1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best budget
4. Best Ultrabook
5. Best 2-in-1
6. Best business
7. Best workstation
8. How we test laptops
The best 14-inch laptops are small in size, but big in potential. Hitting the sweet spot between a 13-inch laptop's portability and a 15-inch laptop's expanded performance, 14-inch laptops are taking over as one of the most popular laptop form factors around — and for good reason.
While a typically slim and minimalist form will see you lose out on some of the larger USB Type-A or Ethernet ports, 14-inch laptops tend to be outfitted with powerful Thunderbolt ports for excellent power delivery and lightning-fast transfer speeds. You're also likely to find dazzling edge-to-edge displays, lighter and sleeker builds, and, more often than not, an improved battery life over their 15.6-inch counterparts.
Determining what makes the best 14-inch laptops boils down to a balance between affordability and quality. It needs solid battery life, swift performance, a beautiful display, punchy audio, a satisfying keyboard, a good selection of ports all measured against its price to see if it's worth the cost.
Are you in the market for a new machine that's both portable and powerful? We've put together our shortlist of the best 14-inch laptops you can currently lay your hands on. Our selection draws across our impressive library of reviews to pick out laptops suited to a variety of different budgets and use cases to help you narrow down your search. Read on for our guide on the best 14-inch laptops in 2024.
Momo Tabari graduated with a bachelor's degree in Journalism & Media Studies at Brooklyn College and has been covering tech for four years. She has written over a hundred reviews and has plenty of experience testing and critiquing laptops.
The Quick list
Best overall
Apple's best keeps getting better. The M3 MacBook Pro is hands down the best 14-inch option available right now, especially if you're not tied to the Windows platform.
Best budget
Budget buys don't always mean sacrificing premium features. That's what the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED manages to showcase, anyway. All for less than $1,000.
Read more below
Best ultrabook
The Acer Swift Go 14 isn't called a "MacBook killer" without merit, this powerful 14-inch laptop has incredible performance and a stunning 2.8K OLED panel that's hard to beat.
Read more below
Best 2-in-1
Nothing's perfect, but some things get pretty close. One such thing is the Yoga 9i 2-in-1. It's awesome power, hypnotic 2.8K OLED display, and impressive sound is hard to rival.
Read more below
Best business
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon means absolute business, with this fantastic laptop model offering incredible battery life and all of the iconic ThinkPad bells and whistles we love.
Read more below
Best workstation
A premium workhorse that will deliver incredible performance if you can get past its price tag. Though rest well assured, the Dell Precision 5470 will work for every last red cent you put down.
Read more below
The best 14-inch laptops in 2024
Why you can trust Laptop Mag Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best overall
Apple MacBook Pro M3 sets the standard for other 14-inch laptops to follow. It's the total package and an obvious top pick for anybody looking to pick up a laptop in this category. Beyond the MacBook's iconic style, its M3 chip is a consistent powerhouse when it comes to accomplishing computing tasks and a real pioneer when it comes to efficiency and battery life.
Beyond the MacBook Pro 14's performance, you'll find Apple's iconic keyboard and plus-sized trackpad, powerful speakers, a fantastic high-resolution webcam, and a stunning 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display.
This MacBook Pro 14 is a multipurpose laptop that can do just about anything, from productivity to creation — and even a little gaming, too. Work or play, the MacBook Pro 14 is a best-in-class option that is well worth a place on any buyer's prospective shortlist.
See our full M3 MacBook Pro review.
Best budget
Buying budget doesn't mean sacrificing a premium aesthetic or solid performance. In fact, for less than $800 you can snag yourself the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, a stylish laptop backed by 12th gen Intel performance with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Not every laptop has to achieve stratospheric levels of face-melting performance or the type of graphical prowess that could rival the latest games consoles. The Zenbook 14 OLED instead provides a decent platform with which you can handle a considerable amount of work and pairs it with a great battery life and a smooth 90Hz 1080p display that's both crisp and vibrant.
See our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q409ZA) review.
Best Ultrabook
There always has to be one machine out there touting the "MacBook killer" moniker, and our current best pick for that title in the 14-inch laptop category is the Acer Swift Go 14. It's packed to the gills with high-performance components and ticks off all of the Ultrabook requirements. Better still, it's plenty affordable and houses one of the most vivid OLED displays we've come across.
The Swift Go 14's incredible performance is the result of a 13th gen Evo certified Intel Core i7 processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, and 16GB of RAM with 512GB of SSD storage to back it up. However, regardless of the top-notch tech housed inside, it's the Swift Go 14's dazzling 2.8K, 14-inch OLED display that will steal the show for many.
See our full Acer Swift Go 14 review.
Best 2-in-1
Everyone loves a comeback, and the tale of the Yoga 9i's return to form is exactly that. The previous model suffered from middling performance and a weak battery life, but the 8th Generation of this fantastic device put to rest all of our complaints.
While its gorgeous 14-inch (2880 x 1880) OLED display is no doubt a potential show stealer, there's no weak link in this ensemble cast thanks to a powerful 13th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU tuned for performance, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of supersonic SSD storage, and Intel Iris Xe graphics.
On top of all of this is the Yoga 9i's convertible potential, offering tablet, tent, and traditional laptop modes of interaction. This versatile machine has plenty to offer to the right owner, and came within a hair's width of a perfect score during our review.
See our full Levovo Yoga 9i (Gen 8) review.
Best business
Lenovo's legacy of supplying incredible ThinkPads to the business sector is back to its dizzying heights. The X1 Carbon, now in it's 11th generation, is is a true return to form for the ThinkPad, solving the battery life woes of the previous model and supplying all the power and performance you'd expect to accompany the ThinkPad name.
This time around the X1 Carbon tallied up 13 hours and 45 minutes in the Laptop Mag battery test, and topped premium average scores throughout our benchmarks trials. That performance comes courtesy of a 13th gen Intel Core i7 processor backed by Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of speedy SSD storage.
Perhaps most impressive is how the X1 Carbon managed to squeeze all of this into a body that weighs just 2.5 pounds without sacrificing anything of its excellent keyboard or bright 14-inch display.
See our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 review.
Best workstation
"The world's smallest, thinnest, and most powerful 14-inch workstation" — sometimes the marketing for these devices says it all for you.
The Dell Precision 5470 is outfitted with a mighty Intel Core i9-12900H CPU, a processor designed with enthusiasts in mind to deliver maximum performance wherever possible. Graphics are handled by an Nvidia RTX A1000 GPU, which is capable of some considerable polygon pushing if that's what you need. Rounding things off nicely is 32GB of RAM and a bountiful 1TB of SSD storage.
Designed with the power user in mind, the Precision's powerful performance is met with a pretty potent price tag for most people. But when you absolutely, positively need every drop of performance, accept no substitutes.
See our full Dell Precision 5470 review.
How we test laptops
We put 14-inch laptops through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution. Gaming laptops go through an entire library of games at high settings to see how their discrete GPUs keep up.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise.
These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
