Ryzen and Ryzen Pro mobile processors have historically tilted more toward office apps and moderate gaming (with integrated graphics that often top Intel's) than the full-tilt gaming and workstation prowess of the best separate CPU and GPU combinations. But the Ryzen 4000 series mobile CPUs that debuted in 2020 changed that in a big way. AMD's subsequent Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 6000 mobile processors can slug it out with Intel's best, and are used in many creative and professional laptops from 2022 and 2023. Both AMD and Intel launched their, newest lines, the Ryzen 7000 and Intel 13th Generation processors, at the start of this year. Intel's 13th Gen chips, in particular, are impressive performers in our testing.

Finally, we come to Apple's MacBooks, where the above In