The Best 2-in-1 Laptops to Flip Between Work and Play

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is simply one of the best Chromebooks you can get right now. If you can get by without Windows and can work within the Chrome browser (with an Android app here and there), then the Spin 714 will save you a lot of money for a slick little 2-in-1. Despite what its $699 MSRP suggests, you get a premium-looking laptop with one of the best screens I’ve used on a Chromebook.

Performance on the Spin 714 is great, and the Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU has a little extra juice to boost Google’s latest AI features in ChromeOS. Unfortunately, as great as the screen is, this laptop is let down by its tinny speakers. It’s also a tad too heavy to use comfortably in tablet mode for long, but it’s a great performer if you don’t need access to any Windows-exclusive apps.

For road warriors who want to take their dual-screen setup on the go, the Asus Zenbook Duo (9/10, WIRED Recommends) could be your perfect match. At first glance, the laptop looks just like any ordinary 14-inch Asus laptop, but appearances can be deceiving. The keyboard is attached to the bottom chassis magnetically, and lifting it away reveals a second 14-inch screen.

The two screens give you much more real estate to work with while you’re on the road, allowing you to orient them side-by-side for two portrait displays or one on top of the other (with the help of a kickstand). Our testing found the laptop performs pretty well, beating out its predecessor, particularly on graphics and AI tasks. Battery life has significantly improved, with nearly 14 hours of streaming video in our test (on one screen). It's truly a portable workstation on the go.

I love the idea of a smaller Surface device for portability. But Microsoft has struggled in the past to deliver a smaller and more affordable Surface tablet that makes the right compromises. The Surface Pro 12 (6/10, WIRED Review) gets awfully close to nailing that balance. It uses the same overall design—and even the same Snapdragon X Plus processor—ensuring that you aren't losing the premium feeling.

It trades out the OLED display, the Surface Connect port, and the Alcantara fabric keyboard—but what you get is a lighter, thinner, and completely fanless tablet. If it were a bit cheaper, I'd be a bigger proponent of this device. That's especially true since you still have to buy the keyboard attachment, which isn't cheap.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 (8/10, WIRED recommends) is one of my favorite pieces of tech from 2024 for one reason: its size. This diminutive detachable laptop is only 11 inches, which sounds painful at first. But this isn’t a productivity machine. Rather, it’s better viewed as a companion you can take anywhere for light web browsing, writing, and watching videos.

The Duet Gen 9 is powered by a MediaTek Kompanio 838 processor with enough oomph for light work while keeping the battery going for around 10 hours on a charge. The small keyboard and trackpad take some getting used to, but they’re also what helps this thing stay so portable. Finally, the included Lenovo Pen is great for sketching or signing documents, and it’s easily stashed away with a magnetic docking slot on the back of the display when not in use.

The ROG Flow Z13 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is the kind of device no one asked for, and upon its release, everyone doubted. And yet, against all odds, it worked. Despite being a tablet, Asus stuffed a discrete GPU beneath its impressive screen, and out came one of the most portable PC gaming devices ever made. Because the computer itself is behind the screen instead of under your fingers, all the hot air stays far away from your hands while gaming, which is a fantastic benefit of this design.

This latest model takes things even further. Under the hood, the Flow Z13 uses the most interesting chip of the year, the AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395, which has powerful enough integrated graphics to make it a step forward above even the RTX 4060 without the use of a discrete GPU. It also has a slightly toned-down aesthetic and improved battery life. It's expensive, but there's truly nothing else like it.

If you want to dip more into the budget range, we’re big fans of the Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus (8/10, WIRED Recommends). While it usually goes for $500, you’ll frequently find it on sale for under $400. That’s excellent value if all you need is solid performance, a web browser, and the occasional Android app.

The Intel Core i3 CPU in the Flex 5i is powerful enough to handle the lightweight ChromeOS with 20 tabs open at a time, and its 14-inch screen is pretty good for such a budget laptop. Battery life is just OK at a little over seven hours in our testing, but you should be able to eke out a pretty solid workday in most situations. There’s also the matter of the rather small 128 GB of storage, but you can open that up with the included microSD card slot.

Budget laptops in the Windows space are guaranteed to come with some compromises, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i 14 (6/10, WIRED Review) holds up well for the price. The laptop is sturdy, if a bit heavy when using it in tablet mode. The keyboard feels nice during extended typing sessions, and the 16:10 display is crisp, though not the most vibrant.

Powering the Flex 5i 14 is an Intel Core i5-1235U processor with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD storage. Even now, those specs are respectable for the price, though they can struggle to keep up with heavier tasks. The included fingerprint sensor is great for quick logins, and there’s a nice selection of ports. A newer model came out a few years ago, and while the CPU upgrade (to the Core i5-1335U) is negligible, you can buy it for around the same price as the older model.