What is the best laptop for flying?
For the past eight years I’ve been a die-hard Mac user. I lived and breathed (and wrote about) it, but the answer to that question is not a computer made by Apple.
The best laptop for those of us who spend our days on planes, trains, and automobiles is Dell’s Chromebook 13, and I’ll tell you why.
First of all, it’s affordable. The model I bought was just under $500, about $300 less than an entry-level macbook, and inline with the low-to-mid-range PC market.
It’s the perfect size and weight for travel. It’s large enough to see the beautiful HD screen, but small enough to fit a drink next to it on a tray table (at least on Jetblue, Amtrak, and Southwest Airlines). It’s also just small enough to type on comfortably in a tight middle seat.
At 3.23 it’s not the lightest computer on the market, but it’s pretty damn light. It’s about a pound lighter than Apple’s 15 inch Retina Macbook Pro, and ⅕ of a pound lighter than Apple’s 13 inch model (and slightly thinner, depending how you measure).
It’s also nearly as sleek, with a beautiful cambered design, and a carbon-fiber and magnesium alloy casing. It feels solid and sturdy.
The back-lit keyboard is comfortable, and easy to touch-type on (I’m doing so right now). The keys have nice travel (downward movement) and the track-pad is smooth and responsive.
Some of the ports on the Dell Chromebook 13. Travelers will find the two USB ports helpful when their phone is running low on battery.
The Chromebook 13 is thin enough to travel in my small backpack (and even thin enough to fit into the seat-back pocket of a coach seat).
The charger is about half the weight and size of Apple’s ubiquitous white charging brick, making it much easier to carry from airport to airport, destination to destination. The battery charges quickly, meaning that even a short window of charging time during a layover can provide you with hours more of battery life.
The best thing for travelers about the Chromebook 13 for is the battery life. It’s off the charts.
I can consistently get 12 hours of usage out of it on the go, even on Wifi, with the display pretty bright. I occasionally go 2-3 days without needing to charge it.
Since it’s portable and it lasts, I also bring it outside with me. The bright HD display is matted to prevent glare, so the screen is incredibly usable in the sun (versus my Macbook Pro’s retina display, which gets washed out by the tiniest bit of sunshine).
The Chromebook is an incredibly simple machine. Settings are limited to just the essentials: Background, trackpad speed, etc. This paring-down happens to make the Chromebook 13 ridiculously responsive.
I can turn my computer on and be working in 30 seconds or less. If it’s asleep, the computer jumps right back into browsing with almost no delay.
And it doesn’t heat up and burn my lap like many a Macbook pro will (Seriously, Apple. Why haven’t you fixed that yet?).
There are a few things that aren’t perfect. My model has only 32 GB of built-in storage, although this is expandable with MicroSD and USB (and Google gives you 200GB of cloud storage for two years with your purchase).
With only 4 GB of RAM, you can’t open a million tabs at once (though I’ve comfortably opened 15-30 at a time without slowdown).
The display, while beautiful and crisp, isn’t quite as perfectly calibrated for perfect color reproduction as Apple’s special displays.
Using Google’s Chrome OS also limits your access to certain apps, like Microsoft’s office suite, and Adobe’s Photoshop (though Adobe is coming to Chromebooks soon). This doesn’t affect me too much because I use Google’s Drive/Sheets/Slides apps anyway, but I know some people are very loyal to their Excel/Word/Powerpoint workflow.
The Dell Chromebook 13 is not perfect, to be sure, but its faults are entirely outweighed by the value, and the performance of it provides, particularly for the jet-set/business traveller crowd.
It just works really well. It’s light, fast, and long-lasting, and it does all of this for a price that is so-far unmatched for its class. You can pick one for under $500 from Dell’s website. Where will you be travelling with your Chromebook?