Using one of the most powerful laptops can be a game-changer if you run resource-intensive software as part of your job. Whether you’re rendering complex 3D scenes, editing 8K video, retouching hi-res photos or any other demanding tasks, a laptop that’s lacking in RAM and graphical power can really slow you down. So we’ve picked out some heavyweights that should be able to handle whatever you through at them, including a powerful gaming laptop.
Nowadays, the most powerful laptops can almost stand up to burly desktops while having the advantage of allowing you to work anywhere, be it at home, in the office, or on the move. Our experts have road-tested many of the laptops on this list in rigorous detail, performing both standardised lab test and putting them through their paces with demanding creative software (our guide to how we test laptops can tell you more).
If you don’t need quite so much power, we also have round-ups of the best computers for graphic design and the best laptops for architects that also include very capable machines. We also have a guide to the best laptops for writers, which includes more economic options. But for now, let’s take a look at the most powerful laptops money can buy today.
The quick list
The MacBook Pro 16-inch with the new M3/M3 Pro/M3 Max chip is the new upgrade to a laptop that was already a beast. Sleek design, great connectivity, industry-leading battery life and a stunning screen make this our top pick as the best powerful laptop for most creatives.
Read more below
2. MacBook Pro 14 (M2 Pro)
For a more portable and slightly cheaper device, the MacBook Pro 14 offers the same power as its larger sibling in a more compact form. Battery life is the only thing you sacrifice other than screen space when going for the smaller size, and we find this whizzes through demanding workloads.
Read more below
3. Asus ProArt Studiobook OLED (H7604)
The ASUS ProArt Studiobook OLED is the most powerful Windows laptop for creatives, and combines powerful internals with a top-rated graphics card and that stunning OLED screen ASUS has become so famous for in recent years. It’s not cheap, but with this amount of grunt, it shouldn’t be.
Read more below
The most powerful laptops in full
Why you can trust Creative Bloq
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
The most powerful Apple laptop
The MacBook Pro 16-inch M3 (2023) is the most (and best) powerful laptop you can get for all your creative endeavours, if you’re willing to pay top price and you want a big screen (there is a 14-inch M2 model from 2023 if portability is more your priority, and a 13-inch version from 2022 as well). This will also give you the latest M3 Pro or M3 Max chip which was released at the end of 2023, and a whole lot of RAM and storage options.
Our review noted that “the Macbook Pro M3 Max takes a significant step up over its older siblings, with a large leap in performance, and a beautiful display in a sleek package.” It also retains Apple’s famous battery life, as this laptop will deliver up to 22 hours of life on a single charge. No small feat for a powerhouse like this.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 came out in October 2023 alongside its 14-inch sibling and boasts a large SSD, lots of graphical prowess and RAM that can range from 16 to 96GB based on your specific needs. The base model will take care of almost all everyday creative work, while the top-end model and its biblical RAM is ready for editing studio movies or work on the most intensive effects and rendering available to humanity.
Like the M2 model, the newest MacBook Pro retains a slew of beloved ports, such as the HDMI and memory card slots, alongside newer features such as ProMotion and HDR (High Dynamic Range). The MacBook Pro M3 (2023) is not only one of the most powerful laptops on the market, it’s also still one of the most comfortable to use.
Read our review of the MacBook Pro 16-inch (M2, 2023) to find out more about why we this laptop’s power blows us away.
The most powerful smaller Apple laptop
If you want a smaller, more portable laptop (and a slightly lower price) but still a ton of power, then the MacBook Pro 14-inch (M2 Pro/Max, 2023) is almost identical to the larger model above. Again, even the base configuration has more than enough power for most tasks, and both performance and battery life are outstanding (although batter life is naturally lower than on the 16 due to the smaller battery size.
We tested the MacBook Pro 14 with the same configuration as the 16 above and found it could cope with multi-tasking across various creative software programmes at once, and we could edit 4K video with various sources playing simultaneously without stressing the machine. In short, this is a powerful compact laptop that’s ideal for creative that need a smaller machine that’s easier to carry around.
For more details, read our Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M2, 2023) review.
The most powerful Windows laptop
If you prefer Windows to MacOS, the most powerful Windows laptop that we can recommend is the ASUS ProArt Studiobook. It manages to pack in some of the most powerful components on the market, and then keep them cool enough to extract huge levels of performance. When we tested this powerful but sleek laptops, we found it to be a great option for everything from image editing to 3D rendering. It laughs at 4K video, is enjoyable for playing games, flies through raw image processing and it looks good too.
The Intel i9 processor 13980HX has eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores for a total of 32 threads, and it’s capable of boosting all the way to 5.6GHz. Storage can go up to a massive 8TB osplit across two upgradable SSDs. Connectivity is well catered for thanks with Thunderbolt 4 and USB 3.2 Gen 2, and the customisable ASUS dial can be useful for regular actions like zooming, scrubbing through a timeline or adjusting brush sizes.
The keyboard took a while to get used to for our reviewer, since it fits in a a numberpad into a 16-inch shell, but we liked the feeling while typing. The only real disappointment was battery life (we got only four and a half hours with automatic dimming turned off), and the fan is a little noisy. With this amount of power that’s largely expected, and you can switch between several cooling profiles, and we found the laptop did keep cool. It’s not the slimmest laptop, but again, that’s not surprising either, and this is more of a laptop to use in a workspace like a creative studio rather than for taking on the move.
See our full ASUS ProArt Studiobook OLED (H7604) review for more details.
The best powerful portable Windows laptop
As we mentioned above, the ASUS ProArt Studiobook is a laptop that belongs on a desk in a studio. For a more portable but impressively powerful Windows laptop, we can thoroughly recommend the ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 OLED. A serious player among pro creative laptops, this is a MacBook Pro rival, both in terms of performance and sleek design, even if the lid is a little smuge-friendly.
The design is innovative, with the rear of the lid protruding a little for better air circulation. The touchscreen is gorgeous and there’s an ASUS Dialpad for shortcuts. This isn’t the 3D dial on the Studiobook; instead it’s built into the trackpad and activated (and deactivated) with a click. The touchscreen provides excellent colour coverage and accuracy, earning it a Pantone validation, and vivid brightness (550 nits in HDR mode). The response time is 0.2ms, you can crank the refresh rate up to 120Hz for gaming.
Weighing around 1.6 kilograms, its not feather but it’s compact and we didn’t find it cumbersome to carry to work and back. It does lag behind MacBooks in battery life (we got over 8 hours of video playback but found it hard to get through a full day working without a charge). Other than that, this is a perfect powerful and portable laptop for any travelling graphic designer or photo editor.
See our detailed ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 OLED review for more details.
The best large powerful laptop
If you prefer Windows over MacOS, the best Dell laptops also have a lot to offer. The most powerful laptop in Dell’s range is the Dell XPS 17 (2022). And it also shows that a laptop with a big, big screen doesn’t have to be bulky and impractical to carry. While hiding some seriously impressive components and fitting in a giant 17-inch 4K display, the XPS 17 remains an impressively thin and light device, which means you can comfortably carry it around with you. This makes it an ideal powerful laptop for people who want to work out and about.
When we wrote our Dell XPS 17 (2022) review, we appreciated the power of Intel’s latest 12 Gen CPU and found the laptop could handle processor-intensive tasks without any slowdown or lag. It could quickly and efficiently perform even the most graphically-intensive tasks, like exporting high-resolution images, or rendering video, which keeping cool, literally and metaphorically. Battery life has had a boost over previous generations of the XPS 17, and you can expect up to 10 hours of life with light use: pretty impressive for such a powerful computer.
The most powerful 2-in-1 laptop
If you’re looking for something even more portable than number 3 in our list, the Dell XPS 13 9315 is a 2-in-1 laptop with a great balance of performance, portability, and design. Sitting at 11.50 inches x 7.90 inches x 0.29 inches in size, it can be used more like a tablet or more like a laptop, and the sleek, stylish chassis, powerful processor and stunning 13-inch touchscreen display make it ideal for you’re working at home in different rooms or on the go.
In terms of performance, the XPS 13 9315 is powered by an Intel Core i7-1250U processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. This configuration is powerful enough for most tasks, including web browsing and basic photo editing. It’s not a laptop for gaming, however. The Intel Iris Xe Graphics offers limited performance for anything other than basic games and we found the 60Hz display felt laggy.
See our full Dell XPS 13 9315 review to learn more.
The most powerful laptop for creative pros
The Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro is a great choice for any creative looking for a powerful Windows device that was designed from the ground up to eat through any task you can throw at it, from rendering to 4K video editing. It’s got some seriously powerful hardware packaged up in a stylish design, configurable with a choice of powerful Intel processors, Nvidia graphics cards and bags of RAM, which means it’s great for 3D animation and video editing.
Not only can it run just about every application you throw at it, but it looks incredibly stylish to boot, with a fancy all-white chassis that stands out against the sea of grey and black options currently dominating the market. It’s pretty safe to say that Acer is giving Apple a run for its money with this design.
Perhaps its biggest selling point, however, is its stunning Pantone-validated 4K IPS display. It’s one of the nicest screens we’ve seen on a laptop, and it makes it a brilliant choice for people who want accurate colours and top-notch image quality alongside powerful components. Just note that weighing in at 2.5kg, this is a powerful laptop for a studio or office, not for throwing in a backpack for use on the go.
For more details, see our full Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro review.
The most powerful laptop for gaming
If you’re looking for the most powerful laptop for gaming as well as creative work, the Razer Blade 17 is our top pick. It carries the well-regarded Nvidia Studio laptop badge, thanks to its top-of-the-line graphics card. In our review, we were dazzled by the Razer Blade 17’s ability to handle complex tasks with ease, with barely a whisper of noise, and without any overheating, thanks to 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Its ability to complete the Blender Benchmark in just 7 minutes and 47 seconds was comparable to the power of desktop systems, and we found that it handled creative apps and intensive games, including VR, like a dream.
The Razer Blade 17 does have one Achilles heel, and that’s its battery life. It’s poor even by the standards of high-performance laptops, which tend to be power-hungry at the best of times. In our testing, we found the Razer Blade 17 able to manage 3 hours and 12 minutes of general browsing on a single charge, but this went down to 1 hour and 17 minutes when sculpting in Blender. And when playing Cyberpunk 2077? Just 57 minutes.
It does come bundled with a 280W power brick, which softens the blow a bit, and it’s worth remembering that the Razer Blade 17 has a lot going for it, including its sublime QHD display and its excellent keyboard. If you can cope with the battery limitation, this will be a tempting option. (Also note that a successor, the Razor Blade 18 is also available.
Our full Razer Blade 17 review goes into detail.
The most powerful laptop with rugged design
If you need the most powerful laptop that you can take into the desert or on a similarly extreme mission, the niche Dell Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme might just the latop for you. It’s a laptop that comes in a flight case with an integrated carrying handle and reinforced rubber armour and rubber port covers. It boasts an IP rating of 65, meaning it’s sealed against dust and particulates and can survive low-pressure water jets.
This all makes for a chunky, heavy design for a mere 13-inch laptop. There’s a lot more than just armour on show here, though. There’s a lot of connectivity – the version we reviewed had an an extra USB-C Thunderbolt port along with the USB, HDMI port, Micro SD card reader, optional Express card slot and SIM card slot, all covered by rubber doors that lock closed. And on the bottom, there are doors that allow the SSD to easily be replaced.
The touchscreen works when using gloves and there’s a stylus niftily located on the side of the chassis too. We found the keyboard was nice to work on, although the trackpad is small and not the most responsive, which caused us to push too firmly and trigger touch gestures unintentionally.
As for power, we tested a configuration with Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor and 16GB of RAM. That’s by no means the most powerful setup in this guide, but we found it zipped along well, boosting to 4GHz if required. There is no dedicated graphics processor, however. The integrated graphics do OK providing some hardware acceleration in image and video editing but this isn’t designed for gaming. Battery life was a reasonable seven hours, but then you can also swap in new batteries if you’re out in the field.
See our Dell Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme review for more.
Other options
Immensely powerful, slick and stylish, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 comes with the latest, greatest Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, a powerful processor, a flashy LED display on the lid and a hefty price tag, but that last one is to be expected.
If you can afford it, this will serve as both a gaming and creative powerhouse (just as long as you don’t stray too far from an outlet). There’s a big 2TB onboard SSD storage, and 32GB of RAM that will run pretty much all the most demanding creative software you can find. And when work is done, you’ve got a laptop that’s primed for AAA gaming on max graphics settings.
The Dell XPS 15 is another favourite from the current generation of Dell XPS laptops. It’s still one of the best and most powerful laptops around, not just for creatives, but anyway seeking the best of everything with very little compromise. It’s equipped with the latest 11th generation of Intel processors, a powerful Nvidia RTX graphics card and plenty of RAM configurations to cater the device to your needs.
There are a few issues specific to users’ needs though, as you’re losing the standard USB-A port from the previous generation of the laptop, which might make hooking up any peripherals like a graphics drawing tablet tricky for digital illustrators and sculptors, and many creative types like a larger display to work on. For those needs, you might have to get an external dock. Plus, if you prefer a larger screen, the Dell XPS 17 (number 3 on our list) is a great alternative.
One of Asus’ portfolio of high-end gaming laptops, the Asus TUF Gaming F17 has been refreshed with some of the latest tech. This includes Intel’s latest 12th Gen CPU, as well Nvidia RTX 30 Series graphics, and on the display side of things, you get a 17.3-inch screen with a meaty 144Hz refresh rate. It’s a good choice for content creation tasks like video editing, as well as gaming.
The Intel Core i7-12700H and 16GB of blisteringly fast 4800MHz DDR5 RAM means you can stream and create content with ease. Leverage the full gaming performance of the GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU with a dedicated MUX Switch. It also features an empty M.2 NVMe SSD slot to easily upgrade your laptop storage.
The screen could be better; while it’s very well specced on paper, in person it lacks a little vibrancy, not to mention brightness. Still, this is a really high-performing laptop, and if your work and play habits require a fast-performing computer, it’s a really solid choice.
FAQs
Which laptops are the fastest?
Usually, when looking at performance, we’re talking about the speed of a laptop’s processor, or CPU, which means that if you’re looking for one of the most powerful laptops, you’ll be looking for a device with one of the latest Intel or AMD processors – or Apple’s M2 range if you use a Mac.
But the CPU isn’t everything. Performance is also determined by a computer’s random access memory, or RAM, which is the short-term memory used to handle active tasks and apps. You’ll want at least 16GB, but note that some portable workstations let you expand on the base memory, allowing you to cram more in if you need to run memory-hungry tasks. Meanwhile, a new generation of RAM, DDR5 is set to replace the current standard, DDR4, and laptop makers are scrambling to put this super-fast RAM into their devices, although it’s likely to remain very expensive for now.
If you work in anything visual, you’ll also want a good graphics card, or at least impressive integrated graphics. The best graphics cards now offer features like raytracing for impressive light effects and graphics upscaling.
What is the most powerful laptop in the world?
This isn’t as easy to answer as you might think, despite benchmarks being published for almost every laptop and 2-in-1 device on the market to compare hardware. It all boils down to what you need the laptop for, and how well it’s optimized for that task.
The Dell XPS range leads the way for Windows-based mobile workstations, while the latest generation of MacBook Pro are beloved by fans of macOS, equipped that that powerful Apple silicon M1.
If you need something for gaming then consider laptops equipped with the latest Ryzen 9 5900X processor and an RTX 3080 graphics cards, such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15.
A powerful laptop is nothing without also having a decent amount of RAM too, with gaming laptops sometimes offering 32GB (you only really need 16GB to enjoy even the most demanding games) and workstations from Apple and Dell configurable up to a whopping 64GB.
What should I look for when buying a powerful laptop?
A powerful laptop comes in many shapes and sizes depending on what would best suit your needs. Right off the bat, you should look at naming conventions. Workstations are available as both desktop and mobile devices and are typically optimised for technical, demanding applications. If something is advertised as a workstation then it’s usually been creative for people who need the full power of a desktop PC condensed into a portable machine.
Similarly, gaming laptops and 2-in-1 devices also have their merits, with gaming portables packing fast processors, an abundance of RAM (compared to traditional laptops) and of course, a beefy graphics card, all of which make them well suited for tasks like 3D rendering and video editing.
2-in-1 devices are usually less powerful, but things have come a long way, and the ability to edit high-resolution images using a stylus directly on a convertible laptop shouldn’t be sniffed at. To pick the right device, you should consider what you need it for: are you always in the field, therefore need a lightweight device, combined with great battery life? Or are you happy to drag around a bigger, heavier laptop if you get a 17-inch display and some seriously beefy graphics?
Picking anything on our list is likely going to serve your needs well, but only you know what area you should be paying attention to when buying a new laptop. Photographers and video editors will want to prioritize the display, as well as ports (nobody wants to keep a dongle safe) and a new, capable processor.
3D artists and game designers however might need to make sure the graphics card is capable of running demanding rendering software, and have enough RAM to cope with multiple applications at once.
Also see our pick of the best laptops for video editing and the best 4K monitors for designers and artists. And if you’re going for a MacBook, you might want to choose the best MacBook Pro accessories.
