Best Small Laptops for Travel
The netbook was a genuine phenomenon and a genuine dead end. For a few years around 2009 a nine-inch, £250, slightly underpowered laptop looked like the answer to travelling with a computer. By 2012 the category was gone.
Why it died. Tablets did the light, cheap, long-battery part better, and ultrabooks did the real-computer part at a weight netbooks had made people expect. The netbook's compromises stopped being necessary.
What to look for in a travel laptop now, which is a different list from the one this post used:
- Battery life over processor speed. Ten hours means you work on the train and the plane and do not hunt for a socket. This is the specification that changes how a trip feels.
- Charges over USB-C. One charger for laptop, phone, camera and headphones, and a power bank that can top the laptop up. This single change removed most of the weight from a 2010 bag.
- Around 13 inches and under 1.5kg. Small enough for a tray table, big enough to work on for a day.
- A keyboard you can type on. The netbook's actual fatal flaw. Try it before buying.
The alternative worth taking seriously: a tablet with a proper keyboard case. For email, writing, documents and reading it is lighter, lasts longer and costs less, and for a lot of people it is genuinely enough.
And the thing that matters more than the machine: an eSIM for data and files synced before you leave. A fast laptop with no connection and nothing downloaded is a heavy notebook.
Part of the guide to gadgets and power.