As much as some of us may deride the MacBook Pro‘s awful keyboard, annoying Touch Bar and over-reliance on USB-C connections, its balance of screen quality, weight, battery life and performance had no Windows-based peer devices for a long time. But now that OLED displays are beginning to hit the market that balance is tipping a little. OLED delivers true blacks, which means high contrast, as well as a wide gamut of colors and high dynamic range that can rival or outperform the MacBook’s Retina Display.
The 16-inch update to the MacBook Pro changes things up a bit. It’s still the size of the 15-inch, but slightly heavier, and ditches the butterfly-switch keyboard in favor of a slightly better scissor-switch-based one. It’s basically the same, however, still with no 4K options. On the other hand, like its predecessors, its performance still beats similarly configured Windows systems on a lot of tasks.
Read more: Best MacBook Air alternatives for 2020
But even an entry level MacBook can stretch the limits of someone’s budget, and even those who have set aside a nice chunk of cash might want something a little more customizable. No one can deny that one appealing thing about Windows laptops is the variety. Even when trying to imitate the offerings of a MacBook (heck, or even an iPad or iPad Pro) there are all sizes of far less expensive Chromebooks, as well as 14- and 15-inch laptops that are slightly smaller and lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but not quite as small as the 13-inch MacBook Air, across the price spectrum. Plus, we’re seeing lots of experimentation with multiscreen designs.
Read more: Best 15 inch laptops for 2020
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With longer battery life than the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the more flexible feature set of a two-in-one, the Spectre is a great choice for work and play. The backlit island keyboard is a pleasure to type on, making it great for typing on. Software-wise, the HP Spectre comes with Windows 10 Home 64, a 10th Generation Intel Core i5 processor and 256 GB SSD storage. Users are also a fan of its trackpad.
Read our HP Spectre x360 13 (late 2019) review.
Read more: The best premium midsize laptops of 2020
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If you’re drawn to a MacBook Pro for its featureless-slab aesthetic, Razer’s your Windows go-to, especially now that the company’s offering a model in Mercury White. It’s priced similarly to the entry-level MacBook Pro model and should provide a similar level of performance. But the white version of the Razer only comes with a 1,980×1,080-pixel screen and is limited to an i7-8750H processor, relatively small 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM. It also weighs a half pound more.
If you’re willing to go with black, you can get a 4K, 100% Adobe RGB screen and a GeForce RTX 2070 for $2,900. That’s more expensive than the comparable MacBook configuration (around $2,700), but it’s a much better gaming laptop. Battery longevity is pretty meh, however, and with the 4K screen it’s even worse.
Read our Razer Blade 15 Advanced review.
Read more: Best college laptops for 2020
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Dell’s is a 13.3-inch laptop that’s so trimmed up that the body is basically the size of an older 11.6-inch laptop. Being part of the company’s XPS line means both its chassis and components are top notch for its class, so you’re getting great battery life and performance, too. Power delivery is via USB-C and it comes with a MicroSD reader and headphone jack.
Read our Dell XPS 13 (2019) review.
Read more: Best laptops, desktops and tablets for designers and creatives in 2020
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Cheaper than even the MacBook Air with the 15-inch footprint of the Pro, but with a higher-resolution display and two-in-one flexibility, Chromebooks are one class of options with no Apple analog. But if everything you do is cloud-based, the C630’s sleek look and feel at a Chrome OS price makes a much more cost-effective alternative. It comes with 8 GB RAM and could even serve as a gaming laptop for more casual gamers.
Read our Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 review.
Read more: The best gaming laptop performers of 2020
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This lacks the elegant design of the MacBook, but if you need raw power in a desktop replacement, this 17-inch behemoth can be configured to outperform the top-end MacBook Pro. Marketed as a gaming laptop, the Area-51m can be outfitted with a desktop-class i9-9900K processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080, 64 GB RAM and 3TB storage (2TB SSD). That will run you $5,150, though.
Starting at a more modest $3,330, you can still buy a desktop-class octa-core i7, RTX 2070, 16 GB RAM and 1TB SSD. That should still deliver comparable performance to a $4,500 MacBook, and you can add a boatload of connectors. It performs well as a gaming laptop too. The Alienware only has an 1,920×1,080 display, which is kind of sad. It’s intended to be run while plugged in — with two AC adapters — so it doesn’t matter that a 4K display would sap the already sad battery life.
Read our Alienware Area-51m review.
Read more: Best two-in-one PCs in 2020 for when you need a laptop and tablet in one
Originally published last year. Regularly updated as we review new products.
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