The best lightweight laptops are thin, light and super-portable, but still provide a lot of processing power. They also have decent battery life, making them perfect for commuting, travelling, working in a cafe, or anywhere where there isn't a readily available power socket.
To help you find the right one, especially now as Prime Day 2023 approaches, we've gathered together the best lightweight laptops available today in the list below. They include ultrabooks, which are categorised as laptops with an Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processor, an SSD, and a thickness of up to 1.5cm. Plus you'll also find some of the best lightweight laptops out there that aren't ultrabooks, but still offer lots of computing power for their size.
Beyond assessing their weight, specs and prices, we and our sister sites have tested all the laptops in this guide, to ensure you can choose the best lightweight laptop to meet your needs. If you want to know more about our review and selection process, read our guide to how we test laptops.
Whether you're a student heading back to school, a creative on the move, or a hybrid worker, we've included a range of laptops at different price points below. If you're looking for something more specific, though, you may want to read our roundsup of best laptops for gaming or the best business laptops. Or, if you're studying, check out our picks of the best laptops for students.
The best lightweight laptops: available now
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The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is our top choice for the best lightweight laptops on the market this year. It's not just one of the smallest and lightest laptops I've ever used, but also hugely impressive when it comes to performance. It's on par with bulkier and heavier rivals (such as the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Air), and the super-sharp 2.8K screen feels much bigger than it is and is a joy to look at and work on.
Extreme thinness comes at a price, though, so video-editing and 3D work will be best left to bigger bricks, but for portability and all-around performance, the Zenbook S 13 OLED is just about unbeatable right now.
Read all about the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED in our full review.
The Dell Precision 5470 is its smallest mobile workstation, which sets it apart from the competition. The top-quality build, super power and incredible battery life, all packed into such a slim 14-inch design, makes it one of, if not the, in my opinion, best options for taking professional-level performance on the go.
There are, of course, factors to consider. Trade-offs for its portability mean less power than in other larger models, and anyone wanting to run the most demanding, graphics-intensive applications might need to look elsewhere. But when you take everything this little machine has to offer, and how long it can deliver it in one go, it's up there as one of the best mobile workstations available.
For more information, read our full Dell Precision 5470 review.
The M2 MacBook Pro 13-inch is the most powerful lightweight laptop from Apple right now. Weighing 1.4kg, just a tiny bit more than the latest MacBook Air (below), it comes with Apple's brand-new M2 chip, which offers some seriously impressive performance.
In our tests, this laptop achieved better performance in both single and multi-core CPU tests than the M1 version, and that led to superb graphical design performance, even at very high resolutions. The battery life is also very impressive. In short, this is the best lightweight MacBook money can buy.
On the downside, it does cost quite a bit, and so if you're not using a laptop for very resource-intensive tasks such as video editing or 3D software, you'll probably find the MacBook Air does everything you need at a lower price. For more details, read our MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2, 2022) review.
If you're an Apple fan wanting a lightweight laptop with an M2 chip, but can't quite stretch the budget to the MacBook Pro 13-inch (above), the MacBook Air M2 2022 will tick all of your boxes.
Having ditched the iconic wedge-shaped design of previous MacBook Air models, the M2 model is just 11mm thick and weighs just 1.24kg, which is a phenomenal feat of design when you consider this is also one of the more powerful machines on our list, capable of editing 4K video and using Photoshop’s AI tools.
In fact, generally, the M2's Neural Engine worked wonders in our tests, and we found no performance loss versus previous models, despite the lighter, slimmer frame and larger screen.
As with most laptops on this list, the MacBook Air doesn't do so well under sustained high pressure, and without the MacBook Pro's fans it can get a bit hot under the hood. You can read our full Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022) review for a full rundown of the pros and cons.
The Dell XPS 13 9315 is an excellent choice for anyone who wants a powerful and portable laptop that can do it all. It's thin and light enough to easily carry around, and with enough power to handle even most tasks, it’s ideal for students, business professionals and creatives alike.
This machine is ideal for those who can’t choose between a traditional laptop or a tablet. The keyboard is fully detachable, so if you want to use it in tablet mode, then the impressive 13-inch touchscreen display just pulls away. It also comes with a stylus, so is brilliant for taking notes, and creating digital art or graphic design. For more, read our Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 review.
The largest in the latest set of lightweight laptops from LG, the LG Gram 17 (2021) is the new and improved version of 2019's LG Gram 17, which we rated highly for its super-thin, super-lightweight design and impressive performance when handling creative software.
With its large 17-inch display and 16:9 aspect ratio, the LG Gram 17 is a great choice for creatives of all creeds, from music producers to writers and digital artists. While its larger screen makes it a little less easy to stash away and a tad heavier (1.34kg) than some of the other laptops on this list, it does make for a less frustrating experience when you don't need to scroll around so much.
Specs-wise, it's a pretty capable machine, too, which considering the fairly lofty price tag, makes sense. It's got an impressive battery life, too.
This new Huawei Matebook X Pro is the real deal. Weighing just 1.26kg, it offers a brilliant processor for lightning quick speed, but the battery life is still ample for those all day sessions – the holy grail of laptops.
The 1TB of storage allows you plenty of space for weighty video or image files, with no worries about running out in the future. And the 16GB RAM is more than enough for your creative projects to grow into.
The display is excellent – bright and colourful, and is also touchscreen, which is a nice bonus. The connectivity is also brilliant. Our reviewer deemed it one of the best Windows laptops they'd ever seen, in fact. See our full Huawei Matebook X Pro (2022) review for more detail on what they liked.
This Chromebook deserves a place on our lightweight laptop list because it offers a premium look and feel, but is totally affordable (if a little heavier than we'd like at 1.99kg). Like all Chromebooks, you won't be able to run either the Windows or macOS operating systems, but as long as that's not a problem, read on.
It's a 2-in-1 device, which means it is essentially an 11-inch tablet that attaches to a keyboard. But because it's at the higher-end, it would work as a laptop for many. Importantly, the price is lower than a similar Windows or Apple laotop, making this an attractive option. Specs-wise, it is somewhere behind the iPad Air, but that's the concession you make at this price point.
Our reviewer spent five weeks with the machine, and found the display vibrant and deep – perfect for watching content and creating digital art. It also has good connectivity but it isn't ideal for intensive gaming due to lag. Find out more by reading our full HP Chromebook x2 11 review.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is our choice for the best lightweight laptop for business on account of its fantastic battery life and its great performance. One of the lighter laptops on this list at just 1.2kg, it still has enough room for a 12th-gen Intel Core CPU, a 14-inch screen, and can be fitted with up to 32GB of RAM.
It also houses some great built-in security features, making it a great choice for business users who like to move around. It only comes with integrated graphics, though, so if you need to complete graphic-intensive jobs like animation or 3D rendering, you'll perhaps be better off elsewhere.
The HP Elite Dragonfly G2 is the lightest laptop on our list, with some spectacular specs and features housed in its small 990g frame. This another laptop we like a lot as a business device. Although once again it lacks the dedicated graphics you'd need for creative work, it's incredibly versatile in other areas.
With its 2-in-1 form factor complete with a 4K touch display, powerful11th-gen Intel Core chips and Intel Iris Xe graphics, this is a laptop that can handle a lot but can also keep going for a while; our sister site Techradar got almost 11.5 hours battery life on test when using it for video playback.
Okay, so we're kind of cheating by including the Asus ROG Flow Z13. Without its keyboard folio, it's just 1.2kg, but with it, the weight bumps up to 1.53kg. So it's not quite as light and portable as some of the others included in this list.
That said, it's an excellent piece of kit for gamers on-the-go. So much so that it even ranks among the best gaming laptops we've tested, despite its lightweight nature.
It does, however, suffer from slightly weaker performance than some of its competition. Still, with the ROG Flow Z13, Asus is taking the 2-in-1 form factor in gaming to new heights. It's superbly built, and on-test we were impressed by the quality, though we wished it was a little more ergonomic. Read our full Asus ROG Flow Z13 review for more details.
The best lightweight laptops: frequent questions
What's the best lightweight laptop?
The best lightweight laptop for you is going to depend on a variety of factors. If you're a student and are just looking for something cheap and easy to use that you can stash away between home, lectures and the library, you'll be perfectly happy with the Surface Laptop Go 2 or the Acer Swift 3, which are cost-effective and capable machines.
If you're looking for something powerful and highly capable, you're looking at the Dell XPS 13 or the MacBook Air (2022, M2), which come with much higher price tags to account for the greater capabilities.
Ultimately, your best bet is to identify what needs you have in a new laptop, whether it's value, performance and speed, storage, design or even software, and use resources like our buying guides to help you make the most informed decision you can.
Can lightweight laptops be powerful?
The short answer is yes, absolutely. However, it can sometimes come at a cost. Take, for example, the MacBook Air (2022, M2), which is one of our favourite laptops on this list. While the M2 chip makes for a powerful MacBook Air model and its tiny frame houses an incredibly impressive component set, it can't fit fans, so it can become very hot after sustained use.
Your experience with a powerful laptop is always going to be better with a larger, heavier machine, but if you need something more portable, we're confident some of our top picks can take you there.
What's the benefit of a lightweight laptop?
Lightweight laptops are supremely portable and great for running small to medium-sized tasks when you're away from your desk. If you frequently move between home and your office, school or local café, it's likely you'd be able to appreciate a smaller, easier to carry machine.
With technology advancements allowing for ever-smaller but still powerful machines, lightweight laptops have become an increasingly viable option for students, businesses and creatives alike to help support more flexible and varied work and life.
Read more:
- These are the best Chromebooks
- The best MacBook Air cases
- We've found the best laptops for writers
