If you want to use a stylus — or your fingers — for notes or drawings, your best bet is to buy a 2-in-1 laptop. These convertible laptops, which feature a touchscreen, give you more to work with than just a boring ol’ touchpad, allowing your creative juices flow. We’ve listed the best 2-in-1 laptops below, including laptops with 360-degree flipping abilities and detachable devices with built-in stands.
What are the best 2-in-1 laptops?
The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 is the best 2-in-1 laptop you can get. When we reviewed the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360, shocked by its approximate 12-hour runtime and amazingly thin-and-light form factor. On top of that, for those who love watching Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max (or any other streaming app) on their laptops, they’ll appreciate the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360’s colorful, bright and vivid display. As a cherry on top, you don’t have to buy a stylus separately. It comes with the beloved S Pen, so you can sketch, draw and take notes to your heart’s desire. See our full Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 review. The Spectre x360 14 is the best 2-in-1 laptop ever. Newly released for 2022, highlights of this laptop include a stunning design, a bright and vivid 3000 x 2000-pixel OLED display, impressive 10+ hour battery life, and fast overall performance. Add to that a generously sized touchpad that is silky to the touch as well as a comfortable (albeit shallow) keyboard, excellent security options (fingerprint sensor and facial recognition) and a good selection of ports, and well, it’s easy to see why we like this laptop so much. We recommend buying the Spectre x360 14 over the Envy 13 if you have the money, especially if you need the flexible design. In fact, the Spectre x360 14 is one of the best laptops if you want a convertible notebook, period. See our HP Spectre x360 14 review Dell’s OLED XPS 13 2-in-1 takes everything we love about the clamshell XPS 13 — fast performance (thanks to 11th Gen CPUs), a sleek, lightweight design and a breathtaking display — and puts it in a flexible convertible chassis. That 3456 x 2160-pixel display is a stunner, offering vibrant colors and cinema-quality 4K videos. One downside of the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, however, is its port variety. You won’t find many traditional ports (e.g., USB Type-A), but there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports for charging, transferring data and connecting to monitors. If you’re a content creator, you’ll appreciate the fact that there’s a microSD card slot. See our full Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 OLED 2021 review. The Lenovo Yoga 9i got refreshed with a 12th Gen CPU, and man, this thing is fast, especially when it comes to file-transfer rates. When we compared its file transferring prowess to other competitors, the Yoga 9i took the throne. If you’re a stickler for stunning displays, the Yoga 9i will meet your needs, thanks to its 2880 x 1800-pixel OLED panel. It’s breathtakingly colorful and vibrant, making visual pleasures a total treat. Whether you prefer Netflix, Hulu or HBO Max, watching your favorite shows and movies on this display will blow you away. One unique aspect of the Yoga 9i that caught our eye is its quick-access keyboard. With just a simple tap, you can quickly launch apps such as Calculator. Heck, you can even quickly switch between dark and light modes on Windows 11. Some may perceive this unique keyboard to be a bit gimmicky, but in my experience, it was actually quite useful and convenient. . See our Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7 review. It’s by far the cheapest 2-in-1 device on this list, and easily the best value you can find. The Chromebook Duet has a 10.1-inch display and comes with a detachable keyboard. Yep, that’s right, the Duet, unlike the Surface or iPad, comes with a keyboard. Why is that so incredible? Because it costs just $299 and we’ve seen it for as low as $249. The appeal of this slate isn’t only its price. The Duet has epic battery life of 12 hours and 46 minutes and its sleek design feels more premium than you’d expect from such an inexpensive gadget. You’re probably worried about the Duet’s performance. Well, it won’t break any speed records, but we didn’t have too much trouble using it for everyday tasks, like browsing the web or watching videos. The latter was especially great on the Duet because its 10-inch panel is surprisingly colorful. You should also consider Lenovo’s Duet 5 Chromebook. See our full Lenovo Chromebook Duet. If you don’t have the best impression of Acer, let the Chromebook Spin 713 change that for you. This Chromebook has almost everything you could ask for in a laptop and it costs only $699. You get a bright and colorful 13.5-inch touchscreen display, exceptional battery life of nearly 11 hours, and quick performance thanks to its 11th Gen Core i5 processor. On top of that, the design is made out of aluminum and it’s a 2-in-1 so you can flip the screen back and turn it into a tablet. At 0.7 inches thick and 3.2 pounds, the Spin 713 can be easily slipped into a backpack on your way to class or work. Yes, the keyboard is a bit shallow and the speaker could be better, but if you want a convertible Chromebook at a reasonable price you won’t do better than the Chromebook Spin 713. See our full Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2021) review. Without departing drastically from its iconic look, the Pro 8 makes subtle improvements to the Surface Pro as a tablet and a laptop. Upgrades include a larger display and a more comfortable to use design, along with a much-needed internal upgrade. That includes an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor and up to 32GB of RAM, components that bring some of the new features of Windows 11 to bear. The added screen size and reduced bezels make for a more modern look, while the rounded edges give it a much more tablet-friendly feel backed up by some of the new software touches in Windows 11. And for creatives or prolific note-takers, the new Slim Pen 2 combined with the Type Cover gives you a built-in stylus with a tactile feel that makes for an improved inking experience. See our full Surface Pro 8 review. Looking for a truly no-compromise best business laptop? You’d be hard-pressed to find a better option than the Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1. It does the miraculous by combining a high-resolution display that is both bright and vivid with long battery life — it’s a feat we very rarely see. Digging into the specifics, the Latitude has a 14-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel 16:10 display and gets more than 15 hours of battery life. Those stats are just astounding. It endures for a full day despite having a powerful Intel Core i7-1185G7 CPU under the hood alongside 16GB of RAM and Iris Xe graphics. Business users will appreciate the extra security features including the fingerprint sensor and IR camera for facial recognition. The laptop is sturdy, having withstood military-grade durability tests, and has great sound quality. If you prefer Lenovo’s signature ThinkPad laptops, consider the excellent Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (2021). If you’re for something a bit more unique consider the ultra-lightweight ThinkPad X1 Titanium. See our Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1 review Microsoft has struck the right 2-in-1 balance. Instead of having a detachable lid like the Surface Book it replaces, or an attachable keyboard like the Surface Pro 8, the Surface Laptop Studio employs a unique hinge that allows the display to be pulled forward and positioned into different modes. Not only can the Surface Laptop Studio be transformed into a digital drawing board, but it does so without compromising the standard laptop mode. This flexibility, along with excellent performance and long battery life, makes the Surface Laptop Studio a compelling option for creative professionals. Add in a fantastic keyboard/touchpad combo, powerful speakers, and a 1080p webcam, and the Surface Laptop Studio finds its place as one of the best 2-in-1 laptops. See our full Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review. HP’s EliteBook x360 1040 G7 is among the best business laptops money can buy. This stunning laptop has a gorgeous chassis that flaunts a flexible hinge, allowing the x360 1040 G7 to convert from a laptop into a tablet. It’s one of a few rare notebooks that seemingly has no downsides. Along with that stylus chassis, you get a bright and vivid 14-inch display. But the EliteBook x360 1040 G7’s greatness doesn’t stop there. The laptop also has a surprisingly comfortable keyboard, fast performance and a host of security features, including an IR camera, a fingerprint sensor and MIL-SPEC-810 rated durability. The 10th Gen Intel CPUs, while lacking graphical oomph, are powerful, and the battery lasts for longer than 11 hours on a charge. For these reasons, the EliteBook x360 1040 is the best HP laptop for business users. See our full HP EliteBook x360 1040 G7 review The Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 sports the world’s first QLED display, which means you’ll get to feast your eyes on a color-rich, super-bright screen – and you won’t have to sacrifice too much battery power to get it. In fact, when we tested the gorgeous royal-blue Flex 15 in our lab, the laptop gave us a whopping 15 hours of battery life. Ah, we no longer have to imagine a world where we can spend all day on our 2-in-1 without having to worry about battery life; Samsung’s made it possible. Another draw of this amazing Samsung 2-in-1 is its built-in S pen as well as its touchpad, which has the ability to charge Qi-compatible devices. One downside of the laptop, though, is its shortened Shift key, which will take some time to get used to. See our full Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 15 review.
How to choose the best 2-in-1 laptop for you
You first need to decide what type of 2-in-1 laptop is right for you. If you want a primary computing device for home and work, you should probably go with a laptop that can convert into a tablet, or what we call a bendback 2-in-1. These include the HP Spectre x360 13, Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo Yoga C940. If you want something more portable or just need a nice display for content viewing, consider buying a tablet that converts into a tablet via a detachable keyboard. In this category are the Microsoft Surface devices and Apple’s iPad Pro. Tablets are also great for artists or designers because they typically support a stylus input and aren’t as unwieldy as convertible laptops. Once you’ve made a choice between tablet or laptop, decide how much power you need. When it comes to specs, we recommend buying a laptop with an 11th Gen Intel U-series or H-series Core i5 CPU, at least 8GB of RAM (16GB is great) and a minimum of 256GB of storage. AMD is coming in hot with its Ryzen 5000 chips, so keep an eye out for those. Battery life is another key component of any good 2-in-1 laptop. If you plan to take the notebook to class or the library, don’t count on there being an outlet! Consider a laptop that gets at least 9 hours of battery life, which should be enough to get you through a couple of classes with enough juice for studies.
How we test laptops
We put 2-in-1 laptops through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management. In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop’s display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests. To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution. Gaming laptops go through an entire library of games at high settings to see how their discrete GPUs keep up. We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 (and soon Windows 11) laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise. These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop’s materials to the feel of its touchpad.
Best college laptops in 2021Here are the best video editing laptops in 2021
