The 5 Best Touchscreen Laptops - Black Friday 2024

The best laptop with touch screen we've tested is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition 15 (2024). This premium 15-inch model feels incredibly well built and is easy to carry around, thanks to its compact design. It has a sharp 120Hz display that gets bright enough to combat intense glare, a tactile keyboard, and an easy-to-use haptic touchpad. The display's 3:2 aspect ratio is great for productivity, as the increased vertical space lets you see more information at once, and of course, it's touch-sensitive. Above the display sits an outstanding 1080p webcam as well as a facial recognition IR camera for added security. Ports include one USB-A, two USB-Cs, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a MicroSD card reader, and a proprietary Surface Connect charging port. You can charge the laptop via USB-C, so you don't have to use the proprietary charger if you don't want to.

The most significant change from previous versions of the Surface Laptop is the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC. This ARM-based chip can easily handle general productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Plus, it's incredibly power-efficient, resulting in an exceptional 17-hour battery life in light uses. That said, many programs don't run natively on an ARM processor. You'll likely be fine if you can access everything through a web browser, but for more specialized third-party apps, it's best to check for compatibility first. This laptop uses soldered RAM, meaning it isn't user-replaceable, so make sure you get enough for your needs upfront. If you want something more compact, there's a 13-inch version of the Surface Laptop, which we haven't tested but expect to be very similar.

If you want something a little more affordable, check out the Acer Swift Go 14 (2024). Although this 14-inch model doesn't feel quite as premium as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition 15 (2024) above, it feels sturdily built nonetheless, exhibiting only a small amount of flex on the lid and keyboard deck. The important thing to know about this laptop is that it has two display options, but only the FHD+ IPS panel supports touch input, so it's a slight downgrade resolution-wise compared to the Surface. You get Wi-Fi 6E wireless connectivity, a 1080p webcam, and a wide port selection that includes two Thunderbolt 4s and an HDMI.

This laptop features Intel's Meteor Lake CPUs, which are powerful enough to handle tasks like text processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, and presentations, as well as more demanding workloads like programming. There's no dedicated GPU option, so don't expect to do anything GPU-intensive. Battery life is excellent at around 11 hours of light use or video playback—you can charge the laptop via USB-C. There's a fingerprint sensor built into the power button. The keyboard provides a good—albeit slightly mushy—typing experience, and while the touchpad isn't haptic, it's large and responsive to all movements and gestures.

The best budget touchscreen laptop we've tested is the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15 (2021). As this is an older model from 2021, you can easily find an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U configuration for around $500. The Ryzen 5 5500U CPU is a few years old but still plenty fast for general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Its battery life sits around nine hours of light use, just enough to get you through a typical eight-hour workday.

This laptop is pretty easy to carry around for a 15.6-inch model. Its metal-and-plastic construction feels relatively sturdy—fair for the price but nothing special. You get a reasonably bright 1080p display, a 720p webcam, and a fingerprint sensor. As for the keyboard and touchpad, the former feels tactile but slightly tiring, and the latter is small but reasonably responsive. Unfortunately, you can only charge the laptop via the barrel plug connector because the USB-C port doesn't support charging, and the HDMI port only supports HDMI 1.4 standards, limiting the output resolution to 4k @ 30Hz.

If you have an extremely tight budget and want to spend as little as possible, get the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 (2023). You can regularly find the Core i3 configuration (paired with an FHD display, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage) for around $350 to $500 USD on Lenovo's website. The Core i3-N305 CPU can handle light productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback; just don't expect to do anything intensive like video editing. The cheaper configurations with an Intel N100 or N200 CPU and/or 4GB of RAM are fine if you have an extremely light workload, but know that you'll experience more slowdowns when multitasking.

Admittedly, this 14-inch Chromebook looks pretty cheap design-wise; however, it's very compact, and its battery lasts around 13 hours of light use. As for the display, while there are multiple options, only the FHD IPS panel with 100% sRGB coverage supports touch input. It looks sharp and gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings. Above it is an excellent 1080p webcam, so your colleagues and clients can see and hear you clearly on video calls. Unfortunately, the keyboard feels a tad mushy, and the touchpad is small and sometimes unresponsive.

The best workstation laptop we've tested available with a touch-sensitive display is the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 (2024). Configurable with Intel Meteor Lake CPUs, up to a Core ultra 9 185H, and various NVIDIA discreet GPUs, this 16-inch model has more than enough processing power to tackle demanding tasks like 3D modeling, simulations, or content creation. You can get up to 64GB of RAM and 8TB of storage, and these components are user-upgradeable, so you can add more later if needed. There are three display options, but similar to some of the laptops mentioned above, only the 60Hz 4k+ OLED panel supports touch input. This display has full coverage of the DCI P3 color space and gets bright enough to combat glare in well-lit settings.

The overall user experience is amazing. It has Lenovo's beloved keyboard, a large haptic touchpad, an excellent 1440p webcam, and tons of ports, including one USB-A, three USB-Cs (two Thunderbolt 4s), an HDMI 2.1, and a fast SD Express 7.0 card reader. Battery life is outstanding at around 12 hours of light use or 11 hours of video playback. You can charge the laptop via USB-C, but since the USB-C ports can only take up to 135W, the battery will lose charge if you perform intensive tasks at the same time, so you'll have to carry around its proprietary charger. The keyboard doesn't get very hot under load, but unfortunately, the fans are pretty loud. Linux users can get this laptop with Ubuntu, Fedora, or Red Hat installed.