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Guide: Which laptop should you buy?

Modern laptops are much more than just a portable alternative to desktop PCs. These practical devices are renowned for their versatility. Designed for specific purposes, they cater to a wide variety of use cases.

In the following article, you will learn about the most common types and discover the key features to consider when choosing the right laptop for you.

Gaming laptops

When it comes to gaming laptops, an optimal gaming experience requires a fast processor and a high-performance graphics card that supports the latest features, such as supersampling. For example, the latest version of NVIDIA DLSS with multi-frame generation. A powerful cooling system enables your gaming laptop to maintain maximum performance consistently, even during long gaming sessions.

For gaming specifically, it is recommended that you choose a display with a high refresh rate of 240 or 300 Hz. This ensures that your games' high in-game FPS is displayed as smoothly as possible. Those who don't use an external keyboard and often play on the go will also benefit from a precise laptop keyboard.

Creator laptops

Creator laptops, i.e. notebooks designed for media production, such as image and video editing or rendering, can place demands on CPU and GPU performance that are just as high as those of gaming laptops. It all depends on how you plan to use the device. For simple tasks that don't require the processing power of a dedicated graphics card, the integrated graphics processor (iGPU) in the CPU may suffice. However, for particularly demanding tasks, the power of a high-performance laptop workstation is necessary.

Working with very large video files requires ample SSD storage space and a lot of RAM — 64 GB or more can significantly speed up your workflow. A high-resolution display with broad coverage of the colour spaces you use, such as sRGB, Adobe RGB or DCI-P3, is also essential for creative professionals.

Multimedia laptops

Multimedia laptops are the all-rounders of the mobile PC world. In addition to a powerful CPU, they usually have an efficient mid-range graphics card or a fast integrated graphics chip from AMD or Intel.

This makes them ideal for basic video or photo editing, for example, but they do not offer the performance of a fully equipped creator laptop. In return, however, they are significantly more affordable. A good multimedia laptop also has numerous external I/O ports, enabling you to connect a projector, additional monitors and other peripherals.

Business laptops

Business laptops are the premium version of standard office notebooks. The most important features are a high-quality build and a design optimised for durability and uncompromising reliability. Unlike gaming or creator laptops, the focus is not on maximum performance; instead, they often use highly efficient components that strike a balance between high performance and low power consumption.

This ensures not only that your business laptop runs quietly, but also that it delivers significantly longer battery life. For anyone who frequently works on their laptop while out and about, this is a key consideration, as is choosing a thin, lightweight laptop that’s comfortable to carry all day long. At bestware.com, you can purchase your new business laptop with optional extras such as 48-hour express repair services.

Optional security features such as TPM, SSD hardware encryption and an integrated SmartCard reader enable compliance with company or public sector regulations.

Laptops for office, home office, and school

This classic office laptop provides an affordable introduction to the world of mobile devices. It is sturdy and reliable, with enough power for everyday use. There are no unnecessary extras, just the essential functions and features of a laptop. These energy-efficient notebooks offer sufficient performance reserves for all daily tasks, such as surfing the web, writing emails, watching videos, editing photos and running office applications.

Laptops for virtual reality (VR) and extended reality (XR)

PC VR — that is, virtual and, increasingly, extended reality on a PC or laptop — typically requires a very high level of performance. In most cases, therefore, a high-end gaming laptop is also a good VR-ready laptop. Suitable models can be found in the XR ready hardware section on bestware.com. However, if you plan to use a wired VR headset with your laptop instead of a streaming stick, ensure that it has a compatible port for the headset.

This could be a DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort, or a Thunderbolt or USB-C port, to which you can connect your VR or XR headset via a cable or adapter. Note: This only works if the port is connected to the laptop’s powerful dedicated graphics card (dGPU connection); it will not work with ports that use the iGPU.

What screen size and resolution is the right choice for your notebook?

Even laptops of the same series often come with different sized displays. Common screen diagonals are 14 inches, 15 inches, 16 inches, 17 inches or 18 inches.

These dimensions not only indicate how much screen space is available for viewing content, but also influence the other features of the device. Most 14-inch laptops, for example, are ultrabooks and therefore particularly slim, light and compact - the perfect solution for travelling or surfing on the couch.

In contrast, 15-inch laptops and 16-inch laptops strike a good balance between a larger display and good portability. For comfortable, relaxed work and play, 17-inch and 18-inch laptops are the most eye-friendly option. However, due to their weight and size, they are not ideal for carrying around in a backpack all day and are better suited as a desktop PC replacement on your desk.

In addition to the 16:9 aspect ratio, which has been the standard for years and is also the norm for televisions, laptops with 16:10 displays have now become the new standard. They offer a little more vertical viewing area and are thus somewhat higher. This is practical, for example, to display additional toolbars on the monitor when working. The format also influences the effective screen size; here is a brief overview:

• Typical display sizes in 16:9 format: 14.1 inch, 15.6 inch, 16.1 inch, 17.3 inch
• Typical display sizes in 16:10 format: 14.0 inch, 15.3 inch, 16.0 inch, 17.0 inch, 18.0 inch

For basic requirements, a Full HD display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels is sufficient, while demanding users and gamers opt for a WQHD (2,560 x 1,440, 16:9 aspect ratio) or WQXGA display (2,560 x 1,600 pixels, 16:10 aspect ratio). In contrast to the monitor on a desktop PC, the laptop screens are significantly smaller and therefore deliver a razor-sharp image thanks to the higher pixel density. This is best explained by a small calculation example:

• A 15.6-inch monitor with 1920 x 1080 pixels has 141 dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch), i.e. 141 pixels per inch.
• On a 27-inch monitor, the value drops to only 82 dpi at the same resolution, so the distance between the individual pixels is much greater.

A laptop with an Ultra HD or 4K display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels is ideal for professional visual media editing.

Laptop chassis: plastic or aluminium?

At bestware, we place particular emphasis on high-quality notebook chassis manufacturing. High-quality plastic offers everything needed for a stable, durable mobile device: a robust, torsion-resistant construction; small gaps; and an excellent feel.

Ultrabooks and slim gaming laptops in particular benefit from a metal chassis, with lightweight yet durable aluminium being the primary material used. This material gives the very slim devices additional stability and offers thermal advantages thanks to its better heat conduction properties. This means that the components can be cooled more effectively.

The fastest notebook processors from AMD and Intel: Advanced, efficient and powerful

Even some lightweight ultrabooks feature high-performance CPUs, such as those in the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series. Examples include the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Ryzen AI 9 365 and Ryzen AI 7 350. In this performance segment, Intel also offers powerful and energy-efficient laptop processors with CPUs from the Core Ultra 200H series.

Mobile processors in the high-performance segment are even more impressive. For the ultimate in laptop performance, look to notebooks from XMG and SCHENKER equipped with processors such as the Intel Core Ultra 275HX, AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D and AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX. These are among the fastest laptop CPUs available and are based on the same technology as desktop PC processors. They offer 16 cores and 32 threads (AMD) or 24 cores (Intel: 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores). There has never been this much mobile performance before.

Tip: XMG laptops or SCHENKER laptops, which you can buy on bestware.com, are notable for integrating the latest generations of processors and graphics cards.

The best laptop graphics cards, from energy-efficient to high-performance

If you mainly use your notebook for simple office and internet applications, as well as for watching videos, the integrated graphics solutions currently offered by AMD and Intel in many processors are more than sufficient. Games can also be played on them, albeit with some restrictions. However, this requires selecting a low detail level and possibly reducing the screen resolution.

Ambitious gamers and power users should buy a notebook with a mid-range or high-end GPU. Only then will the full gaming graphics splendour of the latest AAA titles be realised. Users of software such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Premiere should also purchase a laptop with a high-performance dedicated graphics card to enable GPU acceleration in these programmes.

The various graphics card models differ in terms of numerous specifications. These include the amount of GDDR7 memory (VRAM) used, the chip clock speed, and the number of shader units, texture units (TMUs) and render outputs (ROPs). NVIDIA graphics cards differ in terms of the number of dedicated ray tracing cores for calculating ray tracing effects, and the number of Tensor cores for AI calculations.

Another increasingly important feature is NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation (MFG), which is now indispensable. This advanced technology uses AI to generate additional frames while improving image quality, ultimately resulting in higher FPS in games.

For example, with the GeForce RTX 5050 and RTX 5060, both of which have 8 GB of GDDR7 memory, NVIDIA offers two exciting options for Full HD gaming. These graphics cards provide all the power you need to play demanding games with high levels of detail.

Even faster are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 with 8 GB GDDR7 memory and the RTX 5070 Ti with 12 GB GDDR7 VRAM, which are suitable for higher screen resolutions. The more graphics memory available, the more high-resolution textures can be accommodated — a particularly important consideration when playing games with higher screen resolutions.

The absolute spearheads for laptop gaming, VR gaming, and GPU-accelerated professional software applications are the GeForce RTX 5080 with 16 GB and GeForce RTX 5090 with 24 GB of GDDR7 memory. Not only are they suitable for WQHD gaming, they are also the first choice for 4K or VR gaming on a laptop.

How much RAM does your laptop need?

Even for simple tasks such as using basic office applications and browsing the web, 8 GB of DDR5 RAM is the absolute minimum. However, 16 GB of RAM is recommended as soon as you start using your laptop for more demanding activities. For gaming on a laptop, 32 GB of RAM is recommended, as even 16 GB is very limited for many modern games.

Professional creatives or programmers need 32 GB or more of RAM. This enables a large, high-resolution photo or video to be loaded entirely into RAM for faster editing than if part of it had to remain on slower SSD drives.

Laptop SSDs: fast, high-performance M.2 drives

The current standard in laptops are M.2 SSDs, which are connected either via PCI Express 4.0 or even PCI Express 5.0 with 4 lanes each:

• SSDs with PCIe 4.0 (4 lanes) offer you a transfer rate or bandwidth of up to 7000 MB/s.
• SSDs with PCIe 5.0 (4 lanes) offer you a transfer rate or bandwidth of up to 14000 MB/s.

These are the theoretical maximum values, but many M.2 SSDs can actually achieve them in real-world use. However, the actual reading and writing speeds of your laptop's SSD also depend on the controller, the type of NAND flash memory, and the SSD cooling.

What is an SSD and what are its advantages?

Unlike the mechanical hard disk, which uses rotating magnetic disks and associated read/write heads, the solid-state disk has no moving components. Instead, it uses several NAND flash components and a multi-channel SSD controller to distribute the data.

The advantages are clear: Not only do SSDs work silently and quickly, they also consume less power than the mechanical alternative. This benefits the battery life of laptops in particular. In 2026, mechanical hard drives are only relevant for laptops as external hard drives; however, they cannot yet be replaced by SSDs due to their higher storage capacity of 20 TB or more.

At bestware.com, you can configure your laptop with SSDs from various price and performance classes from well-known, high-quality SSD manufacturers such as Samsung, Crucial and Western Digital, with sizes ranging from 1 TB to 8 TB.

What I/O ports does your laptop need?

USB is certainly the most frequently used interface. The all-rounder for connecting additional peripherals such as a mouse, external SSDs or hard drives and a printer.

There are two types of USB connector: Type-A, which is the classic, somewhat larger USB plug; and Type-C, which is the newer, more compact design. The latter is narrower and is therefore used in many smartphones, for example, and is also twist-proof. Unlike Type-A, it doesn't matter which way you plug a cable into the port; with Type-C, there is no right or wrong way.

USB-C ports also sometimes offer additional functions, details of which can be found in the respective laptop's data sheet. Some ports, for example, allow you to connect an external battery or a compact travel power adapter to charge the notebook on the go via the power delivery function. You can also output a DisplayPort signal via USB-C to address an external monitor.

Thunderbolt takes it a step further. The interface is implemented as a Type-C connector and, at first glance, differs only in that it has a printed lightning symbol on the connectors and slots. It offers the same functions as USB-C, but is significantly more powerful. The fastest external SSDs currently available can read and write at speeds of up to 80 Gbit/s on a laptop. USB4 can also achieve this, but Thunderbolt 5 guarantees more features and a higher data transfer rate than USB4, which is only optional. A quick look at the datasheet will tell you whether it is a full or limited USB4.

Interfaces such as HDMI and DisplayPort allow you to connect a projector and one or more external monitors to your laptop. Thunderbolt and, in most cases, USB-C also feature an integrated DisplayPort function. To use this feature, you will need either a monitor with a USB-C input or an adapter cable for your laptop that enables you to connect a DisplayPort cable from the monitor to the laptop's USB-C port.

Inputs and outputs for connecting speakers or a microphone — some implemented as a combo jack and others as two separate 3.5 mm jacks — complete your laptop's multimedia ports.

Network traffic can run either via a cable connected to an Ethernet port with Gigabit or 2.5 Gigabit speed, or via WLAN. The new Wi-Fi 7 standard, also known by the rather unwieldy term '802.11be', offers particularly fast and stable transmission. Another option for connecting to other devices wirelessly is Bluetooth. This transmission standard is ideal for connecting a laptop to a high-performance Bluetooth speaker, for example.

Finally, some laptops have an SD or microSD card reader. If you are a photographer, for example, and don't want to carry an additional external reader around with you all the time, you should take a close look at the data sheet before buying the laptop in question.

Buying laptops without an operating system

Another special feature of the XMG and SCHENKER brands is that you can configure laptops without an operating system in bestware’s laptop configurator, which offers a clear selection of the best hardware components. Do you already have Windows 11, or do you not need an operating system? If so, you can purchase your new laptop from us without one.

Upgrade and maintain a laptop: What to consider?

Maintaining your XMG or SCHENKER laptop is easy, as you can open it up as needed to clean or upgrade it. Thanks to this feature, you can enjoy your device for a long time.

Even with the utmost care, problems can arise after several years of use, as dust gradually accumulates inside. If your laptop gets too hot, it is usually enough to remove the bottom shell and clean the fans. With a little discipline, you can extend the lifespan of your laptop.

The easily accessible interior also allows you to upgrade SSD or RAM, or replace the BIOS battery on the motherboard. You can also replace the laptop batteries yourself if needed.

Should you configure your own laptop or buy a pre-built one?

At bestware.com, you can configure your new laptop completely from scratch or purchase one of our laptop prebuilds. Both options have their own advantages.

With a fully customisable laptop, you have complete control over the performance of your CPU and graphics card, the manufacturer of your RAM and SSD, and how much RAM and storage space your notebook has. However, please note that we can only thoroughly test and ship your order once it has been received — assembly and quality control take some time.

In contrast, our pre-built laptops are ready-made units that we keep in stock, so they can be shipped much faster. Although you don't have the same customisation options as with fully customisable models, the specifications we've selected meet the needs of most users and save you time before your new laptop arrives.