Best laptops for teachers of 2024: top picks for educators at every budget

The best laptops for teachers provide a serious balance of performance, design, and value along with the portability to move from class to class and beyond. 

Educators need a device that's robust enough to handle the rigors of daily academic life, combining a potent CPU, swift RAM, and substantial storage with a variety of ports for comprehensive document, homework, and presentation management. 

Equally important are the ergonomic features—like a user-friendly keyboard and trackpad, along with a lightweight, slim profile for easy transport, and a display that eases eye strain over long periods. All factors we assess when testing and reviewing teaching laptops. 

The Apple MacBook Air with M3, our top pick, exemplifies this with its performance, portability, connectivity, and more. Educators looking for something more robust can check out the Dell XPS 14 or Lenovo Yoga Book 9i, the latter of which sports a dual-OLED screen design that's perfect for multitasking.

Quick List

How to choose the best laptops for teachers?

When choosing the best laptop for teaching, start with considering your education requirements. If you primarily need the browser and apps like Excel, then a moderately powered laptop will work fine. But if you're in the engineering field or in design, you'll need a powerful laptop that'll offer a lag-free experience. 

You'll want to consider the laptop's battery life. An all-day battery means you won't have to lug around a charger with you everywhere you go. But if you're mostly going to have your setup in one place, then a lower battery capacity will be fine too. 

If you work with a lot of space-consuming files, make sure to opt for a laptop with high storage, otherwise you'll have to carry an external hard drive around with you. 

Lastly, look out for the connectivity ports, security features, display, and pricing.

How we test the best laptops for teachers

Our team of reviewers have tested a massive range of laptops for education, including the best laptops for MBA students, best laptops for computer science students, and the best laptops for architecture students. So, we know what to look out for when exploring laptops built for teachers and educators. 

To test the best laptops for teachers, we've benchmarked and compared several key factors, like their CPU, GPU, portability, storage, and design. We evaluated their overall performance and what kind of users they'd be best suited for. We analyzed their battery lives, security features, display, and checked if they included accessories like a stylus. 

For the ability to work anywhere, connectivity and portability are essential. Here, we checked and noted ports, weight, dimensions, and overall durability and build quality. We also looked at pricing to assess value for money. 

The best laptop for teachers in 2024: top picks

The best laptop for teachers in 2024

Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the entries on our best laptop for teachers list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

The best laptop for teachers overall

For educators seeking a top-tier laptop that seamlessly integrates into their demanding schedules, the Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024) emerges as a preeminent choice. This iteration not only introduces a chic, contemporary design, making the device notably sleek and lightweight, but also enhances its portability, a crucial feature for teachers who are constantly on the move. The reimagined MacBook Air boasts a larger, brighter, and more vibrant display thanks to reduced bezels, facilitating a more engaging and immersive teaching and learning experience without compromising on the device's compactness.

Moreover, the MacBook Air (M3, 2024) sets a high benchmark in performance, with its quick boot times and smooth operation across applications, an essential for the multifaceted tasks teachers tackle daily. The redesigned keyboard is another highlight, offering unmatched comfort for extensive typing sessions, whether it's crafting lesson plans, composing emails, or grading assignments.

Significantly, the battery life of this MacBook Air is impressive, delivering up to 16 hours of use on a single charge. This endurance ensures that educators can get through a full day of teaching, meetings, and planning without needing to recharge, even outlasting long-haul flights, making it an ideal companion for conferences and professional development travels.

Read our full Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M3) review

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The best Windows laptop for teachers

The Dell XPS 14 emerges as a stellar option for educators, standing out within the prestigious XPS series with its remarkable features tailored for teaching excellence. Starting at $1,499, it combines a cutting-edge processor and up to a breathtaking 3.2K OLED display within an elegantly designed chassis that surpasses nearly every other Windows laptop in aesthetics. 

While the base model may require upgrades for the dedicated Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and OLED display, investing in these enhancements, though costly, ensures a laptop that remains relevant for years, justifying the near $2,400 investment for the recommended configuration. 

Notably, the XPS 14 introduces design improvements over its predecessors, such as superior top-mounted speakers alongside the keyboard, enhancing audio quality without compromising on keyboard space. Additionally, its slim bezels encase a 1080p webcam, although lacking a physical privacy shutter. 

With its robust Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Nvidia RTX 4050, the XPS 14 adeptly handles diverse workloads from routine computing to content creation, making it an invaluable tool for educators who demand reliability, performance, and style in their teaching and professional development endeavors.

Read our full Dell XPS 14 review

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The best dual-screen laptop for teachers

The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i shines as an indispensable resource for educators, particularly those involved in extensive academic writing and research. Its hallmark dual-screen feature revolutionizes the teaching and academic writing process, allowing for unparalleled productivity and multitasking capabilities in a sleek form factor. This innovative dual-display setup simulates a multi-monitor environment, perfect for educators who require extensive screen real estate to manage research, lesson planning, and simultaneous document editing without compromising on portability.

Designed with academic professionals in mind, the Yoga Book 9i's versatility adapts to various working preferences, offering customizable setups that cater to writing, researching, and multitasking with ease. Its robust Intel Core i7-1355U processor delivers powerful performance, ensuring smooth operation across applications while maintaining efficiency to prevent the overheating issues often seen in compact laptops.

Despite its impressive dual OLED screens, the Yoga Book 9i provides an exceptional battery life of up to 9.5 hours, which can be extended to over 12 hours when using a single screen. This stamina ensures that educators can rely on the device throughout long teaching sessions or while working on publications and academic papers without constant recharging.

Though the Yoga Book 9i comes with a premium price tag, its innovative features, including the dual-screen functionality, portability, and efficient performance, make it a worthwhile investment for educators seeking a top-tier laptop.

Read our full Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review

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We tested and reviewed the best student laptops - and these are our top selections