The best 2-in-1 laptops combine the power of a laptop with the portability and accessibility of a tablet to give you the best of both worlds. Built with the most up-to-date mobile PC components, the best 2-in-1s are small and light, with beautiful displays and long-lasting batteries that enable you use them all day without worrying about finding a charger.
2-in-1 laptops and tablets are thinner, lighter, and more powerful than ever before, thanks to rapid advancements in mobile components and display technology. lots of options, from gaming laptops under $500 to tablets with attachable keyboards that transform them into decent typewriters.
Of course, picking the ideal one for your needs has become more difficult as well: read on for our picks for the finest 2-in-1s on the market right now.
Right now, what are the finest 2-in-1 laptops?
The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 is presently our top pick for the best 2-in-1 overall, thanks to its fast performance and long battery life in a thin, light chassis with a stunning AMOLED touchscreen.
Even though Windows 11 is already available, eligible Windows 10 PCs may not be offered an update until 2022. Many, but not all, of the laptops on this list can now be purchased with Windows 11 pre-installed. The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio is an excellent pick if you need a laptop right now that will run Windows 11 and show it off to its greatest potential. It’s a powerful, well-built 2-in-1 that can handle some excellent gaming and video editing (if you choose for the discrete Nvidia 3050 Ti GPU). The $129 Surface Slim Pen 2 stylus is a little on the costly side, but it goes well with the Studio and performs well on the convertible’s 120 Hz touchscreen.
If you’re on a tight budget, the Microsoft Surface Go 2 is a great option. It’s a little Windows 10 tablet with adequate processing power to handle most daily tasks and a nice webcam. It’s our pick for most affordable 2-in-1, with a pricing starting at $399 and a detachable keyboard included – a rarity in the tablet market.
The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex is an excellent pick if battery life is your primary priority. It boasts a fantastic touchscreen and a strong Intel i7 CPU, yet in our battery test, it lasted an astonishing 15 hours and 44 minutes.
What factors should you consider before purchasing a 2-in-1 laptop?
Performance: Consider a 2-in-1 Chromebook like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet if you only need something basic for surfing the web and checking email. Look for a 2-in-1 with the latest Intel CPUs, such as the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 or Lenovo Yoga 9i, if you need more power to multitask, run demanding programmes, or edit photos/videos.
Graphics and gaming: 2-in-1s are often built to be as thin and power-efficient as possible in order to work as both tablets and laptops, therefore they don’t have discrete GPUs and aren’t great at running the latest games. If game speed is crucial to you, seek for a 2-in-1 with the latest Intel CPUs to take use of their integrated graphics (currently Intel Iris Xe) capabilities, then invest for extra RAM and storage. Your games will also look better with a beautiful display.
Size: Consider how portable you want your new 2-in-1 to be: is it a laptop that you’ll use as a tablet on occasion, or vice versa? If you prefer a tablet’s lighter weight and smaller size (usually) and can live with a flimsy/detachable keyboard, the Apple iPad Pro 2021 (12.9-inch) or Microsoft Surface Go 2 are good options. Consider the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 or Lenovo Yoga 9i if you prefer a larger screen and more power/versatility from a laptop that also serves as a tablet and don’t mind the extra size and weight.
Operating system: Most 2-in-1s come with one of three operating systems: Windows 10 (most 2-in-1s), iPadOS (for iPads), or Chrome OS (for Chromebooks) (2-in-1 Chromebooks). The most popular is Windows 10, whereas iPadOS is more useful for those who are already part of Apple’s ecosystem. Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system designed to allow for low-cost, speedy PCs, yet it has grown in strength over time with the addition of full Android app support.
How we put the finest 2-in-1 laptops to the test
To determine the best 2-in-1 laptops, we put each one through a battery of benchmarks and real-world testing to see how it will perform in real-world situations.
Using our in-house light metre and colorimeter, we determine the average brightness and colour quality of each laptop’s display. We put our workstations through a variety of tests, including Geekbench 5 (CPU performance) and different 3DMark tests to assess graphics capability. We also run a file transfer test to see how fast a computer’s hard drive is, as well as a special battery test in which the machine browses the internet over Wi-Fi until the battery runs out.
We didn’t run benchmarks for popular games (like Far Cry: New Dawn) because these aren’t dedicated gaming laptops; 2-in-1 laptops, in general, don’t have discrete GPUs and hence will rarely give sufficient performance in recent 3D games. They are, however, capable of running older or less demanding PC games, so we ran a benchmark test in Sid Meier’s Civilization 6: Gathering Storm to see how well they performed.
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