The best lightweight laptops 2023 will be small and light enough to carry around with you while you’re traveling or at school, but still give you plenty of power to complete your work. You should look for a screen size between 13 and 14 inches and battery life that’s long enough to last a few hours without being plugged in.
1. Dell XPS 13
Dell’s XPS 13 is one of the best laptops around for Windows users, and it’s a great choice for those who want a lightweight laptop that doesn’t compromise on performance. Its aluminum chassis is sleek and durable, and it comes in a wide array of colors that’ll appeal to many people.
The XPS 13 has a high-end display and a top-notch keyboard, and its battery life is pretty good. You can even get it in a non-touch option for an affordable price, although that does mean you’ll lose some screen real estate.
It’s a great choice for business professionals and graphic designers who want a laptop that isn’t too heavy to carry with them anywhere. It’s also a solid pick for light gaming and general use.
In addition to an impressive display, the XPS 13 also features a redesigned keyboard that’s more comfortable for long periods of typing. The keys are large, well positioned and spaced out, and the trackpad is responsive to two-finger gestures like scrolling.
Unfortunately, the XPS 13’s battery isn’t as powerful as rivals’, and its fan noise can be a little bit intrusive when used on battery power. If you’re looking for a more portable and lightweight option, the Razer Book 13 is another great choice.
Despite these problems, the XPS 13 still makes an excellent choice for anyone who wants a Windows laptop with top-notch performance and a great display. We’re especially fond of its touch-screen version, which offers a brighter display and more vibrant colors than its non-touch counterparts.
While it’s not the most powerful laptop we’ve ever tested, the XPS 13 can handle a wide range of tasks, including video editing and graphics work. But it doesn’t run as quickly or efficiently as a more powerful workstation, so it won’t be an ideal choice for those who regularly run resource-intensive apps.
It’s a bit of a mystery why Dell decided to incorporate Killer Networking chips into this machine, but it seems to have caused some problems. We experienced instances where the XPS 13 would come back from sleep with Bluetooth disabled, and we had to disable the Killer software in order to fix this.
2. HP Pavilion Aero 13
If you’re in the market for a lightweight laptop that can handle everyday tasks, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 is an excellent choice. It’s an incredibly light laptop with strong processing performance, a bright display, and long battery life. It’s also a great choice for students and anyone who needs a lightweight laptop that can travel with them.
In terms of specifications, the Pavilion Aero 13 packs a powerful AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor paired with an integrated AMD Radeon graphics chip. This gives you enough power to handle some basic digital tasks, but you’ll probably want a more powerful system if you plan on doing serious gaming or video editing.
It’s also worth noting that the Pavilion Aero 13 doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card, which means it can’t handle high-end games at full resolution. However, it can still play popular titles like GTA 5 and F1 2020, though you’ll need to tweak the settings to get a decent frame rate.
The 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1200 IPS touchscreen isn’t the most impressive display option we’ve seen on a HP laptop, but it’s still pretty good. The screen is accurate to sRGB colors, and it also supports the Design and Gaming profile, which optimizes the display for designers who work with colors professionally and gamers who need to see precise details.
On the left side of the laptop, you’ll find an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port, two USB-A ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right, you’ll find a power jack, and the HP’s proprietary charging port.
There’s a 43Wh Li-ion polymer battery that’s backed up by a 65W smart AC adapter, and the laptop can easily run for several hours without needing to be charged. During our testing, it achieved a good average of all-day battery life.
While the Pavilion Aero 13 isn’t an Envy, it does have a lot to offer budget-minded consumers, and HP is aggressively positioning it as a premium alternative to its Pavilion line of laptops. It’s a great choice for students, travelers, or anyone who wants a lightweight laptop with all the essentials in one package.
3. Lenovo IdeaPad 3i
The Lenovo IdeaPad 3i is an entry-level laptop that’s packed with powerful features. It features an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. It also has a 15.6-inch screen and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The laptop is very light and has a solid build quality. Its weight is 1.6kg (3.5lbs) and you can easily slip it into your bag for easy travel.
It comes with a 10th Gen Intel Core i3 processor and is equipped with 8GB of memory. You can upgrade this to 16GB if you want to increase the performance of the laptop.
This model is great for general computing tasks like Microsoft Office, internet browsing and light gaming. You can even use it for school projects and homework assignments.
Featuring a 15.6-inch display, the laptop offers clear images. Its narrow bezels provide a high active area ratio, so you can see more details on the screen.
There’s also an IPS panel on this laptop, which has wide viewing angles and a decent amount of brightness. However, we’ve found the default display to be a little grainy and its color representation is not as accurate as other laptops in this price range.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 3i is also great for gaming as it comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. This GPU can deliver a near 60fps experience at 1080p. You can also upgrade this laptop to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, which provides more performance and better gaming capabilities.
In Geekbench 5.4, which tests CPU performance, the Lenovo IdeaPad 3i scored 1,640 in single-core testing and 7,908 in multi-core testing. This put it in third place behind the MSI Sword 15 with a Core i7-12650H and the Acer Nitro 5 with a Core i5-12500H.
It’s worth mentioning that the battery life of the Lenovo IdeaPad 3i isn’t impressive, especially when compared to the battery life of the Acer Nitro 5. PCMark test results showed it could only last for 5 hours and 32 minutes. The Acer Nitro 5, on the other hand, can last for a full seven hours.
4. Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
The Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022) is a redesign of the entry-level laptop that combines a new M2 processor with several other updates, including a larger display. It also brings back MagSafe, a 1080p camera, and a few other crowd-pleasing features that helped it stand out from the competition in 2018.
The M2 chip is an upgrade over the M1 used in the previous Air, with a more powerful CPU and GPU. It can handle 3D apps more efficiently, and is up to 18% faster than the M1 model in our testing.
It also comes with a bigger 13.6-inch display, which is now brighter thanks to Liquid Retina technology. It has a 2560 x 1664p resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and P3 color gamut support.
Battery life is another key factor, and the M2 Air did a good job in our tests. We got nearly 18 hours of unplugged use out of it, which is excellent considering its small size and thin profile.
If you’re on the market for a lightweight laptop, the M2 Air should be your first choice. It offers excellent performance for a fraction of the price of its Pro counterpart, and it’s easy to carry around with you on long trips.
While the previous Air had a somewhat maligned butterfly keyboard design, the M2 model has an updated Magic Keyboard with full-size function keys above the number row. The keys click smoothly, and they’re well spaced out for comfortable typing.
The display is also a big improvement over the previous Air’s, with a higher resolution and Liquid Retina panel that boosts brightness to 500 nits. It also has a more advanced color handling system that lets it reproduce realistic colors better than the old Air.
There are only two Thunderbolt USB-C ports on the MacBook Air, but this is fine for most users. It doesn’t have an HDMI port, though, so it’s a bit of a pain for connecting to external displays.
The MacBook Air also has a magnetic MagSafe connector, which helps avoid accidents, and it’s compatible with a 3.5mm audio jack. There’s also a FaceTime webcam that’s been upgraded to 1080p, and there are some nice quad-driver speakers that’ll do well for video calls or presentations.