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How to choose a laptop in 2026

Laptop buying decisions split roughly four ways: ultraportable for travel, gaming, creator-class workstation, and budget. The Mars Score reflects this by weighting performance (35%), battery + ports (27%), display (18%) and design (20%) — different from smartphones because portability and connectivity matter more on a laptop you carry daily.

The ARM transition is finally complete

Apple Silicon proved ARM laptops can match Intel/AMD x86 on performance while doubling battery life. Snapdragon X-series chips brought the same to Windows in 2024–25. In 2026, the question is no longer whether ARM is ready — it is which apps you depend on, and whether they have native ARM builds. Check our individual laptop reviews for app compatibility notes.

OLED on laptops is genuinely good now

The first wave of OLED laptops had burn-in problems and crushed peak brightness. The 2025–26 generation (OLED on the XPS 13, Galaxy Book 4 Edge, MacBook Pro 16) ships with pixel-shift algorithms, smarter UI dimming, and 1,000+ nit peaks. For creator work, see our OLED monitors guide — most of the same logic applies.

Thermals matter more than raw TFLOPS

Two laptops with identical CPU/GPU specs can deliver wildly different performance under sustained load. Thinner chassis throttle faster. We measure sustained vs burst performance separately in our Mars Labs testing rigs.

Battery: claimed vs measured

Manufacturer "up to 18 hours" claims usually mean idle playback at low brightness. Real-world battery on a typical work day is half to two-thirds of that. Our best-battery preset ranks by measured screen-on time, not marketing claims.

Ports + Thunderbolt + USB-C PD

The most-underweighted spec in laptop reviews is port quality. A laptop with Thunderbolt 5 (or 4) on both sides, plus a single USB-A and HDMI, replaces three dongles and a dock for most workflows. If you carry a laptop daily, weight port quality as much as raw performance.

How vsMars scores laptops

Mars Score for laptops weights performance and battery+ports highest because those are the specs most reviewers consistently flag as decisive. See our methodology page for the per-spec normalization ranges.