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The titans of the PC industry slugged things out in 2024, jockeying for dominance in the new Al era blossoming before our eyes.
It was most evident in laptops: Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips kicked off Microsoft's Copilot+ PC era with long life and surprisingly competitive performance, only to be rivaled by Intel's Macbook-killing Lunar Lake chips months later. AMD, meanwhile, focused on bringing high-octane speed to Copilot+ PCs, zigging for oomph while the others zagged to endurance. With competition flourishing, PCWorld expects to review over 120 laptops by the end of the year, by far a new high water mark!
But laptops weren't the only category laser-focused on innovation and performance. This year, cutting-edge monitors became the norm, Thunderbolt docks and SSDs embraced newer, faster standards, Intel and AMD launched overhauled desktop CPUs, gaming handhelds got truly competitive, and the software that runs on all that hardware kept getting better and better, too.
You love to see it. With such a gluttony of choice, it became harder than ever for PC hardware and software to impress us. Few products earned our rare Editors' Choice award. And only the very best of the best grace this list.
Without further ado, this is the Best PC Hardware and Software of 2024, as chosen by PCWorld's editors. Congratulations to the winners -with a field this crowded, they ve definitely earned it.
BEST LAPTOP: DELL INSPIRON 14 PLUS
The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus is one of the most well-rounded laptops we've ever tested here at PCWorld. You're getting strong performance, phenomenal battery life (17 hours on a single charge!), and a vibrant 14-inch 1400p display to boot. It hits nearly every mark and is clearly the best laptop for most people. The aesthetics are a little bland, sure, but the hardware capabilities and marathon battery life more than make up for it and a laptop that fits in with the crowd isn't a bad thing. -Ash Biancuzzo
BEST DESKTOP CPU: RYZEN 7 9800X3D It's been a dour year for CPUs- AMD's initial Ryzen 9000 lineup (fave.co/4efXMpv) offered minimal performance uplift and suffered from (since fixed, fave. co/40zlutp) Windows-related performance woes, while Intel's radical new Core Ultra chips (fave.co/4hACpC7) wound up being slower than their predecessors in gaming. But...