If you're looking for the best laptops for writers, you don't necessarily need one that's super-expensive or powerful. Word-processing software is pretty lightweight and will run on even the most basic of laptops. However, there are still other factors to consider.
The most obvious requirement is a good keyboard. If you're going to be writing for long periods, it's essential to have a laptop that's comfortable to write on. Likewise, the screen needs to be suitable for lengthy writing sessions to minimise the strain on your eyes and give you enough space to work with.
We've based our list of the best laptops for writers on these considerations and others such as battery life. Note that when we review a laptop, we make sure to look beyond the pure specs or raw benchmarks, and really get a feel for how it is to work and live with the machine over a prolonged period of time. For further options, see our guides to the best laptop for drawing and the best laptops for programming.
Quick list
This quick list will give you a brief rundown of all our picks, what we love about them, and who we think they're best for. You can click on each to take you to the fuller overviews below.
Money to spare? This ticks all the boxes if you're looking for a laptop for both writing and other, more processor-intensive tasks. It has a fine keyboard, a great design, an excellent screen and includes a super-fast M2 chip, great webcam and excellent battery life. Read more below
If you're on a budget, this Chromebook is a great choice for writing. Slimming everything down, Chrome OS is perfect for those that want to avoid any extra fuss in their laptop. It's got amazing battery life and supports the major word-processing apps. Read more below
If you're looking to for a premium Windows machine that's nicely future-proof, here's our top pick. This 2-in-1 device can be used as a tablet or laptop for greater flexibility. It also has one of the best keyboard-screen-stylus-support combos around right now. Read more below
Slim, light MacBook Airs are great laptops for writers on the move, and if you can get one for less with the 2021 model. Sporting great battery life, a wonderful keyboard, Apple design, and plenty of power for other creative work, it's still superb. Read more below
If you're in between budget and premium and want to maximise value, the Acer Aspire 5 is a great pick. It's solid and dependable, won't cost you a fortune and performs well in terms of performance and for every day writing. Read more below
A 3:2 aspect ratio can be great in a laptop for writing since it offers more vertical space, so more space for writing. The Huawei Matebook X Pro complements that with a great keyboard, nice touchscreen and capabilities for creative work. Read more below
Offering excellent bang-for-buck value, the Lenovo Pad P12 is a good pick at the budget end of the hybrid machine spectrum. It has superb battery life and an optional detachable keyboard. portability and durability are strong points here. Read more below
This is a beastly machine aimed at creatives and can basically do it all. It's perfect for anyone looking for maximum power as well as a great touchscreen. It's overkill for writing alone, but if you're also using your laptop for other things, it's a dream. Read more below
The ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED is a 15-inch laptop, but it's thin, light and eminently portable. It has a 2.8K OLED panel, perfect for super crisp text. That makes its mid-tier pricing a welcome surprise offering great value for money. Read more below
The Surface Laptop 5 is a superb all-rounder. Its comfortable keyboard, strong battery life, and 3:2 screen are the highlights, and it comes in two sizes, offering extra choice. Read more below
Why you can trust Creative Bloq
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Let's be honest, if all you want to do is write on your laptop, it doesn't need to be a particularly powerful one. However, you may want to do other things that are more processor intensive, whether that be streaming video, editing photos or videos, or playing games. If that's the case, and you have money to spend, then the 2023 MacBook Air is now our top pick overall.
With the ultra-fast M2 chip and a bigger, beautiful display, it could be the perfect option for running creative software. It sports the latest M2 chip, making it super fast. Our reviewer found it coped brilliantly on everything from day-to-day tasks like browsing the web and writing up documents to editing 4K video and using Photoshop’s AI tools. Battery life was great too, lasting an entire day, even when performing creative tasks. Apple claims up to up to 18 hours Apple TV app movie playback, which is just one hour more than our testers squeezed out of the device in our looping movie test.
The 1080p FaceTime HD webcam is also great for writers who need to make a lot of video calls (these days that’s most of us), and you also get a fantastic Retina display which, in combination with MacOS, makes for just about the crispest, cleanest font rendering that we have witnessed on a laptop. If you're writing for long periods of time, that's going to make it more comfortable on the eyes than a lesser display.
Overall, then, this is overkill if all you're going to do is writing. But if your writing workflow also requires a lot of web research and watching videos, or if you also want a laptop for other things like creative work or gaming, then you'll certainly see the difference for the extra spend. See our full MacBook Air (M2, 2022) review for more details.
If you're looking for a cheap laptop for writing, a Chromebook is probably the way to go. They cost less than Windows laptops, and much less than the MacBook Air above, but offer great battery life since they require little power. Just bear in mind that Chromebooks take their name from the fact that they run Chrome OS, not Windows, so you can't use every Windows app you might be used to.
That isn't a problem for writing since there are word processors available for Chrome OS, including both Microsoft Word and Google Docs. This Chromebook also has very little internal storage, so you'll be saving work to the cloud. Unlike in the past, you no longer need to be connected to the internet to use a Chromebook though, so you can work pretty much wherever you want.
Some Chromebooks feel a little too small to be comfortable as laptops for writers but when we reviewed it, we found the 14-inch Chromebook 314 to be a nice size, and the keyboard is well laid out and comfortable to use. We found the screen to be good for writing too, with an anti-glare, matte finish. All in all, this is a solid top choice as the best laptop for writers on a budget, just be sure to option the 1080p screen; the standard lower resolution display isn't great. See our hands-on Acer Chromebook 314 review for more details.
Screen: 14.4in 2400 x 1600p 3:2 touchscreen HDR 400
Storage: Up to 1TB
Reasons to buy
+
Comfortable keyboard
+
Beautiful screen
+
Flexible format
Reasons to avoid
-
Expensive
-
More ports would be nice
If you want to treat yourself to a truly premium Windows laptop for writing, then the Surface Laptop Studio 2 fits the bill. Newly updated from the the original Surface Laptop Studio with 13th Gen Intel CPUs, it offers a lot more power than you need for word processing – and costs a lot more than you really need to pay for a laptop for writing – but our reviewer found the keyboard to be a real pleasure to write on. On top of that, the touch screen is gorgeous, and has stylus support, which could come in handy for note-taking if you're inclined.
This is a 2-in-1 device, which means it also converts into a tablet format, which we found could be useful for reading over and correcting writing when on the move, even on the train. It's not the most portable 2-in-1, but you get great battery life and we found that it runs Windows 11 very well. For more details, read our Surface Laptop Studio 2 review.
The 2020 MacBook Air may not be our top choice any more, but it's still a great laptop for writers and a more affordable alternative for those who want a MacBook but can't stretch to the budget of the 2022 M2 MacBook Air. It's wonderfully thin and light and offers brilliant battery life, making it perfect for taking it out and about with you.
The M1 MacBook Air may not have the M2's more powerful chip, but still offers enough power for creative software alongside writing software, making it a viable option for those who need more than just writing capacity too. Our reviewer was and impressed by how quickly the drive loads up apps, and how quick it is to move large files to and from the hard drive. Throughout our tests this MacBook also remained completely silent thanks to its fanless design.
The screen, while a tiny bit smaller than on the new model, is a great piece of tech that's easy on the eyes. Best of all, the 2020 model has been coming in for more regular discounts now that the newer 2022 M2 MacBook Air has been released. See our full MacBook Air (M1, 2020) review for more details.
If you're waiting for that first novel advance before splashing too much cash, there are plenty of mid-range Windows laptops for writers. Our reviewer found this to be a solid and dependable device for those who don't want to spend a fortune. With a plastic body, it doesn't exactly have a premium feel but it's solid enough to carry around.
It also performs well considering the price, especially if you're going to be sticking to word processing tools. We found that the keys don't have the most travel, but the keyboard is well laid out for writing on. Overall, the Aspire 5 is a great affordable laptop for writers on a budget but feel that a Chromebook like number 2 on our list would be too restrictive. See our full Acer Aspire 5 review for more details.
Most laptops have a traditional widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. That's great for watching movies, but not necessarily the most convenient format for writing, which often requires scrolling up and down on vertically oriented documents. An aspect ratio of 3:2 gives you more vertical space, allowing you to see more text on the screen at once. And it also works better for graphic-design work, so is the perfect ratio if you're a writer who also likes to or needs to work on more demanding visual software.
Huawei delivers all of that with the MateBook X Pro, and a very nice touchscreen it has too. It's more than powerful enough for writers who also need to use design software regularly – and the keyboard is comfortable to work on. It's nice and fast too, and our reviewer found opening apps and documents to be a nippy process.
The downside is that if you're in a country like the US, which has blocked access to many Huawei devices and services, you don't get the benefits of the wider Huawei ecosystem. However, if you don't care for ecosystems and just want a premium laptop for writing and doing visual work on, we found the Huawei MateBook X Pro to be a decent option. See our in-depth Huawei MateBook X Pro review for all the details.
The Lenovo Tab P12 is another great choice for those looking for the best laptop for writing on a budget. An optional detachable keyboard turns this tablet into a compact little laptop that we found very convenient to carry around. And as it's an Android rather than Microsoft Windows device, it's much cheaper than most laptops.
It also boasts a huge 10,200mAh battery that easily lasted all day with heavy use and multiple days with lighter use when we tried it. So you could comfortably take this away with you and write somewhere remote for a couple of days, and still have battery life left.
There are some downsides though. The keyboard is small and not as comfortable as other laptops in this list. We'd suggest using the Lenovo Tab P12 as option for quickly jotting down notes, rather than typing up pages and pages of text in one go. But, with the portability and long battery life, the Lenovo Tab P12 lets you note down your thoughts whenever inspiration strikes.
The MSI CreatorPro X17 HX is a large laptop made for professional creatives, and it has a lot of power inside, so it's a great option for all-around pros who need a laptop with a good screen that's easy on the eyes, but need to be able to draw on loads and loads of computing power for burlier creative tasks.
With the very fastest 13th Gen laptop CPU Intel makes paired with Nvidia's finest professional GPU, namely the RTX 5000 Ada, this laptop is obviously overkill for mere writing tasks.But if you're going all out, you may as well own that choice. Which you can thanks to up to 128GB of RAM and two NVMe SSDs, one of which supports the latest ultra-fast PCIe Gen 5 standard.
Along with all that internal hardware hotness, you also have the option of either a 240Hz 1440p IPS display or a 144Hz 4K mini-LED panel that's good for not only 1,000 nits of brightness, but also 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. Nice. Of course, with this much power comes mass. This thing weighs in at 3.3kg so it's not exactly ultraportable. Also, the battery is the largest allowed by most aviation authorities, but you still can't expect battery life that even remotely compares to smaller less powerful Windows laptops, let alone Apple's ridiculously long lasting MacBook Pros.
A big laptop that's actually good for writing on the move
Our expert review:
Specifications
CPU: Up Intel Core i9-13900H
Graphics: Intel Iris Xe Graphics
RAM: 16GB
Screen: 15.6-inch 2880 x 1620 OLED 120Hz
Storage: up to 2TB NVMe SSD
Reasons to buy
+
Excellent battery life
+
Very light
Reasons to avoid
-
Expensive
The ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED is a relatively compact 15-inch laptop that weighs in at a reasonable 1.6kg. Despite that you get the latest 13th-gen Intel processors. Even the base model with its Core i5-13500H is plenty for all but the most demanding tasks and you get a healthy 16GB of memory as standard.
Connectivity is good too, thanks to high-bandwidth Thunderbolt 4 support. More importantly, it packs a stellar 15.6-inch OLED display with 2,880 by 1,620 pixels and runs at 120Hz refresh. It's a glorious display and the perfect partner for long writing sessions thanks to a combination of high pixel density for sharp text and essentially perfect contrast courtesy of OLED's per pixel lighting.
In short, if you are fed up with your smartphone having a much better screen than your laptop, this is the portable PC for you. The fact that it's a nicely designed and built laptop just adds to the appeal. Also consider the Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED, which offers much the same overall package in a slightly smaller 14-inch form factor.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 5's design is getting on a bit now, a fact which is most obviously betrayed by its large screen bezels. But it's still a beautifully designed and engineered laptop with a really nice screen, which is key for long sessions looking at text.
The screen comes in two size options, 13.5 or 15 inches. The 13.5-inch model is cheaper, and still large enough for any writing endeavour so we can heartily recommend the base spec as one of the best laptops for writers anywhere. The tall 3:2 aspect ratio screen makes it very comfortable to write on, and it's a touchscreen too, perfect if you like to make tactile-feeling notes on your work.
The battery life is excellent too, so you can travel about all day without worrying about finding a seat next to a power outlet on a train or in a café. You could also look out for discount on the last remaining examples of the older Surface Laptop 4. It's pretty much exactly the same as the latest model in terms of design, engineering and features, it just runs slightly older Intel CPUs. Check out our full Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 review for more details.
We think the options above are some of the best laptops for writing available now, but the right one for you will depend on your budget and needs. Setting a budget is important in light of the increased cost of living, so we’ve included laptops at a variety of price points to cover all bases to help you choose the right model for you.
An Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) offers a nice balance of stylish design, decent performance and a very reasonable price if you get it on sale. However, an even more reasonably-priced Acer model like the Aspire 5 or Chromebook 315 might give you everything you need. Thinking about which value-adding features you’ll actually use is key, too. For example, a touch screen is nice to have, but if you’re unlikely to make use of it, it’s not worth the extra investment.
FAQs
What makes a good laptop for writing?
As we mentioned in our introduction, some of the key factors in choosing the best laptop for writers include comfortable screens and keyboards, battery life and portability. If you can find a laptop that delivers in these areas, you’re on to a winner. There are some other nice to have features to look out for, too. For example, anti-glare screens if you work outside often. You might also value having a touch screen or writing pad if you’re an avid note-taker.
Historically, storage has also been a consideration, but with the rise of cloud storage, many writers only worry about this if they don’t have regular WiFi access. Plus, USB storage is a perfectly viable option.
Should I get a MacBook or a Windows laptop?
Ultimately, this is a question of preference, but there are a few differences between MacBooks and Windows laptops for writers. While many writers have more experience with Microsoft Word, the software will set you back financially whereas the slightly less sophisticated Pages on Mac comes free. Of course, you could also just use Google Docs if you're regularly connected to WiFi and confident in its Offline Mode.
MacBooks are generally more pricey, as are Mac-compatible peripherals, but can last longer than more budget-friendly Windows laptops. We can’t definitively say Mac or Windows is better for your personal writing preferences, but we will say that the MacBook Air (M1, 2020) is at the top of our list for a reason.
How we tested the best laptops for writers
We tested our picks of the best laptops for writing during our full reviews of each product. When we reviewed each laptop, we performed a series of benchmark tests in order to evaluate their performance, display brightness, speed and colour accuracy and battery life. However, writing doesn't make particularly heavy demands on a laptop so performance benchmarking isn't hugely revealing in this context, but we still consider those test results to ensure that every laptop delivers the performance you would expect given its specifications.
The one benchmarking area that we paid specific attention to when compiling this guide is battery life, since this does make a diffeence if you're writing in different locations. We test battery life under both light loads, which is what writing text amounts to, as well as watching video and more intensive tasks to build a picture of how long a laptop lasts in various usage scenarios.
Screen quality is another area worthy of attention in a laptop for writing, including brightness, contrast, resolution and refresh rate. Ergonomics, and in particular keyboard quality, are also important considerations. We also consider build quality and connectivity in coming to an overall evaluation of each laptop.
Most importantly, our reviewers use each laptop over a period of at least two weeks to get a real feel for what it's like to live and work with the machine. We also take into consideration customer reviews and feedback from our contributing writers, many of whom write on the machines that we recommend above every day as part of their work.
Matt has been a technology journalist for over 15 years, writing for publications such as T3, MacFormat and Creative Bloq. He's a managing editor of TechRadar, Creative Bloq's sister site, where he can be found writing about and reviewing laptops, computers, monitors and more. He often writes for Creative Bloq, helping creatives find their perfect laptop or PC.
