Hi all. I'm thinking about downsizing my primary travel laptop next year, but without sacrificing too much in the way of performance or durability. In the past, I've had (just) acceptable experiences with MacBook Airs and Xiaomi notebooks, both around 12". I'm curious to hear your thoughts on current offerings in this segment. I'm not interested in going too much smaller than 12" because my hands aren't tiny. I prefer Windows (i.e. no Chromebooks).

If only Apple would launch a new 12" Macbook with their current silicon. That would be my ideal travel laptop.

I'm using a 13" Macbook Air, but I'd gladly give up a diagonal inch of screen real estate to get back to a sub- 1 kg Mac.

14" Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 13, Lunar Lake. I just ordered one. 986 grams. Also has WiFi7 vs. the Macbook's WiFi6, faster user-upgradeable storage and a user-replaceable battery. OLED or LCD screen, your choice. Same for a touch screen.

I've done a little more market research since my OP, and it's becoming increasingly clear to me that sub-14" laptops are not nearly as popular these days as they were 10-15 years ago. In fact, one article I read advised those looking for small laptops to focus on older models. As such, I'll probably drop that requirement and focus on weight. My current machine is 1.5 kg, and reducing that by ~30% is appealing.

I think a lot of the "small laptop" market has moved to tablets. Remember netbooks?

Yeah, the 10.x", 11.x" and 12" laptops were so popular since they were all lightweight 900g to 1.3kg or so. Which most modern 13" and 14" business laptops meet. Actually there is even a 16" under 1.2kg... the LG gram 16. But I recommend the Lenovo ThinkPad X1, HP EliteBook X, ASUS ExpertBook B9 or Dell Pro 13 / 14s. All of them are lighter than 1.2kg.

Exactly. You can still find a few 11.6" Chromebooks, but none of them are appreciably smaller nor lighter than a MacBook Air or other modern 13" laptop.

Basically anything smaller than an A4/Letter sheet of paper would require a compact keyboard, and if you're going to deal with the hell that is tiny keys you might as well get a tablet with a keyboard case.

I'd be thrilled with a 13" (non Chrome Book), but nearly everything is 14"+.

I'm 99% travel w/ ipad pro 13". Formerly 11". I find that i can do nearly everything I need to (email, report viewing, light excel, powerpoint viewing, etc) on it. The newest ios 26 is a significant step ahead. For clarity, at my level i'm not "building" ppts or excels and if i do need to do heavier work I'll bring my thinkpad as well, but thats pretty rare.

Dell Pro 13... or Lenovo ThinkPad X13

but to be honest... between 13.3" and a compact 14"... the size difference is not really noticeable.

Also monitor bezels on laptops have continued to get ever thinner (albeit this shrinkage has slowed down due to the physical constraints), and in many cases screens have gotten wider / less square, allowing allows �bigger� screens without increasing all dimensions.

You look at the real footprints of laptops now vs a few years ago ago, a 14� laptop is really not too far off from older 13.3� ones:

e.g.

• 2019 ThinkPad T490 - 329 x 227 x 17.9 (12.95 x 8.94 x 0.7 inches)
• 2019 Thinkpad X390 - 312 x 217 x 16.9 mm
  (12.28 x 8.55 x 0.67 inches)
• 2025 ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 - 315.9 x 223.7 x 17.7 mm (12.44 x 8.81 x 0.7 inches)
• 2025 Thinkpad X13 Gen 6 - 299.3 x 207 x 17.7 mm (11.78 x 8.15 x 0.70 inches)

It�d be better to look at the footprint to determine what size you�re happy with, not screen size, but I realise it�s not as easy to do.


Surface Pro can work too� as mentioned above, tablets have taken a large market away from smaller laptops. While it�s not that easy to use on the lap, the Surface Pro is an a full-fat Windows device; they are now pushing ARM to consumers, look at the (more expensive) �for Business� ones if you want Intel processors.

X1 Carbon Gen 13 is a 14" laptop but is 312.80mm x 214.75mm x 8.08/14.37mm (front/rear) (12.31 x 8.45 x 0.32/0.5 inches) and still under 1 kilo.

I notice weight far more than size.
Case in point: I used to lug around my 2009 Macbook Pro until about 2 years ago, 14.35 in � 9.82 in � 0.95 in (≈ 36.4 cm � 24.9 cm � 2.41 cm) @ 2.5 kilos. I then switched to an Asus Zenbook 31.90 cm � 20.80 cm � 1.39 cm, roughly 12.56″ � 8.19″ � 0.55″ @ 1.2 kilos. I don't really notice the size difference all that much, BUT I do notice the 1.3 kilo reduction in weight! Made even better by being able to ditch the Apple brick power supply and going with a GaN charger for the Asus. The Apple adapter with cord is about 0.64 kilos. So 2 kilos less to travel with.

As an aside, the thermal performance on both the Macbook and Asus are pretty bad, but the Asus doesn't thermal throttle anywhere near as much.

I still miss my Toshiba netbook for traveling!

Surface laptop is 13.3 in its smallest size. I'm on my second one since 2021. Light and good fit on a tray table. I only use it for word processing and web-based management tools, so no need for storage or fancy performance. In fact, the previous version that I bought for around $1200 was slightly faster than the current version that I have, which was around $2200 but had a larger SSD and supposedly faster processor - the downside is Copilot is a zombie and no matter how many times I turn it off it seems to choke off computing speed.

The surface laptop with ARM processor is indeed a nice machine� unless you run into the Windows on ARM compatibility issues�

And for a 13� on the heavy side compared to the Lenovo or Dell