“Unlimited” is a funny term. Unlimited cell phone plans often come with a long list of footnotes, terms, conditions, and exceptions. Mercifully, all of the Big Three cell companies have, by now, ditched throttling on their highest-paid tiers, and include 5G data access in all their unlimited plans. Yet there are still many differences in the services they offer, and from tier to tier within each company.

Cheaper “unlimited” tiers do offer unlimited talk and text. But they still have rules on how much unlimited data you get before they start throttling your speed, and some “unlimited” plans may throttle your data at any given time. Data throttling is the practice of reducing your data speeds after you hit a certain threshold of data used in a month or during times of congestion. It’s been a fixture of cell service plans for years.

Below, I’ve highlighted what each of the major carriers offers for “unlimited” individual and family plans to help you figure out which unlimited plan is best for you and your budget.

The Best Unlimited Plan Right Now: T-Mobile Experience More

T-Mobile Essentials, Experience More, and Experience Beyond Plans

The Essentials plan (with autopay, taxes/fees not included): 1 Line for $60/month | 2 Lines $90 | 3 Lines $90 | 4 Lines $100 | 5 Lines $125

Experience More (with autopay, taxes/fees not included): 1 Line for $85/month | 2 Lines $140 | 3 Lines $140 | 4 Lines $170 | 5 Lines $200

Experience Beyond (with autopay, taxes/fees not included): 1 Line for $100/month | 2 Lines $170 | 3 Lines $170 | 4 Lines $215 | 5 Lines $260

T-Mobile has the best 5G coverage among the big three, the highest 5G speeds, the fastest downloads and the best overall reliability, according to analysis from OpenSignal and Ookla. The carrier also makes claims to winning on value, when you take into account perks that include entertainment bundles, airplane WiFi, and access to satellite data in emergencies.

T-Mobile has rebranded its unlimited offerings this year but still offers three unlimited talk and text plans: Essentials, Experience More, and Experience Beyond. Only the two Experience plans offer true unlimited 5G data without any throttling or deprioritizing (i.e., making your phone stand in line for data behind other, more important, phones during peak demand.)

If cost is more important to you than perks, and you don’t travel a lot internationally, the Essentials plan is what we recommend for people with big families. It’s no frills, just the phone, ma’am, with no subscription money going to streaming services or international carrier fees. Your hotspot is limited to 3G speeds if you’re a laptop warrior, an important consideration for many, and video streaming is 480p. But at its price point, Essentials is the only plan to offer premium data (up to 50 GB) that won’t be throttled. If youy’ve got home WiFi, that 50GB should be sufficient for most people. Besides, it’ll teach your teens how to budget, and how to ask for the WiFi password instead of using their own data. But take note: Data in Canada and Mexico will be so slow you might as well have an old flip phone.

In 2026, we will see the beginning of precision medical forecasting. Just as there have been remarkable advances in weather forecasting with the use of large language models, so will there be for determining an individual’s risk of the major age-related diseases (cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative). These diseases share common threads, such as a long incubation phase before any symptoms are manifest, usually two decades or more. They also have the same biologic underpinnings of immunosenescence and inflammaging, terms that characterize an immune system that has lost some of its functionality and protective power, and the accompanying heightened inflammation.

The science of aging has given us new ways to track these processes with body-wide and organ clocks, along with specific protein biomarkers. That enables us to determine whether a person or an organ within a person is aging at an accelerated pace. Along with that, new AI algorithms can see things that medical experts cannot, such as accurately interpreting medical images like retinal scans to predict cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases many years in advance.

These added layers of data can be combined with a person’s electronic medical records, which include their structured and unstructured notes, lab results, scans, genetic results, wearable sensors, and environmental data. In aggregate, this provides an unprecedented depth of information about the person’s health status, enabling a forecast for risk of the three major diseases. Unlike a polygenic risk score which can detect a person’s risk for heart disease, the common cancers and Alzheimer’s, precision medical forecasting takes it to a new level by providing the projected temporal arc—the “when” factor. When all of the data is analyzed with large reasoning models, it can provide a person’s vulnerabilities, and an individualized, aggressive preventive program.

We already know the risk of these three diseases can be reduced with lifestyle factors, such as an optimal anti-inflammatory diet, frequent exercise, and a regular, high-quality sleep pattern. But, along with attention to these factors, which are far more likely to be implemented when an individual is cognizant of their risk, we will have medications that will promote a healthy, protective immune system and reduce body-wide and brain inflammation. Already the GLP-1 medicines have been shown to be a front-runner for achieving these goals, but many more medications are in the pipeline.

The potential for precision medical forecasting has to be demonstrated and validated via prospective clinical trials that show, using the same metrics of aging, that a person’s risk is decreased. An example for people with increased risk of Alzheimer’s is the blood test known as p-tau217, and that risk can be markedly reduced with improved lifestyle factors, especially exercise. That could be confirmed with a brain organ clock and body-wide aging clocks.

This is a new frontier in medicine—the potential for primary prevention of the three age-related major diseases that compromise our health span and quality of life. It would not be possible without the advances in both the science of aging and AI. For me, this is the most exciting future use of AI in medicine: an unparalleled opportunity to prevent the major diseases from occurring, something that has been dreamed about but has not been possible at scale due to the deficiency in data and analytics. In 2026, it finally will.

As you can see, gaming laptops have become a major emphasis for AMD, because it’s the one area where AMD has managed to win designs from Intel. One great example is the Razer Blade 16 2025, which switched to the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 rather than using one of Intel’s HX chips.

Like Intel and Qualcomm, AMD is also rumored to launch its next-gen chips at CES 2026, which will reportedly use Zen 6 architecture.

Apple makes several chips these days, used in MacBooks, Macs, iPads, and iPhones. The M-series chips have been a huge hit since 2020, dramatically increasing performance and battery life. Fortunately, the designations are a bit simpler to parse through. Each generation of chip is designated by a number, while add-ons like Pro and Max scale up the processing and graphics performance.

The M5 family of chips for MacBooks is the latest release, although the rollout has been limited so far. It’s only available in the 14-inch MacBook Pro right now, meaning Apple is still selling the M4 MacBook Air and M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro.

The older chips are important to know about, too, especially since you can still buy the M1 MacBook Air. You can also buy “renewed” or refurbished versions of older models, such as the M3 Pro or M2 Max MacBook Pro. While the generational bumps (from M3 to M4, for example) have provided consistent increases in CPU performance, it requires getting into very specific comparisons to know the difference between the M2 Max and M3 Pro, for example. For more information, check out our Best MacBooks guide.

The M5 MacBook Air, M5 Pro MacBook Pro, and M5 Max MacBook Pro are all rumored to launch sometime in early 2026.

How Much Processing Power Do You Need?

If you’re a typical user who runs a web browser, Microsoft’s Office Suite, and perhaps even some photo editing software, we recommend a laptop with one of Intel’s Core Ultra V-series chips, such as the Core Ultra 7 258V. These perform well enough and get great battery life.

There are a few good reasons to go for Qualcomm, however. While battery life on these devices is similar to Intel’s latest chips (and Apple’s, for that matter), performance doesn’t drop as much as Intel’s. The prices are also lower, especially on Snapdragon X and X Plus configurations. Laptops are selling for as low as $799 that use the Snapdragon X. While these don’t perform as well as the X Plus or X Elite models, they still get great battery life, which is impressive for a laptop of this price.