While laptops haven’t exactly been advancing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, the industry has finally gotten interesting again.
As we close out 2024 and head into 2025, I’ve got news for you if you’re in the market for a new laptop: a lot has changed, and lots more changes are yet to come. Here are the new things you need to know to make an informed laptop buying decision this year.
Buying last year’s laptops isn’t a good-value move anymore
Chris Hoffman / IDG
I used to recommend buying last year’s laptop models on clearance because hardware hasn’t really improved much year over year. Sure, maybe that new laptop is a bit better… but only marginally. Wouldn’t you rather get last year’s almost-as-good model for 50 percent off?
The calculus has now changed. You may still be able to find clearance laptops from 2024 or 2023 at a good price if you keep an eye on the best laptop sales, but you may want to think twice before buying them.
The latest CPUs — I’m talking Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake), AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite — all have some big upgrades, including improved battery life, lower power consumption, standard Wi-Fi 7 support, and NPUs for AI features that’ll hopefully become more interesting in 2025.
Combine all that with other trending laptop improvements, like the explosion in popularity of beautiful OLED displays, and it may finally be worth splurging on a current-gen laptop.
The latest laptop processors deliver seriously long battery life
Chris Hoffman / IDG
The laptop processor battery life wars are finally being waged. Intel talked a good game with those first-generation “Core Ultra” Meteor Lake processors, but they didn’t exactly deliver those big efficiency gains in our benchmarks and day-to-day testing.
Things are different now, though. Intel Lunar Lake-powered PCs are finally delivering the serious battery life improvements that Intel has been promising. Meanwhile, you can find Arm-powered Windows laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips that have super-long battery life, too. (But thanks to Lunar Lake, you don’t have to turn to those Arm-powered laptops for serious battery life.)
While AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300-series processors don’t hit the same battery life numbers, they have pretty good efficiency while delivering better multithreaded performance over Lunar Lake CPUs.
PCWorld’s Mark Hachman ran UL’s Procyon Office benchmarks, which launches applications like Microsoft Word and Excel and tests how long those applications last in real-world usage scenarios. Here are the battery numbers he saw in this more representative test:
- Intel Lunar Lake: 17 hours, 7 minutes
- Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite: 16 hours, 20 minutes
- AMD Ryzen AI 300: 10 hours, 42 minutes
- Intel Meteor Lake: 10 hours, 35 minutes
If battery life is important to you in a laptop — in other words, you aren’t prioritizing maximum performance for gaming or creative work — then you’ll want to look at laptops with these newer processors.
Gaming laptops are sticking with older processors
Chris Hoffman / IDG
If you want these cutting-edge battery life metrics, you won’t find them in gaming laptops — even in the newer 2025 models. These long-lasting CPUs are mainly designed for power efficiency and AI performance with NPUs, which don’t quite matter in a gaming laptop.
Unsurprisingly, most gaming laptops are sticking with Intel Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs — announced in 2023 — for maximum performance. Plus, as we head into 2025, Nvidia’s latest mobile options are still the GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs launched in 2023.
So, when it comes to gaming laptops, not a lot has changed. I recommend either keeping an eye open for a good deal on a slightly older gaming laptop or waiting a bit longer for some new hardware. Nvidia’s GPUs are due for an update, and there’s a lot of speculation that Nvidia may announce new GPUs at CES 2025.
Wi-Fi 7 is going to be the new standard
In 2025, there’s almost no excuse for a laptop not to support Wi-Fi 7. Intel’s Lunar Lake, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors all include Wi-Fi 7 hardware as standard. If this is your first time hearing about it, learn more about why Wi-Fi 7 is important.
Even if you haven’t upgraded to a Wi-Fi 7 router yet, it’s time to start getting Wi-Fi 7 hardware so you can eventually step it up — and what better way than to start with a compatible laptop? Then, when your router does kick the bucket, you can snag a replacement with Wi-Fi 7.
This is a big improvement from 2024, by the way. Intel’s Meteor Lake processors didn’t include Wi-Fi 7 hardware as standard, and you sometimes had to pay extra for that as an upgrade.
Unfortunately, Wi-Fi 7 still doesn’t come standard on gaming laptops. As mentioned above, most gaming laptops are stuck with Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs for maximum performance, and those generally don’t have Wi-Fi 7. You can still get Wi-Fi 7 support on a gaming laptop if it’s important to you, but you have to go out of your way to look for it.
Cutting-edge “Copilot+ PCs” are the ones with NPUs for AI tasks
When Copilot+ PCs launched in late summer 2024, they were all Arm-based laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus processors. That’s now changed: You can get Copilot+ PCs with Intel Lunar Lake or AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors, too.
If you do get a Copilot+ PC, you’re getting more than just a Copilot key on the keyboard. You’re getting extra AI features in Windows that rely on newer hardware that only exists in Copilot+ PCs.
At launch, those AI features weren’t very interesting. But Microsoft is working on adding more AI features to Windows and still doing its best to bring back the controversial Windows Recall feature (the one that takes periodic screenshots of your PC’s screen and allows you to search your activity history with simple typed prompts). These Copilot+ PCs also include a Copilot Runtime that Windows applications can tap into.
All of this AI goodness is powered by the neural processing unit (NPU) in these PCs. To be branded a Copilot+ PC, a computer needs an NPU capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS). (Not sure what an NPU is? Check out our explainer on NPUs and AI chips.)
Laptops are getting more RAM and storage
There’s a happy story happening across the entire consumer electronics industry right now, from laptops to phones: more RAM and more storage are becoming standard.
It’s all thanks to the explosion of AI, but the rising tide lifts all boats. Laptops and other devices need lots of RAM to keep AI models in memory, so devices with low amounts of RAM aren’t cutting it anymore.
Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC requirements demand a minimum of 16GB of RAM along with 256GB of storage. While not every laptop is a Copilot+ PC yet, the big focus on AI means base-model laptops might have enough RAM and storage that you can buy them without paying for potentially pricey RAM and storage upgrades.
Arm-powered laptops have decent (but not perfect) software compatibility
Mark Hachman / IDG
You don’t have to buy an Arm-powered Windows laptop for fantastic battery life, but you might still want one anyway. If you are interested in something like Microsoft’s latest Surface Laptop or Surface Pro, you should know that software compatibility — which was already pretty good at release — has only improved since then.
Most Windows desktop apps work just fine on Arm laptops thanks to the Prism compatibility layer, and some apps that weren’t compatible at release — like Google Drive and some VPN apps — now work on Arm laptops. Many Adobe apps now work on these PCs, too, though not all of them. Some older printers may also not work.
Long story short, an Arm laptop may be great for you and you may not run into any software compatibility issues, but know that the risk is still there. Intel is betting that these potential app headaches (along with the efficiency improvements of Lunar Lake) will make you skip over Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered systems for Lunar Lake PCs instead, which can run traditional x86 software without any emulation.
That said, most typical laptop users should get by just fine with an Arm laptop. If you end up getting one, make sure you buy from a store with a good return policy just in case it doesn’t meet your needs.
Laptop hardware launches coming in 2025
While Nvidia hasn’t announced anything official yet, rumors say that they’ll announce GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs at CES 2025 in January. If this includes new mobile GPUs, that will give gamers a reason to upgrade — or at least provide a reason to buy a newer laptop if you’re in the market for a new portable gaming PC!
Intel has some new processors, too: Panther Lake will be the successor to Lunar Lake, and Intel says it plans to release this new hardware in the second half of 2025. There’s some talk about Panther Lake having more cores than Lunar Lake (that would be nice), but nothing official yet.
AMD is rumored to be working on “Strix Halo” hardware aimed at high performance, but the company hasn’t announced anything official yet. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for CES 2025 in January, where the company will likely make some relevant announcements.
Qualcomm is also promising less expensive Snapdragon X Plus-powered Arm laptops. The company is aiming for a $700 to $900 price point with new Snapdragon X Plus-powered chips focused on power efficiency.
But Qualcomm isn’t just chasing lower prices. The company looks like it’s working on “Snapdragon X Gen 2” hardware, too, according to a leak from Dell. These processors may launch in mid-2025, if rumors are true. Expect power efficiency and performance upgrades.
In 2025, the laptop market is heating up and becoming exciting again. I just wish there was more new hardware coming for gaming laptops!
