The best Ultrabooks are designed for those people who prioritize portability and battery life over performance but want something more powerful than a Chromebook. Given the small footprint inherent in the design, there’s bound to be sacrifices made to minimize size and weight, so don't expect to play PC games on the same level as a gaming laptop.
Rather, these lightweight laptops are designed to get you through a full workday and then some. The good news is you still get a lot of perks from Ultrabooks like 4K displays and tactile keyboards along with the thin and light frame. Based on a combination of my personal testing experience, price, battery life, specs, and aesthetics, these are the best Ultrabooks on the market – and click here to see them in the UK. If you're after a discount, check out these certified refurbished laptops on eBay.
TL;DR – These are the Best Ultrabook:
- Dell XPS 13
- Asus ZenBook 14
- MSI Stealth 15M
- Apple MacBook Air
- Lenovo Yoga 7i
- HP Spectre x360
- Surface Laptop 4
- Acer Swift 7
- Surface Book 3
1. Dell XPS 13
Best Ultrabook
Dell has long maintained its dominance in the category of ultrabooks, and that hasn't changed with the introduction of the latest Dell XPS 13 model. This new ultrabook gets a little bit thinner than its predecessor without dumping features like the microSD slot or headphone jack, and it actually manages to offer a larger display. The new display offers an extended 1,920 x 1,200 resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio for more vertical screen real estate. It's also a bright display with an anti-glare finish, a combination that makes for easy readability.The Dell XPS 13 model we've picked out comes running on an Intel Core i7-1165G7 for a blend of performance and efficiency. Though you're getting integrated graphics on this ultrabook, it's the new Intel Iris Xe graphics, which can actually muster playable frame rates in some esports games. So, you'll have a laptop that can compile spreadsheets during the day and crush competition after work all in a diminutive, 2.64-pound package.
2. Asus ZenBook 14
Best Budget Ultrabook
The Asus ZenBook 14 is truly a bit of a marvel. At just $750 (or even under $700 if you opt for the 256GB model), it's surprisingly packed with capable hardware in a thin-and-light chassis that looks like it should cost more. In this package, you're getting a 14-inch display on a laptop that measures just 0.7 inches thick and weighs only 2.65 pounds. Asus has done a solid job trimming down the bezels around the display to let the laptop maintain its compact dimensions.
The display panel offers a 1080p resolution and has an anti-glare finish for easier viewing in bright conditions (something cheaper laptops often struggle with). Inside, the ZenBook 14 is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U six-core processor and a Nvidia GeForce MX350 GPU. It's impressive enough to get a new Ryzen mobile processor at this price, but dedicated graphics is especially surprising. The one notable drawback here is that the system only features 8GB of RAM and it's soldered on, so there's no upgrade option here.
3. MSI Stealth 15M
Best Ultraportable Gaming Laptop
It used to be that a laptop under four pounds and well below an inch thick were hard to come by. Now, you can get gaming computers offering those thin-and-light specifications. The MSI Stealth 15M (read our review) not only manages to stay that small (3.73 pounds and just 0.63 inches thick, to be precise) but it does so without major compromises on what it squeezes inside.
You might expect a small or slow display or perhaps a mid-tier CPU, but the MSI Stealth 15M includes a 15.6-inch Full HD display that runs at 144Hz and comes powered by an Intel Core i7-11375H processor built on Intel's newer 10nm node. It even squeezes in an Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU to readily dial up the graphics at 1080p. With Wi-Fi 6, you can enjoy fast connectivity for gaming when you're away from your desk, or you can park this at your desk to play and connect directly to a monitor with the laptop's full-size HDMI port.
4. Apple MacBook Air
Best Ultralight Apple Laptop
If you take a quick look at the newest MacBook Air, you might think it looks like almost nothing has changed. Outwardly, you'd be right. It's the exact same shape and size, even weighing just as much as its predecessor. But, Apple has made some dramatic changes under the hood. Namely, Apple switched away from Intel's processors and introduced its own Apple M1 system-on-a-chip. This puts its CPU, GPU, memory and more all onto the same chip, and it's some chip.
The Apple M1 features four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, letting it speed through some tasks while sipping energy when doing more basic work. These new processing cores also give the new MacBook Air a big boost in battery life. What's truly impressive is that Apple has made this switch to a new chip that operates very differently from Intel's chips yet the operating system and apps are running just fine despite needing a translation layer for many apps to function. The new architecture is also closer to what you'd find in Apple's phones, so iOS apps on macOS should run with ease. Apple's new MacBook Air takes a big step in a new direction, and it looks like Apple's got its footing right.
5. Lenovo Yoga 7i
Best Convertible Ultrabook
Lenovo provides a ton of flexibility in a light package with the Lenovo Yoga 7i. This laptop goes beyond the old Ultrabook classification and into the new Intel Evo platform. It comes powered by an Intel Core i5-1135G7 for solid performance in a wide variety of workloads, and it has Intel Iris Xe Graphics onboard to handle even some light gaming. Another part of that Intel Evo specification is a long battery life and fast boot up times, so the Lenovo Yoga 7i offers a 13-hour runtime and uses a 512GB PCIe SSD to start up quickly and launch programs just as fast. You’ll also enjoy high-speed connectivity with Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 4.
The Yoga 7i’s flexibility comes by way of a 360-degree hinge, letting you use it as a laptop, as a tablet, or as a stand-up display in the tent mode. The 1080p display gets plenty bright at 300 nits, and it has a touchscreen interface for convenient tablet use. If you don’t like using your fingers, the Yoga 7i also supports the Lenovo Active Pen for precise stylus input.
6. HP Spectre x360
Another Lightweight Convertible Laptop
If you like the sound of a convertible laptop but just want something a little bit smaller and sleeker, check out the HP Spectre x360. HP has been at the convertible laptop game for almost as long as Lenovo and this is one fine looking machine both inside and out. The all-metal housing barely adds any weight, yet serves as an added layer of protection from an accidental drop.
There are several different configurations available, but the one linked here boasts an Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 13.3-inch (1,920 x 1,080) FHD display. More than enough to get through most workloads and not break a sweat. At 2.88-pounds and measuring 12 x 7.7 0.7 inches, it’s small enough to fit into even the thinnest of laptop bags.
7. Surface Laptop 4
Most Stylish Ultrabook
The Surface Laptop 4 continues to deliver an exceptional ultrabook experience with a well-polished design, modest but dependable internals, and a simply great display. This latest model offers up the same 13.5-inch PixelSense Touch as its predecessor, offering a taller 3:2 aspect ratio and a sharp 2,256 x 1,504 resolution.
Inside, the Surface Laptop 4 is powered by a capable Ryzen 5 Surface Edition 4680U processor offering six speedy cores and multi-threading. The system runs on 8GB of LPDDR4x memory, though it can be upgraded to 16GB for improved multitasking. While the base model still costs $1,000, this time around it comes packing 256GB of storage, doubling what the base Surface Laptop 3 offered. This new model also offers Wi-Fi 6 connectivity for improved wireless networking to take advantage of everything from your typical Netflix streaming to Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming. With all its packing, the Surface Laptop 4 still manages to weigh just 2.79 pounds and measure close to a half-inch thick.
8. Acer Swift 7
The Thinnest and Lightest Ultrabook
When it comes to the absolutely thinnest and lightest Ultrabook nothing beats the Acer Swift 7. It's astonishingly thin at just 0.39 inches thick and it weighs a mere 1.96 pounds, making it lighter than even some smartphones.
You're not going to be doing any gaming on this thing obviously, but Acer says the battery is good for up to 13 hours of light lifting, so it should be good for full day's worth of office tasks. One other treat on this laptop is the 14-inch Full HD multi-touch display that's also covered in Gorilla Glass, so it can handle the road warrior lifestyle just fine.
9. Surface Book 3
Best Detachable Ultrabook
The Surface Book 3 not only offers a compelling ultrabook experience, but as a 2-in-1 detachable laptop, it also delivers one of the most polished tablet experiences you can find. Despite packing all of its core internals into just the display section, the Surface Book 3 manages to offer a capable Intel Core i7-1065G7 paired with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q. That's more performance than you'll find in just about any other tablet out there (besides the 15-inch Surface Book 3).
Surface Book 3 also offers plenty of RAM and storage, letting you configure a machine that can stand up to some serious workloads. With the Surface Book 3's support for touch, tablet mode, and active styluses, it can work wonders for design tasks. And, with all that, it remains highly portable, weighing under four pounds and offering a lengthy battery life.
What to look for in an Ultrabook
Shopping for an Ultrabook comes down to picking an ultraportable laptop and shaving many millimeters from its profile, without sacrificing performance too greatly. For the most part, the best Ultrabooks nowadays are pretty peppy machines that can handle all-day office work as well as some light video and image editing tasks too.
These modern machines mostly come with either Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, a minimum of 8GB of memory, and at least 128GB SSD for storage. There are, of course, always exceptions to this rule. For example, the Acer Swift 7 uses an Intel Core Y-series processor, which is its low-wattage CPU.
Prices for a capable Ultrabooks laptop usually hover above $1,000 and can easily increase to over $2,000, depending on specs and manufacturer. Don’t get overwhelmed when looking at specs and prices, because unless you are going to edit a lot of videos or use resource-intensive programs, most mid-range ultraportables will be just fine.
