The best laptop brand for your specific need is likely going to be less important than any given machine's specific hardware, but when it comes to finding the best laptop or the best chromebook, the name or logo on the lid does go a long way.
Some laptops, like the Apple MacBook Air (M1) have a reputation for stylish design and quality performance, while the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 is the hardcore PC gamer's go-to for gaming on the go.
So the question of the which is the best laptop brand comes down to what you need a laptop for, so we've gone through the trouble of breaking the best laptop brands down into their specialties so you know the best place to start in your search for a new system.
This isn't to say that a company that doesn't appear underneath a specific heading doesn't make a great product for that market, but this list should be seen more as a place to start and you can make a more informed decision about what you should look for in a given use case and make a better comparison across all laptop brands when making your purchase.
Best General-Use Laptop Brands
The best laptop brands for general use computing are largely going to focus on a few key features, namely battery life, the quality of the display, portability, and processing power.
These aren't necessarily going to be the most powerful machines going, and most are likely to fall into the Ultrabook category. For most people, that's absolutely fine, since being able to take it with them on a plane and watch a movie is likely more important than how many frames-per-second it's going to get while gaming.
Best Business Laptop Brands
When it comes to enterprise laptops, the best laptop brands are pretty well established. In addition to ease of use, they need to feature some pretty high-end security features that you just don't see on more mainstream systems.
Some of these features include fingerprint log-in, IR cameras that can lock a laptop when you step away from it for a moment, Kensington locks for physical security of the machine itself, and physical webcam shutters that can't be bypassed by an intruder to use your webcam to spy on you. While this latter feature really should be a must-have on any laptop you buy, it's an absolute necessity for business laptops.
Best Gaming Laptop Brands
Gaming laptops in many ways are more finely tuned and tricked-out hardware-wise than all but the most premium creative workstations, and in most cases there is considerable overlap between the two. These are laptops meant to do one thing especially well, which is play high-performance PC games on the go at the highest framerates your money can buy.
So when it comes to gaming, there are a few companies who have really made this class their own and are easily at the top of the best laptop brands in the market by a mile.
Best Creative Laptop Brands
The qualifier "creative" can mean many things when it comes to a laptop, but generally speaking, you're looking at graphic design, video editing, 3D rendering, and even game development.
In many cases, the hardware requirements between a creative workstation and a high-end gaming laptop aren't all that different, but while a gaming laptop is all about FPS while gaming, a creative workstation is far more focused on things like color quality and how much of the sRGB spectrum the display covers or whether the laptop is Pantone-calibrated.
