In the world of portables, the best 15-inch laptops are versatile devices. They hit that sweet spot between portability and power; big enough to get work done, but not too bulky to shove into your backpack. It is the most convenient convergence of productivity versus portability.
The expansive display on a 15-inch laptop lets you view and work in multiple side-by-side windows or become fully engrossed in high-resolution movies or TV shows. Since a laptop in this size range weighs between 3 to 4 pounds and measures less than a half-inch thin, it won’t feel too heavy or bulky to comfortably carry during your work commute, across campus, or to the neighborhood coffee shop.
15-inch laptops have the right amount of chassis space to fit in powerful internals, a bigger display, and a bigger battery. There is also enough room for good airflow, so those components aren’t throttling when performing demanding tasks.
Therefore, they should be at the top of your list of options if you need something that is easy to travel with yet more than capable of tackling heavier workloads.
Best 15-Inch Laptops of 2023
Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (2023)
Ask any laptop aficionado, and they will tell you that there is really no need for a large MacBook Air. Why? Because it kind of defeats the purpose of the line in the first place. Air MacBooks were designed to be lighter and more portable companions of the Pro, so why make it big?
Factor in the fact that the 15-inch is practically just a larger MacBook Air 13-inch, complete with the same internal specs as its smaller sister, and it just feels like pure gratification.
However, it is hard to deny that in its own right, the MacBook Air 15-inch (2023) is a great laptop. It has a stunning design, a brilliant screen, and probably the best speaker setup you will find in a laptop. Anyone hoping for a screen real estate upgrade in their notebook will be overjoyed, especially since it really is not all that much thicker or heavier than the 13-inch.
On test, it appears that the MacBook Air 15-inch (2023) appears to have been consciously designed to offer the same level of performance as the 13-inch model. It performed really well, with macOS Ventura feeling fast and responsive. Apps such as Apple TV+, Chrome, and Photoshop opened quickly and without any slowdown. And Apple’s promise of up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing and 18 hours of video playback is roughly accurate.
Factor in the fact that it’s pretty fairly priced, and it is hands-down the best 15-inch laptop in 2023.
Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360
Last year’s Galaxy Book Pro 360 was a welcome surprise after a rocky few years for Samsung’s laptops. And while the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360’s verbose name is a mouthful, just about everything else about this laptop is brilliant.
Samsung fixed two complaints from last year with a brighter display and stronger hinges while keeping the rest of the experience at the same high level. The new 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P processor is more than enough power for this paper-thin 2-in-1. And with nearly 12 hours of battery life, it should easily get you through a full day.
The 15.6-inch display in a 3.1-pound laptop remains remarkable, and its 2-in-1 form factor makes it a dream laptop for traveling. Not only that, but it more than doubles the Geekbench performance of its predecessor. This means that unless you have incredibly demanding needs, this vanishingly thin laptop has more power than you will likely ever need.
If portability isn’t a priority for you, there are certainly more powerful 15-inch laptops out there. But if you need to carry your laptop around with you, the versatility, size, and performance of this laptop are hard to beat.
Lenovo Legion S7
According to Lenovo, the Legion S7 is ‘the world’s lightest RTX laptop’. And while this might not necessarily be true – the ROG Flow Z13 from Asus is lighter, for example, though it is a tablet/laptop hybrid – at just 1.9kg, the Legion S7 certainly feels impressively light. Especially when compared to other gaming laptops.
It has some great specs, including up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, which will play games at medium to high settings. The build quality is excellent as well. On test, it couldn’t quite manage to hit 60+ fps on ultra in the latest games, but making some adjustments such as lowering texture detail to medium helps it hit that 60fps mark. And its general CPU performance is strong, tackling general tasks from web browsing to video calls smoothly with no UI delay.
The only thing that might disappoint here is its heat management. The thinner chassis clearly doesn’t allow for thermal performance on the same level as its chunkier siblings. Still, for a 15-inch laptop, this offers a brilliant mix of value and performance, and the stylish design means you can use this in a professional environment as well.
This makes it equally good for work as well as play, and one of the best 15-inch laptops in 2023.
Dell XPS 15 (2023)
Dell seems to be hitting some sort of ceiling in terms of innovation. Case in point, the Dell XPS13 2-in-1 that goes from being one of the most gorgeous 13-inch laptops to a plain detachable that serves its purpose.
The Dell XPS 15 (2023) seems unfazed by this, however. It keeps that beautiful and tough chassis, gorgeous display, and amazing keyboard and touchpad that users know and love. Although its battery life leaves something to be desired.
Performance-wise, though, it churns out consistently high performance which essentially makes it a great gaming laptop. It even offers ray-tracing capabilities – as long as you have one of the higher configurations, that is. It also performs smoothly with no slowdown or struggle to speak of when you do your usual productivity and creative work.
And throughout all this, its cooling performance will keep up, preventing the laptop from overheating.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (15-inch, AMD)
Microsoft made the right decision by choosing to go with an AMD APU for the Surface Laptop 4. While it didn’t work out quite so well for the Ryzen 3000 series equipped Surface Laptop 3, the Ryzen 4000 processor catapulted the Surface Laptop 4 ahead of the pack in terms of performance and battery life.
The AMD Ryzen 7 4980U CPU offers solid performance when compared to the Surface Laptop’s direct competition. And with 16GB of RAM and a spritely 512GB of SSD storage, you will receive unfaltering multitasking and fantastic read/write speeds to boot.
The Surface Laptop 4’s display isn’t slacking either. It has a sizable 15-inch display affording up to 2256 x 1540 pixels of on-screen real estate. All of that screen space is put to great use thanks to a bright, sharp, and vivid IPS panel that could only be bettered with a switch to OLED.
MSI Katana 15
At first glance, the MSI Katana 15 looks like any other mid to high-range gaming laptop. Its keyboard is adorned with RGB, its chunky chassis suggests power lurking inside, and there is a reasonable amount of ports to suit all your gaming peripherals.
On paper, everything checks out too. A beastly 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor resides alongside 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and a mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. Nothing here seems out of the ordinary, that is until you catch sight of this machine’s price tag.
It is less than $2,000. Not bad at all.
It all sounds a little too good to be true, and in all fairness, it is. The MSI Katana 15 is not a picture of perfection; a lackluster display and a dire battery life are two of its two most prominent flaws. But if all you’re concerned about is getting the most bang for your buck, look no further.
HP Victus 15
The HP Victus 15 is a superb budget gaming laptop and one of the best 15-inch laptops in 2023. For a relatively low price, the HP Victus 15 offers good gaming performance and can handle modern games at medium settings and 1080p resolution.
While it is not the most powerful gaming laptop out there, it does a good job with online competitive games thanks to its speedy 144Hz display. Keep in mind, though, that more graphically-demanding games may chug. Also, its battery life is paltry, only lasting a little over four hours during our battery tests, which means you might want to stay close to an outlet.
At this price though, it is an ideal first gaming laptop, and the solid build quality means kids and teenagers can hammer away at the keys without fear. But if you want something with a bit more power, check out the Razer Blade 15 below.
Razer Blade 15 (2022)
The Razer Blade 15 is staggeringly powerful and more than capable of annihilating any PC game you throw at it. That is while inheriting its predecessor’s thin and compact form factor, gorgeous finish, impressive speakers, a comfortable keyboard, and so on.
12th-Gen Intel CPUs and DDR5 RAM mean that this new model is at the very cutting edge of laptop hardware. It comes out a whopping 62% ahead of its predecessor in multi-core performance in Cinebench R23 and outpaced its predecessor by a huge margin in our 3DMark tests.
However, the downside is that all that power in a slim form factor means that this laptop runs pretty hot. So be sure to give it all the cooling help it needs. Keep it plugged in as well, as it lasted a measly two hours and 49 minutes in the PCMark 10 battery life test.
Nevertheless, this makes it an excellent candidate for creative professionals, especially with a design that keeps things classy and a trackpad that’s among the best you can get on a gaming laptop. If you have deep pockets and you like to keep things stylish, this is the best 15-inch laptop for the gamer in you.
Gigabyte G5
Gigabyte has a solid track record in putting out gaming laptops that are durable and deliver good performance for the asking price. The Gigabyte G5 doesn’t fall from that tree, and it even throws in a bit of portability in there for your benefit. And yes, it still looks like the gaming laptops of old, but if you’re too embarrassed to lug that kind of notebook around, at least this one is rather stylish and won’t give you a back strain.
Most importantly, the performance is pretty hard to beat at this price point – even when you have the 2022’s model with the RTX 3000 graphics. It may not delight you with 4K gaming, but it will deliver handle the most demanding games without dropping to abysmal framerates at 1080p. This is more than enough for most gamers, while keeping calm and collected during the most intense moments.
Just bear in mind that it has struggled with CPU-intensive workloads like real-time strategy games and video editing. It can handle some lower-level creative work or very basic home video editing, but that’s about it.
Asus ZenBook Pro Duo (UX582L)
Two heads are better than one, they say. This is especially true of the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo which employs a pair of 4K displays into a single laptop with the goal of increasing your productivity. Did we also mention that the main display is an OLED panel? So not only do you get crisp detail, but you also get mind-blowing color.
The ZenBook Pro Duo is more than just stunning touch displays, though. It boasts an overclockable Core i9 processor, 32GB of RAM, a seriously fast 1TB SSD, and a powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. That means there’s not much this laptop cannot do.
Second displays on laptops are not a new concept: Asus had quite a library of dual screens in the early 2000s. However, it is currently the only company that does the concept justice. The ZenBook Pro Duo not only gives you an absolutely beautiful 4K OLED touch panel but also gives you a full-length, 4K touch display right underneath.
Overall, the ZenBook Pro Duo is a serious contender for creative and mobile professionals looking for a worthy alternative to Apple.
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