5 notebooks with nicer-looking bottoms from the last 365 days

The 2025 Blade 18 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5090 SKU tested) has an unusual-looking bottom panel that bucks the trend by being neither flat, nor opaque. There is a small window integrated here exposing the motherboard, something desktop PC builders should find familiar. The protruding parts make the design a bit bulky, increasing the casing's height but also lending the internal 3-fan cooling solution some extra strength. This is a rather quiet gaming machine that cools its power-hungry internal components well, improving performance; naturally, perks such as Thunderbolt 5 and user-upgradable RAM come included, too.

With overall ratings of 79 %, 80 % and 81 %, Gigabyte's affordable Gaming A18 Pro, A16 and A16 Pro, respectively are riddled with issues such as high DPC latencies, SSD throttling, and louder-than-expected fans. Curiously enough, overall visual design isn't noteworthy here; it's the bottom panel that got most of the designers' attention and love, adorned with patterns, color accents and a prominent logo not unlike higher-end desktop motherboards. Bottom panel design is virtually identical across the 3 models.

A few Gigabyte Aorus and Asus gaming laptops reviewed in the last year boast a similar - but not as striking - bottom panel look.

The most affordable MacBook ever, especially taking US dollar's depreciation over the years into account, sports traits characteristic of many Apple products: Good build quality, solid display and speakers, comfortable-to-use input devices and long battery life. It also comes in a variety of colors, not limiting itself to the usual drab darker gray and lighter gray options. Its bottom gets the same color as every other part of the exterior, as exemplified by the image below. The bottom panel's shape is a little uninspiring, with very few bumps, cutouts or other eye-catching elements, so it's just the bright color that it has going for it. Which is still a lot, in this day and age.