Laptops come in a variety of different form factors these days, with manufacturers playing into the different categories to develop an intended use case. For example, lightweight laptops are made to be carried around, and trade in some raw power for portability. 2-in-1 laptops come with touchscreens that allow for use as a tablet. The best form factor for you reflects how you think you’ll use the device.
Lightweight/ultraportable laptops
Made for students, hybrid workers, and anyone who needs to commute with their laptop. These devices have seen a huge explosion in the past few years, becoming thinner and lighter than ever. Some good examples are the Asus Zenbook A14, the Apple MacBook Air M4, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition — all devices we’ve tested and love for their ultraportable forms relative to power and battery life.
Business laptops
Designed for the office, these laptops often come with more RAM and local storage, but less powerful GPUs. Their physical designs are often sleek, neutral, and corporate, and they feature lots of ports for compatibility purposes. Premium work laptops may have extra touches like OLED screens (like the HP EliteBook X G1a) or haptic trackpads (Lenovo’s ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition) to match the high-end hardware.
2-in-1 laptops
Also called convertibles, these laptops allow for the screen to be folded all the way back so it can act as a tablet or be used in “tent mode” to display media. Some 2-in-1 laptops we’re big fans of are the Lenovo Yoga 7i 2-in-1 16 and the Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1.
Gaming Laptops
As the name suggests, these are laptops made to run games, and as such come with the hardware to support that. We’re talking high-end GPUs, large, vivid displays, and often, RGB lighting and other physical design effects that set them apart from business laptops.
While they’re designed to run the latest titles, they also can double as good machines for creatives thanks to their high-end hardware, and as such, tend to be pricier. Some gaming laptops we love are the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i and the Alienware Area-51m 18.
MacBooks
Apple’s line of MacBooks are premium devices with a host of features that integrate into the Apple ecosystem. The hardware on MacBooks is arguably some of the best in the industry, with things like gorgeous Liquid Retina displays, crisp, clear webcams, and Apple’s line of Silicon processors, which have some of the most impressive performance on the market. The trade-off is the cost, which start around the $1,000 mark and go upwards from there.
Chromebooks
Google’s Chromebook lineup uses its own operating system — ChromeOS — to power its lineup of light and affordable laptops. Putting a streamlined, limited OS onto a laptop with modest hardware means you forgo the sprawling memory demands of Windows, and run 8GB of RAM smoothly and efficiently.
We’re big fans of Chromebooks at ZDNET, with some of our favorites being the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, and the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE.
