Buying guide: The best premium laptops you can pick up right now

I recently received the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro and the Dell Latitude 9450 2-in-1 – both Intel-based laptops – for review. But in the last month or so, the laptop landscape has turned upside down thanks to Microsoft, Qualcomm and even Intel.

Let’s take a closer look at these two machines before diving into the competition in the premium laptop segment.

Dell Latitude 9450 2-in-1: Great choice for business users

The Dell Latitude 9450 is a laptop that can keep up with your fast-paced lifestyle and prioritises form over function. It’s geared toward business professionals and nails the brief.

It’s got the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U (Intel’s first AI chips) processor, a 360-degree hinge, and a 14-inch touchscreen display. The Dell Latitude 9450 is eye-catching. It’s simple and stylish and will suit any working professional who purchases it. It’s got shiny metal edges, a soft matte finish on the lid, and a smooth and velvety keyboard. With a stiff hinge (allowing for no wobble), the laptop is built to last knocks and any wear and tear.

Also read: Sony ULT Tower 10 review: This big party speaker delivers the goods

At 1.5kg, it’s a little hefty when compared to other ultraportable laptops even though Dell claims it is the smallest 14-inch laptop. As I unboxed it, I realised it was sleeker than I expected.

The next thing you notice is the gorgeous touchscreen display. The 14-inch IPS display with a QHD+ (2,560x1,600) resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, narrow bezels and anti-smudge coating, has good viewing angles and gets bright enough (peak brightness of 500 nits). The only downside is that the refresh rate is only 60Hz. The speakers are loud, they don’t distort and will make every movie night that much more enjoyable. While there are limited ports, Dell does sell a compact dock, in case more are needed.

The backlit keyboard is a joy to type on. The touchpad is smooth and good, and the performance is top-notch. The battery life was strictly average as I was getting just under six and a half hours on average on a single charge.

With all that said, the Dell Latitude 9450 2-in-1 is a great choice for business users who want some flexibility with their devices. It’s an impressive device overall but costs a bomb. At ₹2,95,000, one might have to think twice before purchasing it.

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro: MacBook-style Windows experience

While I liked the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra, the Galaxy Book4 Pro is even better. It’s lightweight, blazing fast, and lasts long on a single charge. Available in both 14-inch and 16-inch formats, the Galaxy Book4 Pro has improvements across every aspect.

The 14-inch version that I reviewed comes with an OLED display (touchscreen with 3K resolution), weighs just 1.2kg, has a thickness under 12mm and has the same all-aluminium chassis as its predecessor. It may be Macbook-inspired, with its clean and minimalist approach, but it does stand out in the Windows crowd. It comes in just one Moonstone Grey colour variant.

The Galaxy Book4 Pro features an array of ports: two Thunderbolt 4 ports along with a full-size HDMI 2.1 port on the left. On the right, there is the headphone and mic combo jack, a microSD card slot and a USB 3.2 Type-A port.

With class-leading displays in their smartphones, Samsung is no slouch when it comes to its laptops. It’s got a “Dynamic AMOLED 2X” panel on the Galaxy Book4 Pro with a 2,880x1,800 resolution, a refresh rate of 60Hz and 120Hz, an anti-reflective coating, and thin bezels on all four sides. There’s excellent colour reproduction and great viewing angles, and it gets bright enough (peak brightness of 500 nits) for outdoor usage.

The crux of the Galaxy Book4 Pro is in the form of the Meteor Lake (Core Ultra 7 155H) processor and the improvements in graphics that it brings. Load up any application that makes heavy use of the GPU and you’d be mighty impressed. It features Intel Arc graphics. From editing photos in Photoshop to smoothly running games like Forza Horizon 5 (with over 60fps at medium settings), the laptop can do it all despite not having a dedicated graphics card.

The other benefit of the Meteor Lake chip is the improvement in battery life. The chip features two low-power (LP) efficiency cores that help in reducing loads and conserving battery when not being overworked. This translated into a solid all-day battery life for me. I was constantly getting over 9 hours on a single charge with my light-to-medium workload of watching YouTube videos, streaming Spotify, writing articles, browsing and researching on multiple Google Chrome tabs, but no gaming.

Meteor Lake does bring some AI magic here. Adobe’s suite of apps - Photoshop, Premiere and Lightroom - are the first to natively take advantage.

The keyboard that sits flush with the body was comfortable to type on with good feedback. But it was the trackpad that disappointed me. The clicks were not evenly registered across the trackpad. The 1080p webcam was pretty good, the speakers were loud and didn’t distort (the MacBook Air’s and the HPs do feature better speakers).

The Galaxy Book4 Pro provides a great MacBook-style Windows experience. It’s got great battery life and superb performance for the most part. This laptop isn’t meant for gaming, and with the speakers a tad bit underwhelming, it’d be best to invest in an external speaker as well.

Overall, it’s a thin, sleek and high-quality Windows laptop with a solid build. It isn’t cheap at ₹1,39,990 (16GB RAM/512GB SSD) and ₹1,71,990 (32GB RAM and 1TB SSD). The laptop shows just how far Intel’s Meteor Lake processors have come.

The competition

It will be a few months before the first batch of Meteor Lake laptops are released to the public. But at least, for now, we have some Snapdragon Elite/Copilot PCs that have launched worldwide. There’s also the very popular, but also expensive, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops from Apple. Let’s quickly run down some of the best options on the market presently.

Surface Pro 11/Surface Laptop 7: Microsoft announced these laptops back in March and they’ve now gone on sale. They’ll become available in India over the next few months.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED: With an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor and a vibrant 14-inch OLED (2880x1800 resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio) display, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is no slouch. When I reviewed it, I had called it a “premium laptop with no compromises”. It also has a design that stands out.

Dell XPS 14/16: The Dell XPS 14 & 16 laptops feature futuristic designs (read: invisible trackpads) and powerful components. They aren’t cheap, with the XPS 14 starting at ₹1,99,990 and the XPS 16 coming in at a starting price of ₹2,99,990. They both come with AI-based features and a Touch Function Row. The XPS 16 comes with a gorgeous 16.3-inch 4K+ OLED display (with a 120Hz refresh rate) and can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, and up to a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. The XPS 14 meanwhile has a 14.5-inch OLED display (with 3.2K+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate) that supports up to Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. Although on the more expensive side, the XPS series from Dell has always been one of the mightiest in the industry.

HP Spectre x360 14: One of my favourite 2-in-1 laptops got a fantastic refresh for 2024. It comes in both 14-inch (which I reviewed) and 16-inch variants. The one change you need to know about is that HP finally went from a 3:2 aspect ratio to the more versatile 16:10. The other change is that there is a brand-new 9MP camera (which can capture 4K video).

Acer Swift Go 14: The Acer Swift Go 14 is a thin and light laptop with an Intel Core Ultra processor, integrated Intel Arc GPU, a 14-inch WQXGA+ OLED display and AI chops. It’s available for ₹84,990, It’s a great way to get into the AI game without breaking the bank. It’s good for both content creation and consumption. The dull design and strictly average speakers might be a put-off for potential buyers.

Asus Vivobook S15: The Asus Vivobook S 15 is one of the first Copilot+ PCs launched in India. With its extremely long battery life, a gorgeous 15.6-inch OLED display (3.2 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate), and the all-important Snapdragon X Elite, the Vivobook S 15 is a behemoth on paper. There are some things to ponder concerning the laptop: a 16:9 aspect ratio (as opposed to the popular 16:10 aspect ratio) a lack of a touch screen, and a non-haptic trackpad. Still, it’s a laptop that offers plenty of promise.

HP EliteBook Ultra and HP OmniBook X AI PCs: HP was another launch partner for Microsoft and its Copilot+ PCs. The HP EliteBook Ultra and HP OmniBook X laptops are now available in India. The enterprise and business laptop, the HP EliteBook Ultra, comes in at ₹1,69,934. The HP OmniBook X, meant for retail customers, has a starting price of ₹1,39,999. Both laptops feature a Snapdragon X Elite processor, a 14-inch touchscreen (with 2.2L resolution), 16GB of RAM, 1 TB of internal storage and a 5MP web camera. The two laptops are nearly identical. The only difference between the two are the colour options and the HP Wolf Security software (loaded onto the EliteBook Ultra and not the OmniBook X).

Both machines come with a 14-inch touchscreen with 2.2K resolution and offer 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of internal storage. There’s also a 5 MP web camera with support for Windows Hello (face unlock).

MacBook Air/MacBook Pro: We all know Apple and their in-house Apple M3 chip (ARM-based system on a chip (SoC). If you’re not a fan of Windows or are a video editor, then the MacBook Pro is worth a look.

More on Microsoft and Qualcomm’s Copilot+ PCs

Microsoft kickstarted the wave of AI PCs with the Surface Pro 11 (optional OLED display and a new and improved Surface Pro Flex keyboard) and the Surface Laptop 7. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series processors that power these laptops have a ton of AI power under the hood. There’s a neural processor included with these laptops that powers the AI capabilities. As part of Windows 11, these laptops will run over 40 AI models.

Besides the two Surface products, all major laptop partners - Samsung, HP, Acer, Asus, Dell and Lenovo - have announced Copilot Plus PCs of their own.

Let’s talk about Intel’s Lunar Lake

It was only in December of 2023 when Intel introduced the company’s biggest architectural shift in 40 years with the Metro Lake processors, also known as Core Ultra.

As of June, there are just a handful of Core Ultra laptops on the market. Despite that, Intel isn’t playing the waiting game. They’ve gone ahead and revealed Lunar Lake, their upcoming chip, that will once again overhaul the formula. It’s a massive update for the company, and they are directly taking the fight to Qualcomm and Microsoft.

The new Lunar Lake chips triple the size, quadruple the AI accelerator performance and promise up to 14 percent faster CPU performance with the clock speed. Even more impressive is the 50 percent improvement in graphics performance and 60 percent better battery life vis-a-vis Meteor Lake chips. The icing on the cake is that Lunar Lake laptops will not have a separate memory stick. The chips bake 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5X memory into the package itself. This is done to reduce the overall power consumption.

Sahil Bhalla is a Delhi-based writer. He posts @IMSahilBhalla.

Also read: JBL Live Beam 3, CMF Buds Pro 2 review: How TWS cases are becoming smarter