When you think about running a successful blog, your mind probably goes to things like writing stellar content and SEO.
But, if you’ve ever had to write on an ancient, sluggish laptop that sounds like it’s going to catch on fire whenever you open up a few tabs of Google Chrome, you probably realize how important tech is for your blogging success.
The fact is, a laptop should be reliable and enhance productivity. You also need a laptop that fits your needs, especially if you create video content for your blog or work while traveling.
So today, I’m breaking down some of the best laptops for blogging to suit a variety of blogger ‘types.’ If you’re ready for a hardware upgrade and want to ditch that 10 pound Lenovo ThinkPad you’ve been lugging around, this is the list for you.
How to Choose the Best Blogging Laptop – Factors to Consider
Before you find the best laptop for blogging, it’s important to outline the criteria you should focus on. Shopping for tech can be both expensive and complicated, so it helps to highlight the features that are most important before shopping.
Price
The limiting factor for buying your blogging laptop is inevitably price. Laptops range from a few hundred dollars for a small notebook laptop to thousands of dollars for the latest hardware.
Many of the best laptops for blogging fall in the $500 to $1,500 range, but consider your budget and decide what you’re comfortable with.
Screen Size
If you blog frequently, a large screen is a luxury that’s often worth the money. This is also true if you do freelance work like graphic and web design where splitting your screen into two separate windows improves your workflow.
Related: 7 Ways to Make Money Blogging as a Freelancer
Weight
If you’ve ever lugged around a heavy laptop all day, you know how irritating, or even painful, it gets.
So, when choosing the best blogging laptop, consider your lifestyle. If you’re a travel blogger who’s always on the go, prioritize finding a lightweight laptop. If you only blog from home, weight isn’t as critical.
Processing Power
If you blog on WordPress or Google Docs and don’t do much else, any modern laptop should suffice.
But, if you have hobbies like vlogging, your laptop needs enough power to run editing software. Plus, having some power behind your hardware is nice since even regular internet browsing is faster.
If you need more processing power, look for blogging laptops that have a minimum of:
- 8GB of RAM
- An i7 processor
Battery Life
There’s nothing worse than sitting down for a writing session only to find there’s no outlet and you have to run back home. If you’re a travel blogger or always write in cafes, you need a laptop that supports your lifestyle.
Thankfully, many of the best blogging laptops have all-day battery capacity, or at least 8 hours. All-day is ideal, but if the price isn’t worth it, buy a laptop power bank on Amazon as an alternative to always stay charged.
Hard Drive Type and Capacity
Laptops generally have two types of hard drives:
- Hard Disk Drive (HDD): Traditional data storage that’s mechanical
- Solid State Drive (SSD): A faster harddrive that stores your data on flash-memory chips
HDDs are slower and more prone to data loss since they have actual moving parts. SSDs are more reliable, and the speed difference is immense; a laptop with a SSD can startup in seconds whereas an HDD often takes a minute.
Granted, SSDs are more expensive, but in my opinion, it’s the new golden standard for blogging laptops. Just make note of the capacity. 500GB is more budget-friendly, but if you can get 1TB of data or more, that should cover all of your blogging files.
Best Blogging Laptops: Comparison Table
| Laptop | Price (Approximate) | Screen Size | Weight | Best For | Buy |
| Acer Aspire 5 | $450 to $600 | 15.6-inch | 3.97lbs | Budget Blogging | Amazon |
| Asus VivoBook | $850 | 14-inch | 3.2lbs | Travel Bloggers | Amazon |
| MacBook Air | $999 | 13.3-inch | 2.8lbs | Lightweight | Amazon |
| Dell XPS 17 | $1,900 | 17-inch | 5.5lbs | Vlogging & Blogging | Dell |
| Acer Chromebook | $300 | 15.6-inch | 2.4lbs | Just Writing | Amazon |
The Best Laptops for Bloggers
Now that you know what to look for when comparing hardware, it’s time to examine the best blogging laptops for every price point and lifestyle.
1. Best Budget Blogging Laptop – Acer Aspire 5
If you want a budget blogging laptop that’s also surprisingly powerful, the Acer Aspire 5 is for you.
This sleek laptop is ideal for the budget-conscious blogger. In terms of specs, the cheapest Acer Aspire 5, which starts at around $430, includes:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200U
- GPU: AMD Radeon Vega 3
- RAM: 4GB
- Display: 15.6-inch
- Storage: 128GB SSD
- Weight: 3.97lbs
- Battery Life: 7.5 hours
If you’re just blogging, this is enough to get the job done, just be mindful of the small harddrive.
However, I like the Acer Aspire 5 because upgrading to a more powerful Ryzen 5 quad-core processor and 8GB of RAM only brings the price up to $589. This model also includes a 256GB SSD. As for battery life, expect about 8 hours for both models.
The bottom line is you can get a powerful, lightweight blogging laptop for between $450 to $600 with Acer.
Pros: Budget-friendly; upgradable features; cheap for a laptop with a SSD
Cons: Small harddrive; loud fan
2. Best Laptop for Travel Bloggers – Asus VivoBook S Thin
As a travel blogger, you typically need more than a budget laptop to get the job done.
For starters, you want a lightweight laptop with a long battery life and ample storage to make life easy. If you vlog, you also want a better CPU and more RAM than most budget laptops.
Thankfully, one of the best laptops for travel bloggers is the Asus VivoBook at around $850.
Specs of this laptop include:
- CPU: Intel i7 8550U
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX150
- RAM: 8GB
- Display: 14-inch
- Storage: 256GB SSD
- Weight: 3.2lbs
- Battery Life: Between 5 and 8 hours depending on task (bring a power bank!)
Overall, the fact that you get an i7 quad-core processor and 8GB of RAM means you can blog, create graphics, and even edit YouTube videos with this powerful little laptop.
Pros: Powerful yet lightweight; price
Cons: The battery life is the main downside for this budget-friendly travel blogger laptop
3. Best Lightweight Blogging Laptop – 2020 Apple MacBook Air
When Apple released its first MacBook Air, it set the standard for what to look for in a lightweight laptop.
Now, the 2020 MacBook Air isn’t necessarily the best travel blogging laptop just because it’s lightweight.
This is for several reasons. Firstly, it’s often harder to get a Macbook repaired abroad if something breaks compared to most Windows computers. Macbooks are also more expensive, so depending on where you travel, this can be a source of attention you don’t want.
But for a lightweight blogging laptop for shorter trips or working in cafes, the MacBook air is perfect. The specs are also impressive:
- CPU & GPU: Apple M1 Chip
- RAM: 8GB
- Display: 13.3-inch
- Storage: 256GB SSD
- Weight: 2.8lbs
- Battery Life: 15 hours
The 2020 MacBook Air usually costs between $899 and $999. The M1 chip is really the major upgrade here, and is 3.5 times faster than previous generations of Macs according to Apple. Plus, in classic Apple fashion, you get the same sleek, elegant feeling with the MacBook Air as with other Apple products.
If you frequently blog in cafes or are always lugging your laptop around, the portability, performance, and battery life of the MacBook Air make it one of your best laptop choices.
Pros: High-performance and elegant design from Apple at an affordable price
Cons: The screen is on the smaller side, which isn’t ideal if you also do work like programming or graphic design
4. Best Laptop For Blogging & Vlogging – Dell XPS 17
It wouldn’t be a proper list of the best blogging laptops without showing some love to the content creators out there.
Yes, I’m talking about all the influencers, YouTubers, TikTokers, and people who create a lot of video content.
If you blog and vlog, you need a workhorse of a laptop. This is because video editing requires significant computing power. You also want enough storage space to hold all of your blogging and vlogging files.
At around $1,900, the 2020 Dell XPS 17 checks all of the boxes. Specs of this powerful laptop include:
- CPU: Intel i7-10750H
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 TI
- RAM: 16GB
- Display: 17-inch
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Weight: 5.5lbs
- Battery Life: 10 hours
You can get the price down to $1,350 if you opt for 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and an i5 processor. However, the point of Dell’s XPS 17 is to create the breathtaking content you’re dreaming of without encountering technical difficulties, so downgrading doesn’t really make sense.
If you’re in love with Apple, you can consider the 16-inch MacBook Pro instead for your blogging and vlogging needs. But for Windows users, the Dell XPS 17 is one of the best laptops for blogging if you have a larger budget.
Pros: Processing power and RAM; storage space; large screen for multitasking
Cons: Price
5. Best Blogging Laptop for Just Writing – 2020 Acer Chromebook
So, you don’t make videos, spend a lot of time browsing the web, or need a lot of processing power for your work.
You. Just. Want. To. Write.
That’s great news because you can stick with the affordable Acer Chromebook for around $300 to get the job done.
So, why are Chromebooks so inexpensive?
Well, Chromebooks aren’t exactly fully-fledged laptops. They use Google’s operating system, store most of your data on the cloud, and are meant for simplistic computer usage (like writing on WordPress or a Google Doc).
In terms of specs, the 2020 Acer Chromebook comes with:
- CPU: Intel Celeron N4000
- GPU: Intel UHD
- RAM: 4GB
- Display: 15.6 inches
- Storage: 32GB eMMC
- Weight: 2.4lbs
- Battery Life: 12 hours
This is more than enough to write all day without worrying about speed or battery life. The screen is also large enough so you don’t have to squint. Just get used to storing most of your files on the cloud due to the storage limitations.
Pros: Cost-effective; long battery life
Cons: Limited processing power and storage space
6. Other Popular Blogging Laptops Worth Considering
It’s hard to cover every laptop in this list of the best blogging laptops. The truth is, there are plenty of other excellent candidates.
If none of the laptops on this list pique your interest, you can also look into buying:
- Microsoft Surface 3: A powerful, touch-screen laptop that’s under $900
- Asus Zenbook 13: An ultra-slim 13.3-inch laptop that’s excellent for travel bloggers
- Lenovo IdeaPad 5: Another powerful-yet-affordable blogging laptop with an i7 processor, 12GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $800
- Microsoft Surface Go 2: A 2-in-1 laptop that can transform into a tablet, making it a lightweight and portable blogging laptop choice
- Dell Inspiron 15: At under $600, this is another sturdy business laptop that still has enough power for you to blog without any problems
Summary
When it comes to laptop shopping, you have to strike a balance between your budget and your needs.
I think everyone would enjoy dropping $3,000+ on the most powerful laptop setup on the market if the money didn’t come from their bank account.
But, when it’s your money on the line, you have to be sensible. Choosing the best laptop for blogging means finding a laptop that lets you work efficiently and doesn’t restrict your creativity.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a travel blogger or work at your desk at home; decide what factors matter most for your blogging laptop and choose a laptop that lets you focus on consistently publishing great content.
