The best lightweight laptops of 2025: Expert tested

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Recent advancements in processor technology have allowed laptops to be thinner and lighter than ever before -- without sacrificing performance. Take the 2.1-pound Asus Zenbook A14, one of the lightest laptops we've ever tested, also with one of the best batteries. They don't have to be tiny, either; LG's Gram 17 has a large, brilliant display, but is only 0.74 inches thick and weighs 3.2 pounds.

Our team of expert reviewers has gone hands-on with dozens of laptops over the past year to evaluate performance, design, and value -- along with carrying them around town to measure how portable they actually are.

What's the best lightweight laptop right now?

After putting several devices through the wringer, we found the best overall lightweight laptop to be the MacBook Air M4 for its fantastic combination of features, battery life, and performance relative to value. It's not the best choice for everyone, however, so we've included a number of other devices we love as well, each for a specific use case.

Also: The best laptops of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed

The best ultraportable laptops of 2025

Let's face it: the MacBook Air set the standard for lightweight laptops, and it continues to do so by packing more power and performance into a tiny frame. The MacBook Air M4 is Apple's latest in the series, and an incremental upgrade from the M3, refining its design with quality of life features that make it the best overall lightweight laptop in 2025.

Review: Apple MacBook Air M4

The M4 MacBook Air supports two additional monitors with the lid open, and has more memory for less compared to last year's M3, positioning it as a competitively-priced laptop in an increasingly uncertain consumer market.

The MacBook Air is also a great laptop to take to work, as videoconferencing on this laptop is a joy. The upgraded 12MP camera on the M4 Air with Apple's new Center Stage feature and Liquid Retina technology is crisp, smooth, and vibrant. If you have an iPhone, integration between the laptop and your phone is as seamless as ever.

Also: Best MacBooks of 2025: The top 5 models for most people

Regarding more demanding tasks, the upgraded M4 processor handles use cases once relegated to the MacBook Pro, with video editing and design applications running smoothly, particularly with the higher-end configurations, going up to 32GB of unified memory on the 15-inch.

Apple MacBook Air M4 tech specs: Operating System: MacOS | CPU: 10-core CPU with 16-core Neural Engine, 8, 10-core GPU | Display: 13-inch, 15-inch | RAM, Storage: From 16GB to 32GB of unified memory | Camera: 12MP Center Stage camera | Battery: Up to 15 hours | Weight: 13-inch: 2.7 pounds; 15-inch: 3.3 pounds

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The Asus Zenbook A14 turned heads when it debuted at CES 2025. It's exceedingly light, but also has a balanced design that delivers what consumers want: a crisp OLED display, slick form factor, and multi-day battery, with an approachable $999 starting price.

Asus' proprietary "ceraluminum" material is responsible for the laptop's featherweight status, clocking in at just 2.1 pounds and contributing to its neutral, matte beige aesthetic. Like all ultraportables, there are trade-offs here, but the Zenbook A14 makes them carefully.

Review: Asus Zenbook A14

For example, the OLED display is crisp and brilliant, but it doesn't have the razor-thin bezels you'd see on an ultra-premium device. Similarly, the 32GB of RAM pairs with a Snapdragon X processor (not a Plus, not an Elite) that's snappy and responsive for work, multitasking, even light gaming, but not for grinding away at demanding workloads.

Instead, it's light, airy, and aesthetic, made to be seen, to go where you go, and remain untethered. Its best quality is its marathon battery, which will provide multiple days of use or more, depending on how hard you push it.

The Zenbook A14 earned our Editor's Choice award for its strong combination of features and is our pick for the lightweight laptop with the best battery in 2025.

Asus Zenbook A14 tech specs: Operating System: Windows 11 Home/Pro | CPU: Snapdragon X/Plus, Qualcomm Hexagon NPU up to 45 TOPS | GPU: Qualcomm Adreno GPU | Display: 14-inch, WUXGA (1920 x 1200) OLED, 60Hz refresh rate, 600nits HDR peak brightness | RAM, Storage: 16GB/32GB, 512GB/1TB SSD | Camera: 1080P FHD | Battery: Up to 30 hours | Weight: 2.7 lbs.

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The LG Gram 17 takes portability to the extreme. At 0.74 inches thick and barely over three pounds, the Gram 17 not only holds a Guinness record, but achieved what was previously thought impossible for a 17-inch laptop.

Its portability is matched by a suite of powerful hardware, including an Intel Core Ultra 7 "Lunar Lake" processor, 32GB of memory with 1TB of storage, and an Intel Arc GPU. This is a machine designed with work in mind, but can also handle some gaming.

Review: LG Gram 17

Speaking of work, the LG Gram 17 is light enough to go wherever you go, and brings a powerful enough battery to back it up. Battery life times depend on how hard you're pushing the machine, but expect to get well over a day's work on one charge, even taking into account strenuous workloads such as video editing or image rendering.

The LG Gram 17 combines portability with a large display, and is the best laptop out there right now for someone who prioritizes those two features.

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The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x feels premium. Its dark "cosmic blue" colorway and sleek form factor exude a grown-up, capable aura that feels down to business but still fun.

The solid hardware on board supports that impression, with the Snapdragon X Elite processor leading the charge, and the brilliant 3K OLED display as the cherry on top. And best of all, it's thin, portable, and less than 3 pounds, making it as portable as it is performing.

Review: Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x

It also has one of the best displays I've seen on a laptop in a while, capable of up to 1,000 nits of brightness for peak HDR content. The touchscreen display features a resolution of 2944 x 1840 pixels (or 3K), resulting in a gorgeous media experience with a 90Hz refresh rate for that silky-smooth, crisp image.

The Slim 7x lives up to its name as an ultraportable laptop that easily slides into a backpack, supported by a durable, all-aluminum chassis, securing it as a solid option for remote workers and freelancers on the go.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x tech specs: Operating System: Windows 11 Home 64 ARM | CPU: Snapdragon X Elite 3.4GHz | GPU: Integrated Qualcomm Adreno | Display: 14.5-inch OLED touchscreen, up to 1,000 nits brightness, 90Hz refresh rate | RAM, Storage: Up to 32GB, Up to 1TB SSD | Camera: 1080P FHD | Battery: Up to 22 hours | Weight: 2.8 lbs.

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The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a solid gaming machine in its own right, but it's the combination of power and portability together that make it our pick for best lightweight gaming laptop.

The hardware in this laptop is no slouch; its AMD Ryzen 9 8000-series processor delivers a powerful baseline of performance, while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU completes the package as a graphics card that can gaming with ease. This isn't necessarily the best gaming laptop on the market, but it is perhaps the most portable, particularly when it comes to this amount of power in a compact, clean form factor.

The Zephyrus G14 isn't necessarily pigeonholed into being a gaming laptop, either. This is a machine that will do just as well in the office as it will handling heavy workflows with creative software such as video editing or animation. If you do take it to the office, you'll notice it comes stacked with practical ports: you have two each of USB-A and -C, HDMI, headphone jack, and a microSD slot.

In addition, the battery lasts surprisingly long for a machine with this level of hardware and an OLED display. Most people will be able to get an entire workday plus a little more out of just one charge, even while performing demanding tasks.

Review: Asus' new laptop is a solid MacBook alternative that's better in several ways

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The best lightweight laptop in 2024 is the Apple MacBook Air M4. Portable, powerful, and with a long-lasting battery, the M4 is a versatile workhorse that you can throw in a bag and take with you anywhere you go. The Apple MacBook M4's 10-core CPU and GPU is armed to take on almost anything you throw at it, and the entire package starts at just 2.7 pounds.

Laptop	Starting cost	Processor/GPU	RAM/Storage	Weight (pounds)
Apple MacBook Air M4	$999	M4 10-core CPU / 10-core GPU	16GB up to 32GB, 1TB	2.7 (13-inch), 3.3 (15-inch)
Asus Zenbook A14	$999	Qualcomm Snapdragon X, X Plus / Qualcomm Adreno GPU	Up to 32GB, 1TB	2.16 (Snapdragon X), 2.4 (Snapdragon X Plus)
LG Gram 17	$1699	Intel Core Ultra 7 "Lunar Lake", Intel Arc	32GB, 1TB	3.2
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x	$1,199	Snapdragon X Elite / Qualcomm Adreno	16GB, 512GB	2.6
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14	$1600	AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, GeForce RTX 4060	Up to 32GB, 1TB	3.31

The best lightweight laptop for you depends on what you want to get out of it. Laptops packed with powerful gaming hardware like the Asus Zephyrus G14 are going to weigh a little more, while extreme lightweight machines like the LG Gram Pro 17 will have some design tradeoffs that go along with their compact size.

Choose this lightweight laptop…	If you want…
Apple MacBook Air M4	An all-around powerful laptop that can do it all in a lightweight, portable form factor.
Asus Zenbook A14	A stylish, ultra-thin 14-inch laptop with a gorgeous display and marathon battery.
LG Gram 17	The lightest, thinnest 17-inch laptop on the market, no matter the cost.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x	A premium laptop for work that's as high-performing as it is portable.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14	The lightest machine you can get while still calling it a proper gaming laptop.

We use a combination of methods to test laptops here at ZDNET. First, we acquire data from benchmarking software to analyze a system's metrics under the hood, and compare those to advertised numbers. Then, we spend an extended amount of time with the laptop (usually a week or two) using it the same way a normal consumer would, in order to analyze its portability, form factor, and how well the battery actually holds up, among others. For an extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive laptop testing methodology.

Benchmarking: First, we run a series of tests to put the computer's hardware through the wringer in order to see what it's capable of. Cinebench is one of the most commonly-used hardware testing suites, which tests the laptop's rendering performance on single and multiple CPU cores. PCMark 10 is another powerful program that covers a wide variety of tasks performed in the workplace, and there are many others that we use in tandem to gather as much data as we can. Some components we run tests on include:

Processor: The "brain" of the laptop, and one of the most important factors that determines performance. The four biggest manufacturers that make most of the CPUs found in laptops today are Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple (in their own machines only). This is tested in benchmarking software.

The display: The size of the display (measured diagonally from corner to corner) is also what dictates the laptop's overall size, and play a big role in the laptop's cost. Brightness is measured in "nits", and color spectrums are tested in benchmarking software.

The graphics processor (GPU): Whether it's integrated into the CPU or a dedicated graphics card, how well the machine handles graphics is a key factor when it comes to demanding visual tasks like video editing, rendering, and of course, gaming. We test the GPU with a combination of benchmarking software, gaming, and media playback.

Physical form factor: Finally, the laptop's overall appearance and physical form factor encompasses its weight, thickness, how the keyboard and trackpad feel, and whether or not it has a display that can be folded back to form a tablet. We carry the laptop around for at least a week and note how well it commutes.

Battery testing: We test a unit's battery in a few ways. A handful of benchmarking programs have their own battery testing components, but we also will just let the laptop run for as long as it can under a medium load. We ensure screensavers and hibernation mode are turned off, set the display's brightness and audio at 50%, load up a livestream on YouTube in Chrome, and wait 'til the end.

The human element: As we mentioned earlier, metrics and system data is important, but numbers alone don't give you the full picture. This is where we weave in our personal experience with the device and tap into the practical use cases that consumers actually care about.

Ultimately, our goal is to break down the capabilities of each and every laptop we test into digestible terms that real people can find useful. There is a lot of noise and confusion when it comes to navigating the laptop and computer consumer market, so we hope to bring an intuitive element to the whole process by leveraging our team's decades of experience.

These laptops all offer solid performance in their own right, but paired with their lightweight design, bring a new level of convenience with their portability. Keep in mind that the differences in their weight here are broken down to tenths of a pound, while most people won't even notice much of a difference between two and three pounds. These other factors went into the decision making process:

Display: All of the laptops evaluated here are the 14" versions, except the Gram Pro 17 of course, which is 17-inches and still one of the lightest.
Battery life: In order to be considered for this list, I considered machines with better-than-average battery life. This is one metric that will vary significantly based on use case, but all of these laptops will easily last an entire workday (eight hours) on one charge, even while undergoing demanding workloads
Price: Cost is an important factor and will make or break many consumers' choices. The reality is that ultraportability does come at a cost, as none of these laptops would be considered "budget" by any rate. The Acer Swift Go 14, however, is still quite affordable, starting at $800, though upgrades will move that number more in line with the others on this list.

The answer to this question is simple: laptops are made to be carried around, and no one wants to carry a heavy computer. Having a thin, lightweight machine opens up its usability and lets you take it places you normally wouldn't consider possible.

Ultraportability does come with tradeoffs, however, both in terms of design and cost. When talking about design, the constraints on manufacturers to squeeze value out of every square inch of space in the laptop means that certain elements may be smaller, lighter, or in non-conventional locations. This especially refers to the laptop's battery, its display, or the laptop's keyboard.

In terms of cost, ultraportable laptops are often made with high-end, special lightweight materials that are going to cost more to produce and manufacture than simple plastic or aluminum. All of the laptops on this list were chosen for their well-designed, functional form factors and use of lightweight materials.

Laptops are incredibly thin and light these days, with cutting-edge technology pushing the limit even further each year. Just ten years ago, it wasn't uncommon for laptops to weigh six or seven pounds; today, that seems absurd.

Most laptops today weigh between two and a half and five pounds, with a five-pound laptop being considered on the heavy side. Different configurations change the weight of laptops, as well. More memory and storage will increase the weight -- something to keep in mind when buying.

The heaviest laptops on this list are the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and the 15-inch MacBook Air M3, each weighing just 3.3 pounds. In the laptop world, that's light.

While every computing platform has its loyal supporters, most people end up using a particular operating system because of key applications running on it, employer preferences, or budgetary constraints. Windows, which ranges from budget to premium, and Apple's MacOS, which is exclusive to premium devices, cover a broad spectrum. Chrome OS is mostly limited to mid-range devices.

Also: Comparing the best Macs: Is a MacBook or Mac Studio right for you?

All Windows devices listed here meet the requirements for Windows 11. If you purchase a device with Windows 10 installed, you will be able to upgrade to Windows 11 if you choose to do so. Note that after October 14, 2025, Windows 10 support will end, and there will be no further security patches or feature updates.