The battery life is good for the size—it lasted all day in most of my testing. The keyboard is quite nice to type on. The oversized trackpad sometimes got in my way, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker; you just have to watch where you rest your palms, or you might right-click by accident.

This laptop has plenty of ports, including two USB-C (one 4.0, one 3.2 Gen 2), three USB-A, a microSD card reader, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and the aforementioned OcuLink port for docking or external graphics if you have an eGPU lying about. It’s hard to complain about that list, especially with the ability to plug in a graphics card when you need it, though I do wish the two USB-C ports were on opposite sides of the laptop.

System76’s Pop!_OS Linux has long provided what I consider one of the best Linux experiences out there. The Cosmic Desktop and the custom apps System76 ships with it provide that “just works” stability you need to use Linux daily without even noticing you’re using Linux.

Best for Performance

The Kubuntu Focus Zr 1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a powerhouse, but at 15 inches by 12 inches, over an inch thick, and weighing in at 8 pounds, it’s not a laptop you casually cart around. But if your work requires serious computing power, be it machine learning (running TensorFlow), local LLMs, big data crunching workflows, or high-end video editing, the Zr Gen 1 delivers power in spades.

Inside, the Zr Gen 1 features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX with 24 cores, an RTX 5090 graphics card, 24 GB GDDR7 RAM (expandable up to 192 GB), and two SSDs (one 1 TB and one 2 TB; you can have up to four drives, one of them being a PCIe Gen 5×4 NVMe). Along with the discrete GPU, it has an integrated one as well, so you can turn off the discrete card to maximize battery life. I spent about 90 percent of the time with the discrete card off and just turned it on when editing photos and video.