Why Buying a "Windows" Laptop Sucks in 2026

[00:03] I'm going to start with the elephant in the room here, guys. Pricing. In 2023, you could regularly buy ASUS's Zenbook 14, essentially a worse version of the MacBook Air, for $700, appropriately priced. Last year, it jumped by $200 to

[00:20] $900. And right now, it's going for $1,200. Almost double what it was in 2023. And might I add, the Zenbook, like a lot of Windows laptops, has actually received a little sneaky downgrade. You see, it used to come with a

[00:34] high-resolution OLED panel at this price point. Now, it's got a lower-resolution On the Qualcomm side, if you want a Snapdragon chip, that laptop is now $550 more than it was. Sure, this year's version has a much better processor, but

[00:49] that doesn't equate to such a big price hike. But wait, there's more. And it only gets worse from here. If you want a laptop with Intel's new Meteor Lake X chip, those are the ones with the powerful B390 integrated GPU,

[01:04] with the powerful B390 integrated GPU, you can buy Dell's XPS 14 for $2,600. But that laptop, it only feeds its processor 25 watts of power, so it underperforms. Well, how about ASUS's new awesome

[01:17] Well, how about ASUS's new awesome ExpertBook Ultra? That one is $3,600. Air-like devices. So, let's just take a look at how Apple has priced the Air

[01:29] during that same time frame. Well, in 2024, you could buy the 13-in MacBook Air with an M3 chip for $1,000. That's on a sale. And as I said, those sales, they frequently happened. The new 2026 model with the same memory and storage

[01:43] cost $950. Yep, $50 less. Now, in all fairness, I laptop, but realistically, it's better to the tune of, say, $500, not $2,500.

[01:57] What about gaming? In 2023, you could buy the popular Zephyrus G14 with a 4060 buy the popular Zephyrus G14 with a 4060 for $1,200. That's on a regular sale. Right now, you can buy last year's model for 2,300,

[02:11] almost double the price. And beware, in that cheaper 2025 config, ASUS has just sneaked in an older not even the current Zen 5 one. You have to pay more for that. The new 2026 model of the G14, which we are currently

[02:26] reviewing, I'm actually expecting it to come in close to $3,000. What about over at Lenovo? Right now, you can buy last year's Legion 5 with an AMD Zen 5 processor and a 5060 for $1,600.

[02:39] Or you can buy the new 2026 model, which is pretty much identical specs, for $700 more. Razer's Blade 16 with an RTX 5080 and 64 gig memory, that was $3,500 last year. This year, that 5080 model costs $500

[02:55] more and comes with half the memory. Yay! Or if you have $5,500 to spend, you could buy ASUS's new Zephyrus Duo, which only comes with 1 TB of storage.

[03:07] Finally, the Yoga Pro 9i. In 2024, it was the value king of creator laptops. You could regularly find it with a 4060 for $1,600. This year, after a minor redesign, it got a major price hike. It hit the

[03:22] market at $3,100. Double the price. It has since dropped to 2,700, but that's over $1,000 more than it was 2 years ago and $500 more than it was last year. And for that reason, I'm out. The 2026 MacBook Pro

[03:37] 16, which I think is net net a better laptop, that only went up by $200. And for that increase, Apple doubled its storage. The Yoga starting memory and storage, it didn't change with its price hikes. So, surely, given these prices,

[03:52] Windows laptops, they must have gotten better, right? Well, yes and no. There quality. You've got tandem OLED displays and that sort of thing. But, we're still seeing fundamental issues just seep through. It's as if the product managers

[04:07] designing these laptops don't actually use them. Dell's new XPS keyboard is really uncomfortable to type on. It's worse than the keyboard in the $500 MacBook Neo. MSI's Prestige laptops, they continue to just get so hot when

[04:20] under load, they're actually uncomfortable to use. And innovations like ASUS' giant trackpad that you can write on, they're just half-baked. That trackpad's palm rejection is so bad, you end up just having to disable it and use

[04:34] a mouse. And flat out, none of these laptops have chips that can compete with Apple's M5 Pro and Max chips. Now, if you watched sponsored videos paid for by Qualcomm, you may think that their Snapdragon X2 chips are actually

[04:48] But, they really only get close in pure CPU tasks that run natively on their hardware, and many applications don't. Plus, their GPU performance is just way worse than those higher-end Apple chips. And you can't get a Snapdragon laptop

[05:01] with a powerful Nvidia GPU. Now, in the past, Windows laptops have excused their issues by being cheaper than Macs. But, as I just showed you, this is no longer the case. And they can't even use the excuse that the price hikes are all due

[05:15] to the soaring memory costs of AI. Apple's prices, they haven't really gone up. And Windows laptop prices, they've been going up for years. And this really leads me to my fundamental point. The Windows PC model, it just doesn't seem

[05:30] to be working anymore. You've got too many cooks in the kitchen, all of whom are profit-making companies just trying to extract the maximum amount they can from the transaction. This means that you're paying more for your laptop, or

[05:43] you're getting less, or worse still, you're paying more and getting less. Plus, having so many cooks in the kitchen, it just ends up with massive coordination issues. Take Lenovo's brand new Yoga Pros, really solid laptops, but

[05:56] they aren't able to put their Nvidia GPUs to sleep when you pull out the power, and this just leads to bad battery life. In laptops with less players in the mix, this doesn't happen. Now, this model could work if each of

[06:09] these companies excelled in their specific focus area, but that's not what's happening here. Nvidia is giving you 50 series GPUs that are barely better than the 40 series ones that we had 4 years ago. And the worst offender

[06:22] had 4 years ago. And the worst offender by far is Microsoft. I want you to name three improvements to Windows over the last 10 years that has actually made your life better in some material way. I bet you can't. Instead, what Microsoft

[06:36] has done is spend that money that they're collecting from your laptop purchase to push their own agenda. They've implemented new pop-ups to try to pester you to switch to Edge. They've implemented new reminders to subscribe

[06:48] to their paid services, you know, Xbox, OneDrive, and Office. They've also implemented deeply Copilot in Windows and Office, which nobody asked for and has just made the whole experience of using them worse. And if you want to

[07:00] just use that computer that you've paid for and not sign up for an online Microsoft account where they can advertise to you, sorry, they got rid of Creating products that benefit Microsoft and not their consumers, that's been in

[07:13] their DNA for decades. I mean, who remembers the Zune? It was for all those folks who were like, "I really wish Microsoft had a cheaper, crappier version of the iPod." There was no fundamental customer need that this

[07:25] product was filling. And that goes for the laptop space, too, where they recently tried to make AI laptops a thing. Basically, they created this BS designation that certain laptops were AI ready because they had a Copilot key in

[07:38] the keyboard and an MPU capable of very basic levels of performance. Microsoft hopped on stage lecturing us how AI was going to shift to the edge and just run on your laptops, and you absolutely had to upgrade. It was nonsense, and

[07:53] everyone saw through it. Most useful AI requires performance and storage far in excess of what these laptops have. That's why it runs in the cloud. Microsoft was really only doing this so that you bought a new laptop and they

[08:07] earn more money from the copy of Windows that it came with. But it wasn't just failed experiments like Copilot Plus that Microsoft has been spending their money on. A good chunk of it goes towards controlling the industry, and

[08:19] they are not alone here. AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel, they are notorious for doing this, too. You guys might not know this, but when a YouTuber is sponsored, even brand who sponsored the video, the marketing dollars, they often come from

[08:33] Microsoft or one of those chip manufacturers. And this allows those secondary companies to control the message. Perfect example. In a sponsored YouTubers, they normally aren't allowed

[08:46] to tell you what AMD has as an alternative. And this is why we we here at this channel, we don't allow sponsored videos that look like reviews. message is Qualcomm's recent Snapdragon X launch. They spent a ton of money, and

[09:01] for those dollars, you got to hear YouTuber after YouTuber claiming that moment. I'm willing to bet that Qualcomm put that language in their sponsorship brief. But it gets worse. These

[09:15] marketing dollars, they aren't just used for sponsorships and advertisements. They're also used to control the laptop design itself and the product's name. For years, gamers have asked, "Why do high-end gaming laptops, they only come

[09:29] with Intel and not AMD?" I've heard from pretty good authority that Intel provides incentives to exclusively use their chips. On the product naming side, Intel wants their laptops to just stand out. I'm pretty sure that's why Lenovo

[09:42] has given their Intel laptops a special designation of Aura Edition. >> As a consumer, does a product named the Yoga Slim 7i Ultra Aura Edition, does that appeal to you? Probably not. As you can see, this is a complete mess. You've

[09:57] charging more for their products so that they can influence the industry and experiment with new products and services that benefit them and not you. Meanwhile, the laptop manufacturers that know their customers the best, they have

[10:10] their hands tied behind their backs. And all of these shenanigans, we're paying for through inflated laptop prices. Guys, I've only scratched the surface here. We've got the ridiculously confusing names that Intel, AMD, and

[10:24] Nvidia call their chips, which just leads to buyer confusion. Someone buying a Core i7 processor thinking it's faster than a Core i5, but because it's from a different series, it isn't. You've got laptops with 85 W 5060s and others with

[10:38] 115 W ones. Again, you could just buy the wrong laptop not knowing its GPU is crippled. In fact, product naming is so confusing in the Windows space, you've got nefarious third-party sellers scamming people, branding these crappy

[10:53] old Windows laptops as gaming ones even though they don't even have a GPU capable of gaming. They can do this because it's not obvious from the components naming what the laptop is capable of. And this leads me to my

[11:06] wrap-up. Apple's model works, and the sooner manufacturers try to grab back power from Microsoft and these component manufacturers, the better. I'm really worked up here, guys, but I am going to end on a positive note. You have the

[11:20] companies. They will listen to us if we couple of things that you can do. Firstly, it's never been a better time to buy a MacBook. If you are open to

[11:32] buying one, definitely give them a look. Secondly, there are absolutely great Windows laptop deals happening right now. You just need to know where to look, and that is exactly why we've built bestlaptop.deals to demystify this

[11:44] Over there, you can clearly see the price history of a laptop right across actually a good price or it's just one of those bogus fake sales. We also call out if a laptop's current price qualifies it as a good or great deal,

[11:59] and we list older laptops that are great deals and are still available there, Perfect example, the 2025 Acer Predator 16S with a 5070Ti and 32 gig of memory. It has regularly been going on sale for around $1,700, which is just a killer

[12:15] deal. Sure, it's not perfect. It has dreadful battery life, but for that price, guys, it is a steal. To help you out, I'm going to list a bunch of the best 2025 laptop deals down below this video. Finally, there are manufacturers

[12:29] like Framework who have strong Linux support. Linux, it's absolutely not for everyone, but it is getting better. We're actually planning to do a Linux deep dive and see whether it's finally suitable for more people. If you're a

[12:41] to directly support our Linux testing effort, we do have a Patreon and YouTube membership tier. All the money we raise will go to more Linux coverage. And with that said, if you like this video, get subscribed. It definitely helps me know

[12:54] me. Or, you can just post a comment down below. Till next time, go do something awesome with your day, and I will catch you later.