The best 14-inch laptop will deliver great performance and battery life in a fairly compact package, which makes taking your work or gaming on the go easier than ever.
Whether you’re a student, remote worker or just looking for the best laptop for everyday computing without spending a lot of money, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve tested more than 1,800 laptops over 15 years at TechRadar, and we’re here to help you find the perfect device.
Whether it’s the super-powerful MacBook Pro 14 with M3 chip for all the best that Apple has to offer, the seriously affordable Acer Swift Go 14 with new AI capabilities (without breaking the bank), or the stunning Razer Blade 14 for all the latest gaming and content creation you can want in a 14-inch laptop, we’ve put all the laptops on this list through a rigorous testing and review process, so you can be sure you’re getting the right 14-inch laptop for your needs and budget.
The quick list
1. Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3)
The best 14-inch laptop overall
The MacBook Pro 14 hardly needs an introduction, but this powerful laptop comes loaded with up to an M3 Max chip and plenty of memory and storage. It’s not cheap, though.
2. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7
The best 14-inch Windows laptop
The Surface Laptop 7 combines a gorgeous design with a roomy 14-inch screen and plenty of power for almost any task you want, making it the best 14-inch laptop running Windows 11.
3. Acer Chromebook Spin 314
The best 14-inch Chromebook
The Acer Chromebook Spin 314 is one of the best Chromebooks on the market for students, parents, and anyone else who wants portable computing at an affordable price.
The best 14-inch gaming laptop
The Razer Blade 14 is one of the most stylish and powerful gaming laptops on the market, though you’ll definitely pay a premium for it.
The best budget 14-inch laptop
The Acer Swift Go 14 is an affordable and powerful laptop for everyday computing tasks, work, and even some light gaming and AI functionality.
6. Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1
The best 14-inch laptop for business
The Dell Latitude 9440 is an outstanding 14-inch 2-in-1 laptop for business users, offering versatility, performance, and a great price point.
The best 14-inch laptop in 2024
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Want to cut to the chase and find our picks for the best 14-inch laptop in 2024? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices, and you can jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
The best 14-inch laptop overall
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Apple raises the bar once again with its latest 14-inch MacBook Pro, now featuring the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips.
The new MacBook Pro 14-inch replaces the M2-powered models from early 2023, delivering noticeable performance improvements over 2023’s M2-series devices. The M3-equipped MacBook Pro not only stands out as the top choice for creative professionals but also reigns supreme as the best 14-inch laptop on the market overall.
According to our testing, the MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 series chips excels in handling resource-intensive tasks; managing to run circles around all but the best laptop CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Whether it’s editing 8K video, recording multiple instruments simultaneously, or editing complex audio projects in applications like Ableton Live 11, this laptop can do it all.
The laptop also performed very well in everyday workloads, showcasing its versatility and reliability for a broad variety of users. That said, if all you’re looking for is basic, everyday computing and light productivity work, the MacBook Pro 14-inch will be overkill unless you opt for the entry-level configuration with base M3 chip.
The MacBook Pro 14-inch also boasts a Liquid Retina XDR display enhanced by mini-LED technology and ProMotion adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz. This produces vibrant colors and deep contrasts, creating a visual experience that enhances both creative work and general use. The design remains unchanged from 2021 and 2023 models, but you still get solid build quality and a screen that continues to impress (even if its competitors are catching up).
Despite its premium price point at higher spec levels, there is an accessible option for those with a tighter budget. Apple has done away with its entry-level MacBook Pro 13-inch but introduced a more affordable base model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro equipped with the standard M3 chip.
Although it doesn’t match the power of the M3 Pro and M3 Max versions, this model provides an excellent opportunity for a wider audience to experience a top-tier laptop without totally breaking the bank to do so.
Read our in-depth Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3) review
The best Windows 14-inch laptop
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The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is a sleek, lightweight, and powerful laptop for those who don’t want to sacrifice performance for portability.
Powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, the Surface Laptop 7 offers some of the best battery life on a Windows laptop (nearly 16 hours in our testing) and delivers smooth performance for everyday productivity tasks.
Its gorgeous high-refresh-rate display is a standout feature, providing vibrant colors and a responsive experience. However, the laptop has a limited selection of ports, which may be a drawback for users needing extensive connectivity options, and the lack of an OLED display may disappoint those seeking the best visual quality a 14-inch laptop can provide.
Meanwhile, the Arm-based architecture in the Snapdragon X Elite is incredibly energy efficient, but it does present some potential compatibility issues with certain apps, and its gaming performance is generally disappointing.
Despite these limitations, the Surface Laptop 7 is fantastic for general productivity, making it one of the best laptops going, and is easily the best 14-inch laptop running Windows you can get right now.
Read the full Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 review
The best 14-inch Chromebook
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The Acer Chromebook Spin 314 is a good choice if you’re looking for a budget-friendly 14-inch laptop.
It works especially well for students, with a Full HD touchscreen that’s clear and responsive. The screen can flip all the way around, so you can use it as a regular laptop or more like a tablet – handy for taking notes or watching videos.
It runs on an Intel Pentium N6000 processor, which is fine for everyday stuff like browsing the internet, watching videos, and working on documents. Just keep in mind that it’s not meant for heavy tasks.
One of its biggest selling points is battery life. It can go for over 10 hours on a single charge, so you won’t need to worry about sticking by a wall outlet during a long day of classes or work. The design is pretty straightforward and kind of old-school, which some people might like. It looks nice without trying too hard, though some might prefer something with more pizzazz.
Overall, the Acer Chromebook Spin 314 is a solid pick if you need a basic, versatile laptop, especially for its price. It’s easily one of the best Chromebooks out there, and for a 14-inch laptop, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better one running ChromeOS.
Read the full Acer Chromebook Spin 314 (2023) review
The best 14-inch gaming laptop
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The Razer Blade 14 (2024) stands out as the best 14-inch gaming laptop available, offering an exceptional balance of power, portability, and premium design.
Powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor and up to an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, it excels at running even the most demanding games while supporting creative tasks like video editing and 3D modeling.
Its QHD+ 240Hz display delivers sharp visuals with smooth refresh rates and 100% DCI-P3 color accuracy, making it perfect for both gaming and professional use.
The laptop’s slim, durable aluminum chassis gives it portability without sacrificing performance. This makes it our pick for the best gaming laptop of the year, which is quite an achievement for a 14-inch device.
Although it has a high price tag and moderate battery life, the overall package of superior build quality, cutting-edge hardware, and compact size makes it very hard to beat. This blend of power and portability, along with style and substance, makes the Razer Blade 14 the best pick for anyone looking for the best 14-inch gaming laptop on the market.
Read the full Razer Blade 14 (2024) review
The best budget 14-inch laptop
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The Acer Swift Go 14 is an excellent choice for anyone looking for an affordable 14-inch Windows laptop without compromising on performance.
Powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and 16GB of RAM, it handles multitasking daily tasks and light gaming pretty well. Standout features include a sharp 1440p webcam (ideal for video conferencing) and a dedicated NPU for basic AI workloads.
The laptop is designed with a slim, lightweight frame and an aluminum lid, offering a decent build for the price. Its display offers solid visuals with good color accuracy, making it suitable for both work and media consumption.
While it lacks some of the premium build features found in the best Ultrabooks, it more than makes up for that with its fantastic price and strong general performance. Priced under $800, the Swift Go 14 is excellent value for students, professionals, or anyone looking for a reliable, portable laptop on a budget. It’s the best budget 14-inch laptop you’ll find on the market.
Read the full Acer Swift Go 14 review
The best 14-inch laptop for business
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The Dell Latitude 9440 is a spectacular 14-inch business laptop, offering premium design, performance, and functionality for professionals.
Its standout feature is a 16:10 InfinityEdge display, which maximizes screen real estate for productivity while maintaining excellent visual quality. The device is powered by 13th-gen Intel Core processors and Intel Iris Xe graphics, delivering robust performance for demanding business applications.
A key feature is its haptic collaboration touchpad, which integrates Zoom meeting controls, enhancing communication during virtual meetings. The laptop’s sleek design features high-end materials and a dual-network connection feature, ensuring seamless internet performance.
While it comes with a premium price tag and fewer port options than some competitors, the combination of excellent performance, business-centric features, and superior build quality makes the Latitude 9440 the best 14-inch business laptop for professionals seeking reliability, power, and style.
Read the full Dell Latitude 9440 Business Laptop review
Best 14-inch laptop: FAQs
What is the best 14-inch laptop?
The Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch with Apple M3 is our top pick for the best 14-inch laptop on the market. However, with a whole host of new laptops powered by new Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors, Apple has a lot more competition in this space than it’s had in a very long time.
Is 14-inch the perfect laptop size?
While there is no objectively perfect laptop size, the advantage of a 14-inch laptop is that it strikes an excellent balance between portability, performance (a bigger laptop allows for more powerful hardware), and display size. That said, whether a 14-inch laptop is the right size for you will depend on your specific needs.
Why are 14-inch laptops popular?
A 14-inch laptop is going to be the best laptop size for a lot of users who want decent performance and utility while also having a degree of portability. A 14-inch laptop will also likely cost less than larger, more powerful laptops, while not sacrificing too much performance for the sake of cost and portability.
How to choose the best 14-inch laptop for you
The best 14-inch laptop for you will depend on what you need to use it for.
If you’re in school and need something affordable and portable, the Acer Swift Go 14 and Acer Chromebook Spin 314 are very solid picks that won’t break the bank while giving you enough performance to make it worth your while.
If you need something more powerful, the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro is ideal for creative workloads, while the Razer Blade 14 is perfect for gaming. They do come at something of a premium, thanks to their powerful hardware, but if you need performance above all, these are the two you should use as your benchmark when shopping for a laptop to suit your needs.
For more general computing or productivity work, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is an outstanding choice. It will give you as much performance as you’ll need for most things, offers phenomenal battery life, and is one of the best-looking laptops on the market (especially its Sapphire colorway).
For business users, the Dell Latitude 9440 2-in-1 is powerful and portable. It includes all the extra security features that a good enterprise device should, while having the versatility of a 2-in-1 that makes collaboration a breeze (or at least as much as any workplace collaboration can be).
Whatever your need, though, there’s a 14-inch laptop on the market to fulfill it, and the laptops in this guide are a great place to start (or end) your search.
How we tested the best 14-inch laptops in this guide
We put all the laptops on this list through a rigorous testing regime that stresses the CPU, GPU, and even NPU to their limits using standard industry tools like GeekBench 6, 3DMark, PCMark 10, and more to collect qualitative data on each laptop that we can use to compare one to the other.
We also spend days with each laptop before writing a formal review to see how well they perform. We run local video playback and synthetic use-case simulation tools to drain the battery to measure how long it will last on a full charge, as well as how long it takes for the laptop to recharge.
Finally, we use our collective knowledge gathered over the hundreds of laptop reviews we’ve conducted over 15 years here at TechRadar to score each laptop in a transparent and comparable way to help you make the best decision for your needs and budget using actual data, not just vibes. That’s why you can trust TechRadar to help you find the best 14-inch laptop for you, no matter what you’re looking for.
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