Laptop buying guide: screen, battery and how much memory you really need
OLED or Mini-LED, 16 or 32 GB, and why our battery figures differ from the box. A no-nonsense laptop guide.
Start with how you will use it. For email, browsing and documents, 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB drive are plenty. For photo editing, coding or lots of browser tabs, go for 32 GB.
Screen first, then specs
You look at the screen all day. OLED gives perfect blacks and vivid colour; Mini-LED gets brighter for sunny rooms. A 120 Hz refresh rate makes scrolling feel smoother.
Real battery life
We test every laptop with the same mix of video calls, browsing and documents at a fixed brightness. That is why our figures are usually lower, and more honest, than the box.
