Best Laptops in 2023

Best laptops in 2020, is a very complicated topic to talk about. In our day to day lives, smartphones have always been a thing that most of us talk about. We talk about their specs, how they can handle games and so on. But one piece of technology that is as popular, if not more, as the smartphone is a laptop.  Laptop purchase, especially during this Covid-19 pandemic, has been on a rise, with manufactures running out of models to sell. 

Unlike smartphones, while buying a laptop there are many things to consider like your budget, the processor you want, what kind of a display option should you go for, if you want a dedicated graphics card in your system or not, how much ram is enough ram, and what kind of a storage option should you be looking at – does having only a hard disk suffice or should you go for a hybrid option that will help you better your boot-up times.

All of this can get quite confusing for an individual and I have seen over the years, that people end up paying more for something that they do not require or pay less and then find out that their investment has gone down the drain and the laptop they have does not fill in the right shoes for them. 

Keeping all of these factors in mind, here is a list of some of the best laptops you can buy in 2020. This list has a range of laptops and in the end, you can find a list of them with their links and prices so that you can then find the one that fits your budget and is the one you should be buying almost immediately before the stocks everywhere run out.

Before diving into the options – Define your budget

The most important thing you may want to do before looking at any laptops available is to define your budget. How much do you want to spend on a laptop? Because looking at the options, you may think of expanding your budget, and that is the most common problem. It is very important to fix a price beforehand so that you do not end up spending a lot more than what you intended on spending. 

You may also want to keep in mind that some of these options have been selected, keeping in mind the situation that you may just be buying these for the purpose of attending online classes and use them for very little periods of time. The list does not have any ranking, it is only in ascending order of their prices.

Know the specifications – Best Laptops in 2020

Unlike smartphones, while viewing laptop specifications, there are a lot of things that you need to keep in mind. The first thing is how much RAM do you want? 

If your use is primarily for school then 4GB of RAM should be enough. You can get a laptop with 4GB of RAM and some decent specifications for very cheap prices. For most of the work cases, I think 8GB of RAM should be a comfortable option. You can open a lot of Chrome tabs with this amount of memory and most of the games out there will require this as a minimum specification. 

The next question is how much storage should you opt for. Now this is a tricky question. There is no one size fits all answer. The most common option you will find is the 1TB hard disk option. This much storage is more than sufficient for any common user. If speed is not your primary objective then this should be your choice. 

The next option is a hybrid one. A 1TB HDD + 128GB SSD. Now this is the configuration I recommend. You can load Windows on the SSD so that you get fast boot up times and some very important and frequently accessed files could be placed year. The last option you may find is an all SSD option, something like 512GB of SSD. This should be your choice if the files you use are not large in size and speed is of utmost importance to you. 

Now, let’s dive into the list and find out which laptop is perfect for you and how much you should be spending for that perfect choice of yours.

• Best Laptops in India 2020
  1. Lenovo Ideapad S145
  2. Lenovo Legion Y540
  3. Asus VivoBook S15
  4. HP Omen
  5. HP Envy x360
  6. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Number 1 – Lenovo Ideapad S145

The Ideapad S145 (81UT00EGIN) is a 15.6 inch laptop powered by Ryzen 5 3500U along with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD. This laptop is the perfect choice for all your daily needs. It runs on Windows 10 with a lifetime of validity and has integrated graphics for all the basic requirements. 

This laptop can easily help you in handling all your online classes and will not burn your pocket a lot as well. Coming in at about Rs 40,000 you can easily choose this option. It has a good battery life, an excellent display(at this price point) and the 8GB of RAM will help you in making sure that you are not stuck anywhere. 

As a college student myself, this laptop could essentially be the one choice for all the students to help in making their presentations, researching various topics, and the 1920×1080 display will be perfect for those that want to sit and watch Netflix or consume content on Youtube the entire day. The backlit keyboard is the perfect feature if your place sufferers from long power cuts or you like working in the night. 

It has a single full HDMI slot, 2 USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port along with a card reader and a headphone jack. With all of these ports you can be rest assured that you can plug in a number of devices at the same time. I personally think that an ethernet port would also be so much helpful for you to simply plug in a LAN cable for much better speeds.

Bonus points to AMD for giving a quad-core CPU at such cheap rates, which is a big factor in driving the cost of this laptop down. They are really pushing the limits of what a cheap CPU can do and they are already dominating the desktop world. 

Number 2 – Lenovo Legion Y540

The Legion Y540 (81SY00TGIN) is also a 15.6 inch laptop powered by a 9th Gen Intel i5 coupled with 8GB of RAM. You get a huge storage option with this one – a 1TB hard disk along with 256GB of SSD. This choice right here hits the sweet spot of being a gaming as well as a professional laptop. It does not have a lot of RGB, so you can easily take this to your office, without everyone staring at you. The Legion logo at the back also lights up giving it a nice look. 

This laptop also has a dedicated graphics card – a Nvidia GTX 1650, which is a 4GB graphics card. In terms of performance, you can easily play games like Battlefield 5, Fifa 19 and many more at Full HD resolution, without noticing any lags or drop in frame rates. While we are talking about games, Lenovo has made sure that you get full size arrow keys so that there is no drop in your performance. 

I like the way they have implemented the trackpad. It has physical buttons, instead of going with one full pad. This helps in preventing accidental clicks as well as giving the buttons a firm press. The speakers are down firing, so that may be a down side, if you keep the laptop on your bed, that will take a good hit to the sound quality. 

In terms of parts there are a bunch of them. A good thing that lenovo has done is that they have all the ports on the back of your device. This helps in managing all the devices in one place. You have 3 USB 3.1 ports, 1 USB C port, 1 HDMI and 1 Mini DisplayPort, 1 Ethernet port and a headphone jack. I don’t think you will have a problem connecting any device to this laptop. 

If you are looking at a device that you can game on as well as use it for professional purposes, then this laptop that costs around Rs 65,000 should be the best choice for you. 

Number 3 – Asus VivoBook S15

The Asus VivoBook has been a popular choice for a mid range thin and light for quite some time now. The S15 (S532FL-BQ501T) builds on the same and improves it with some new features. It is powered by a 10th Gen Intel i5 along with 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. You may get a lower capacity, but an SSD is much faster than a hard drive so you will be able to copy things on and off the device very quickly. 

The build quality is very nice. You get a plastic and aluminum combination chassis that is very sturdy and will not disappoint you. The new feature available here is the ScreenPad 2.0. This is a secondary display integrated in the trackpad, that allows you to run quite a number of things. The hinge on this device is one that I like. It is very sturdy and also raises the bottom of the device slightly to provide some fresh air to it. 

The keyboard is well planned and has a fair amount of travel to it, unlike the really shallow ones that Asus had used on the previous version. It is completely backlit, with a single white LED, but gives you the option to choose between 3 intensities. Apart from the ScreenPad that they advertise, if you keep that closed and just use it as a normal trackpad, you get a smooth full glass trackpad, that is very strong and sturdier than many others out there.

The usefulness of the second screen depends on what application you are using, and also if the developers support the second screen. It is a sort of a gimmick, and its use will depend from person to person. In terms of ports, you get 1 USB 3.1, 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB C port, a full-size HDMI port, a mic/headphone jack, and an sd card reader. 

You also have a dedicated Nvidia MX250 graphics card and with that, I don’t think you should use it as a hardcore gaming device. It can handle light games but it will struggle in some of the heavier games available out there. This laptop is primarily for your personal use. Being a student you will spend lots of time browsing the net and using multiple tabs in Chrome. This will not be an issue with this device, but you will need to charge it twice if you want to get through the day. 

Number 4 – HP Omen 15

HP is a big name in the laptop industry. They have so many laptops at every price point but in the gaming world, this laptop is one that I would recommend to you all. The HP Omen (15-en0001AX) is a full sized laptop, powered by a Ryzen 5 – 4600H. There is 8GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD available to you here. Again this is a good thing that will help you move things faster and will reduce the boot up times.

Design wise, HP has done an excellent job. This device has a much more matured look to it than other devices by HP in the past. The entire device has a solid build quality. I especially love the keyboard that HP provides. I have been using one for 3 years and absolutely love it. Just like the legion y540, this also has made some changes in the layout to give you a full size arrow key. They have removed the num pad from the device completely. 

The keyboard is also backlit and you can customize it in 4 regions across the board. The trackpad is the same as any other HP laptop. There are no dedicated buttons, it is just one giant trackpad. If you want to game it is much better to get a seperate mouse and use that instead. The speakers are from Bang and Olufsen and are top firing. They sound pretty good and when you combine them with the display, you will have an awesome gaming experience. 

Speaking of performance, you get a 1650Ti, which is a 4GB graphics card. The processor can easily handle all the things and is much better than its i5 counterpart. This combination is one of the best available to you for handling gaming as well as any content creation. You can easily edit videos on Premier or work on heavy graphics on Illustrator or After Effects. 

Priced at about Rs 75,000 this laptop will be your best partner in gaming, at a cheap price. You can expect this to handle all the games that come out in the next 2-3 years with no issues at all. 

Number 5 – HP Envy x360

Image Source: The Verge

After talking about a gaming option from HP, let’s talk about the complete notebook from HP. The HP Envy x360 (13-ay0044AU) is a 13.3 inch laptop which is powered by a Ryzen 5 – 4500U. It has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD. This is the perfect choice for home as well as professional use. I feel 256GB might be a small storage choice for some people out there, so you may want to look at buying an external hard disk for some other sort of storage that you are comfortable with. 

Traditionally, the Envy line has always been a class lower than HP’s Specter line, but this year, some things have changed. The Envy x360 looks as good as the Specter 2019 model and is also comparable in terms of performance to the Elite Dragonfly, which has been the top business notebook of this year till now.  

The Ryzen 5 – 4500U is all set to compete with Intel’s i7 processor with it’s 6 cores. Anything from everyday browsing, to streaming, to heavy office work, to multitasking, you name it and the processor will be able to handle all of it. You will have no issues running multiple apps and using a dozen or so tabs on Chrome simultaneously. 

In all of the Envy’s till now, this is the best looking one that I have seen till date. The build quality is really premium and HP has made sure that no stone is left unturned in ints design. The keyboard has a fingerprint sensor, along with a good key travel and a bright backlit led. The chassis is strong and does not have a weird flex unlike some of the previous devices. The trackpad however, is small for most of the people out there, but has excellent tracking and is very smooth as well. 

In terms of ports, HP has shown us that it is very easy to include full size USB A ports in a small notebook. You get 2 USB A ports, 1 USB C port and 1 micro sd card reader. Unfortunately, there is no HDMI slot for you to connect it to a projector. The trapdoor style hinges that they have used is an excellent thought, since most of us still use a mouse and pen drives that have a Type A port, so plus points to HP for that. 

If you are in the market looking at a good premium notebook that you can use for any purpose (even editing video on Premier) and want a good display (which is also a touchscreen by the way) then the Envy x360, coming at about Rs 75,000, will definitely not disappoint you. 

Number 6 – Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Image Source: Absolute Geeks

The G14 has been the centre of attraction and the one to beat in terms of performance ever since its release. No other laptop, even with some of the best processors from intel like the i7 or the i9 come close to this one. The one I am recommending here is the G14 which is a 14 inch laptop, powered by Ryzen 5 – 4600HS which is a 6 core CPU, along with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. This, as discussed earlier, will give you the best speeds along with a sufficient storage capacity. 

Asus has done a fantastic job by providing such powerful hardware in such a small form factor. The laptop is the best option for productivity and to handle all sorts of editing or gaming tasks that one may have. The processor, as mentioned, has no trouble in handling anything and everything that you throw at it. 

The hinge is similar to what we saw on the Vivobook earlier. It lifts the bottom of the device so that it can receive fresh air. The build quality is really good. Asus has included a fingerprint sensor on the keyboard. The keyboard itself is very nice, each individual press is firm and you will somewhat enjoy using this keyboard, whether it is to type long documents or while you are gaming. The layout is a good choice by Asus. The bottom row is a bit larger to include full size arrow keys and they have also included some multimedia keys on the top. 

The trackpad is also good, it is sufficiently large.  and is one single pad with the buttons below it. In Spite of it being a gaming device, the battery life of this device is amazing. You can easily get through the day on a single charge. The device also has a 4GB of dedicated graphics in the form of an Nvidia GTX 1650Ti, but you could also upgrade to the 2060 super option. The same is the case with the display, if you need a higher refresh rate screen, then you can purchase that model. 

Asus has also been very generous with the ports on this device. There are 2 USB 3.1 ports, 2 USB Type-C ports, I HDMI port and a headphone/mic combo port. It would have been nice if they had made charging through one of the Type-C ports possible, but instead they chose to go with a barrel connector for the power brick.

Coming in at about Rs 1,00,000 this option will not fit everyone’s budget, and is only for the hard core users out there. If your work involves running a lot of heavy applications simultaneously or if you just want a good gaming laptop, then this is definitely the one that you should be going for. You can also read our full review here. 

Now with all of these options before you, it is very important you keep in mind the cost of the device you are purchasing and what kind of use you want out of your device. I hope you find this list useful and if you want more reviews on some of the smartphones out there, follow be on Instagram, by clicking below

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