Lenovo is one of the most popular laptop brands in the world, and with good reason. Its laptops are among the most innovative around, and Lenovo has experience with making systems that balance design and performance. While there are a lot of great Lenovo laptops, only a few can be considered the best Lenovo laptops.
The Lenovo Yoga 9i is a versatile touchscreen laptop which can twist into different positions and … [+] include a style.
Lenovo
From the ultra-capable Lenovo Yoga 9i at the top of the scale, to the highly portable, lightweight and inexpensive Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5, Lenovo has something for everyone among its latest laptops. The best models have the Intel 12th generation CPUs, plenty of storage space and advanced technologies like OLED screens and Thunderbolt 4 ports. These are our current favorite designs.
Best for: Portability and long battery life, with a sharp 2K OLED display.
The Lenovo Yoga 9i is a fantastic all-round laptop, with impressive internal hardware, a great-looking screen, support for the latest connectivity and terrific battery life. The Yoga series remains the flagship model among Lenovo’s consumer laptops, and its build quality is solid, though without the MIL-SPEC testing found on the ThinkPad line. Inside, the Yoga 9i has an Intel Core i7-1260p, a relatively low-power CPU which still produces impressive performance—and enables lengthy battery life. It’s backed up by 16GB of fast DDR5 memory that takes full advantage of the 12th-generation Intel CPU, Wi-Fi 6E connectivity and a speedy 1TB SSD.
The 2.5K OLED touchscreen display delivers crisp text and vibrant images thanks to its support for 100% DCI-p3 color space. The display carries 400 nits brightness. As with other models in the Yoga line, you can use the Yoga 9i as a traditional laptop, or you can position it in tent, presentation or tablet mode. It includes a stylus, as well as a fingerprint reader. While Lenovo rates the battery for up to 23 hours, real-world results are coming in at noticeably less.
Best for: Playing your favorite games at high resolution and frame rates.
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is a hotly competitive gaming laptop, packed with the latest components to deliver high frame rates in all your favorite games. Whether you’re playing competitive esports or immersive AAA games, this laptop has the power to make them all look and run great. As with most gaming laptops, don’t expect extensive battery life, though; the Legion 5i clocked out about 5 hours of gameplay. At 5.5 pounds, this laptop is best suited to staying in one place, but it ticks so many boxes that it’s worth sacrificing some portability in favor of excellent performance.
With a massive 2TB SSD, you have all the space you need for your entire game library. The 16-inch, 2.5K display supports refresh rates up to 165Hz, making it fast enough to keep up with most demanding games (if you want an even faster display refresh, other configurations go up to 240Hz). The webcam is only 720p, a small downside when many models are now at 1080p.
Best for: Working and playing in tablet and laptop mode.
The Lenovo Yoga 7i is an all-around performer, but it doesn’t quite have the finesse of its sibling, the 9i series. This configuration stands out, especially with its current discounts. It has a high-performance processor, fast DDR5 memory and even the help of a dedicated Intel GPU to power through less demanding games at high frame rates.
With a 1TB SSD, you have plenty of space for whatever you want to store, and the 2.5K touchscreen has 400 nits brightness and wide viewing angles thanks to its IPS panel design. Lenovo rates the battery for up to 26 hours on a single charge. At 4.2 pounds, this model is slightly heavier than the 14-inch Yoga 9i, not enough that you can’t carry it with you, but enough to limit its use as a tablet.
Best for: Cloud-based activities, answering emails or watching videos on-the-go.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 is a lightweight, portable and pretty Chromebook with a great touchscreen, plenty of on-the-go storage, and good battery life. If you don’t need the full functionality of a Windows or MacOS laptop, this is one of the best Lenovo laptops you can buy. It even works great as a secondary laptop for use with cloud services, like answering emails or typing up work. Its Snapdragon processor can handle Android games, too.
The Duet 5’s 13.3-inch OLED touchscreen display impresses. with amazing contrast and bright colors that make movies and TV shows look great. This is a versatile laptop, lightweight too, and at this price, you could buy it and another laptop for true multi-device functionality.
Pros:
The OLED display looks great and is rare on a laptop of this price.
Best for: Professionals who crave a featherweight yet sturdy system.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 14-inch is the latest in a long line of ThinkPads to balance robust, reliable performance with great style. At the heart of this configuration is the capable Intel Core i5-1240P processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. This configuration comes with a 14-inch, 1080p touchscreen display (4K is an option in more pricey iterations). Lenovo rates the battery to last 12 hours, enough to get you through the better part of the day, but a disappointing mark nonetheless.
Like other ThinkPads, this laptop’s build feels sturdy and solid, yet it weighs just 2.5 pounds—making it one of the lightest laptops you can buy. It supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 for the latest wireless connection standards, and it has two Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C ports and two USB Type-A ports. Built for business users, this laptop has biometric security, with a built-in fingerprint reader, privacy shutter and Tile-ready security to help you find your laptop; and it can withstand bumps and extreme conditions (it’s tested to the US Department of Defense’s MIL-STD 810H standards for drops, endurance and more).