Best Laptops of 2025: Top 11 Picks After Testing 30+ Models

Key Highlights

• Performance: The 16-inch MacBook Pro achieves an outstanding Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 22,758, making it the fastest laptop tested.
• Battery Life: It boasts an impressive battery life, lasting nearly 21 hours under benchmark conditions, ranking second among all tested MacBooks.
• Design Features: The laptop includes next-gen Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports and supports up to 1000 nits of brightness, enhancing usability.
• Camera Upgrade: The MacBook Pro features a 12MP Center Stage camera, offering improved image quality for video calls and Desk View functionality.

A majestic piece of modern machinery, Apple’s jacked new 16-inch, M4 Pro-fueled MacBook Pro is a future-proofed investment for creative professionals who run intense multimedia-editing apps and software on a regular basis.

Read Mashable’s full review of the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M4 Pro).

Put simply, this MacBook Pro is a beauteous behemoth. With a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 22,758, it’s the fastest laptop we’ve ever tested by a not-close margin. (The runner-up, Lenovo’s $3,599.99 Legion Pro 7i 16 OLED Gen 10, scored a 20,369.) It “can handle heavy workloads without a single stutter,” said Gedeon. It’s also incredibly long-lasting, surviving for nearly 21 hours in our battery life benchmark. Out of all the MacBooks we’ve ever tested, it has the second-best battery life. That’s amazing considering how powerful it is.

While it may look like a pretty standard MacBook on the outside — minimalist, relatively thin, made from aluminum — Apple’s tacked on a few subtle but noteworthy design upgrades from the previous generation. For one, it comes with three next-gen Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports for zippy data transfer speeds. (These accompany an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 charging port, and a headphone jack.) Two, it can hit up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness, a bump from 600 nits in its M3 Pro predecessor. There’s also an option to add a glare-reducing “nano-texture” display finish, which wowed Gedeon when she took the laptop into her backyard: “I didn’t have to squint, adjust angles, nor play hide-and-seek with shadows,” she wrote. And three, the new MacBook Pro’s camera is now a 12MP Center Stage shooter (up from 1080p) with support for Desk View, a feature that produces an overhead view of the user’s desk.

Its high-fidelity six-speaker sound system is the same one you’ll find in the M3-era Pros, but no complaints there. Gedeon likened its audio quality to a “gourmet apple pie … piping hot, golden, and worth every sinful calorie.”

And by calories, we mean dollars. It’s tempting to recommend the M4 Pro MacBook Pro to anyone who values power efficiency in a laptop, but its price point keeps it firmly in “experts-only” territory. (Our upgraded testing unit with 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and a nano-texture display came in at $3,649; the base configuration goes for $2,499.) Don’t bother with the splurge unless you’ll make full use of it on the daily. For what it’s worth, we also really like the new 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro for those with less strenuous workloads; that one starts at $1,599.