Samsung's budget Galaxy Z Flip is here, but it's not what I was hoping for
After all, I have a soft spot for anything and everything that flips, and would love to be able to recommend something that doesn't cost $1,000. However, I'm slightly disappointed now that the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is here. It might turn out to be an impressive option from Samsung, but I'm not sure that it's a proper Fan Edition launch, and here's why.
If I wanted a Galaxy Z Flip 6, I would have bought one
When I first saw the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, my mind went to an unexpected place. Honestly, the only thing I could think about was the old clip that went, 'On all levels except physical, I am a wolf.' Now, swap the idea of being a wolf for being a Galaxy Z Flip 6 — that's the same thing, right? Alright, jokes aside, that seems like the method Samsung used to create its latest Fan Edition launch.
Everything about the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is just last year's flip-style flagship, just recolored (in boring black or washed-out white) and paired with a downgraded chipset. It has the same 3.4-inch folder-shaped Flex Window, the same 4,000mAh battery, and the same dual camera setup that we've used and trusted for years now. And, in one sense, I suppose it's a perfect example of Samsung deciding not to fix what isn't broken.
Samsung knows how to make a great flip phone, but how do I recommend a new one when the previous generation is still so readily available?
However, I don't think it's making the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE stand out, either. I've touched on it once, but Motorola's Razr success comes from giving each model a distinct price point. The base Razr (2025) is meaningfully cheaper, with specific cameras, a slightly pared-down cover screen (at least in terms of materials), and a distinct battery and charging setup — it has differences that justify its lower price. Then, if you want to upgrade, there's the Razr Plus and Ultra, both of which add to the experience without making you feel like you're upgrading from a previous-generation launch.
In Samsung's case, the problem with making the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE share so much of the Flip 6's DNA is, well, you can still find a Galaxy Z Flip 6 without looking too hard. You can get its extra 4GB of RAM, its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor, and its much better color options, all while probably saving some money. Sure, you might miss out on one more year of software updates (the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE ships with Android 16 rather than Android 15), but you're still covered well into the 2030s.
Maybe we've just forgotten what Fan Editions are all about
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Like I said at the start, I could be wrong about Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE. It could turn out to be a great little flip phone, thanks in part to its similarity to the previous-generation flagship. If that's the case, then awesome — go out and buy one. However, my real problem with that idea is that Samsung's standard approach for Fan Edition launches isn't just copying and pasting what worked before. Instead, it usually finds ways to shuffle in new features to make a nearly flagship-grade phone, yet makes it feel meaningfully different.
Take the Galaxy S24 FE, for example — a phone that offered enough of an identity at a sub-flagship price point that I was willing to recommend it over the base Galaxy S24. Where the Galaxy S24 was small at just 6.2 inches, the Galaxy S24 FE was large, offering a 6.7-inch 120Hz display that matched its half-sibling on all levels except for peak brightness. Samsung's more affordable option packed a bigger battery, too, jumping to 4,700mAh over the Galaxy S24's 4,000mAh. Sure, the flagship model had a better processor and more flexible cameras, but that's precisely what you'd expect from a $150 (or more) upgrade.
Samsung's Fan Edition lineup is built on value, and I'm just not sure I can find it on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE.
Samsung's Fan Edition tablets follow the same formula, and I think it works just as well. I touted the Galaxy Tab S10 FE as all the tablet Android fans need, and I continue to stand by it every time I slot it into my backpack for a trip. Instead of going large, the Galaxy Tab S10 FE goes small, choosing a 10.9-inch, 90Hz LCD over a 12.4-inch, 120Hz AMOLED and axing the second rear camera sensor — something I never used in the first place. There's also a smaller battery to match the smaller frame and a lower-tier Exynos 1580 chipset under the hood. Pair it up with a $350 price delta, and it's easy to see where this Fan Edition tablet has room to stand on its own.
The other thing that all of those other Fan Edition launches have going for them is the benefit of time. They've never had to compete directly with their flagship counterparts, instead launching a few months later as more of a mid-year upgrade. So, when the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE launches on the same day as the Galaxy Z Flip 7 with just a $200 price difference, it's easy to see why the flagship option is getting all the headlines. It has a better chipset, a more exciting Flex Window, extra RAM, and a bigger battery, and the price difference won't feel very big when you can keep it in your pocket for as many as seven years.
As much as I'd like to steer true Galaxy fans towards another Fan Edition launch, and as much as I want Samsung to keep hunting for value in the sub-flagship segment, I'm just not sure that the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE is the phone to get me (or anyone else) there.
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Android Authority
3 minutes ago
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CNET
3 minutes ago
- CNET
What Makes Cheap Earbuds a Real Value? Here's How I Find the Hidden Gems
A few months ago, Final Audio, a boutique Japanese brand, sent me its new, relatively low-priced ZE3000 SV noise-canceling earbuds to test. I was curious: Would this be a hidden gem among the dozens, even hundreds, of budget headphone options out there? Even as a full-time reviewer of these products, I can't keep up with all of them. So I did what I always do. I charged them up, then swapped out the default medium-size tips for the largest set of included ear tips and hoped I'd get a tight seal, which is crucial for getting optimal sound quality. If I can't get a tight seal, I'll swap in a pair of my go-to tips from other earbuds brands I've tested (Sennheiser and Bowers & Wilkins tips are a good match for my ears) and note that in my review. In this case, Final Audio's largest tips worked well. No issue there. I ran through some of the usual tracks I use for evaluating headphones, an eclectic mix that includes Spoon's Knock Knock Knock, Athletes of God's Don't Wanna Be Normal, Orbital's Dirty Rat, Bjork's Hollow, Drake's Passionfruit, Pixies' Vault of Heaven, Florence and the Machine's Choreomania, various Foo Fighters songs, plus some tracks from Car Seat Headrest's The Scholars, CNET home audio editor Ty Pendlebury's favorite new album (it is well recorded). The ZE3000 SV lacked a few features, like sensors that pause your music when you take a bud out of your ears and resume playing when you put it back in. The noise-canceling and voice-calling performance weren't top-tier. But the earbuds seemed well-tuned and pleasant-sounding, with a natural quality to the sound, with good depth and bass punch. They were also nicely designed. Overall, they seemed like a step up from many budget earbuds I've tested. Then things took an unexpected turn. I noticed that an online earbuds sleuth had claimed that the ZE3000 SV weren't unique and cost more than they should. Some Reddit users picked up on his post and were critical of Final Audio. But were the accusations really true? And had the company actually done anything wrong? As I dug deeper into this little mystery, I got a revealing glimpse behind the curtain of how budget headphones are made and how any given brand can distinguish its low-cost models from those of rivals. Below, I'm going to fill you in on how companies make their budget earbuds and on the trade-offs involved, from features to cost to who does the actual work. I'll also give you an in-depth comparison of designs from budget earbuds mavens Earfun and Soundpeats and my detailed, hands-on impressions of the Final Audio ZE3000 SV and a lower-cost model that on the surface shares some distinct similarities. A daunting array of choices As consumers, we face dizzying choices when it comes to audio products. In-ear or over-ear. Wired or wireless. High-end or entry-level. Headphones or portable speakers. Often we end up with a small collection across some or all of those categories, some that we use every day, others that sit in a drawer for long stretches at a time. My colleague Katie Collins has written that everyone needs three different types of headphones, each one serving a different purpose. But that can add up to a chunk of spending, so we're also always on the lookout for a bargain. Decent quality without breaking the bank. In premium territory, there's Apple, the dominant player in the true-wireless earbuds market with its category-defining AirPods and Beats products. According to market researcher Canalys, in the first quarter of this year, it held a 23% share of that market worldwide, and in North America, its share is more than double that at "over 50%." The AirPods Pro 2 and other higher-end noise-canceling earbuds from Bose, Sony and other big-name audio brands start at around $250 (list price) and go all the way up to $400 or more. A lot of people can't afford those prices, or maybe just don't want to spend that much on a device that's pretty easy to lose. I've lost or damaged only a handful of earbuds in over 10 years of testing them, but my kids sure are skilled at misplacing or destroying them. While the number of true-wireless earbuds shipped each year continues to grow — 331 million devices in 2024, up 12% from the year before, according to Canalys — Apple's share has been drifting downward, with some of the biggest growth coming from non-established audio brands, many of them based in China, that make "cost-effective" earbuds that come in at half the price of AirPods or less — sometimes much less. I can check out only so many budget earbuds and headphones, so I tend to keep coming back to a handful of value brands that produce affordable products that punch above their weight, so to speak. These include Earfun, Anker (Soundcore), Soundpeats and Baseus. I've also dabbled in QCY, Acefast, Oladance, Tranya, Tozo and Tribit, which I think makes better Bluetooth speakers than earbuds and headphones. This is just a small fraction of the no-name audio brands you'll find on Amazon, some of them with nonsensical names like TSYUCXH, KZ ZSN and Rorsou. I've had a few folks suggest I try the $29 Beribes headphones, which have accrued 45,000 user reviews on Amazon and look eerily similar to the Tozo HT2, which I've tried and which aren't bad for around $35. There is no shortage of budget earbuds confronting consumers. This is just a small sampling. David Carnoy and Zooey Liao / CNET Prices for budget headphones and earbuds have remained fairly steady, with only slight increases amid President Donald Trump's shifting tariff threats. A couple of value headphone companies I spoke with said that if tariffs stay at their current levels, they didn't anticipate prices rising significantly on their models, which suggests profit margins on budget buds may be a little better than I thought. Once you spend a little time in this world — or too much time, in my case — you start to notice that a lot of the products look and sometimes sound pretty similar. There are AirPods clones with stems, and stemless "dot-style" buds like the Final Audio ZE3000 SV. You also encounter plenty of "sports" models with ear hooks that mimic the ear-hook design of the Beats Powerbeats Pro and newer Powerbeats Pro 2. Occasionally, you'll see near-exact copies of popular earbuds like the AirPods, but for the most part, these so-called knockoffs simply — and sometimes rather blatantly — follow the design cues of popular models. Earbuds design: Off the shelf versus from the ground up Diving into budget earbuds waters can be a murky experience. While cheap earbuds continue to improve, not all are created equal, and I still run into a lot of low-cost buds that sound pretty poor. By that, I mean they lack clarity and definition, distort at mid to higher volumes, and have middling noise canceling and voice-calling performance. That said, it's becoming increasingly easy to find budget models that meet the criteria of being good enough and that offer a good fit along with decent sound quality and overall solid performance. Getty Images / Zooey Liao / CNET Some value products are developed from the ground up (from scratch) by a company's own team of designers and engineers. But the reality is that the majority of earbuds on the market are based on off-the-shelf designs or "pre-developed product packages" crafted by Chinese factories. That means many earbuds you'll find on Amazon, while looking slightly different, are based on the same "package." The challenge for me as a reviewer is trying to discern what's different about all these similar models, especially when the changes from generation to generation are incremental at best. What I find interesting is that now even major audio brands like Bose are doing their own versions of pre-developed product packages, licensing out their designs and technology to other brands to help recoup development costs. Earlier this year, Skullcandy released its Method 360 ANC buds with Sound by Bose, which were developed in collaboration with Bose and lean on the technology and tuning that Bose developed for its own earbuds. I described them as "$100 Bose earbuds in disguise" because the buds themselves share a very similar design aesthetic to Bose's QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, though their charging case resembles the one Skullcandy uses for its $60 Dime Evo earbuds. "Sound by Bose allows us to bring our audio technology to products in markets, categories or price points where we don't currently offer solutions," says Nick Smith, president of audio technology business and chief strategy officer at Bose. We've also seen a proliferation of cheap earring-like clip-on buds. That happened after Bose popularized this design with its $300 Ultra Open Earbuds and factories in China went into overdrive to create cheap knockoffs. While clip-on earbuds first started appearing in Asia several months (or even longer) before the Ultra Open Earbuds were released, Bose not only vastly improved upon the design and performance of early clip-on models, but it also did a bang-up job marketing them as a "totally new kind of wearable device." Since the clip-on open earbuds don't feature active noise canceling and their open design compromises sound quality, their performance bar is lower, making it easier for value brands to create compelling alternatives to the Bose buds for much less. Once new clip-on models upgraded their drivers and added their own versions of Bose's flexible hinge, enhancing their comfort level, the gap narrowed significantly between Bose's premium clip-on model and those from far cheaper value brands. For example, Baseus' new MC1 Pro cost around $65, and while they aren't as good as the Bose, they're not that far behind and cost way less. "To offset acoustic limitations, emerging vendors are collaborating with audio labs to optimize sound quality, with some products nearing traditional TWS [true-wireless stereo] standards," Cynthia Chen, research manager at Canalys (now part of Omdia), said in a statement. She noted that open earbuds are the fastest-growing segment of the true-wireless earbuds market and are accelerating the shift from functional audio devices to value-driven, lifestyle-oriented products. Open buds are "where technology meets fashion," she said. Two popular budget earbuds with similar specs: What separates them? Over the years, I've become well-versed in Anker's Soundcore buds (of which there are many) and Earfun's offerings, and awarded the EarFun Air Pro 4 an Editors' Choice award in 2024 as a value standout. Most companies don't want to delve too deeply into the details of their product development. When I asked Anker's PR rep about how it developed its products, he came back with: "We respectfully decline to comment." CNET composite: Zooey Liao/Joe Maldonado; Getty Images, Amazon Earfun, however, was more forthcoming. Despite its products looking like they might be based on pre-developed product packages, Helen Shaw, the company's marketing manager, tells me they aren't and that EarFun creates "ground-up" products based on its original designs with custom molds, circuit boards and various components. "All EarFun products are independently developed, with its own R&D team, and the core R&D team has previously served the world's first-line audio brands, such as Sony, JBL and Philips," Shaw says. "Self-developed mode" adds more time to the development process, and it typically takes a year or more to complete a product. As an example, she said that its next-gen Air Pro 4 Plus would be available in September or October, a little more than a year after the Air Pro 4 was released in August 2024. "This is relatively rare among the current cost-effective headphone brands," Shaw tells me. "Other brands basically find factories to directly OEM, change the logo and change the ID." ("OEM" is industry jargon for companies that do the actual manufacturing of products on behalf of the brands that put their names on the final products.) By doing so, they can save manpower and capital investment and can quickly go to market (in six months instead of a year, for instance). But the disadvantage is that they don't tightly control the production process. As a result, there can be quality control issues, with imperfections creeping into the products, which can lead to performance problems; sound quality can vary from earbud to earbud even though they're the same model. EarFun doesn't release quite as many earbuds as Anker does each year, and its priciest true-wireless earbuds, the Air Pro 4, list for $80 and usually sell for closer to $60. In contrast, Anker's new-for-2025 Liberty 5 buds list for $130 and typically get discounted to $110 or a little less. The Liberty 5 are a tad sleeker and more premium-looking than the EarFun Air Pro 4 and have improved noise-canceling and voice-calling capabilities. But it's debatable which is the better value and some people will tell you they like the older Liberty 4 Pro, which has dual drivers and sometimes is on sale for less than the Liberty 5. As a reviewer, it gets even trickier when the specs of two models from competing brands look nearly identical. Take for example the new-for-2025 Soundpeats Air5 Pro. They're powered by the same Qualcomm chip found in the EarFun Air Pro 4, have the same size drivers and cost essentially the same. I was curious to hear why each company thought its product was better, given their similarities. EarFun's Shaw was quick to point out that the Soundpeats Air5 Pro lacked a few features that were in its Air Pro 4 buds. These included ear-detection sensors, wireless charging, Google Fast Pair and Auracast, which allows you to tune into audio broadcasts over Bluetooth, say from a TV at your gym. She also said that the EarFun team spent nearly half a year "customizing the ear caps" and included five pairs of ear tips to help ensure a tight seal and comfortable fit for a variety of ear sizes. (I certainly agree that ear tip design is a critical, sometimes overlooked element of earbuds design; I also value ear-detection sensors.) "For the active noise canceling and sound-quality performance, both have the brand's tuning style and different results," she says. "It depends on the user's preference." A Soundpeats representative defended the company's Air5 Pro, citing its potential advantages: "At first glance, the Soundpeats Air5 Pro and the EarFun Air Pro 4 appear very similar. Both are powered by the Qualcomm QCC3091 chip, offer high-resolution audio support, feature similar driver sizes and are available at comparable price points. However, the real-world experience can differ, and this is where Soundpeats demonstrates a clear advantage." Getty Images / Zooey Liao / CNET She said that the Air5 Pro offered up to 55 decibels of "AI-powered" adaptive noise cancellation, compared with 50 decibels on the EarFun Air Pro 4. It also featured anti-wind noise technology, which helped maintain audio clarity in outdoor settings. Combined with the buds' six-microphone setup and CVC 8.0 (Qualcomm's Clear Voice Capture technology with background noise reduction), this added layer of noise control gave the Soundpeats "a slight edge in preserving both audio and call quality in noisy environments." She also noted that from a comfort standpoint, the Air5 Pro were lighter at 4.8 grams per earbud compared to 5.2 grams for the EarFun. Additionally, the Air5 Pro's "ergonomic shape and integrated triangle vent help reduce in-ear pressure, allowing for longer, more comfortable use." Personally, I'd give the slight edge to the Earfun Air Pro 4 due to those extra features. However, from a performance standpoint, they're both at a similar level, with small differences separating them. That makes them challenging to evaluate, especially when everybody has different ears and audio tastes. Online drama and an earbuds origin story CNET composite: Zooey Liao/Joe Maldonado; Getty Images, Amazon Based in Kawasaki City, Japan, Final Audio is geared toward audiophiles and specializes in earphones and headphones that range from its flagship $4,000 D8000 planar magnetic open-back headphones to those aforementioned entry-level ZE3000 SV buds that are priced near the top of the "budget" range at $100. I'm always on the lookout for under-the-radar products that might be a good value, and the ZE3000 SV seemed like they might be a good candidate based on my experience with earlier Final Audio products. Judging from how they looked, I was under the impression that the ZE3000 SV buds were developed from the ground up. Curious to see exactly what their specs were and whether there was any online buzz about them, I did a quick search and came across an eyebrow-raising post in the message boards at entitled Reviewer Poorting finds that $100 ANC earbuds Final ZE3000 SV is almost the same product as $33 Roseselsa Ceramics X. Poorting had published a video on BiliBili tearing down both earbuds and comparing their components. Truth be told, I'd never heard of the Roseselsa Ceramics X earbuds before I saw that post comparing them to Final Audio's ZE3000 SV buds, though it appears the Ceramics X have a small cadre of fans. (Note that they currently cost $38 instead of $33.) "The Ceramics X was released in March 2024 and the ZE3000 SV in December 2024," wrote the message board poster, named Helias. "I guess Final found the same OEM who made the Ceramics X and asked it to produce the ZE3000 SV with minimal modifications. Final saved tons of R&D cost here, and is obviously having a greater profit margin than Roseselsa. However, in terms of performance, I'm afraid I don't see proof that the Final offers much more than the Roseselsa." Hmmm, I thought. I guess the Final Audio earbuds weren't developed from the ground up after all. But I also wasn't convinced they were exactly the same product. I thought there might be more to the story, so I went to Amazon and bought the Ceramics X, then dashed off an email to the Final Audio PR rep. I told her that I liked the ZE3000 SV but came across a post online claiming they were the doppelganger for the much cheaper Roseselsa buds. "Can you ask someone at Final about it?" I inquired. She said the folks there weren't aware of the post until I alerted them to it. As it turns out, the post was correct. The ZE3000 SV, which have become hard to find online (perhaps because Final Audio has held back distribution after becoming aware of the little online drama surrounding them), were based on a pre-developed product package. However, the PR rep said that while the ZE3000 SV and the Roseselsa Ceramics X share a common base and appear visually similar, there are significant differences. The Final Audio ZE3000 SV (left) and the Roseselsa Ceramics X. Numi Prasarn and Zooey Liao / CNET "Roseselsa made only minimal changes, limited to tuning and finish," she says, "whereas Final implemented more substantial modifications in areas critical to sound and performance." She explained that with the rapid growth of true-wireless earbuds and the huge surge in demand, many factories in China were offering earbuds packages that included the molds, circuit boards and various components. This setup benefited factories, as they could sell the same package to multiple brands and recoup development costs more easily. Factories gave brands like Final Audio two options. They could use the package as is, slap their logo on it and essentially white-label it, or the brand could invest in customizing it by changing the mold, structure or internal components. The ZE3000 SV, which wasn't designed to be "as complex as Final's ground-up flagship models," fell into the custom option category. The company opted for "a reliable base package" it had already tested and then made several customizations in line with its sound and design philosophies. For starters, Final altered the look of the buds with an angled top and added its own matte, pebbled finish. On the inside, it swapped in new drivers, redesigned the rear acoustic chamber and programmed the buds with its own proprietary noise-canceling algorithm. It also included its own ear tips, which, as I've noted, are important for a secure, comfortable fit and tight seal. Finally, it developed a dedicated companion app for the buds. What it didn't change was the main circuit board, front acoustic chamber, system software and the exterior shell of the case. Now that I had the Ceramics X, I was able to compare the two models myself. With that matte, pebbled finish and with Final slicing off the top of each bud to give them a little more interesting, angled look, the ZE3000 SV definitely looked a little more premium, though the Ceramics X design seemed just fine to me, particularly considering their low price. I noticed some differences in sound quality and noise-canceling performance. The Final's noise canceling was a tad superior — it did a slightly better job muffling the sound of an HVAC in my kitchen. And although the Ceramics X sounded impressive for its low price, the ZE3000 SV was slightly smoother sounding with slightly better treble performance, slightly more natural sounding mids and a tad more depth and openness. I found the ZE3000 SV's tonal balance more pleasing overall, but the Ceramics X's sound certainly impressed me for the price. As far as their companion apps go, both are adequate, though not great. The Final Connect app offered a seven-band equalizer to tweak the sound, while the Roseselsa RoseLink app had three preset EQs to choose from: Pop, HiFi and Rock. Both buds support the AAC, SBC and LDAC audio codecs for Bluetooth streaming (Android devices support LDAC). They also offer Bluetooth multipoint pairing, allowing you to pair the buds with two devices simultaneously. Both also have a low-latency mode for gaming and video watching. In the end, to my eyes and ears anyway, the Final ZE3000 SV earbuds are a small step ahead of the Ceramics X. You can argue over whether Final Audio's customizations are worth the extra $60 or so — many people would say probably not — but Final had improved upon the base package. It didn't have to spend as much to develop the product from the ground up, but there were still extra costs involved. Maybe prefab isn't so bad Five years ago, the gap between premium and budget true-wireless earbuds was fairly wide. Higher-end components, particularly when it comes to drivers, built-in amplifiers, DACs (digital-to-analog converters) and chipsets impact sound quality, overall performance and feature sets. Getty Images / Zooey Liao / CNET While Apple, Bose, Sony and other big audio brands continue to offer top earbuds that are well-designed and feature not only excellent sound quality but also superior noise canceling and voice-calling performance, you can find plenty of earbuds options between $40 and $100 that are surprisingly decent. The hard part is finding cheaper models that manage to rise above the rest of the budget pack and stand out as under-the-radar gems — whether it's because they offer an overall strong combination of fit and performance, or whether they simply stand out for their sound quality. Budget earbuds are often made in the same Chinese factories that manufacture earbuds from first-line audio brands, and some lower-end models from those known brands likely share some of the same off-the-shelf components found in no-name, value earbuds. Since I test the majority of earbuds for only a few weeks at a time (though some of my favorite models I continue to wear more regularly), it's always hard to tell how reliable and durable some of these cheaper earbuds are and whether they'll truly hold up over time. Alas, with just about whatever earbuds you use, their battery life degrades over time, and eventually the buds have to be replaced (since you can't swap in new batteries), sometimes sooner rather than later, especially if you wear them for several hours a day, as a lot of AirPods users do. There's a tendency to look down on products that haven't been designed from the ground up, even in the land of earbuds where lookalikes are common, whether they're self-developed or not. But my travels through this world have taught me that there's more nuance and variation to product development than I thought. In some ways, what Final Audio did with the ZE3000 is similar to what I did when I added a two-car garage to our house a few years ago. To save some money, I looked at some prefab designs at a place that sold prefab sheds and garages. I could take one of the standard models — there were four or five styles to choose from — or I could pay more to customize the design, adding dormers for the second floor and upgrading the windows and some of the construction materials. I opted to customize it — it cost about 25% more — but it ended up looking significantly better while still costing much less than building a structure from scratch. It also went up remarkably quickly, as a small crew of Amish men from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, erected it in two days. If you saw it, you might not even think it was based on a pre-developed product package. CNET composite: Zooey Liao/Joe Maldonado; Getty Images, Amazon Visual Designer | Zooey Liao Art Director | Jeff Hazelwood Creative Director | Viva Tung Video | Numi Prasarn Video Editor | JD Christison Project Manager | Danielle Ramirez Editor | Corinne Reichert Director of Content | Jonathan Skillings
Tom's Guide
3 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
I test laptops for a living — and these are my 3 favorite laptops of 2025 (so far)
I can't say that 2025 has been a particularly exceptional year for laptops, at least so far. That's not to say there haven't been new developments. After all, the first RTX 50-series notebooks are now available, offering a decent (if unremarkable) performance bump from previous generations. There are also a good number of Intel Lunar Lake laptops that finally give the best Windows laptops comparable battery life to the best MacBooks. I test and review laptops for a living, and these three have stood above the rest. Below, I'll detail what I like about each of these laptops and hope that this can help you if you're in the market for a new notebook, whether it's for work or fun. The MacBook Air 15-inch M4 is currently the main laptop I use at the office, so it instantly makes it on this list. But why this specific laptop instead of something that's either smaller or perhaps more powerful? This MacBook has everything I need to get work done as efficiently as possible. I have the 15-inch MacBook Air M4 connected to an external monitor, with the latter serving as my primary monitor. The MacBook Air M4 serves as my secondary display, which I specifically use to view and respond to Slack messages. Its large screen ensures I don't have to squint when reading messages from my colleagues. Thanks to the M4 chip inside, the Air M4 can easily handle my everyday workload, which often consists of 20 to 30 open tabs and the occasional YouTube video (or two) running in the background. And when I need to head into a meeting room, this laptop is light enough to easily carry around the office. The big screen also means I don't have to make a big compromise when I have to work with a single screen. When it comes to everyday work at the office, the 15-inch MacBook Air M4 fits all of my needs. Plus, it just looks nice sitting on my desk! The MacBook Air 15-inch M4 is one of the finest laptops out there, thanks to its gorgeous display, fast M4-driven performance, sharp 12MP camera and new Sky Blue color. The fact that it costs $100 less than the previous model makes it irresistible. However, those who own the M3 model don't need to upgrade. While they don't get as much attention, I'm a fan of Samsung's laptops due to their general lightweight design and OLED panel options. The last one I tested was the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro, and it exemplifies everything I love about the company's laptop line. The main reason I like this notebook is its gorgeous 16-inch (2880 x 1800) OLED. This screen makes everything pop, so movies and shows look spectacular. It also gets pretty bright for both SDR and HDR content, meaning you won't miss a single detail in videos or on websites. While relatively large, this laptop's lightweight and thin design make it a great travel companion. I also like the generous port selection, which is something you don't always find on machines this thin. Inside, it packs a Lunar Lake chip that gives it plenty of power for everyday work and nearly 12 and a half hours of battery life, which is better than average for a Windows laptop. Even if Lunar Lake isn't as energy efficient as Snapdragon X Elite, Intel's CPU generally plays nicer with a broader range of apps and programs compared to Qualcomm chips. The Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro is a svelte laptop featuring a gorgeous 16-inch OLED display, fast Intel Lunar Lake performance and a spacious keyboard. Though its AI capabilities aren't anything special and it has too many superfluous Samsung apps, the Galaxy Book 5 Pro is still an overall excellent laptop for work and play. I initially had reservations about RTX 50-series gaming laptops since I felt the previous-gen RTX 40-series machines were still good enough for gaming. While that's still true, testing rigs like the HP Omen Max 16 and Alienware 16 Area-51 Gaming Laptop have made me an RTX 50-series believer. This is especially true with Alienware's incredible laptop. The Alienware 16 Area-51 has style and substance. Its Liquid Teal finish gives the laptop a dark iridescent sheen that shifts colors when you view it under different lighting. Combine that with the RGB lighting that mimics the motions of the aurora borealis, and you have a machine that looks like it was created by aliens! Though this Alienware laptop is big and bulky, there's no denying that it's one beautiful piece of kit. Then there's the incredible gaming performance. I got Doom: The Dark Ages to run at 120 fps with DLSS 4 off and 240 fps with DLSS 4 enabled. The latter's fps effectively matches the display's refresh rate. This laptop can even run the graphically demanding Cyberpunk 2077 at 70 fps with DLSS off and 240 fps with the frame-generating tech turned on. You can read my full Alienware 16 Area-51 review for more details (and gushing), but suffice it to say this is my favorite gaming laptop of 2025 right now. The Alienware 16 Area-51 gaming laptop makes a bold statement thanks to its (inter)stellar design, powerful RTX 50-series performance and vibrant 16-inch display. Though it demands a steep price and can be heavy to carry, this laptop delivers an out-of-this-world gaming experience.
