"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Originally an IBM design, the ThinkPad is pretty tried and true as far as work laptops go. Even down to the icon TrackPoint navigational nub in the middle, the ...

As of November 2025, I think the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4) is the best MacBook for most people. It's a sleek-as-ever notebook featuring impressive performance, open-lid support for two external displays, a great 12MP Center Stage camera, and an extremely reasonable starting price of $1,199 (making it $100 cheaper than its M3 predecessor ).

Third-party developers are getting into the act, too. Adobe's most important creative apps, like Photoshop and Lightroom, are available in Arm-native versions. There are beta x86 versions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, and Acrobat that run just fine, especially after recent improvements to the emulation subsystem.

These settings aim to strike the best balance between battery life and performance on your Windows laptop. While they won't give you the best battery life or the maximum performance that Windows' power-saving or best performance profiles do, it will get you through the day without compromising the experience or much of the performance.