The best PC hardware and software of 2024/2025 [Video]

The titans of the PC industry slugged things out in 2024, jockeying for dominance in the new AI 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.

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