Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop Best Buy
Why you should buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 2 laptopLenovo's ThinkPad line of laptops, which it inherited from IBM, features some of the company's best business laptops, according to our explainer on the Lenovo brands. The line includes the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 2, a powerful device that will be able to keep up with all of the demanding tasks in your daily workload with its 12th-generation Intel Core i5 processor and integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics. The laptop also features 16GB of RAM, which our laptop buying guide recommends for those who are planning to run intensive applications or engage in any kind of content creation.
dell inspiron 15.6 touchscreen laptop best buy
Why you should buy the 17-inch HP 17z laptopThe 17-inch HP 17z laptop is equipped with the AMD Athlon Gold 7220U processor, AMD Radeon Graphics, and 8GB of RAM. These specifications won't let it challenge the best laptops, but if you're only planning to use the laptop for basic functions such as browsing the internet, typing documents, and watching streaming content, they're more than enough. You'll also be able to access the most popular productivity software on the laptop becomes it comes pre-loaded with Windows 11 Home, on a 128GB SSD that should provide ample space for your files.
The best touchscreen laptops have responsive, accurate screens that make swiping and tapping your way through work or play feel natural and intuitive. They also have bright, vibrant displays, and are often mounted on a 360-degree hinge that lets them flip over to use as tablets.
In addition to all of the above, touchscreen laptops have improved by leaps and bounds in recent years as PC operating systems have been refined for touch input. While you won't find any Macs with touchscreens (though we hear MacBooks with touchscreens may debut as soon as 2025), Windows 11 and ChromeOS are both very usable with nothing but your fingers.
If you're looking for a premium Windows touchscreen laptop to get work done from anywhere, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 is the way to go. It has a nice responsive touchscreen and a comfy keyboard with well-sized, satisfying keys. Plus, it packs competent components into a thin, light chassis, and it comes with a clean bloatware-free Windows 10 install.
Add in its respectable 10-plus hour battery life and the touchscreen's tall 3:2 display ratio, which can help you read and edit documents more comfortably, and you have a great notebook for getting things done on the go. The speakers are pretty good, too; in fact, this is one of the best-sounding laptops around.
The Asus ZenBook Duo 14 is great for anyone who needs two touchscreens on their laptop, because Asus has embedded a 12-inch touchscreen above the keyboard. It might seem like a gimmick, but in our hands-on testing we found it's actually a great home for secondary applications like as Spotify, Slack, Discord and more. It can also be used by creative apps from the likes of Adobe, who put touch controls there.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is one of the best touchscreen laptops when weight is key, because it manages to pack highly performant components into a slim, 2-pound chassis. The touchscreen feels comfortable to use, as does the snappy keyboard, and its 12-hour battery life (based on our in-house battery testing) helps you carry it all day without worrying about bringing a charger.
The Dell XPS 15 offers all the virtues of the XPS 13, but with a larger touchscreen that feels responsive to the touch and makes navigating Windows via touch feel fluid and natural. If you splurge for the 3.5K OLED display option, you'll enjoy touching and tapping your way across one of the prettiest laptop screens in the business.
The Pixelbook Go is a great touchscreen laptop for students who need a Chromebook because it offers long battery life (11+ hours), solid performance, a bright, colorful display and a responsive touchscreen. If you've got over $600 to spend, this is one of the best Chromebooks yet for those willing to dip into the premium range. Just be aware that the Pixelbook Go is a bit short on ports, and doesn't fold into tablet mode like its bigger Pixelbook brother does.
The HP Elite Dragonfly is a touchscreen 2-in-1 with one of the most stunning designs we've ever seen on a laptop, sporting incredibly thin edges that measure just 0.6 inches in thickness and a deep blue coat of paint that looks refreshing, mesmerizing and professional all at once. And while the Dragonfly is wonderfully light at 2.5 pounds, it also feels impressively sturdy, has an oleophobic coating to prevent fingerprints and uses recycled ocean-bound plastics to help the environment.
Performance and features-wise, this beauty is a beast. Its stunning 13.3-inch touchscreen crushed our color and brightness tests, and it helps make TV and movies look great. Its Intel CPUs are beefy enough to handle business-grade workloads without issues, and its keyboard is one of the most pleasant we've ever typed on. HP Elite Dragonfly also offers over 12 hours of battery life, so you can carry it through a day of meetings without needing to worry about running dry. The Dragonfly is on the expensive side with a starting price of $1,629, but those who are willing to pay a premium will be rewarded with one of the best touchscreen laptops on the market.
The only major complaint we have with this laptop is that it makes for a somewhat awkward tablet. Yes, the touchscreen is snappy and easy to use, but the laptop's size means you can't comfortably hold it in one hand as you would with smaller tablets. But it's entirely possible some folks will consider the Yoga 9i as a perfectly capable Windows tablet despite its size.
We also love the Galaxy Book Flex's fantastic endurance and solid performance, but there are some asterisks getting in the way. Specifically, its keyboard takes some getting used to, thanks to a questionably-placed fingerprint reader and shallow keys. Still, if you need a great touchscreen 2-in-1 with the longest battery life on the market (the Flex lasted an amazing 15 hours and 44 minutes in our battery test) this is the laptop for you.
Acer serves up the trifecta of fast, long-lasting and affordable with the Chromebook Spin 713. This sleek silver touchscreen laptop weighs just 3 pounds, and it offers incredible performance for a Chromebook thanks to its Intel Core i5 CPU. Plus, it has a surprisingly bright and colorful display.
After we've run our suite of lab tests the laptop is delivered to one of our crack reviewers for hands-on testing. This involves at least a week of daily use, during which the reviewer tests how well the laptop stands up to everything from working remotely to watching movies, playing games, listening to music, and creating content. Each reviewer also tests how effective and comfortable the laptop is during daily use, evaluating the design and accuracy of the keyboard, touchpad, and touchscreen.
The best laptops with CD and DVD drives are on the verge of extinction, unfortunately. Trust me! During my tenure as a laptop reviewer, I haven't seen a SINGLE laptop with an optical drive. Now that everything can be downloaded or streamed straight to your PC, including games, software, music, and more, CD and DVD usage is becoming outdated (I know, I'm not happy about either!)
If you need access to a disc drive, you'd be better off purchasing an external DVD drive that can plug into one of the best laptops (like this highly rated external CD/DVD drive (opens in new tab) from Amazon). Since many manufacturers stopped making laptops with optical drives several years ago, laptops with built-in CD-DVD drives that are available today have obsolete hardware that is several generations old. Keep that in mind!
The best laptop with a CD-DVD drive is, without a doubt, the Acer Aspire 3. It's well priced at less than $600, and of course, it meets your needs with a built-in optical drive, so you can play as many CDs and DVDs on this thing to your heart's desire.
I also dig the ultra-large 17.3-inch display on this laptop, which means you have plenty of screen real estate to read long-form articles and other expansive stuff that large screens are best for. It's also highly praised on Amazon, so we're not the only ones singing its praises!
Another best laptop with a built-in optical drive is the HP 17 2021 17.3-inch laptop. This is for folks who have heavy workloads because it comes equipped with 32GB of RAM, which means it is excellent at multitasking and juggling several tasks at once. If you need to run several resource-intensive apps at once, this is the laptop for you. It's also packed with abundance of storage space (1TB HDD + 512GB SSD). Admittedly, it's pricey, but it's worth it for those seeking a capable, productive laptop with a built-in CD-DVD drive.
There's a reason why the Acer Aspire 3 has an Amazon rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars! It's one of the best laptops you can get because it's packed with a large-screen display (17.3 inches), giving you plenty of screen real estate as you surf the web or work on large spreadsheets. Most importantly, it has an optical drive that can fire up any CD or DVD without a hitch.
If the last HP laptop is too pricey for you, consider this HP notebook that has a touchscreen display. It's priced at less than $800, and it comes with a 10th Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU, Intel UHD graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. And of course, it has a built-in optical drive, which means you can pop in your favorite CDs and DVDs without any issues.
If you're looking for a decent laptop with a CD drive on the cheap so that it will not break your bank, the Lenovo ThinkPad E570 is an excellent choice. One of the best qualities of this laptop is that it is equipped with a variety of ports for all your peripheral needs.
At CNET, our laptop experts have collective decades of experience testing and reviewing laptops, covering everything from performance to price to battery life. This hand-curated list covers the best laptops across various sizes, styles and costs, including laptop computers running on Windows, MacOS and Chrome. 041b061a72