Our team of hardware reviewers have been checking out the best laptops for teachers - and from budget picks to premium PCs, these are the devices we recommend.
We've expertly tested the best business laptops and the best student laptops - and for those working in academia, there's a lot of crossover. We're looking for portable models with crisp screens, outstanding keyboard quality, and powerful performance - all at an affordable price.
The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s is our pick for the best laptop for teachers. it's a durable, robust machine that'll slip easily into any laptop bag and power through almost every task from seamlessly running office apps to online classes and calls. We use this laptop every day for similar purposes, and it's never let us down.
Check out the round-up below to see our favorite teaching laptops - for each model, we've personally benchmarked performance and compared specs, design, and price for all classroom activities.
Quick List
Best overall
Slim, professional, durable, with one of the best keyboards on a laptop, the ThinkPad T14s is our daily driver - and we love it.
Best laptop for teachers on a budget
The Acer Aspire 5 is a fantastic and fantastically affordable laptop that performs well for basic office tasks.
Best laptop for teaching online
A stellar webcam, mic, and overall sound quality mark the Acer Swift Go 14 out as a great device for online classes - at a reasonable price.
Best Mac laptop for teachers
Apple's MacBook Air retains the stunning design of the last model but at a cheaper price and more powerful hardware.
Best Dell laptop for teachers
The Dell XPS 14 is the latest entry to the storied XPS lineup, with powerful performance, excellent style, and a good starting price.
Best dual-screen laptop for teachers
Due to its unique dual-screen design, the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is an innovative laptop that's a godsend for teachers who need to work on lesson plans and do research at the same time.
The best laptop for teachers in 2024
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
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.
Best laptop for teachers overall
The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s is one of the best laptops for teachers and just about every other professional. It’s our go-to device thanks to its incredibly comfortable keyboard, portability, and a 14in screen that’s bright, crisp, and big enough for most projects.
Powered by Intel and AMD chips (we recommend choosing the AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 for better cooling), performance is exceptional for most office-based tasks. We’ve experienced no issues whether we’re browsing, emailing, attending online meetings, and typing. Battery life lasted us around 8 hours, so should last most of the school day.
One reason why we use the T14s is the keyboard. Even newer ThinkPad keyboards with their shallower key travel depth provide simply the best typing experience you’ll find on a laptop. Keys are firm, with good depression, and unlike even Dell and MacBooks, never feel hard or spongy.
The device, like most ThinkPads, is somewhat expensive so this is an investment. But build quality is very durable. It’s tough, and if you kit it out with 32GB RAM (unfortunately, it’s not upgradeable), you’ll have a future-proofed device that feels robust enough to last many semesters.
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad T14s review
Best laptop for teachers on a budget
The Acer Aspire 5 is surprisingly good considering its budget price, and we enjoyed our time using it. If you’re looking for a cheap laptop for a teacher that can survive the commute and day-to-day travel, this is an ideal pick.
It’s available in a range of specs, with the Intel Core i5 version reviewed by our team. This device also had a low 8GB, and we’d generally recommend increasing this to 16GB minimum for seamless performance. As it stands, with our review unit, we found performance very respectable when using office apps familiar to most teachers. Benchmarking the Aspire 5 resulted in a very respectable office laptop overall, especially at this price. Design, too, impressed us, feeling sturdy in hand and weighing a very portable 1.7kg.
At 6.5 hours, battery life didn’t quite last us all day during our tests, and it won’t power through complex workloads or gaming. But for a budget teacher’s laptop, the Aspire 5 offers excellent value for money.
Read our full Acer Aspire 5 review
Best laptop for teaching online
The Acer Swift Go 14 is a well-priced laptop that’s ideal for teaching online thanks to the quality of its microphone and webcam. Yes, we don’t see it often, but this budget laptop features a 1440p at 30Hz webcam, with images coming through sharp during our review. And we found the sound quality to be excellent considering the size of this device. At 14in, it’s incredibly portable for those who need something more commuter-friendly.
The machine is available in a range of configurations, with Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, and either 16Gb or 32GB - we don’t recommend a lower RAM, as you’ll find these laptops tend to slow down during even basic tasks like browsing.
It’s not the greatest laptop we’ve ever tried - it certainly lacks the build quality of a ThinkPad or MacBook. Battery life is fair, clocking in at eight hours and 25 minutes in our tests. But for the price, and for general use, it ticks every box for online teaching.
Read our full Acer Swift Go 14 review
Best Mac laptop for teachers
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
Best Dell 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.
Find the best deals on Dell products with our Dell promo codes.
Read our full Dell XPS 14 review
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
The best laptops for teachers compared
| Model | Screen size | Processor | RAM | Battery life |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo ThinkPad T14s | 14in | 13th generation Intel Core i5 - i7 / AMD Ryzen 5 - 7 Pro | Up to 32GB | Up to 12 hours |
| Acer Aspire 5 | 14in / 15.6in / 17.3in | 13th generation Intel Core i5 - i7 | Up to 32GB | Up to 10 hours |
| Acer Swift Go 14 | 14in | Intel Core Ultra 5 - Ultra 7 | Up to 32GB | Approx. 8 hours |
| Apple MacBook Air 13in | 13in | Apple M3 | Up to 24GB | Up to 18 hours |
| Dell XPS 14 | 14in | Intel Core Ultra 7 | Up to 64GB | Approx. 9 hours |
| Lenovo Yoga Book 9i | 13.3in (x 2) | Intel Core i7 | 16GB | Up to 14 hours |
Best laptop for teachers: Honorable mentions
Others may do it better, or for a better price, but based on our reviews, these laptops for teachers deserve an honorable mention.
How to choose the best laptops for teachers?
When choosing the best laptop for teaching, there are a number of factors to consider.
Size and design
A good laptop for a teacher should light and portable - 13-15in laptops are a popular size, but we favor 14-inch laptops for a balance of screen space and portability. Depending on how much you'll travel with the laptop, look for durable features and IP ratings of the sort you'll find in the best rugged laptops.
Specs
For most teaching laptops, prioritze CPU and RAM. This will ensure that apps, web browsing, and emails is fast and seamless. Unless you're using your laptop for complex graphic design and high-resolution video editing, GPU will be less important for most office-based tasks.
Battery life
Unless you have the luxury of working near a mains or in a single location, battery life is going to be important. You'll often need to trade performance for extended battery life, so it's about finding the balance. However, most modern laptops offer batteries that last the working day. We run battery tests on all laptops we review.
Storage
Storage is especially for educators in academia. The best laptops for teachers have a solid-state drive (SSD), which is quicker and longer lasting than older hard drives, and more resilient. Look for those with plenty of space - 1TB is a good baseline - and pair this with the best portable SSDs and the best cloud storage for backups.
Connectivity
Slim-line laptops may be great for carrying to and from classes, but they also tend to have fewer ports for connecting extra devices. If you're not hooking up peripherals like keyboards and second monitors, . However, if you plan of using a lot of accessories, you may need to pair your laptop with one of the best laptop docking stations to give it extra versatility.
How we test the best laptops for teachers
✅ More than 1,800 laptops, Chromebooks, and MacBooks reviewed
✅ 15 years of product testing
✅ Over 16,000 products reviewed in total
✅ Nearly 200,000 hours testing tech
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.
