The best laptops for Cricut makers needn't be the most expensive or the most powerful computers on the market, but they do need to meet certain criteria for good all-round functionality. You'll want at least 8GB of RAM and a reasonably fast processor for a good experience, and a quality touchscreen display can also be a benefit. The good news is you can get these features and more these days without costing you a lot of money.
We're big Cricut fans at Creative Bloq and we've reviewed most of the brand's cutting machines and heat presses. That means our team has a lot of experience working with the brand's software, Cricut Design Space, and we've tested it out of a wide range of laptops, from lightweight 2-in-1 devices to laptops aimed at creatives.
In the guide below, we pick out the best Cricut laptops for different needs and budgets, evaluating the pros and cons of each based on our hands-on reviews and extensive evaluation comparison of specs. If you don't yet have a Cricut, see our guides to the best Cricut machines and the best Cricut alternatives. The best laptops for Cricut below will work with all digital craft machines.
Quick list
We'll start with brief overviews of our picks. Scroll down for our full comparisons.
An Intel i9 processor, OLED display and a NVIDIA GPU for around $1,200 / £1,000? What's not to love? The specs are more than you need for Cricut software, but it's such good value that it's a sensible future-proof buy. Read more below
For more portability, we love this super-light laptop with its versatile 360° hinge, superb connectivity and vivid 16:10 2.8K OLED touchscreen. It's Pantone-validated for colour fidelity, making it a great value option for creative work, including Cricut. Read more below
We found the Surface Laptop 5's 15-inch touchscreen ideal for creating projects in Cricut Design Space, as well as working in other creative apps like Photoshop or Affinity Designer. The base model is enough for most crafters. Read more below
If you prefer MacOS, we think this is ideal for Cricut on the go. It's whisper-quiet thanks to Apple's M2 chip and fanless design, and we got around 16 hours of battery life. The screen is bright and offers good colour coverage. Read more below
The Surface Pro 9 flips between laptop and tablet with ease, making it the best of both worlds. It fits nicely on top of the Cricut Maker 3 or Cricut Explore 3. We found the Intel i5 model runs Design Space nicely. Read more below
A competitively priced laptop that's built to last, we found the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 offers up to 15 hour of battery life, a crisp 12.4-inch touchscreen, and good enough performance for crafting in the base model. Read more below
The 14-inch MacBook Pro carried Apple's base M chip, making for a lower entry price than before, still with the benefits of a sleek chassis and a fabulous screen. It's not cheap and it's more than you need for Cricut, but it's a solid long term investment. Read more below
The Acer Aspire 3 Spin 14 isn't the slickest laptop, but you get a lot for very little money. It 14-inch display supports touch and stylus input, folds 360 degrees into tablet mode that can sit on a Cricut machine, and it offers a decent 1,920 by 1,200 resolution. Read more below
This is a niche machine and way more than you need for Cricut software, but the second display can be handy for things like displaying customer orders, design work progress or even just instant messages or your music player Read more below
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Ports: 1x USB-C with power delivery 2x USB-A, 1x Thunderbolt 4, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1 x 3.5mm audio, 1x Ethernet,
Display: 15.6” FHD (1920 x 1080), 2.8K, 120 Hz
Reasons to buy
+
High specs for the price
+
Excellent OLED screen
+
Runs everything we tried
Reasons to avoid
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Poor speaker quality
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No SD card slot
The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is a surprisingly powerful and adaptable laptop for its mid-range price point. We were impressed with the colour coverage, brightness and contrast of the OLED screen, and the internals are impressive too: an Intel i9 and up to NVIDIAGeforce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card for under $1,500.
Those specs are more than you need to run Cricut's software, but the laptop is such great value that we think it's a sensible buy to ensure you're futureproofed for other kinds of creative work that might need to do if you're making crafting a business, from design to photo and video editing. Suffice it to say that we had no problem at all creating Cricut projects in Adobe Illustrator and importing them to Design Space, and with the OLED screen, we found our designs looked really clear and vivid.
Display: 13.3-inch, 2880 x 1800, OLED, 550 nits, 100% DCI-P3
Reasons to buy
+
Reasonably priced
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Lovely OLED screen
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Magnesium chassis
Reasons to avoid
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Doesn't have the very latest CPUs
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No dedicated GPU
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No legacy ports
Another option from Asus, this laptop doesn't match our first choice for power, but, as we said, you really don't need that much power to run Cricut software. And you might prefer a smaller, more portable laptop, particularly if you use Cricut on the go. We were impressed with how much the ASUS Zenbook S 13 Flip OLED packs into its sleek, compact magnesium frame.
We found the 13.3-inch OLED touch display to be bright and vivid, with great Pantone-certified colour coverage (we got 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and 113% of sRGB). We also appreciated the two Thunderbolt 4 ports for super speedy connectivity. We found the chiclet keyboard and trackpad to be comfortable to use, and we tested 14 hours of battery life, further backing up the case for the portability of this device.
Unlike our top choice, this isn't available with a dedicated graphics card. That doesn't matter for Cricut alone, but it may dissuade those who also do more complex video editing work to promote their craft business. The laptop also lacks legacy USB-A and HDMI ports, so, you'll need adapters if those connectivity types are critical for you.
Connectivity: USB-C, USB-A, 3.5mm headphone jack, Surface Connect port
Display: 13.5 or 15 inch touchscreen, up to 2496 x 1664 resolution
Reasons to buy
+
Large and crisp touchscreen display
+
Solid all-round performance
+
Windows 11 is excellent
Reasons to avoid
-
Design feels dated
We think the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 is a good option for Cricut users and digital crafters in general. It's big selling point is that it's available with a 15-inch touchscreen, which we found perfect for creating projects in Cricut Design Space.
As a Windows 11 device, it runs Cricut Design Space perfectly, and it has more than another power to run Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or other high-end graphics software like CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer. The base model is a little under-powered by today's standards with just 8GB RAM. As I found in my Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 review, it can start to slow down if you're running multiple intensive apps, but I was a long away from maxing it out when using Cricut Design Space.
For Cricut alone, the entry-level model should do perfectly fine. If you do tend to use lots of apps at once, you can go for a configuration with more RAM.
Display: 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display with 2560x1664 resolution
Reasons to buy
+
Beautiful display
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Excellent M2 chip performance
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Brilliant build quality
Reasons to avoid
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Only two ports
We're big fans of the MacBook Air at Creative Bloq, and we think the 2022 M2 model makes a great choice for Cricut software, which is available for MacOS. The selling point here is the sleek, lightweight design. It looks great paired with a Cricut machine, but this is about more than just looks. It's also about portability and performance.
Since the MacBook Air doesn't have a fan, it's whisper-quiet, and we found battery life to be the best of any of the laptops we have tested for Cricut, giving us over 16 hours on a single charge. That makes this another contender for using to work on Cricut designs on the go without having to worry about a power supply.
We found the display to be up to the job too. Apple has baked in support for the P3 color gamut, and the screen is plenty bright, with up to 500 nits of brightness in our tests. Our only real complaint is the lack of port variety. While the Thunderbolt 4 ports are incredibly speedy, you’ll need an adapter if your peripherals don’t use USB-C.
The Surface Pro 9 from Microsoft is an excellent option if you want the best parts of both a laptop and tablet. The Surface Pro 9 can flip between tablet and laptop modes with ease (if you buy the optional Type Cover, that is). It runs Windows OS, so you can run Cricut Design Space and all desktop design software programs, but you can also use it as a tablet for the convenient portability of handheld use.
The touchscreen means that you can use the Surface Slim Pen (also not included) to draw by hand in vector design software like or to navigate the interface. And as a tablet, the Surface Pro 9 is about the size of an iPad Pro in depth and the perfect size to fit into the tablet slot on top of the Cricut Maker 3 and Cricut Explore 3.
The Intel i5 and i7 models have enough power to run any full software too such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. The less powered ARM SQ3 build will struggle but runs Design Space just fine. The advantage of the SQ3 is extra battery life and 5G connectivity, but if you're working from home on Cricut projects, I'd suggest the Intel i5 model.
Competitively priced laptops tend to feel cheap and fragile. But not the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3. We thought it felt high quality and built to last. Performance wise, the 12th Gen Intel i5-1235U isn't exactly cutting edge, but we found it to have enough grunt for Cricut and other daily tasks. The base model also comes with 8GB of RAM, which again is enough for mainstream applications.
The battery life is fantastic to, giving us up to 15 hours. The main downside is the relatively small 12.4-inch screen. However, it's a good quality display and supports touch input. Connectivity is a little limited, too, with just one USB-C port, a USB-A, audio jack, and Microsoft's Surface Connect interface. It's not going to be up to more demanding design tasks, but this is a nice budget choice that will do the job for Cricut with no problem.
For 2023, Apple has introduced the new M3 chip family and with that comes a cheaper MacBook Pro 14 model than before. Where the previous 14-inch MacBook Pro models were only offered with the Pro and Max chips, the latest MacBook Pro 14 can be had with the base M3. That allows for a cheaper entry point while offering more than enough performance for Cricut and other daily tasks.
The good news is that the new base model offers nearly all of the other upsides you get with more powerful MacBook Pros. For starters, there's the best build quality in the business. This thing is an absolute delight, physically. Then there's the 14.2-inch, 3,024 by 1,964 pixel Liquid Retina XDR. With full array local local dimming and up to 1,600 nits of brightness, it's one of the very best screens in any laptop. And, of course, you get excellent battery life as with any recent MacBook thanks to the efficiency of Apple's silicon.
As for downsides, well this new base model only has two rather than three Thunderbolt 4 ports. And it's still not cheap. Add anything to the base spec and it very quickly gets awfully expensive, but you really don't need any more for Cricut.
Connectivity: 1x USB-C, 2x USB-A, 1x HDMI, 1x audio jack
Display: 14-inch, 1920 x 1200
Reasons to buy
+
Budget friendly
+
Touchscreen with 360-degree hinge
Reasons to avoid
-
Not the fastest
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Limited battery life
If you're looking for a budget laptop to use with Cricut’s Design Space software, may we suggest the Acer Aspire 3 Spin 14. It's an eminently affordable portable PC but won't leave you feeling horribly short changed.
Firstly, there's a decent 14-inch display with 1,9020 by 1,200 resolution. Even better, it's a touchscreen with a 360-degree hinge with tablet mode and stylus input support. That's pretty trick at this price point.
You also get 8GB of RAM at a very competitive price point. The CPU is a modern 12th Gen Intel model with eight cores, albeit they are eight Efficient cores. This chip doesn't have any Performance cores.
There isn't a huge array of connectivity, either. But with USB-C, USB-A and HDMI, most bases are covered. Battery life is rated at six hours, which is likewise nothing special. But for a budget machine, this remains a pretty strong all-rounder.
The Asus Zenbook Duo OLED might appear to be a gimmicky option, but hear us out on this one. That second full-size display hidden underneath the removable keyboard can be used to boost productivity for those who run a business around their Cricut machines, so you can display customer orders, design work progress or even just your instant messages or music player.
And of course as the name suggests, you're getting not one, but two beautiful OLED displays that provide rich black tones, alongside a 120Hz refresh rate and 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. This isn't just a great laptop for Cricut users, but graphic designers and content creators in general thanks to it being seemingly designed for creative professionals.
That lovely screen will make your Cricut designs really pop, and it comes equipped with the latest 14th-generation Intel processors, as well as plenty of RAM.
Our only issue during tests (see our review of the Asus Zenbook Duo OLED) was mediocre battery life with both screens in use, but if you're looking for a truly unique creative workstation laptop to help run a Cricut business, the Asus Zenbook Duo OLED is a solid choice.
What's the best laptop for Cricut Explore Air 2, Cricut Maker 3, Cricut Explore 3, and other Cricut machines? The good news is that the above requirements are met by a wide range of Windows laptops and MacBooks, including many budget models. If you're really short of cash, be aware that you don't actually need a laptop to run Cricut's Design Space. You can use a smartphone or tablet instead.
However, there are two reasons why you might want to go for one of the more expensive laptops on the market instead. Firstly, because it’s going to provide a better computing experience in general. And secondly, because some of the more advanced Cricut features, such as Offset, are not supported with the minimum system requirements but require higher system specs, such as Windows 10 64-bit. Essentially, the more you spend, the better your experience will be; both when using Cricut machines and when doing general computing tasks.
Laptops are technologically complex and oh so varied in features and form factors. That means numerous capabilities that need to be tested, prodded and assessed. Cricut isn't the most demanding application, but a good screen is still important, with brightness, contrast, colour coverage and pixel density all on the list.
Touch responsiveness including support for input pens is also key, with the number of pressure levels supported always an important factor. Next up we assess overall form factor, portability and build quality, which in this context means everything from conventional clamshell laptops to 2-in-1s and tablet convertibles with detachable keyboards and even foldable laptops.
You absolutely don't need an epic 16-core CPU or powerful graphics chip for Cricut, but we test laptops to ensure a decent baseline of both GPU and processor performance.
Connectivity is another key element for any laptop, which means looking out for features like Thunderbolt tom ensure plnty of bandwidth, USB-C for univrsal connectivity and the specification of wireless interfaces. Good battery life is of course always desirable for any portable drawing device.
We also assess ergonomics, build and usability, including keyboard quality, chassis rigidity, trackpad response and more to build up a practical picture of how well a laptop performs in the real world rather than merely benchmarks. That said, we do run a series of benchmark tests on all laptops we get in for review, which will be different based on the intended use for them. All the laptops in this guide have been run through the following tests (provided the OS is compatible for each one):
• Cinebench R23/2024 - this assesses the performance of a computer's CPU and GPU using real-world 3D rendering tasks
• Geekbench 5/6 - this tests the CPU's processing power, both by using a single core for a single task at a time as well as all the CPU's core to see its ability to multitask
• PCMark 10 - this test assesses a computer’s ability to run all everyday tasks from web browsing to digital content creation, testing app launch speeds, 3D rendering and even battery life
FAQs
What kind of laptop do you need for a Cricut?
All of the devices in our pick of the best laptops for Cricut meet the system requirements for the devices' software and then some. However, if you choose a different laptop, make sure it meets the basic Cricut system requirements below. Note that if it’s a Windows laptop, it must be running a full version of Windows, as opposed to Windows S mode.
For Windows:
Operating system: Windows 8 or later
CPU: Intel Dual-Core or equivalent AMD processor
RAM: 4GB
Free disk space: 2 GB free disk space
Connectivity: USB port or Bluetooth connection
Display: 1024px x 768px screen resolution
For Mac:
Operating system: macOS 10.15 or later
CPU: 1.83 GHz
RAM: 4GB
Free disk space: 2GB
Connectivity: USB port or Bluetooth connection
Display: 1,024px x 768px screen resolution
Do Chromebooks work with Cricut?
No, but Yes. Chromebooks use Chrome OS rather than Windows or MacOS, and Cricut Design Space will not run directly on Chrome OS. However, there is a way around that. If your Chromebook is compatible with the Google Play Store, and has Bluetooth, then you can download the Android version of Cricut Design Space on the Google Play Store, and use your Bluetooth to connect. Most Chromebooks released in 2022 meet this criteria.
Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creativebloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and leading video game title Official PlayStation Magazine. In his early career he wrote for music and film magazines including Uncut and SFX. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on AI, digital art and video game art and tech, and more to Creative Bloq, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5. He's also a keen Cricut user and laser cutter fan, and is currently crafting on Glowforge and xTools M1.
