The best laptops for Cricut makers: get the most out of Cricut Design Space
As keen crafters, we've picked out the best laptops for Cricut makers – all tested to handle the brand's software.

The best laptops for Cricut makers don't necessarily need to be the most expensive or powerful. We'd recommend something with at least 8GB of RAM and a fairly fast processor to take advantage of more advanced Cricut features, and a quality display to view your work. Plenty of laptops meet these standards.
We're big Cricut fans, and have extensive experience using most of the brand's devices and have also used its software, Cricut Design space, on a range of laptops. Our top pick currently is the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED, which offers generous power and a gorgeous OLED display at a tempting price.
Below, we've listed top picks based on our testing experiences, assessing the performance, design, and additional features while also considering a wide range of price points. If you don't yet have a Cricut, see our guides to the best Cricut machines and the best Cricut alternatives.
Quick list
We'll start with brief overviews of our picks. Scroll down for our full comparisons.
An Intel i9 processor, OLED display and NVIDIA GPU for around $1,200 / £1,000? What's not to love? The specs are more than you need for Cricut software, but this is a great value future-proof buy.
Read more below
A competitively priced laptop offering good enough performance for crafting, the Acer Aspire 7 is a solid budget choice. Its RAM and storage can be upgraded and it has a discrete GPU.
Read more below
For portability, we love this super-light laptop with its versatile 360° hinge, superb connectivity and vivid 2.8K OLED screen. It's Pantone-validated for colour, making it a great value option for creative work, including Cricut.
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If you prefer MacOS, we think this is ideal for Cricut on the go. It's whisper-quiet thanks to the fanless design, and we got around 16 hours of battery life. The screen is bright and offers good colour coverage.
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We found the Surface Laptop 5's 15-inch touchscreen ideal for creating projects in Cricut Design Space, as well as working in apps like Photoshop or Affinity Designer. The base model is enough for most crafters.
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The Surface Pro 9 flips between laptop and tablet for the best of both worlds. It fits nicely on top of the Cricut Maker 3 or Cricut Explore 3, and even the base configuration runs Design Space nicely.
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The best laptops for Cricut in full
Why you can trust Creative Bloq
The best laptop for Cricut overall
01. ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED
Our expert review:
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
✅ You want a mid-size laptop: A laptop of this size provides a good amount of space for design work while still being relatively portable.
✅ You want a machine capable of general creative work: With dedicated graphics and a colour-accurate screen, this has us covered for everything from Cricut designs to photo editing.
✅ You want a good balance between specs and price: We think this laptop is fantastic value for the specs provided.
❌ You want a touchcreen laptop: Scroll down further for our pick of the best touchscreen options for Cricut.
❌ You're on a budget laptop: We think this laptop offers phenomenal value, but it provides more power than necessary for Cricut and there are cheaper options on our list.
🔎 Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is our top pick for Cricut since we think it provides the ideal balance between price and specs on one hand and size and portability on the other. It can easily handle much more demanding programs than Cricut Design Space, and the screen provides great contrast and accuracy for creative work. ★★★★½
What you need to know
Vivobooks occupy the mid-range of Asus's laptop lineup. They're aimed at users who want the specs for creative work without the power and price tag the brand's professional ProArt Studiobooks. The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED delivers great value as a surprisingly powerful and adaptable laptop for its mid-range price point.
Design and build: We loved the overall premium feel of this laptop. It feels strong and has a sleek metal lid and nice details like a webcam privacy shield and a fingerprint scanner on the power button. The OLED display boasts 2.8K resolution, a refresh rate of 129Hz, and 600nits of HDR peak brightness, which makes it possible to work on Cricut designs outdoors on a sunny day. It's also Pantone-validated to meet industry standard levels of colour fidelity, so you can rest assured that you designs should look like how they'll really come out.
Performance: We were impressed with the colour coverage, brightness and contrast of the OLED screen, which we found made our designs look very clear and vivid. The internals are impressive too. We tested the configuration with an AMD Ryzen processor and Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060. Suffice it to say that we had no problem at all creating Cricut projects in Adobe Illustrator and importing them to Design Space.
Pricing: We were very impressed with the specs and performance on offer for a laptop that's priced at under $1,500. The 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 intending on making crafting a business, from design to photo and video editing.
Read more: Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED review
Attributes | Notes | Rating |
---|---|---|
Design and build | Strong and sleek. | ★★★★★ |
Performance | Great OLED screen and good GPU. | ★★★★★ |
Pricing | Great value for the specs. | ★★★★ |
The best budget laptop for Cricut
02. Acer Aspire 7
Our expert review:
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
✅ You want a budget laptop: The Acer Aspire 7 has the most accessible starting price out of the laptops for Cricut that we've chosen, but be sure to check for deals on the options above.
✅ You want decent battery life: While it's not as long-lasting as some heavy-hitter laptops, the Aspire 7 puts in a decent shift, battery-wise, lasting about six hours.
✅ You want a dedicated GPU: While a separate graphics card isn't necessary for Cricut, it's rare on laptops at this price point.
❌ You want a bright screen: The dim display on the Aspire 7 is a bit of a letdown.
❌ You see a cheaper deal on one of the laptops above: This laptop's biggest strength is its value, so it makes less sense if you see one of the devices above for a similar price.
🔎 Acer Aspire 7 will have a lot of appeal for anyone looking for cheap laptop for Cricut that gets the basic job done. It's not flashy, and the dim, uninspiring display is definitely a knock against it, but for the price the Aspire 7 is a workable choice. ★★★½
What you need to know
The Acer Aspire 7 is a cheap laptop with sufficient power to run Cricut's software, or whatever design program you prefer. It's a jack-of-most-trades with solid build quality and pleasing scope for customisation.
Design and build: While its build is plastic, the Acer Aspire 7 feels solid enough, and something our reviewer especially appreciated was its customisability; you can get under the hood and upgrade RAM and storage if needed. The trackpad works well and there's a decent range of ports, including HDMI as well as USB-A and USB-C.
Performance: Scoring well for rendering and visualisation and photo editing in our benchmark tests, the Acer Aspire 7 boasts enough power to handle Cricut tasks. It didn't do so well at video editing, but we're less worried about that in this instance. Having 16GB of RAM keeps things running smoothly, and there's scope to upgrade it if needed. The battery life, while unexceptional, is decent enough, putting in a good six-hour shift. However, the 15.6-inch display is a disappointment, with low 202-nit brightness that you'll struggle to see outside, and poor colour accuracy displaying only 58.1% sRGB colours.
Pricing: The most appealing aspect of the Acer Aspire 7 is its price. For a low outlay, it ticks all the boxes that Cricut designers are going to need ticked, although the poor display limits its utility for serious design work, particularly with regard to colour accuracy. Still, you don't often get a laptop with a discrete GPU at this price point, and the upgradeable RAM/storage capabilities of the Acer Aspire 7 should appeal to anyone who likes to tinker with their PC.
Read more: Acer Aspire 7 review
Attributes | Notes | Rating |
---|---|---|
Design and build | Solid, upgradeable design, but a poor display | ★★★ |
Performance | Good battery life and adequate performance for crafting. | ★★★½ |
Pricing | Good value. | ★★★★ |
The best laptop for Cricut for portability
03. ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED
Our expert review:
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
✅ You want a super portable laptop: The Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is light and compact, and battery life is excellent.
✅ You're OK with a smaller screen: The bright OLED screen is the best we've experienced on a laptop of this size, but some will prefer more space to work with.
✅ You don't need a dedicated GPU: A dedicated graphics card isn't necessary for Cricut, but it's desirable if you're also doing heavy video editing.
❌ You want more working space: If you find the interface cramped on design software you may want a larger screen unless you plan to use an external monitor.
❌ You're looking for value: This isn't the most expensive on our list, but it costs more than the Vivobook Pro 16 above and MacBook Air.
❌ You need a dedicated GPU: While it's not at all necessary for Cricut, you might want a dedicated graphics card if you also edit video.
🔎 Asus ZenBook S 13 OLED is the best compact laptop we've tested. It has more than enough power for Cricut work, and the OLED screen provides excellent colour accuracy and contrast. However, the Vivobook above offers more laptop for less money. ★★★★½
What you need to know
Zenbooks are Asus's premium range of laptops. They're not specifically aimed at designers, but we think this sleek compact device is an excellent option for those who want a more portable laptop for Cricut.
Design and build: We were impressed with how much the ASUS Zenbook S 13 Flip OLED packs into its sleek, compact magnesium frame. It only weighs 1kg, which makes it a great choice if you're working on the move, for example at craft fairs and other locations. We found the chiclet keyboard and trackpad to be comfortable to use despite the compact size. Note that there are now legacy USB-A and HDMI ports, so you'll need adapters if those connectivity types are critical for you. However, we appreciated the two Thunderbolt 4 ports for super speedy connectivity.
Performance: With integrated graphics, 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's software. That said, while the lack of a dedicated graphics card doesn't matter at all for Cricut alone, it may dissuade those who also do more complex video editing work to promote their craft business.
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 tested 14 hours of battery life, further backing up the case for the portability of this device.
Pricing: The ZenBooks S 13 is a little on the expensive side when you consider that it's smaller and less powerful than the Vivobook above. It's also more expensive than the MacBook Air on our list. However it makes up for that with a premium look and feel and the best screen we've used on such a compact laptop. We think it's the ideal option for Cricut users who want a portable but highly capable laptop for using on the move.
Read more: Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED review
Attributes | Notes | Rating |
---|---|---|
Design and build | Super light and compact. | ★★★★★ |
Performance | Good all-round performance and colour coverage. | ★★★★ |
Pricing | Relatively expensive for its size. | ★★★ |
The best MacBook for Cricut
04. Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022)
Our expert review:
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
✅ You want a compact and light laptop: The 13-inch MacBook Air is only 200g heavier than the Asus Zenbook above.
✅ You want a great price: The 2022 model of this laptop is very cheap for a MacBook and provides great specs for the price.
✅ You like Apple: There's a MacOS version of Cricut Design Space, and we think a MacBook pairs very well with a Cricut machine, but if you may prefer to stick to Windows if it's what you're used to.
❌ You want a touchscreen: Apple has yet to make a laptop with a touchscreen. See the Microsoft laptops below for options there.
❌ You want a Windows laptop: If you're used to Windows, you may not want to have to adapt to a new operating system.
🔎 Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2) is a sleek, compact laptop that fits Cricut aesthetics. It has plenty of power, and best of all, there are some great deals on the 2022 M2 model at the moment. ★★★★½
What you need to know
Apple has released new M3-chipped MacBook Airs for 2024, but we think the previous M2-powered 2022 MacBook Air 13 is the best option for Cricut users looking for value. The design is very similar to this year's 13-inch model, so, considering that the M2 chip is already more than powerful enough for Design Space and other design programs, we don't see a need to pay more for the latest iteration.
Design and build: We've long been fans of the MacBook Air at Creative Bloq, and we've given excellent reviews to almost every one that we've tested. We think the 2022 M2 model makes a great choice for Cricut software, which is available for MacOS. We loved premium build quality and the sleek, lightweight design, which really looks the part paired with a Cricut machine.
Performance: Of course, choosing a Cricut laptop is about more than just looks, and the MacBook Air also delivers portability and performance. Since it doesn't have a fan, it's whisper-quiet, and we found battery life to be excellent, giving us over 16 hours on a single charge. Beaten only by the MacBook Pro further down our list, 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. We measured up to 500 nits of brightness in our tests, and this was enough to see the screen clearly even when working in bright sunlight. 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.
Pricing: Another selling point of the M2 MacBook Air is its price. That might seem unusual for an Apple laptop, but since the new M3 Air was released this year, Apple has decided to keep the 2022 M2 model on sale at $100 less than it's launch price. You'll often be able to find further savings on top of that from third-party retailers, taking the price down to around $849 / £949 (see below for any current deals). That makes this one of the cheapest laptops in our list. Note that Apple does also make a larger 15-inch MacBook Air, which we also highly rate. The M3 MacBook Air 15 starts at $1,299 / £1,299.
Read more: MacBook Air (M2, 2022) review
Attributes | Notes | Rating |
---|---|---|
Design and build | Sleek, light and compact. | ★★★★★ |
Performance | Great battery and more than powerful enough Cricut. | ★★★★ |
Pricing | Great price when discounted. | ★★★★ |