If you're a big-picture sort of person, you need a laptop to match. You yearn for a notebook (the word "laptop" is a bit of a misnomer for these bulky thigh-crushers) that not only capably replaces a desktop PC but also gives you an easy-on-the-eyes, panoramic view of your workspace or playing field. That likely means a 17-inch model, one of the largest popular screen sizes in the portable universe.
Almost all 17-inch laptops feature displays that, technically, measure 17.3 inches on the diagonal (just as so-called 15-inch laptops usually measure 15.6 inches from corner to corner). That's enough for a magnified view of full HD or 1080p resolution (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), or a comfortable view of higher resolutions, such as 4K (3,840 by 2,160), which can make you squint on a smaller screen.
Ready to go big? Read on for a breakdown of our current top, tested 17-inch laptops for 2023 in a variety of user categories. This is followed by a guide to what to look for in the right 17-inch laptop for you, and we conclude with a spec breakout of those top picks.
If you're a multi-window user on your laptop or your eyesight is challenged, a 17-inch screen can be a godsend. On the negative side, this screen size dictates a bulky machine—one that's often too big for a briefcase, requiring a special laptop bag, backpack, or roller bag, and too heavy for more than occasional transport between home and office or cubicle and conference room.
(Credit: Molly Flores)The lightest 17-inch laptops, with one major exception, generally weigh in at under seven pounds. (The outlier, the LG Gram Pro 17, is an extraordinary case that comes in at under three pounds.) The heaviest, which are invariably gaming models, tip the scales at a back-breaking 7 pounds or more, and in some cases, that's not counting hefty AC power bricks. Airline tray table? Forget it. More like checked baggage.
Nor should you expect long battery life from a plus-size notebook. These machines are designed to run on AC power most of the time. If yours can endure unplugged for more than four hours, consider yourself lucky. (Just take a look at the tested runtimes of our favorites in our spec comparison table.)
(Credit: Molly Flores)So, are these tradeoffs too much to suffer merely for a pleasing view? Are luggables just the large-print books of the laptop world?
No—they're also the performance leaders. Their chassis accommodate the most powerful processors and graphics cards, the strongest cooling systems, the most memory, and multiple solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard drives for ample storage. They have plenty of room for all the ports you might need, as well as spacious, near-desktop-class keyboards with full keypads for numeric data entry.
Jumbo laptops aren't for frequent fliers, but they fill a big niche. Let's look at what they can do, and what to look for as you shop for one.
Work or Play: What Is Your 17-Inch Laptop For?
A few 17-inch laptops are general-purpose PCs for people who want an occasionally portable system with a large screen. Most, however, fall into one of two camps with diametrically opposed, but equally hardcore, audiences: mobile workstations, and serious gaming laptops.
Both types can handle what many PC users think of as work: office productivity and email using Word, Excel, Outlook, Chrome, Slack, and so on. But mobile workstations, as seen in our special guide, laugh at such modest apps. Instead, they carry independent software vendor (ISV) certifications of compatibility and smooth operation with programs for way tougher computing jobs: computer-aided design (CAD) and advanced 3D modeling and rendering, crunching through huge scientific or engineering datasets, or delving into video editing and the creation of worlds for virtual reality. And they rely on state-of-the-art CPU and GPU power to do so.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)With the exception that CPU muscle is a little less important while GPU strength is paramount, much the same applies to gaming rigs (also the stars of their own buying guide and roundup of ours that's worth checking out). They're designed to play the latest and greatest titles at high speeds—at least 60 frames per second, double the rate recognized as providing minimally smooth gameplay—with all the visual details and eye candy turned up to 11. Onscreen stuttering or tearing just won't cut it. Lag can be fatal during a frag fest.
Whichever class of 17-inch machine you are considering, you're likely drawn to it by the one big thing the two main types have in common: the screen. Let's look at that.
What Kind of Display Is Best in a 17-Inch Laptop?
In the 17-inch class, workstations and gaming laptops alike benefit from choosing the right screen type. A solid baseline pick would be an in-plane switching (IPS) or indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) panel, which gives you the sharpest colors and contrast, as well as the widest off-center viewing angles. Touch screens aren't very popular in either class, with both gamers and workstation pros preferring the pixel-by-pixel control of a mouse.
(Credit: Molly Flores)Gamers often choose displays capped at 1080p resolution for high frame rates' sake; fast gaming at 4K resolution requires a costly, top-of-the-line graphics processor (GPU), like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2000, 3000, and now even 4000 Series. By contrast, some workstation users enjoy the highest-resolution screen possible to mimic the desktop experience of multiple monitors or for editing 4K video. Some mobile workstations also excel at precisely matching what's seen on screen to your finished work's destined output, offering a choice of the web's sRGB, print's Adobe RGB, or cinema's DCI-P3 palettes or color spaces. A few recent models from makers such as Asus and Gigabyte also come with validations by Pantone for color accuracy.
Most standard laptop LCDs have a refresh rate of 60Hz, redrawing the image on the screen 60 times per second. That's fine for the human eye—television is 30Hz and most movies 24Hz—and for 90% or more of applications and users. But it's not enough for fanatic gamers who've invested in graphics chips that can crank out more than 60 frames per second. Hence the availability of gaming laptops with so-called "high refresh" 120Hz, 144Hz, 240Hz, or even 300Hz and 360Hz displays. (See more about whether you really need a high-refresh display.) Shoppers in this stratosphere will also find some screens that support Nvidia's G-Sync technology, able to synchronize the refresh rate of the display on the fly to the GPU's output for smoother appearances.
CPU, Memory, and Storage: Which Components to Get in a 17-Inch Laptop?
When it comes to CPUs, Intel parts teamed with discrete GeForce, RTX A-series (formerly Quadro), or Radeon RX graphics processors lead the popularity contest over AMD's mobile Ryzen 5 and 7 chips with their integrated graphics. The most popular option for 17-inch gaming notebooks is Intel's Core i7 H Series, not the lighter-hitting Core i7 U- or G-Series CPUs that show up in thinner, lighter laptops. The mighty—and mighty costly—Core i9 chips occupy the top of the market. (Read much more on choosing the right laptop CPU.)
For mobile workstations, the Core i7 and Core i9 are joined by Intel's Xeon processors, which offer support for server-style, error-correcting code (ECC) memory. Though outside the mainstream for ISV apps, ECC's ability to detect and fix single-bit memory errors is a plus for scientific, architectural, or financial computing jobs intolerant of even the slightest data corruption.
(Credit: Charles Jefferies)Regular, non-ECC RAM will serve just fine for most buyers, though. An allotment of 8GB of memory is the bare minimum for a gaming laptop, with 16GB preferable. (More than that's not usually necessary, unless you have the budget to burn, or will also do content creation work or streaming in addition to your gaming.) Workstations have a heartier appetite for RAM, with 16GB a practical minimum and 32GB not uncommon; many models support a whopping 64GB or 128GB. In the case of a workstation portable, you'll want to look into the specific RAM requirements of the applications you plan to run to gauge how much you should splurge on memory.
As for storage, look for one or two M.2 solid-state drives, often joined by one or two 2.5-inch hard drives—the SSD for the operating system and favorite applications, the roomier hard drive for games and data. Most performance-conscious portables use slightly quicker PCI Express (PCIe) rather than SATA solid-state drives; PCIe has mostly taken over the field at this point in new models. In connection with PCIe SSDs, you'll often see the acronym "NVMe" (for Non-Volatile Memory Express) bandied around, as well as a few proprietary monikers, such as HP mobile workstations' Z Turbo Drives. Both indicate the fastest SSDs. (See our guide to the best PCI Express NVMe SSDs.) Some SSDs are in the M.2 form factor and upgradable; others may be soldered down, and not.
Half a terabyte of storage (for an SSD-only system) is the smallest amount you should accept; 1TB or 1.5TB is more mainstream, and some workstations include up to 3TB or 4TB of capacity. If money is a limiter, a smaller SSD (say 256GB or 500GB) as the boot drive, paired with a roomy hard drive, is a fine compromise. A 17-inch laptop is most likely to have room for both. Some 17-inchers may have an empty bay to let you install an aftermarket 2.5-inch drive or an M.2 SSD yourself. This can be an economical option.
Choosing a GPU: Will Your 17-Inch Laptop Be Good for Gaming, or Pro Work?
Mobile workstations' graphics cards are divided between Nvidia's RTX A-series (formerly Quadro, and much more common) and AMD's Radeon Pro (far less common) brands. Their silicon is optimized for different operations than the companies' respective GeForce and Radeon parts for gaming laptops, as well as for hard-charging, constantly-on rendering, or calculations.
On the gaming side of the fence, too, Nvidia enjoys a big market lead in mobile GPUs. Its "Ampere" architecture defines its GeForce RTX 30 Series offerings, seen first in desktop video cards like the GeForce RTX 3080. At the higher end of the gaming laptop market, these GPUs, indicated by "GeForce RTX" instead of "GeForce GTX," have mostly replaced chips based on the "Turing" architecture of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 20 series, though you'll still see some laptops based on these for sale. The RTX 40 Series "Ada Lovelace" GPUs, in turn, have started to supplant the Amperes as 2023 progresses. We've just started testing the first of these in PC Labs, and expect most new laptops with discrete GPU chips to have these going forward.
The basic story for both workstations and gaming rigs is a familiar one, though: Higher model numbers and higher prices bring you more speed and higher frame rates. They also gain you support for features such as virtual reality (VR), though even midrange gaming laptop GPUs like the now-aging GeForce RTX 1660 Ti (from the Turing generation) and above, and all of the current GeForce RTX chips, support playing and exploring VR worlds, while high-end mobile-workstation parts like the Nvidia RTX A series support VR authoring or creating them.
(Credit: Molly Flores)A little bit of GPU history will help you make sense of the offerings out there. Nvidia's gaming-laptop GPUs saw a shift in 2021. Before the launch of the RTX 30-Series Ampere and RTX 20-Series Turing laptop chips, it was a simple ladder: They climbed from the GeForce GTX 1050 to the GTX 1050 Ti, then the GTX 1060, with the formerly high-end GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 topping the line. The last three were replaced by the GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2070, and RTX 2080 (and slightly faster "RTX Super" versions of the last two), which have themselves given way to the RTX 3050, RTX 3050 Ti, RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and top-end RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti. Only the last two will truly satisfy gaming hounds planning to play the latest titles at 4K resolution with all the image-quality settings dialed up, while the GTX chips and lower RTX chips have been designed for gamers with full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) screens. The RTX 2070, RTX 3060, and RTX 3070, meanwhile, straddle the full-HD and 4K realms.
The same dynamic should hold true as 2023 progresses, with the RTX 40 Series chips encompassing RTX 4090, 4080, 4070, 4060, and 4050 offerings, roughly in parallel with their 30-Series counterparts. We'll see as we test more of them.
(Credit: Molly Flores)At the very low end, the mobile versions of the GeForce GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Ti, and GTX 1660 Ti are getting supplanted by RTX GPUs. (There is no mobile version of the GTX 1660.) Machines with the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti started hitting the streets in early 2022; these were the first low-end RTX-class GPUs. You're looking at an up-to-date lower-end laptop if it has an RTX 3050, 3050 Ti, or 3060, or an RTX 4050 or 4060 GPU.
Traditionally, very few huge, heavyweight gaming laptops carried not one but two GeForce GPUs for ludicrous speed, using Nvidia's SLI (and in the latest generation, NVLink) multi-GPU technology. But they cost a fortune, their battery life was invariably brutish and short, and not all games benefitted from dual-GPU setups, anyway. They are now an anachronism, and if you see one, it's a sign of old tech. But if they appeared in any class of laptops, it was 17-inchers.
As for rival AMD? Nvidia dominates laptop GPUs, to be sure. But AMD's Radeon RX mobile GPUs have made some decent inroads into gaming machines over the past year, especially with AMD's launch of its AMD Advantage laptop program, which mandates certain performance and component requirements. So far, though, Radeon RX GPUs have tended to appear more in 15-inch-class machines, less so in 17-inchers.
(Credit: Molly Flores)So, What Is the Best 17-Inch Laptop to Buy for Your Needs?
That's about it for general advice, except for matters of personal preference. Keyboards, for instance: Some gaming laptops go wild with colorful, customizable RGB backlighting and feature macro keys for storing frequently used command or combat sequences, while some mobile workstations' touchpads or pointing sticks feature the third (middle) mouse button often used in CAD and similar applications. And we don't think you should buy a 17-inch laptop in either of these groups that doesn't have at least one Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 port, which combines USB-C and DisplayPort functionality with daisy-chainable support for external docking and storage solutions.
At any rate, you're ready to shop for the notebook of your big-screen dreams. Get started by checking out the reviews we've assembled here (we've outlined the keys specs for all of them below), and good luck: Flex those biceps and get your back-strengthening routine down pat. You're going to go big. On the flip side, your eyes will be very, very happy.
