Here are the 5 best laptops for travellers – and Apple is not on the list
The Google Pixelbook, the Microsoft Surface Laptop, Dell XPS 13, Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 and Huawei Matebook X Pro are convenient, slim and powerful
Is the world’s best travel laptop dead? Ten years after Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air to the world, the laptop is on Apple’s back burner – and some fear that it is being phased out entirely.
Rather than redesigning and upgrading the hardware like all of the tech giant’s other marquee products, Apple has left the Air to collect dust, and now the MacBook and MacBook Pro are taking the spotlight. While they are more powerful, they are not as convenient for frequent travellers.
On the surface, the MacBook and MacBook Pro measure up to the Air. They are comparable in size and weight, though they lack the superskinny, sloping gradient design that makes the Air so easy to slide in and out of carry-ons. The also lack the Air’s “chiclet” keyboard, with its silent and spacious keys. The replacement “butterfly” design has been so prone to malfunction and sticky keys that Apple overhauled its warranty coverage for certain MacBooks. That does not take into account these models’ smaller screens, shorter battery life, higher prices and designs that have barely changed in more than a decade.
Add it all up, and it is no surprise that Mac-loyal warriors around the world are being seduced by lighter, sleeker, sexier, and more powerful laptops – ones that run Windows and Chrome OS.
These five MacBook replacements are guaranteed to meet your work and play needs, whether you are bored in a business-class suite, dashing off PowerPoint slides in a hotel room, or banking on the Shinkansen. Based on a road test that took us from New York to Los Angeles and Tokyo to Paris, these were the best of roughly a dozen new options – standing out for their excellent portability, keyboard comfort, battery life and computing power.
If efficiency Is your middle name …
… get the Google Pixelbook.
Why we like it: The supersexy, two-toned body, which features Gorilla Glass and brushed metal, will not smudge no matter how many times you have to unpack and repack it at the airport. And at just 2.4 pounds (about 1 kilogram), you will not feel the Pixelbook in your carry-on. There is top-of-the-line hardware inside this laptop, including quad-core i7 processors and 16 GB of RAM, making for ultra-fast loading speeds and easy multitasking. In just 15 minutes, you can add two hours of juice to the nine-hour battery thanks to the Pixelbook’s quick charger. Dash off emails in laptop mode, use automatic tethering to your Pixel phone to work online sans Wi-fi, or flip around the screen to watch movies in tablet mode. Besides the free security software, Google gives you 1 TB of complimentary online storage.
