The best laptops for writers don't need to be expensive or packed with features for gaming or media. They just need to have a great keyboard, be quick to start up, and offer long battery life. For value, a Chromebook is hard to beat, and our top pick is the $200 Acer Chromebook 314.
If you want to do more than writing, of course, there are more powerful and feature-rich models to choose from. So we've also added some pricier options to the list, and you can rest assured, we've tested all these machines out, so we know they work well in practice and offer great value for money.
This Chromebook is a great choice for writing and happens to be one of the cheapest options here, at roughly $200. Slimming everything down, Chrome OS is perfect for those that want to avoid any extra fuss in their laptop. It's got amazing battery life and supports the major word-processing apps. Read more below
Want more? This ticks all the boxes if you're looking for a laptop for both writing and more processor-intensive tasks. It has a fine keyboard, a great design, an excellent screen and includes a super-fast M2 chip (cheaper than the M3), great webcam and excellent battery life. Costs around $999. Read more below
If you're looking for a premium Windows machine that's nicely future-proof, here's our top pick. It features a comfortable keyboard with good key travel, making it comfortable for extended writing sessions. It's also sleek and portable, and offers long battery life. Read more below
If you're in between budget and premium and want to maximise value, the Acer Aspire 5 is a great pick. It's solid and dependable, won't cost you a fortune and performs well in terms of performance and for every day writing. Read more below
A 3:2 aspect ratio can be great in a laptop for writing since it offers more vertical space, so more space for writing. The Huawei Matebook X Pro complements that with a great keyboard, nice touchscreen and capabilities for creative work. Read more below
Offering excellent bang-for-buck value, the Lenovo Pad P12 is a good pick at the budget end of the hybrid machine spectrum. It has superb battery life and an optional detachable keyboard. Portability and durability are strong points here. Read more below
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If you're looking for a cheap laptop for writing, a Chromebook is the way to go. At around $200, it costs less than Windows laptops, and much less than the MacBook Air below, but offers great battery life since it require little power. Just bear in mind that Chromebooks take their name from the fact that they run Chrome OS, not Windows, so you can't use every Windows app you might be used to.
That isn't a problem for writing since there are word processors available for Chrome OS, including both Microsoft Word and Google Docs. This Chromebook also has very little internal storage, so you'll be saving work to the cloud. Unlike in the past, you no longer need to be connected to the internet to use a Chromebook though, so you can work pretty much wherever you want.
Some Chromebooks feel a little too small to be comfortable as laptops for writers but when we reviewed it, we found the 14-inch Chromebook 314 to be a nice size, and the keyboard is well laid out and comfortable to use. We found the screen to be good for writing too, with an anti-glare, matte finish. All in all, this is a solid top choice as the best laptop for writers on a budget. st be sure to option the 1080p screen; the standard lower resolution display isn't great. See our hands-on Acer Chromebook 314 review for more details.
If all you want to do is write on your laptop, it doesn't need to be a particularly powerful one. However, you may want to do other things that are more processor-intensive, whether that's watching films, editing photos, or playing games. That's why I've chosen the MacBook Air (not Pro) with M2 chip as the overall top laptops for writers. Yes, the M3 version of the Air is out, but that's waaaay too much if what you want is mainly to write. I think the M2 hits the sweet spot.
With the ultra-fast M2 chip and a bigger, beautiful display, it could be the perfect option for running creative software. When we reviewed it, it coped brilliantly on everything from day-to-day tasks like browsing the web and writing up documents to editing 4K video and using Photoshop’s AI tools. Battery life was great too, lasting an entire day, even when performing creative tasks. Apple claims up to 18 hours' Apple TV app movie playback, which is just one hour more than our testers squeezed out of the device in our looping movie test.
The 1080p FaceTime HD webcam is also great for writers who need to make a lot of video calls (these days that’s most of us), and you also get a fantastic Retina display which, in combination with MacOS, makes for just about the crispest, cleanest font rendering that we have witnessed on a laptop. If you're writing for long periods of time, that's going to make it more comfortable on the eyes than a lesser display.
Overall, then, this is overkill if all you're going to do is writing. But if your writing workflow also requires a lot of web research and watching videos, or if you also want a laptop for other things like creative work or gaming, then you'll certainly see the difference for the extra spend. See our full MacBook Air (M2, 2022) review for more details.
Screen: 15in 2496 x 1664 px (3:2 aspect ratio) 120Hz
Storage: 1TB SSD, MicroSD
Reasons to buy
+
Comfortable keyboard
+
Beautiful display
+
Strong battery life
Reasons to avoid
-
Expensive
-
Overkill for writing
If you want to treat yourself to a truly premium Windows laptop for writing, then the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 fits the bill.
It features a comfortable keyboard with good key travel, making it comfortable for extended writing sessions. It boasts long battery life (our reviewer measured 9 hours 21 minutes in his tests), so you can write for hours without worrying about running out of power. And its sleek design and lightweight construction make it easy to take with you wherever you go, whether you're writing at home, in a coffee shop, or on the go.
The Surface Laptop 7's display is sharp and vibrant, making it easy to read and write for long periods. And the laptop's fan is quiet except when doing resource-intensive tasks such as video encoding, so it won't distract you if you just want to write.
Powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor and AI-driven tools like Copilot+, it offers a lot more power than you need for word processing – and costs a lot more than you really need to pay for a laptop for writing. But if you want to do other things with your laptop besides, then you'll be pleased to know it scored well in our benchmark tests, so it should cope with the most demanding software, although we wouldn't recommend it for gaming.
If you're waiting for that first novel advance before splashing too much cash, there are plenty of mid-range Windows laptops for writers. Our reviewer found this to be a solid and dependable device for those who don't want to spend a fortune. With a plastic body, it doesn't exactly have a premium feel but it's solid enough to carry around.
It also performs well considering the price, especially if you're going to be sticking to word processing tools. We found that the keys don't have the most travel, but the keyboard is well laid out for writing on. Overall, the Aspire 5 is a great affordable laptop for writers on a budget but feel that a Chromebook would be too restrictive. See our full Acer Aspire 5 review for more details.
Most laptops have a traditional widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. That's great for watching movies, but not necessarily the most convenient format for writing, which often requires scrolling up and down on vertically oriented documents. An aspect ratio of 3:2 gives you more vertical space, allowing you to see more text on the screen at once. And it also works better for graphic-design work, so is the perfect ratio if you're a writer who also likes to or needs to work on more demanding visual software.
Huawei delivers all of that with the MateBook X Pro, and a very nice touchscreen it has too. It's more than powerful enough for writers who also need to use design software regularly – and the keyboard is comfortable to work on. It's nice and fast too, and our reviewer found opening apps and documents to be a nippy process.
The downside is that if you're in a country like the US, which has blocked access to many Huawei devices and services, you don't get the benefits of the wider Huawei ecosystem. However, if you don't care for ecosystems and just want a premium laptop for writing and doing visual work on, we found the Huawei MateBook X Pro to be a decent option. See our in-depth Huawei MateBook X Pro review for all the details.
The Lenovo Tab P12 is another great choice for those looking for the best laptop for writing on a budget. An optional detachable keyboard turns this tablet into a compact little laptop that we found very convenient to carry around. And as it's an Android rather than Microsoft Windows device, it's much cheaper than most laptops.
It also boasts a huge 10,200mAh battery that easily lasted all day with heavy use and multiple days with lighter use when we tried it. So you could comfortably take this away with you and write somewhere remote for a couple of days, and still have battery life left.
There are some downsides though. The keyboard is small and not as comfortable as other laptops in this list. We'd suggest using the Lenovo Tab P12 as option for quickly jotting down notes, rather than typing up pages and pages of text in one go. But, with the portability and long battery life, the Lenovo Tab P12 lets you note down your thoughts whenever inspiration strikes.
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus
This solid, business-oriented laptop offers long battery life, cool and quiet operation, and a lightweight design. It's let down by the keyboard, which is adequate but could be improved. Otherwise, though, it's a good choice for writing, office tasks, presentations, and general admin. Read our 3.5-star review.
How to choose the best laptop for writing
We've whittled the options above down to the six best laptops for writing available right now, but the right one for you will depend on your budget and needs. Setting a budget is important in light of the increased cost of living, so we’ve included laptops at a variety of price points to cover all bases to help you choose the right model for you.
Sure the Apple MacBook Air (M2) is a wonderful laptop that is more than capable than offering the best writing experience around. But the far more reasonably-priced Acer Aspire 5 or Chromebook 315 might give you everything you need. Thinking about which value-adding features you’ll actually use is key, too. For example, a touch screen is nice to have, but if you’re unlikely to make use of it, it’s not worth the extra investment.
How we tested the best laptops for writers
We tested our picks of the best laptops for writing during our full reviews of each product. When we reviewed each laptop, we performed a series of benchmark tests in order to evaluate their performance, display brightness, speed and colour accuracy and battery life. However, writing doesn't make particularly heavy demands on a laptop so performance benchmarking isn't hugely revealing in this context, but we still consider those test results to ensure that every laptop delivers the performance you would expect given its specifications.
The one benchmarking area that we paid specific attention to when compiling this guide is battery life, since this does make a diffeence if you're writing in different locations. We test battery life under both light loads, which is what writing text amounts to, as well as watching video and more intensive tasks to build a picture of how long a laptop lasts in various usage scenarios.
Screen quality is another area worthy of attention in a laptop for writing, including brightness, contrast, resolution and refresh rate. Ergonomics, and in particular keyboard quality, are also important considerations. We also consider build quality and connectivity in coming to an overall evaluation of each laptop.
Most importantly, our reviewers use each laptop over a period of at least two weeks to get a real feel for what it's like to live and work with the machine. We also take into consideration customer reviews and feedback from our contributing writers, many of whom write on the machines that we recommend above every day as part of their work.
As we mentioned in our introduction, some of the key factors in choosing the best laptop for writers include comfortable screens and keyboards, battery life and portability. If you can find a laptop that delivers in these areas, you’re on to a winner. There are some other nice to have features to look out for, too. For example, anti-glare screens if you work outside often. You might also value having a touch screen or writing pad if you’re an avid note-taker.
Historically, storage has also been a consideration, but with the rise of cloud storage, many writers only worry about this if they don’t have regular WiFi access. Plus, USB storage is a perfectly viable option.
Is it better to buy a laptop with a touchscreen or a traditional keyboard and trackpad?
Whether you prefer a touchscreen or a traditional keyboard and trackpad depends on your personal writing style. Touchscreens can be convenient for taking notes or annotating documents, but they may not be as comfortable for long typing sessions. Traditional keyboards and trackpads are generally more ergonomic for writers, but they may not offer the same level of versatility as touchscreens. If you're not happy with your keyboard setup, consider buying one of the best external keyboards: they won't cost much and can really help you work more comfortably and productively.
What is the best laptop screen size for writing?
The ideal screen size for a writing laptop again depends on your personal preferences and how you plan to use it. A larger screen can be helpful for reading and writing long documents, while a smaller screen may be more portable, so a better bet if you write on the go a lot. Most writers find that a screen size between 13 and 15 inches is a good compromise.
Should I get a MacBook or a Windows laptop?
Ultimately, this is a question of preference, but there are a few differences between MacBooks and Windows laptops for writers. While many writers have more experience with Microsoft Word, the software will set you back financially whereas the slightly less sophisticated Pages on Mac comes free. Of course, you could also just use Google Docs if you're regularly connected to WiFi and confident in its Offline Mode.
MacBooks are generally more pricey, as are Mac-compatible peripherals, but can last longer than more budget-friendly Windows laptops.
Beren has worked on creative titles at Future Publishing for over 13 years. Cutting his teeth as Staff Writer on the digital art magazine ImagineFX, he moved on to edit several creative titles, and is currently the Ecommerce Editor on the most effective creative website in the world. When he's not testing and reviewing the best ergonomic office chairs, phones, laptops, TVs, monitors and various types of storage, he can be found finding and comparing the best deals on the tech that creatives value the most.
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