Our top picks↩
1. Best overall
2. Best business
3. Best small
5. Best creative
5. All-rounder
FAQs
How to choose
How we test
The best OLED laptops produce incredible image quality. They manage this by using a special display construction, where each pixel emits its own light. A conventional LCD display, by contrast, relies on a separate backlight to shine through the pixel layer. The end result is that OLED (which stands for organic light-emitting diode) displays have far better contrast.
That makes the best OLED laptops great for HDR viewing, along with more vibrant color and better color gamut coverage. It's also not unusual for an OLED display to cover a full 100% of the demanding DCI-P3 video gamut, something most LCD displays struggle to achieve.
In this article, we've pulled together the very best OLED laptops on the market. They don't just have gorgeous displays, but they're packed with storage and fast-running processors too, so you'll have a great computing experience overall.
Our top picks
Best overall
The Galaxy Book4 Ultra is a premium ultrabook aimed squarely as a rival to Apple's MacBook Pro. Featuring a sleek aluminum ultrabook design, its standout feature is its stunning 16-inch 3K (2880x1800) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate.
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Best business
Focused on business, the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo laptop has a beautiful 16-inch 4K OLED display. This stunning screen offers vibrant colors, high contrast, and sharp details, and covers 137.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. It's also a brilliant performer.
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Best small
The ZenBook S 14 has an awesome HDR OLED screen. Its 14.5in diagonal, 16:10 aspect ratio and 2880x1800 resolution mean it’s tack-sharp and just about large enough to work on while traveling. We found battery life to be very good.
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Best for creatives
In our tests, this laptop flew along, with enough graphics processing power to provide significant hardware acceleration, and the 32 addressable threads speeding up parallel tasks in Lightroom such as exporting and generating smart previews.
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All-rounder
The popular Dell XPS laptop is now available in a 16-inch size, and with an OLED display. It also has a microSD card slot, up to Intel Core Ultra 9 power and up to 64GB RAM. Plus it boasts up to 4TB solid state storage; ideal when ingesting gigabytes of 4K content.
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Best OLED laptop overall
The Galaxy Book4 Ultra laptop is a premium ultrabook aimed squarely as a rival to Apple's MacBook Pro. Featuring a sleek aluminum ultrabook design, its standout feature is its stunning 16-inch 3K (2880x1800) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, leveraging the Korean firm's expertise in display technology.
This lovely laptop also packs in a lot of powerful hardware. If you spec it to the max, you'll get an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD storage, and a Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU for solid gaming and content creation performance. And its large keyboard, trackpad, and selection of ports (Thunderbolt 4, USB 3.2, HDMI 2.0) make it well-suited for productivity work of all kinds.
The battery life is likely to get you through a typical workday, and it supports fast charging. Additional features include a fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi 6E, and seamless integration with Samsung Galaxy smartphones for easy file sharing. The main downside is its high price.
For more details, read our Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra review
Best OLED laptop for business
Focused on business, the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo laptop has a beautiful 16-inch 4K OLED display. This stunning screen offers vibrant colors, high contrast, and sharp details, and covers 137.9% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
It's also a brilliant performer, and no surprise there. After all, this is one of the first laptops with Intel's new Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7-155H CPU and dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI acceleration. Which means it works faster than most mainstream laptops as well as some M2 and M3 MacBook models.
With a premium aluminum design, full-sized backlit keyboard, large touchpad, and a good selection of ports including Thunderbolt 4, and battery life running over 13 hours, this is our top choice if you're in the market for an OLED laptop for business use.
Best small OLED laptop
The ZenBook S 14 impresses right out of the box thanks to its awesome HDR OLED screen. Its 14in diagonal, 16:10 aspect ratio and 2880x1800 resolution mean it’s tack-sharp and just about large enough to work on while traveling, though you’re going to want an external monitor for anything that requires a wider perspective. The screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 600 nits of brightness, and it covers the sRGB and DCI P3 color gamuts. It’s even Pantone certified.
You can choose from several different performance configurations, but a top-end model comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD – plenty of firepower for intensive image or video editing. Despite this, we still found battery life to be very good, with the 72Wh cell inside capable of slightly more than eight hours of constant light work. For more details, read our ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED review.
Best OLED laptop for creative work
If you want a laptop mainly for photo or video editing, you won't just want a beautiful screen; you'll want powerful specs that can keep up. And this laptop delivers both those things.
In tests, our reviewer found that in the configuration we were sent (13th-gen Intel i9 processor, 64GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU), Photoshop and Lightroom flew along, with enough graphics processing power to provide significant hardware acceleration, and the 32 addressable threads speeding up parallel tasks in Lightroom such as exporting and generating smart previews.
The main downside was that battery life takes a hit, which is always going to be the case with seriously powerful laptops. But if speed is more important to you than portability, this is well worth considering. For more details, read our Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED review.
Good all-rounder
The popular Dell XPS is now available with a larger 16-inch display size, and it's OLED. That's very good news for imaging enthusiasts, as this is the finest laptop screen tech money can buy. An OLED display means deeper blacks, wide color gamuts, and excellent contrast ratios as well as HDR support.
The XPS 16 also has a microSD card slot, and up to Intel Core Ultra 9 power, not to mention up to a huge 64GB RAM – and with up to 4TB solid state storage it’s also an ideal machine to have when ingesting gigabytes of 4K content.
Graphical firepower comes from Nvidia's RTX 40-series GPUs, while super-fast Thunderbolt 4 connectivity means you could even supplement the built-in graphics with an external, desktop GPU for more demanding projects – but for quick edits on the fly, the XPS 16 will be more than up to the task.
FAQs
Are there any downsides to OLED laptops?
OLED displays have been known to suffer from 'burn in'. This is where image elements that remain in the same place on screen for a prolonged period – such as the Windows taskbar – can leave a halo-like ghost outline when you switch content to a game or video, and the ghosting may even be visible when the display is powered down. That said, manufacturers do have ways to prevent burn-in, with experience gained from the TV and smartphone sectors, both of which have used OLED displays for longer than in laptops.
What size laptop should I buy?
Laptops are meant to be portable, so it can be tempting to get the smallest, thinnest, lightest machine out there. However, while 13-14" laptops are indeed great for travel, that small screen size can soon feel frustratingly restrictive for longer image/video edits.
The best 17-inch laptops are the exact opposite: great for a more comfortable Photoshop experience, but big and heavy to lug about town. 15.6-16" laptops offer the ideal compromise, and are large enough to house a big battery, too.
What processor (CPU) do I need?
Laptop processors – the 'Intel' or 'AMD' entry on the specs list – are at the heart of a laptop and are a major factor that determines its speed. However, there's a bewildering range of different processor models, with naming/numbering conventions that don't always have a logical connection with their real-world performance.
Generally, Intel processors will be called Core i3, i5, i7 and i9. The bigger the number, the faster the performance. However there can be crossover between models, as some faster i5 processors can outperform slower i7 chips – great! AMD has adopted a similar number convention to Intel, with their CPU line-up called Ryzen 3, 5, 7 and 9 processors. Again, the higher the number, the faster... usually.
We'd recommend a Core i5 / Ryzen 5 CPU as the minimum for image or video editing, with the highest number of processor cores you can afford: the more cores, the more a processor can work on at any one time. Just bear in mind that the faster the processor, the more power it'll consume, and the faster your battery will drain. For an idea of how different processor models will perform, check out this handy chart from PassMark.
How much RAM (memory) do I need?
The amount of RAM determines how fast your laptop can be 'fed' with work. You can have the fastest processor in the world, but if it doesn't have enough RAM to feed it the data to process, the computer will have to fall back on the hard drive/SSD for temporary data storage, leading to frustrating slowdowns.
There's really no downside to having more RAM, so buy the most you can afford. 16GB is a bare minimum when editing larger files, with 32GB being a safer amount for a future-proofed editing machine. And don't rely on being able add an extra stick of RAM yourself further down the line. Many new laptops have RAM permanently soldered in, so the amount you spec at purchase is the amount you're stuck with.
How much storage does a laptop need?
Laptops now pretty much always use an SSD for data storage; they're way faster than an old mechanical hard disk drive. As with RAM, buy the largest capacity you can afford. However storage can be easily increased after purchase with one of the best external hard drives or best portable hard drives.
The only thing to bear in mind with this upgrade path is the speed and extent of your laptop's connectivity. Generally most new laptops will have at least one USB 3.2 / Thunderbolt 3, or USB 4 / Thunderbolt 4 connection. Either will be plenty fast enough to run an external hard drive to the max. Generally, the larger the laptop, the more physical USB ports it'll have. That's useful when connecting multiple peripherals, like an external keyboard, mouse and secondary monitor.
Should I buy a graphics card for my laptop?
Many budget laptops lack any dedicated graphics processor, relying instead on the main processor (CPU) to do double duty. This can actually be fine if you don't do any gaming or much video encoding. But if you are a keen video editor, a dedicated graphics processor will likely speed you your encoding times. This doesn't need to be a top-end model, as these have most benefit for gaming. We'd recommend a mid-range model like a NVidia GeForce 3050 or 3060, as this should give you a healthy amount of encoding speed without costing a fortune.
How to choose the best OLED laptop
When selecting the best OLED laptop, prioritize aspects like display quality, battery life, performance, and portability. Ensure the OLED screen offers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and high contrast ratio for an immersive visual experience. Opt for a laptop with a powerful processor and ample RAM to handle demanding tasks efficiently. Consider battery life for prolonged usage, and look for a lightweight and sleek design for portability. Additionally, check for features like SSD storage and connectivity options to suit your needs.
How we test laptops
When examining a laptop, we thoroughly analyze its internal hardware components, construction quality, ergonomic design, performance across various tasks, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with its intended audience. While we consider the needs of an average user, we also prioritize the viewpoints of photography and videography enthusiasts, placing emphasis on display quality and color accuracy. Utilizing tools such as monitor calibrators, we verify the screen's adherence to manufacturer specifications, alongside employing software benchmarks like GeekBench to evaluate processor and graphics card performance.
