We're nearing the end of yet another year, which means it's a good time to look back and reflect on what happened throughout 2023. It's good to look back at things with a bit of hindsight and see what was good or not as good, and personally, I want to focus on what I know best: laptops.
And as it turns out, 2023 was a slow year for the laptop market. Looking back, most of what happened was very iterative and boring, and I missed the excitement that manufacturers brought to the table in 2022. That's not to say these were bad products, but even the very best laptops were not exciting ones. Here are a few reasons why I think 2023 was a pretty boring year for laptops.
1 No big new designs
Carrying last year's legacy
One of the reasons 2023 feels kind of slow in retrospect is that it doesn't really feel like we're in a different position than we were in last year. Every major manufacturer that refreshed their most popular lineups this year stuck with the same designs that were used last year. To be fair, most of these manufacturers did have big refreshes in 2022. The HP Spectre x360 13.5 got a facelift, the Dell XPS 13 series turned into three laptops with different designs, and the Lenovo Yoga 9i went from boring to one of the most beautiful laptops on the market. Even the MacBook Air got a much-needed redesign that improved basically everything.
In 2023, none of that changed. Most of these laptops did get updated, but only on the inside, so they look exactly the same as before. Apple did introduce a 15-inch MacBook Air, but it was still pretty much the same laptop we saw last year.
What's most troubling is that devices that did need an update didn't get it. The Dell XPS 15 and 17 have had the same design for many years, and when Dell didn't change them in 2022, I thought for sure 2023 would be the year. But no, we were still stuck with this design that's really starting to show its age. Meanwhile, Microsoft also didn't do anything special with its Surface lineup, and even let go of Panos Panay, the visionary behind the bold products that the company has put out in the past year. We have a Surface Laptop Go 3 with the same low-resolution display and no facial recognition, while the Surface Go 4 is just a business device now. There really wasn't anything too exciting in the mainstream market.
2 All minor spec bumps
Processors didn't make any huge leaps, either
To add insult to injury, not only did the external hardware not change very much, but there wasn't much to look forward to inside these laptops, either. Intel put out a minor upgrade to its 12th-generation processors, featuring slightly faster speeds and better efficiency. Meanwhile, AMD did launch Zen 4 laptops, but it muddied the Ryzen branding, and many laptops are still using Zen 3 processors. Both Intel's 13th-gen and AMD's Zen 4 processors are solid upgrades, but not really enough to get your attention. Intel, specifically, left its integrated GPUs untouched for the second generation in a row, so it fell even further behind when it comes to thin-and-light gaming.
In some cases, laptops didn't even get a spec bump. Because Intel never released 9W 13th-generation processors, the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 13 2-in-1 are still the same exact models from 2022. And new products that needed low-power processors had to launch with last year's CPUs, too, such as the HP Spectre Foldable.
On top of that, many considered Nvidia's new laptop GPUs disappointing, with a lot of the advertised performance gains coming from frame generation, which wasn't available on previous GPUs. Plus, with AMD and Intel mostly sitting on the sidelines in terms of GPUs, there wasn't much to be excited about. It would have been a good year for Intel to try and make a dent when it comes to laptop GPUs, but the company has been awfully quiet since debuting its Arc GPUs in 2022.
3 Even Apple is boring again
The M3 Mac family isn't that appealing
Apple has been riding high since introducing Apple Silicon, with each new product representing something you couldn't do before in that form factor. 2023 did start off strong with the M2-based MacBook Pro and Studio models, which were still a big upgrade. But towards the end of the year, the company introduced the M3 family of processors with the MacBook Pro, and for the first time in a few years, I didn't really feel anything.
The designs are unchanged, which is fine since I think the MacBook Pro still looks modern. But it feels like the M3 family was a bit rushed out the door, and Apple decided to make some weird compromises that lessen the impact of this new series. The M3 Pro has fewer performance cores than its predecessor, and it looks like memory bandwidth has also been lowered on these models, so it feels like there's a mix of upgrades and downgrades here. It's just harder to be blown away now after Apple caused such a major shift in what laptops can be.
4 Still waiting on foldables
Folding laptops exist, but not really
Finally, one thing that truly disappointed me this year was that foldable laptops are still taking their sweet time to be feasible. In 2022, at least two were announced: the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2. Asus had what was essentially a paper launch for the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which is extremely hard to find, while Lenovo has yet to launch its own foldable, even over a year later.
In comes HP, with a surprise announcement and launch of the HP Spectre Foldable — a laptop with a 9W processor from last year costing $5,000. Let's be completely clear here: no one should buy this laptop, or any laptop at that price. Foldable phones have been progressing quickly and feel very refined now, and you could argue they're worth the money. But folding laptops still feel like a distant dream that didn't get any closer to being realized in 2023.
A slow year, but there were exceptions
2023 was definitely a bit of a lull in terms of laptops, but there were some cool exceptions that kept things a little more interesting, even if they weren't for most people. Lenovo led the charge in terms of innovation, with things like the dual-screen Yoga Book 9i or the ThinkBook Plus Gen 4. But these devices have a very limited audience and high price tags, so they're enough — by themselves — to make a year very interesting.
At the end of the day, it's okay for 2023 to be more boring. 2022 was a spectacular year for laptops, and it would be impossible to replicate that every year. And 2024 is already looking pretty promising, so at least we have that to look forward to.