Best 14-inch laptops 2024: Small size, big potential (2024)

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.

Best 14-inch laptops in 2024: Quick list

Best overall 14-inch laptop

Apple Macbook Pro 14 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 M2 Pro or M2 Max SoC 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 M2 Pro MacBook Pro review.

Best 14-inch budget laptop

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.

Best 14-inch gaming laptop

Alienware's catalog of laptops might turn some away with its prices, but that kind of investment usually results in some pretty phenomenal gaming performance and incredible on-screen visuals.

Case in point: the Alienware x14 R1 — a portable gaming platform with everything you need to burn through your game library without a second thought. Armed with a 12th gen Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-Series graphics, the x14 is a tremendous 14-inch option, brimming with gaming potential. Add to that a ridiculously fast SSD with 2TB of storage and 16GB of high-speed RAM and you have a well-rounded machine that can even serve a purpose as a decent workstation or creator-class device.

Best 14-inch 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.

Best 14-inch laptop display

The Pro Duo 14 also smartly comes with an excellent, highly accurate stylus that is a joy to use. However, there is the crowded keyboard, and thumb-sized touchpad to contend with, which will be a turn-off for some. Overall, it’s a perky performer which could make it perfect for on-the-go content creators who will put that stylus to good use.

See our full Asus ZenBook Pro 14 Duo OLED review.

Best 14-inch all-rounder laptop

If you're unsure of what kind of laptop you need, it's sometimes best to aim for the middle of the pack and choose a solid all-rounder. In this case, we'd recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon — an AMD-powered laptop that ticks all the boxes when it comes to striking the balance between performance, price, and comfort.

AMD's Ryzen 7 5800U processor provides the muscle, with Radeon Graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a zippy 512GB of SSD storage all playing a vital supporting role when it comes to this laptop's strong overall performance.

But a bright and colorful 14-inch OLED panel and quality speakers make the user experience stand out, with the combination of both greatly bolstering the Slim 7 Carbon's entertainment potential.

See our full Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon review.

Best 14-inch 2-in-1 laptop

Best 14-inch laptop for Windows

If we hadn't already attributed the title of "Macbook Killer" to one of the other Acer laptops on this list then the Acer Swift 5, with its rival-crushing performance and striking dark green and gold design, would no doubt have claimed it for itself.

A 13-hour battery life, a stunning 2.5K display, and a rapid SSD are all joined by peppy 12th gen Intel Core i7 performance that results in one of the best day-to-day Windows laptops you're likely to find within the same price bracket.

Best 14-inch business laptop

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 14-inch workstation

Best 14-inch Chromebook

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.