Best Apple Laptops

MacBook Air: Experts' favorite laptop, now with "insane" battery life

Professionals now recommend Mac laptops more often than Windows models because many of the traditional advantages of Windows no longer apply. Today, you can run Windows on any Mac since they all use Intel processors, and independent tests and surveys show that Macs are more reliable and less vulnerable to virus attacks than other laptops. Perhaps most important, Apple has lowered the price of its Mac laptops so there's not much of a cost difference if any. For more on Mac versus PC, see our Buyer's Guide.

Once the pretty underachiever of the Apple family, the 13-inch MacBook Air (Est. $1,100 and up) has matured into experts' favorite laptop, period. "If you're a normal person shopping for a laptop, you should buy a MacBook Air," says Nilay Patel at TheVerge.com after testing the newest 13-inch Air.

It looks, feels and works just like last year's Air -- in other words, pretty fantastic, experts say -- except for its mind-boggling battery life. Apple estimates 12 hours, but critics say that's just being modest. Patel cruises the web for an "insane" 13.5 hours, CNET plays videos for 14.5 hours and PCMag.com manages an "astonishing" 15.5 hours on one charge. That shatters the record for laptops without an external battery, considering that 7 hours is usually considered excellent.

Performance is still as snappy as ever, thanks to the Intel Core i5 Haswell processor, speedy 128 GB flash drive and 4 GB of RAM. Or you can step up to a Core i7, 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of flash storage. New Intel HD Graphics 5000 even makes for nice casual gaming.

It's no longer the lightest laptop around, but the MacBook Air's 3-pound shell tapers to just a fraction of an inch thick, and testers barely notice they're carrying it. Reviewers say its sturdy yet beautifully crafted design, terrific keyboard and multi-touchpad, and rock-solid reliability still set the gold standard. The Air packs plenty of power for most users, experts say, but if portability is paramount, the 11-inch MacBook Air (Est. $1,000 and up) performs nearly identically for a half-pound and $100 less.

If you need more power and a better screen, professional sources recommend the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display (Est. $1,500 and up) . Its ultrasharp, 2,560 by 1,600-pixel screen sets a new standard: "There are no superlatives left for Apple's Retina displays," Patel says. Colors pop, text looks beautifully crisp, and images gain new depth and detail. You simply can't get a display this good on any Windows rival. Only the higher-res 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display (Est. $2,200 and up) beats it.

The 13-inch Pro with Retina Display outweighs the Air by a half-pound, but it does pack more muscle under the hood, including a faster Core i5 processor that's upgradeable to Core i7 and 8 GB of RAM. Haswell is expected to hit the Pro line in early September, bringing a major leap in battery life to 7.5 hours from the current 6.5.