The best laptops for teachers offer the perfect blend of portability and performance, letting you focus on what you do best.
Our reviews team have expertly tested the best business laptops and the best student laptops - so, when it comes to getting the most from your laptop in professional academia, we know what's important to you. Our top pick is the ultra-light and ultra-slim Apple MacBook Air, powered by the incredibly powerful M3 processor.
We've rounded up our favorite laptops for teachers, with an emphasis on sleek, compact designs that boast plenty of power for multi-tasking and running a wide-range of online and office apps. In reviewing laptops suited to teaching, we've benchmarked performance and specs, while assessing overall design, dimensions, and robust construction for all classroom activities.
Quick List
The best laptop for teachers overall
Apple's latest version of the MacBook Air proves that you can improve on perfection. It retains the stunning design of the last model but with a cheaper price and more powerful hardware.
The best Windows laptop for teachers
The Dell XPS 14 is the latest entry to the storied XPS lineup, and its mix of powerful performance, excellent style, and good starting price make this the Windows laptop to beat.
The 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: top picks
The best laptop for teachers in 2024
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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
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.
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Read our full Dell XPS 14 review
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
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
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.
