I tested the best MacBook alternatives and found 7 worthy rivals

Haley Henschel

The 2026 Zenbook A14 is one of the best Windows laptops I've ever tried. It's close to perfect for users needing a snappy ultraportable with incredible battery life, solid build quality, and a pretty OLED display. It's an ideal daily driver for most people, and especially great for traveling.

The latest Zenbook A14 overachieves on performance and battery life; it looks unique without being obnoxious; and it's so featherlight that it makes the MacBook Air feel hefty. Moreover, it feels fairly priced.

Performance: The Zenbook A14 runs on Qualcomm's peppy new Snapdragon X2 Elite chip, which I can't hype enough. It's just 10 percent slower than the M5 Air in single-core tasks like sending emails and web browsing (so they're effectively equals there). In multi-core workloads like video editing, it's actually 20 percent faster than the M5 Air — a difference you're more likely to feel in practice. It's also roughly 10 percent faster than the M5 Pro in multi-core scenarios. Eighty-eight percent of the laptops in our testing database can't pull that off.

FYI: That Snapdragon CPU is a Windows on ARM chip, which basically means that it's built differently than the traditional x86 chips inside other Windows laptops. As such, it's not compatible with as many PC games and certain specialty software. You might also run into problems trying to use ARM laptops with certain peripherals, like older printers. Most public universities recommend that their students avoid them for this reason.

Battery life: The Zenbook A14 is an endurance sprinter. It was able to loop a video for 27 hours and 36 minutes straight before dying, surpassing the M5 Pro, our reigning battery life champ among Apple computers, by 6.5 hours. (Compared to the latest Air, it offers 10 extra hours of battery life.) It's the third-longest-lasting laptop we've ever tested in our decade-plus of reviewing them.

Design: The Zenbook A14's chassis is made from Asus' proprietary "Ceraluminum" material, which is smudge-proof and ultra-light yet rigid. It weighs only 2.4 pounds, which makes it 0.3 pounds lighter than the Air. It comes in a tan finish ("Zabrinskie beige") with gold accents and a matte texture that reminds me of pottery; I find it refreshing in a world of boring silver laptops. Its crown jewel is its bright 14-inch OLED screen, which is more colorful than a MacBook Air's display, if not quite as crisp. Its keyboard is another standout feature: It has a pleasantly smooth, "creamy" feel. It comes equipped with an HDMI port, two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and an audio jack, so it offers way more connectivity options than its Apple counterpart.

Value: The Zenbook A14 starts at $1,349.99 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It's a bit pricier than a 13-inch M5 MacBook Air, which starts at $1,099 with the same specs. The Air also has a nicer haptic touchpad and 12MP webcam. But the Zenbook A14 offers better multi-core performance for demanding tasks, more ports, a more colorful display, and a lighter (but still sturdy) build. It also lasts much longer.

The 2025 Acer Aspire 16 AI is a stellar pick for casual users with limited budgets and simple workloads, particularly those who like a larger screen. (Younger students would make great use of it.) It's portable for its size and long-lasting, so big ups if you frequently work on the go. We can't say that it's better than the Neo, but we can say it's the best MacBook Neo alternative right now.

The Aspire 16 AI is my reigning favorite cheap Windows laptop. It offers great multi-core performance for the money, a healthy amount of RAM and storage, plus a smooth display and all the ports you could need. You mainly feel its "budget-ness" in its build quality.

Performance: The Aspire 16 AI's Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip is about 40 percent slower than the Neo's A18 Pro chip in single-core scenarios, so it doesn't feel as responsive when you're surfing the web or working in Word docs. That said, it's just as good as running multi-core tasks like light video editing. (Our benchmarking showed that it's 12 percent faster than the Neo in that regard. It's a trivial bump, but it's something.) At the time of writing, the Aspire 16 AI was the fastest sub-$900 laptop we've tested for multi-core workloads.

Note that the Snapdragon X CPU is a Windows on ARM chip, so it's not compatible with as many games or specialty apps as Intel or AMD chips (which have x86 architecture — see above, in the Zenbook A14's section). But a budget laptop isn't really made for that kind of usage, anyway, so that's not a huge concern here. I'd be more worried about it not working with an older scanner or printer.

Battery life: The Aspire 16 AI plowed past the Neo in our battery life benchmark, a video rundown test, lasting 17 hours and 22 minutes to Apple's 14 hours and 50 minutes. Stamina-wise, it's more on par with the M5 MacBook Air, which lasted 17 hours and 40 minutes. You can easily squeeze two full workdays out of this thing without needing to charge it in between.

Design: The Aspire 16 AI is pretty trim for a 16-incher. At 3.42 pounds, it's only a little bit heavier than a 15-inch MacBook Air. (There are even slimmer, lighter 16-inch options — see the Asus Zenbook A16, below — but they're way more expensive.) Its display is a bit dim and not as crisp as the Neo's, but I appreciated its buttery 120Hz refresh rate and touchscreen capabilities. Its port setup is also great: While the Neo has just two USB-C ports and a headphone jack, this laptop tacks on two extra USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a microSD card slot. That's some MacBook Pro-level connectivity.

Value: For the same price as a 512GB Neo, the Aspire 16 AI offers double the RAM, better multi-core performance, more ports, a 120Hz touchscreen, and a backlit keyboard. But it's not as well-made as the MacBook Neo; it lacks a fingerprint login feature, and it doesn't feel as fast in everyday productivity scenarios. It also comes in one boring color. Still, it feels very fairly priced in an era when decent, cheap Windows laptops are getting scarce.

FYI: Acer also makes a 14-inch version of this laptop (the Aspire 14 AI), which comes with an Intel processor that alleviates the Windows on ARM compatibility issues. It offers double the storage, slightly better battery life, and slightly better single-core performance for only $500 to $700, depending on the retailer. I haven't tried it, so I can't speak for it personally, but our friends at CNET really liked it. You probably can't go wrong with either size.

The 2026 Acer Swift X 14 is an excellent desktop replacement for professional creatives who need the oomph of dedicated graphics for especially intensive software (and proper AAA gaming). I specifically recommend it for those who care more about MacBook-esque power than MacBook-esque looks.

After testing two configurations of the Swift X 14, I prefer the pricier model with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics. It's a top-tier performer with gaming prowess and good battery life, relatively speaking. It's not as sleek or long-lasting as a 14-inch MacBook Pro, but it's slightly cheaper with the same amount of RAM and storage, plus a striking OLED touchscreen.

Performance: The Swift X 14 lags behind the M5 MacBook Pro in single-core workloads, but they're peers when it comes to multi-core tasks. (The MacBook Pro proved just two percent faster there, which is nothing.) It's the fastest Windows laptop at its price point by that metric. The Swift X 14's discrete GPU makes it better for raw performance in the heaviest of workloads compared to the MacBook Pro, including 3D rendering and PC gaming. It can run graphically grueling titles like Cyberpunk 2077 flawlessly without any AI upscaling tech turned on.

It's worth mentioning that this Swift X 14 is not a Copilot+ PC, meaning it doesn't have a massive NPU that enables Microsoft AI features like Recall, Click to Do, and Microsoft Paint's Cocreator. This is bad news if you need a laptop for running local AI tasks, but great news if you don't like it when your laptop is clogged with AI tools you never use. (Personally, I'm in the second camp.)

Battery life: The Swift X 14 lasted 10 hours and 10 minutes in our battery life rundown test. That wouldn't be a great result if it were a regular Windows laptop, but it's pretty decent for one with dedicated graphics. Still, it lasts about half as long as the MacBook Pro.

Design: This is a very utilitarian laptop. It weighs about the same as a MacBook Pro, but it's boxier and a bit thicker, and it comes in a single "iron" finish. It manages to fit in plenty of ports, including two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, two USB-A ports, a microSD card slot, and an audio jack. Its keyboard has a lovely clickety-clackety feel, and its haptic touchpad is very satisfying to use. You can actually draw on it with the included stylus. (It's tricky to get the hang of it, but it functions like a built-in drawing pad.) The flashiest thing about the Swift X 14 is its 14.5-inch 120Hz OLED touchscreen display, which has remarkably punchy colors. It's very glossy and not as sharp or bright as a MacBook Pro's screen, but OLED won't be a thing on a Mac until late 2026 at the soonest.

Value: As configured, the Swift X 14 comes with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage and costs $1,999.99. An M5 MacBook Pro with just as much memory and storage goes for $2,099; it's a more polished laptop with better single-core performance plus double the battery life, but its raw graphics capabilities can't compete. For what it is, I think the Swift X 14 is an expensive but sound buy.

I should note that the other configuration I tested was a Swift X 14 AI with an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor and RTX 5060 graphics, which cost $1,699.99. (That model is a Copilot+ PC, FWIW.) It offered similar single-core performance but 21 percent worse multi-core performance and a much worse battery life — it only lasted six hours and 24 minutes in our benchmark. It also doesn't have as much raw power. Yeah, it's $300 less, but the Intel-powered Swift X 14 is the smarter pick for the money.

The super-light Asus Zenbook A16 is an impeccable buy for professionals (namely, remote workers) seeking a premium Windows laptop that outshines the 15-inch MacBook Air in many ways. You'll have a tough time finding a better option if you want a sturdy ultraportable with a big-and-bright OLED touchscreen at a great price.

The Zenbook A14's newer, larger sibling is another one of my all-timers. It offers MacBook Pro-beating multi-core power in a design that's substantially lighter than the 15-inch MacBook Air. It's closer to $2,000 than $1,000, but it's shockingly well-priced for its incredible performance, decent battery life, top-notch display, useful ports, and tons of RAM.

Performance: The Zenbook A16 is the first laptop to market with Qualcomm's top-of-the-line Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip, and boy, does this thing cook. There's only a nine percent difference between it and Apple's M5 chip in single-core scenarios, which is negligible. It feels so snappy compared to most other Windows laptops I've tried. In multi-core tasks, it screams past the M5 MacBook Air and Pro by up to 38 percent. It's actually the second-fastest laptop we've ever reviewed when it comes to multi-core oomph. The only machine that beats it is the 16-inch, M4 Pro-powered MacBook Pro from late 2024, which costs $3,649 as tested. (We haven't tried the latest M5 Pro or M5 Max models, but they're almost certainly faster, too — and vastly pricier.)

As with the Zenbook A14, Windows on ARM compatibility issues might be a concern for some users here.

Battery life: The Zenbook A16 lasted 16 hours and 26 minutes in our battery life benchmark. It doesn't have as much stamina as the Zenbook A14, but that's a very good number for a mega-powerful laptop with a big, vivid display. It beats our 14-hour median for the Windows laptops in our database, as well as our 16-hour median for MacBooks. Compared to the MacBook Air, you only lose out on an hour and 20-ish minutes of usage.

Design: The Zenbook A16 is very similar to the Zenbook A14, but it comes with a few key upgrades that give it a more premium vibe. One is its OLED display: It's much crisper and brighter, and it has a 120Hz refresh rate plus touchscreen capabilities. Additionally, the Zenbook A16 has an extra SD card slot, and its speakers sound better. (They're not quite MacBook-tier, but they're good for a Windows laptop.) The Zenbook A16's Ceraluminum build also makes the Air feel heavy. At only 2.87 pounds, it's the lightest 16-inch laptop we've ever tried. It's lighter than a lot of 14-inch models I've tested, actually. For reference, the 15-inch MacBook Air weighs 3.3 pounds — almost half a pound more.

Value: The Zenbook A16 retails for $1,699.99 with 1TB of storage and a whopping 48GB of RAM. The 15-inch MacBook Air maxes out with 32GB of RAM, and it'll cost you $1,899 if you tack on a 1TB storage upgrade. For $200 less, the Zenbook A16 offers much better multi-core performance, a nicer display, and more ports. It's not as good for running games and specialty apps as other laptops at its price point — c'mon, ARM — but overall, it's one hell of a deal. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Asus jacked up its price down the road. RAM famously isn't cheap right now.

A Chromebook might make more sense than the MacBook Neo if you're a very casual user who mainly works in Google apps. The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is a premium model from late 2025 that's better-made and more power-efficient than most other options in its class. It also pulls double duty as a tablet for those who like doodling or taking notes by hand.

Read Mashable's full review of the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514.

The Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is one of the nicest (and most expensive) Chromebooks I've ever tried. It costs more than the Neo, but it gets you more RAM, a smoother touchscreen display you can write on, and a longer battery life.

Performance: The Chromebook Plus Spin 514's MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 chip trails the Neo's A18 Pro chip. In multi-core scenarios, it's 18 percent slower than the Neo. We didn't record its single-core score, but assume it's much worse — the Neo is a single-core speed demon. (Based on other publications' benchmarking, it looks like the Neo is about 40 percent faster in single-core workloads.) Still, this is one of the fastest processors you'll find in a modern Chromebook.

Battery life: The Chromebook Plus Spin 514 lasted 18 hours and 11 minutes in my testing, beating the Neo by three and a half hours. It's the longest-lasting Chromebook we've ever tried, leaving many fancier Windows laptops (and even the latest MacBook Air) in the dust. So, while it may not feel as zippy as a Neo, it won't die on you as fast.

Design: This 14-incher looks and feels really nice for a Chromebook. Many of its kin have cheapo, all-plastic builds, but it only has a plastic keyboard deck — the rest is silvery aluminum. It's a very professional-looking machine. Additionally, its hinge is strong and doesn't creak when you rotate it. While its touchscreen display isn't as clear or bright as the Neo's Liquid Retina setup, it has an upscale 120Hz refresh rate. (This, plus its category-leading performance, makes it pretty great for cloud gaming.) I'm also a fan of its clicky, comfortable keyboard.

Value: The Chromebook Plus Spin 514 comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS storage. It launched at $699 in fall 2025, but as of May 2026, it retails for $749. It's a great Chromebook, but an expensive one. It certainly isn't as good a value as the Neo, which offers more single-core power, better build quality, Touch ID, and 512GB of faster SSD storage for $699. In other words, buy this one on sale if possible.

The 2026 Dell XPS 14 is a stylish splurge for aesthetic-forward power users — I'm thinking content creators who might also be occasional gamers. You're probably wishing the 14-inch MacBook Pro was even sleeker and a little more portable, and you may be getting impatient waiting for Apple's touchscreen OLED upgrade. You're definitely open to carrying around dongles. And you definitely have cash to burn.

I tested two configurations of the mega-sleek XPS 14, and the one I'd recommend as a MacBook Pro alternative has the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor. It keeps pace with the base Pro in multi-core workloads, and its integrated GPU holds its own for intensive app use. Plus, it comes with a dazzling tandem OLED touchscreen display with a variable refresh rate from 20Hz to 120Hz. I don't have any good things to say about its price tag — you can spend close to $3,000 without getting a proper GPU — but at least Dell runs frequent sales on its website.

Performance: The Core Ultra X7 chip is a close rival of Apple's M5 chip when you work it hard. It doesn't feel as snappy in single-core scenarios, but trails the current MacBook Pro by only four percent when used for multi-core tasks. (That's a negligible difference.) What's more, the Core Ultra X7's Intel Arc B390 iGPU is comparable to an entry-level dedicated graphics card. It's perfectly capable of running Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding AAA games on the market, with the help of Intel's AI upscaling tech.

Battery life: The XPS 14's stamina is lacking compared to the M5 MacBook Pro, though it really depends on what you're using it for. It held out for 10 hours and 19 minutes in our video rundown test, which is a full workday at least, but not great. (Its Apple counterpart ran for over 21 hours in the same test.) That said, its display dips down to just 20Hz when you're viewing static content, so it should last much longer when it's not looping a video.

If you want an XPS 14 with MacBook-beating battery life in almost any scenario, look into the $1,890 base model with an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 chip. It lasted 22 hours on the dot in our video rundown test, and its refresh rate can drop to a mere 1Hz for static content. Just know that you'll sacrifice a good chunk of power: It offers 35 percent worse multi-core performance; speed-wise, it's most akin to an M2 MacBook Air from 2022. It also scraps the good iGPU and trades the beautiful OLED panel for a duller non-touch LCD one. It's also very expensive for what it offers.

Design: The XPS 14 is easily one of the most stylish laptops I've ever encountered. Dell trimmed down its all-aluminum design for 2026, making it a touch thinner and nearly half a pound lighter than a 14-inch Pro. It's available in two MacBook-y finishes: graphite and shimmer (coming later this year). Its lattice keyboard takes some adjusting to if you're used to regular island-style keyboards, but it translates to a modern, minimalist look. Its seamless glass haptic touchpad looks equally clean. Its speakers are above-average for a Windows laptop — they're just a little more echoey than a MacBook's. As for the OLED display I keep talking up: It's not as bright or crisp as a MacBook Pro's Liquid Retina XDR display, but it's more vibrant and just as smooth at its maximum refresh rate of 120Hz.

Value: My XPS 14 review unit with a Core Ultra X7 chip, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an OLED touchscreen costs $2,879.99 — ouch. (Thanks, RAMageddon.) Suffice to say, don't buy it unless it's on sale. For reference, an M5 MacBook Pro with the same amount of RAM and storage costs almost $800 less. You miss out on OLED there, of course, but gain a superior battery life, better single-core performance, and more ports. It's a much better value at the end of the day.

Get an iPad Air if you desperately want to stay within the Apple ecosystem, but don't necessarily need a full-fledged MacBook. It's a smarter pick if you really care about portability, or if you'd like a device that's optimized for drawing and note-taking.

Read Mashable's full review of the 11-inch Apple iPad Air (M4).

iPadOS 26 introduced a "windowing" feature that lets you resize and open multiple apps at once, making iPads work as laptops. The 11-inch iPad Air with the M4 chip is our current favorite iPad for most people because it's fast and beautiful, yet still reasonably priced. It's just as zippy as a last-gen MacBook Air, but it's no more expensive than a MacBook Neo if you pick one of its lesser storage options.

Performance: The current iPad Air has a pared-down version of the M4 chip that powered the 2025 MacBook Air. (The iPad's chip has an 8-core CPU and a 9-core GPU, while the MacBook's chip has a 10-core CPU and an 8- or 10-core GPU, depending on the size.) Yet our testing showed that their performance differences are basically nonexistent. In basic single-core tasks, the 11-inch iPad Air is just one percent slower than last year's 15-inch MacBook Air. In more demanding multi-core workloads, it only scored 12 percent worse. There's a slightly bigger gap between the iPad Air and the latest MacBook Air, which makes sense because it has a newer chip. Compared to the Neo, though, the iPad offers 50 percent better multi-core performance. This is all to say that Apple's tablet can hold its own against its computers. It has more than enough power for the average user in almost any scenario.

The main thing separating the iPad Air and MacBook Air here is the type of software they support. Some iPadOS versions of apps have fewer features than their macOS counterparts.

Battery life: While we haven't run the M4 iPad Air through our battery life benchmark, Apple has it rated for up to 10 hours of use per charge. It can't match any MacBook on stamina, but it'll get you through a full workday without an outlet.

Design: The iPad Air is basically one big Liquid Retina display. It's just as bright, smooth, and pretty as the screen on an Air or Neo, but it has bonus touchscreen capabilities. (You can draw or take notes on it using an Apple Pencil.) It has the same elite aluminum construction as any MacBook, and it's available in four colors, including two pretty pastel shades of blue and purple. It's incredibly lean, coming in at just 0.24 inches thin and 1.02 pounds. It's almost half as thick as a 13-inch MacBook Air and over half as light. You do forfeit some connectivity there — it only has a single USB-C port; there's not even a headphone jack. But it manages to squeeze in the same great 12MP FaceTime camera as the MacBook Air and Pro.

Value: The 11-inch iPad Air starts at just $599, but it can get more expensive quickly as you add more storage. (The base model only has 128GB of storage, or half of what you get with the $599 MacBook Neo.) Consider, too, that its keyboard is sold separately — that'll cost you an extra $269, putting you at $868 before any storage upgrades you might need. I think the iPad Air is a pretty good value for what it is, but it's not a more cost-effective MacBook alternative.

The laptops we review get put to work as our primary computers. This includes trying any unique software or use cases they support. We also subject all of our loaners to a multi-app/tab stress test and Primate Labs' Geekbench 6 benchmark, which measures CPU performance in common tasks. Gaming laptops get put through additional graphical benchmarking.

To gauge a laptop's stamina, we conduct a battery rundown test that involves playing a looped 1080p version of "Tears of Steel," a short open-source Blender movie, at 50 percent brightness and 50 percent volume. Ideally, we hope to get at least 19 hours of battery life from MacBooks, 14 hours from Windows laptops, and 10 hours from Chromebooks.

As we're using a laptop, we zero in on certain components to evaluate its build quality. These include the display, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, speakers, and ports. We also assess its overall aesthetic and portability.

We determine the ultimate value of a laptop by comparing its performance, design/build quality, and battery life to other laptops with similar pricing, specs, release dates, and use cases. We consider any accessories it comes with, any upgrades from its predecessor(s), and its future-proofing.