13in MacBook Air (new M4, with 24GB RAM) and Mac Mini as desktop the best setup I’ve ever had. I debated between the 13in and 15inch MacBook Airs and am so glad I went with the 13.
The Best Size of a Laptop
41–50 of 76 posts
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#4213 inch Mac book air.
After years of large MBp I switched to 15 inch MB air. Then the 13 inch. It’s moment of inertia is closer to the palm holding - i.e., it feels very light.
Screen is a bit tight. So all I do I crank up the size (setResX), put on pair of 0.5 readers and voila instant large screen. I can go all the way to 2560x and still read and work.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#43I'm using a 10 year old 15" MBP right now, and while I have several other smaller models, nothing feels as right to me as this large screen and solid keyboard on my lap.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#44…is 14”. It is the perfect balance between portability, weight, and screen real estate. I’ve tried 13”, 14”, 15”, and 16”. 14” is where it’s at.
I've got an LG Gram 17-inch laptop that weighs about the same as a 13-inch macbook air. Having a huge screen on a super-light, super skinny laptop is so handy for portability and all the extra screen real-estate is great for a developer. Its difficult to go back to a 14-inch. I wish more laptop manufacturers would make ultra-lights with large screens.
I was recently helping someone shop for a laptop and stumbled upon the LG gram. I was really impressed with the build quality and how light it was. I think it was a 16in though. I prefer smaller screen 13/14 but I was very tempted to get one myself.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#45in my opinion the best laptop could be an A4-sized Macbook Air.
So you want a 13" Air. Go buy one. They're pretty good, I've been doing all my work on a succession of them since like the second revision.
13" Air: 11.97 × 8.46". A4: 11.7 × 8.3".
The actual screen is only slightly smaller than an A4 page.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#4617" historically has been my ideal.
I am more than happy to lug something bigger and heavier about for performance sake because whatever it is I am doing when I get that laptop out is going to be development or sysop work based and there is a good chance I will need some performance and screen space to get the job done. I can live with something smaller if the laptop can be docked to a couple of screens and keyboard and mouse but historically I have always preferred bigger laptops when that isn't possible.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#47> A monster machine in our homes and a tiny laptop that connects to it..
I am definitely going this route with my homelab setup. More people should do this, but a lot of techies even are happy to use a cloud platform.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#48On the 10" size, I think few can beat the design of an IBM 701 [1] with its butterfly keyboard. I would be cool if this were to make a comeback: a 10" screen couple with a 12" keyboard. The Sony Vaio P laptops were also cool with their 8" wide screens, but their keyboards were somewhat cramped. [2].
At the 8" size category, a Pixel 9 Pro Fold coupled with a decent foldable keyboard, perhaps something like [3], is a killer combination. My personal favorite keyboard in the foldable category was the TextBlade [4], which, sadly, never materialized.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_701
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P_series
[3] https://www.amazon.com/ProtoArc-Ergonomic-Foldable-XK03-Blue...
[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/91249548/waytools-textblade-pock...
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#49Tengentially: Since a lot of us are hybrid workers now, can't we have a better solution than having to constantly schlep our laptops to work and back? I want an easily pluggable SSD that doesn't dangle precariously out of the side of my laptop. Something like the old PCMCIA form factor. Then I could have a work laptop and a home laptop.
Given how powerful phones are nowadays it's a shame that we can't just dock our phones into a keyboard & monitor and run a full desktop OS on them.
Re: The Best Size of a Laptop
#50What is the best size? This is a distribution with a multi modal solution.
But the netbook size mode seems to be underrepresented. Huge fan of the Air 11.6" or the MacBook 12" with an M chip.