Best Big Laptops
Looking for more screen? These 17-inch models from Asus, HP, and LG come recommended by CR's testers
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The allure of a large, 17-inch laptop is easy to understand.
A roomy display makes it easier to browse the web and edit large spreadsheets and photos, while providing a more immersive streaming video experience for watching YouTube or Netflix.
Those extra inches also make it easy for manufacturers to find room—and power—for souped-up components, such as a dedicated graphics card that can tear through complex tasks like rendering high-resolution video or seamlessly sifting through years of digital photos.
Those high-end components make these larger laptops killer gaming machines, too, allowing you to play the latest hit titles at high settings without breaking a sweat.
Compared with more popular 13- to 15-inch laptops, a laptop this size may not be ideal for a road warrior or a college student who bounces from a dorm room to a café to class throughout the day. But that doesn't mean it's too big to carry from your home office to the living room or take on a flight.
Every year Consumer Reports buys dozens of laptops at retail stores, testing them in our labs to see exactly how they perform. That's how we can independently confirm processing speeds, how long the battery lasts, and how comfortable the keyboard is to use.
What follows is a list of 17-inch laptops that pass muster with our testers.
This 17-inch LG laptop weighs 2.9 pounds, which is about 2 pounds lighter than its nearest competitor. As a result, you can easily take it with you across town to the local coffee shop or back and forth to your office without thinking twice.
With an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of solid-state storage, the LG Gram 17 packs more than enough power to handle more demanding tasks like editing 4K video, which many smartphones today can shoot.
Aimed at more casual gamers, Dell’s 17-inch G7 laptop is among the best large laptops in our ratings.
The Dell has an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, 256GB of solid-state storage, a 1TB traditional hard disk drive, and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. As our testers noted, this laptop will make short work of even the most demanding tasks, whether that’s editing and rendering high-res video or playing new games like “Wolcen” at high settings.
The standard drawbacks of being so large and powerful apply here, too. Battery life while doing intensive tasks isn’t great at only 5 hours, and the laptop weighs a hefty 7 pounds.
Another gaming model, the Acer has an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, 512GB of solid-state storage, and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. It's not quite as powerful as the Dell G7 17 but will hold its own when it comes to just about anything you’d want to use a laptop for. The Acer also offers impressive value because it’s typically available for $800 or less.
Our testers also highlighted the portability of this laptop, considering its large size; you don’t have to be chained to a desk. It weighs well under 6 pounds, which is good for a laptop this big, while its battery lasts as long as 9 hours under a light load and 6 hours with more intense use.
Non-gamers can get a lot of mileage out of this Intel Core i7 gaming laptop. The 16GB of memory and 512GB of solid-state storage make it possible to tackle everything from merely watching video to editing it. And the 17-inch display runs at 144Hz (vs. the typical 60Hz), which means tasks such as moving the cursor with a mouse and dragging browser windows across the screen are faster and smoother.
On the flip side, this model has a battery that lasts as little as 5 hours under a heavy load. That's not unusual for a large laptop, but it does mean you'll want to keep a power cord handy.
Inside this Asus model there’s an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, 512GB of fast solid-state storage, and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. Those are all high-end components that combine to deliver excellent performance, even for complex tasks like editing and converting video and rendering 3D models.
Our testers described it as being a good—though not great—travel companion because it weighs 5 pounds (lighter than some competitors) and has a battery that lasts a little more than 5 hours under a heavy load and more like 7 hours under a light load.
