I travel weekly for work and need a personal laptop for basic business apps and content consumption. I also carry a business laptop provided by my client so weight is a priority. I currently have an original Surface Laptop and like it but it’s on its last legs. Ideally, my new laptop would have a similarly sized screen or slightly bigger but be the same weight or ideally lighter than the Surface. After weight my priorities are an amazing screen, good keyboard and trackpad. Excellent battery life would be nice to have. I don’t really care about performance as much. I don’t want Snapdragon though, seems to offer no benefits.
I live in the USA and my budget is flexible.
I’ve narrowed my search down to the following with some comments based on reviews I’ve seen:
Acer Swift Edge 14 AI - Seems perfect for my needs but currently vaporware in the USA but maybe my Surface can survive until this is released
Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition 14 - Seems really solid overall but a bit on the heavy side compared to others on this list
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition - Would be perfect if not for price and battery life seems a bit worse than most other laptops on this list
MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo - I wish it had a higher refresh rate, not sure if I trust MSI as a laptop manufacturer
Honor MagicBook Art 14 (Intel) - Looks pretty amazing but unavailable in US so tariffs and support will suck
HP OmniBook 7 Aero - Not much info available on this yet
Thoughts? Which of these options would you recommend for my use case? Are there any other laptops that I should be looking at?
This one afaik Josh is looking into reviewing. It’s on the cheaper side, but from what I can tell, it looks to have white colored keys with a white backlight, not a good combination.
I agree about Lunar Lake being probably the best fit for somebody like you. That being said, if you can wait at all for Panther Lake, I would, because it will likely be better in terms of performance and more flexible with RAM while still offering Lunar Lake’s excellent battery life.
Unfortantely, I’ve found a lot of good Lunar Lake laptop stock has dried up or won’t be available in the US until the aforemention Panther Lake is announced and fully unveiled likely at CES in early January 2026, and at that point, I’d wait…
f you live near a Micro Center, I’d go there and take a look at what they have, because while they have good sales, almost all of their laptops are available for in store pickup or purchase only; no shipping to an address allowed on over 80% of the laptops there.
How about the Lenovo Slim 7i 14 Aura Edition? I personally can take a bit of heavier weight if it means an overall better laptop. Especially compared to laptops from a decade and a half ago and their weight.
