As much as we love the wild and wacky gadgets that make CES the chaotic showcase it’s been every year, we know very well we won’t be using many of those newfangled contraptions that litter in every square foot of the show. We mean, how many of the tech in our CES 2025 best gadgets list do you really see using any time soon? You know what we’ll use a lot, though? Laptops. And CES 2025 has a whole lot of them.
Every year, the trade show plays host to the newest laptops that showcase the most cutting-edge chips, displays, and other PC technologies. This year is no different, as booths showed off laptops equipped with AMD’s newest CPUs, Nvidia’s latest 5000-series GPUs, ultra-bright OLEDs of all sorts, and even a rollable display. Even more impressively, all these powerful laptops came in slim and lightweight profiles that make them ideal for packing in a bag and taking on the go.
These are the best laptops of CES 2025.
Lenovo ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition
Unlike the ThinkPads we’ve known through the years, this one doesn’t have familiar elements like the carbon fiber frames or the Trackpoint nubs, with Lenovo opting for a more minimalist keyboard layout with tighter key travel, precise tactile feedback, and a spill-resistant build. We like the grooved bottom panel, which makes it easier to grip, as well as a bar-shaped hub housing all the fans and ports that runs the entire width of the laptop’s body, allowing it to maintain an ultra-slim build throughout the rest of the device. That hub, apparently, also makes it easy to access the battery or SSD for service or repairs.
Available with either 14-inch or 15.3-inch OLED displays, the laptop can be equipped with Intel Core Ultra 7 processors, Intel Arc Xe2 integrated graphics, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and up to 2TB of storage. As an Aura Edition, this is equipped with software that make it easy to transfer files between the laptop and your phone, among other features.
Asus Zenbook A14
Asus is positioning this to be a MacBook Air competitor and it definitely succeeds in that regard. From the 2.2-pound weight and durable ceramic-aluminum chassis to the 30-hour battery life and gorgeous 14-inch Lumina OLED display with 3K resolution, this is one sleek-looking machine. It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor that really helps it lengthen that battery life, all while delivering a variety of AI features, along with up to 32GB Of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of SSD storage, so it should outperform the MacBook Air pretty easily. We’re especially fond of the extra touches like the tap-and-slide touchpad, Wi-Fi 7, smooth hinge action, and generous selection of ports.
Lenovo Thinkbook Plus Gen6
Most laptops in this list are just pretty standard machines. They have bright displays, powerful CPUs, and all the hardware they need to accomplish their productivity and gaming tasks. This laptop is here, on the other hand, due to the uniqueness of its rollable display, which can expand upwards from 14 inches to a 16.7-inch panel, giving you over two inches of additional vertical screen real estate. The OLED display also boasts a 120Hz refresh rate, 400 nits of brightness, and 100 percent DCI-P3 color accuracy, all while offering a split-screen mode that allows you to use the expanded panel as a dual-monitor display. It runs on Intel Core Ultra CPUs and Intel Arc graphics.
Razer Blade 16
The 2025 version of the Razer Blade is the outfit’s thinnest laptop ever, coming in with a shell that’s just 0.6 inches thick. Because thinner laptops also tend to run hotter, they equipped it with a new vapor chamber cooling system that uses dual fans and 0.05mm exhaust fins, so it should be able to manage heat pretty well. At the top end, it gets a 240MHz OLED display, an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5090 CPU, and up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM, which sound incredibly impressive for something as slim as a productivity computer from just a couple years ago. It’s housed in a unibody chassis cut from a single block of aluminum, with a six-speaker system and all the fancy LEDs you expect from a Razer device.
MSI Titan 18 HX AI
MSI’s most powerful laptop, this gaming beast features a stellar 18-inch Mini LED display with a 3,840 x 2,400 resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a 120Hz refresh rate. At the top end, it can be outfitted with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, and up to 96GB of DDR5 RAM (yep, you can get nearly 100GB of RAM into this thing), all while getting two NVMe M2 SSD slots (one Gen4 and one Gen5). It’s got two USB-C/Thunderbolt slots, three USB-A 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.1 slot, gigabit Ethernet, and an SD card slot, as well as a 99.9Wh battery, which is the largest capacity battery you can carry on a plane. If the standard Titan 18 HX AI lacks the gamer panache you like your laptops covered in, you can also opt for the Dragon Edition, which throws in an acid-etched hand-drawn dragon art on the lid. Just be aware, this is going to be pricey, as configurations should start at around $5,000.
Acer Aspire Vero 16
If you like your gadgets with more sustainable credentials, then the Vero 16 just might become your favorite laptop at CES 2025. The chassis, for instance, is made primarily from post-consumer recycled plastic and a bio-based material crafted from oyster shells, while the entire touchpad is made from the same ocean-bound plastic. We love the textured appearance of the finish, which, the outfit claims, is designed to resemble warm cement, while the chassis is designed to be easily opened with a screwdriver, which should make it easier to make repairs. It runs on Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, Intel Arc graphics, up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and 2TB of M2 SSD storage.
Alienware Area 51 Laptop
Alienware is bringing back their Area 51 branding and the new lineup includes this powerful gaming laptop. Available in two display sizes, 16 and 18 inches, it runs on an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, 64GB of RAM, and 12TB of SSD storage at the top end, although slightly less powerful options should also be available. It’s a tad thicker than your modern ultraportable, which is not unexpected for an Area 51 device, but that extra size does accommodate an intricate thermal architecture that helps it move air through the system without making too much noise. As you may have expected, it’s got a bit of that spaceship aesthetic that Alienware’s always slapped onto their gaming devices, so nobody’s going to mistake it for a productivity computer at any point.
ASUS ROG Flow Z13
The only convertible laptop on the list, this gaming laptop puts the computing hardware behind the monitor, allowing it to be used as a standalone tablet. What makes this interesting, though, is the use of AMD’s Strix Halo APUs, which claims 84 percent faster rendering performance than the Apple MacBook M3 Pro and 2.2 times more performance in AI workloads than an RTX 4090. Is it really that powerful? We don’t know, but it’s going to be interesting to benchmark this thing. Features include a 13.4-inch IPS panel with 2.5K resolution, up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 70Wh battery.