By Robin Owens 3 days ago, Hardware
What is the best 13-inch laptop at an affordable price?
Nowadays the market offers a broad range of 13" laptops. The devices have different prices, advantages and disadvantages, but be sure that a 13 inch laptop will be quite enough to complete a lot of serious tasks, like editing photos, or processing music, or playing resource-tolerant games. It is a great choice if you are looking for a portable yet productive device.
A 13-inch laptop is rather compact and lightweight, so it is easy to take it with you in your briefcase of a backpack. Despite its small size, the best 13 inch laptop ensures impressively effective performance to fulfill the most complicated tasks. In the article below you can read about the best 7 laptops we have picked for you.
CPU: Intel Core i3 | GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 256 GB | Display: 13-inch | Weight: 2.8 pound
⊕ Long battery life
⊕ Reasonable price
⊕ Excellent performancе
⊕ Portable
⊖ Weak camera
A new MacBook Air, released in 2024, is considered the best 13 inch laptop by many users all over the world. Nice-to-touch keys, amazingly bright display, perfect size, reasonable price, and a powerful quad-core processor are the features that appeal to a lot of people. Besides, the laptop comes with a fingerprint sensor and a very precise touchpad.
You will be absolutely satisfied with the outstanding graphics, ensured by MacBook Air. If you are looking for a portable laptop, powerful enough, and reasonably priced, this one is a decent choice. Besides, users, who can afford it, may enhance the laptop, purchasing a 1.1GHz Core i5 with 3.5GHz Turbo Boost and a 6MB cache for an extra $100.
CPU: Intel Core i3-10110U | GPU: Intel Integrated Graphics | RAM: 4 GB | Storage: 64 GB | Display: 13.5-inch | Weight: 2.97 pound
⊕ Keyboard backlight
⊕ Nice to touch
⊕ Budget-friendly
⊕ Excellent display
⊖ Small storage
Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5 is a great 13-inch laptop for the users, who are looking for a performant still easy-to-use device. This laptop is provided with the 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i3 processor and a capacious battery, able to work approximately 10 hours.
The main features of the Chromebook ensure the greatest productivity. After deep research, we can say that this model is the best 13 inch laptop, which covers the needs of most users. Besides, the price on Amazon is very attractive, and the Chromebook is totally worth it.
CPU: Octa-Core Processor | GPU: Radeon Graphics | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 512 GB | Display: 14-inch | Weight: 2.65 pound
⊕ Great battery
⊕ Solid build
⊕ Affordable
⊕ Compact design
⊖ Average display
Acer Swift may be considered the best 13-inch laptop if you need a compact device to take it with you anywhere. It is equipped with 4" Full HD Widescreen IPS LED-backlit Display, which has a resolution of 1920x1080, and a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Other features, which will appeal to lots of users, are sleek metal chassis, top screen-to-body ratio, and long battery life. For such a reasonable price, Acer Swift seems to be a very decent choice with a list of impressive features.
Although, many reviews claim that the quality of the display is not perfect. Even considering this fact, this 13-inch laptop is very attractive.
CPU: Intel Core i5 | GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 256 GB | Display: 13-inch | Weight: 3.1 pound
⊕ Excellent screen
⊕ Touch Bar and Touch ID
⊕ Quick SSD
⊕ Long-lasting battery
⊖ Wi-Fi 6 not supported
⊖ Lack of ports
New MacBook Pro is a wonderful option for any of the Apple fans. Now it comes with an improved Magic Keyboard, which is very comfortable and shows excellent performance.
MacBook Pro is provided with enhanced processors, which are now even more powerful. If you are looking for a device for multitasking, this will be the best 13-inch laptop for your needs. It will easily complete more complicated tasks than MacBook Air can handle, though for many users Air will be quite enough.
CPU: Intel Core i7-1065G7 4 Core | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB | Display: 13.3-inch | Weight: 2.84 pound
⊕ Perfect connectivity
⊕ Impressive keyboard
⊕ Accurate touchpad
⊕ Super slim design
⊖ Possible ghosting
Razer Blade Stealth is an amazing 13-inch gaming laptop, provided with GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti graphics card. This model will impress you with the high-quality graphics it delivers. The diagonal of 13 inches is just right, not too large, and not too small, compared to other Razer Blade laptops.
The speakers deliver decent audio quality. The powerful GPU allows you to play the majority of mid-level level games, and even some of the high level. If you set a resolution to 720p, the picture is bright and clear with true colors.
CPU: Intel Core i7-8565U | GPU: Intel HD Graphics 620 | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB | Display: 13.3-inch | Weight: 2.6 pound
⊕ Solid and reliable
⊕ Decent battery life
⊕ Unique ErgoLift design
⊕ Thin bezels
⊖ Overpriced
Asus ZenBook 13 is a reliable 13-inch laptop with a solid build, which corresponds to the highest military standards. It was tested in many different ways and is proved to survive and perform great in different environmental conditions.
A unique ErgoLift design is well-though-out to please you with the greatest comfort. The keyboard is placed in the most comfortable position for typing, the cooling is improved, the audio is excellent. The laptop is ready for professional use: provided with Windows 10 Professional and hardware TPM security.
CPU: 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7-8565U | GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620 | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB | Display: 13.3-inch | Weight: 3.89 pound
⊕ Large SSD
⊕ Great compatibility
⊕ Long-lasting battery
⊕ Sturdy build
⊖ No lightweight
⊖ Pricey
HP Elite Dragonfly is a lightweight, perfectly portable and quick 13-inch laptop. Use an optional 4G LTE5 to ensure the connection from anywhere. The laptop will please you with the top-quality audio by Bang & Olufsen, and an excellent screen.
However, the battery doesn’t last long. The price of this device is above average, but if you are not on a budget, the laptop is definitely worth it.
| Image | Name | Features | |
|---|---|---|---|
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MacBook Air 13-inch
Our Choice |
CHECK PRICE→ | |
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Lenovo Chromebook Flex
Compatible |
CHECK PRICE → | |
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Acer Swift
Full HD |
CHECK PRICE → |
The first thing you need to choose is the OS supported. As soon as you answer this question, select the style of the laptop you like. There are three major styles:
Touch Screen – In general, works similarly to your phone. You are going to manage all the tasks with the help of your finger touch.
2-in-1 Laptops – This is a kind of mixture of a keyboard laptop and a tablet. You may disconnect a display and use it as a tablet, or use a traditional version with a keyboard. These laptops are quite popular nowadays.
Traditional Laptops –A traditional style doesn’t suppose any disconnections, you have a display with a keyboard in one piece.
Random-access memory, or RAM, is responsible for fast access to files and programs, running on your computer. Enough RAM guarantees the possibility to leave programs open without any errors or hangings. We believe that the best 13 inch laptop needs at least 8GB of RAM for proper performance.
The operational speed of the laptop is defined by its processor. If the built-in processors aren’t powerful enough, the computer will be slow. Our advice is to select a laptop, provided with quad-core processors as a minimum to guarantee stable and decent performance.
Having enough hard drive storage is essential. You definitely don’t want to waste time removing files to free up space all the time. If a laptop has a 256GB storage, it is good. In fact, the larger storage it has, the better, but the price on the laptops with up 1TB of storage, for example, will be quite high.
The most popular screen resolutions for 13" laptops are 1080p (1,920x1,080) and 4K (3,840x2,160). The latter usually costs more and requires more battery power. The majority of users will be satisfied with the 1080p, considering the size of the display.
The experienced buyers claim that if you want to get a discounted device, it’s better to begin shopping in spring. So, they consider April and May the best month to purchase a new laptop. Some experts also add September to this list.
It depends on the game you want to play. If a 13 inch laptop meets all the requirements of the game, everything will be fine. But if the built-in GPU is not enough, you won’t have pleasant experience.
To find out the size of your laptop display, you should measure its diagonal from one bottom corner to the opposite top corner. Don’t include the bezels.
