Verge's top laptop picks: MacBook Air M5, Neo, Zenbook A16
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- MacBook Air 15 (M5) is The Verge's top overall pick, praised for its 13-hour battery, best-in-class haptic trackpad, and loud speakers, though it now starts $100 higher than the M4 generation.
- Apple's $600 MacBook Neo — $500 for students and teachers — is recommended as a budget standout, with an A18 Pro chip that beats most Windows laptop chips in single-core performance despite a smartphone-derived design.
- Microsoft's Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Pro 12-inch get the nod for Windows users, with Snapdragon X Plus chips and all-day battery life, but Microsoft recently hiked Surface prices due to industry-wide 'RAMageddon' memory shortages.
- Asus's Zenbook A16 at $1,699.99 is called the lightest 16-inch laptop around at 2.87 pounds, packing a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip, 48GB of RAM, and a 120Hz OLED — more memory and storage than a comparably priced 15-inch MacBook Air.
- The Verge flags a recurring caveat across every Windows-on-Arm recommendation: Snapdragon X chips still have app and game compatibility issues that competing Intel and AMD silicon do not.
- Asus's Chromebook Plus CX34 is the guide's pick for kids and light browsing, with a sharp 1080p display and a 1080p webcam featuring a physical privacy shutter.
Why it matters: Shoppers between $600 and $1,700 get a clearer hierarchy than usual: Apple's M5 Air dominates for mainstream buyers, while Windows-on-Arm machines offer longer battery and OLED screens at a price-and-compatibility trade-off. Microsoft's recent Surface price hikes, blamed on industry-wide RAM shortages, have narrowed the value gap with Apple — while the $600 MacBook Neo puts a sub-$1,000 Apple laptop with a mechanical trackpad within reach of students for the first time.
