Sometimes you want a laptop that transforms into a tablet, or vice versa, and that's when you need to start hunting for the best 2-in-1 laptops on the market.
I know because my team and I review dozens of them every year, and we're always looking for models that are elegant, powerful, energy-efficient and easy to carry. And they're are more great options to choose from than ever, thanks to the ever-improving state of mobile computing tech.
I've started recommending the Microsoft Surface Pro 11, for example, because even though it's technically a tablet with an optional detachable keyboard it's a great 2-in-1 thanks to the Snapdragon chips inside. Spring for the OLED ugprade to really make it feel premium.
But even older 2-in-1s like the Acer Spin 5 are still a great value, and the Spin 5 is especially nice because it comes with its own stylus. Of course, if you can afford something fancy, I recommend the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 because its an elegant 2-in-1 with a vivid OLED display and a killer soundbar, plus there's a stylus packed in to boot.
Read all about why we recommend these and more in this list of the best 2-in-1s to buy right now, based on our hands-on testing and reviews!
The quick list
In a hurry? Here's a brief overview of the laptops on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever laptop catches your eye.
This latest model of Microsoft's 2-in-1 is the best yet thanks to its Snapdragon X chip, making it the most powerful and longest-lasting model yet. On top of that, you can upgrade to an OLED display. I like this one-two punch because it takes the Surface Pro from good to great - you go from a fine Windows 11 tablet with okay battery life and speed to a lovely Windows slate with an eye-catching OLED touchscreen and speedy performance that lasts all day. Sure, the detachable keyboard and stylus are expensive, but if you need the best Windows 2-in-1 for most people this is it.
The Acer Spin 5 is a modest workhorse with a nice 14-inch touchscreen, a packed-in stylus and great battery life. While the model we reviewed costs roughly $1,300, there is a slightly older model which can often be bought for under $1,000 — an excellent value for this 2-in-1 that feels premium thanks to its light weight, great keyboard and bright touchscreen.
The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 is a slick 14-inch OLED-equipped 2-in-1 that comes with a carrying sleeve and stylus. It's a bit more expensive than our top recommendation, but if you can afford it this svelte 2-in-1's elegant chassis, excellent soundbar and higher-resolution OLED touchscreen is worth splurging on.
The Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is arguably one of the best 2-in-1 laptops for the money. It’s a fetching and sturdy ultraportable with plenty of ports, plenty of power, and a vivid 2.8K OLED panel. On top of that, it also has an LED number pad on its touchpad — which is a nice touch.
The Chromebook Spin 714 offers great battery life and more power than most Chromebooks today, plus it comes with a stylus and mouse. It's expensive for a Chromebook, but worth it—and still far cheaper than the rest of this list.
The Yoga Book 9i is a compelling alternative to foldable screen laptops because you get two 13-inch displays in one package you can use in multiple modes. There are some clever software gestures and multitasking features here, too.
Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who's spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom's Guide, which includes managing laptop coverage and reviewing many himself every year.
The best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now
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The best 2-in-1 overall
The Microsoft Surface Pro 11 is the best Surface Pro in years, for two reasons: Snapdragon and OLED.
While the base model comes with a perfectly functional 13-inch LCD touchscreen, you can add a little luxury to this Windows 11 tablet by splurging on the OLED touchscreen upgrade. It adds a new level of quality to the tablet's display, and makes everything you watch or do on it look a little nicer.
Add in the new Snapdragon X Plus or Elite chips you can get inside and this tablet becomes the most interesting Surface Pro we've seen in a long time. The Snapdragon chips affords the tablet speedy performance and good battery life (12 hours in our testing), which is great to have in a Windows 11 machine this portable.
So if you're in the market for a Windows tablet that can double as a laptop (if you pay for the attachable keyboard, which is a bit too expensive for my liking), you'll be well-served by the Surface Pro 11.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Pro 11 review.
The best value
The Acer Spin 5 is a modest 2-in-1 machine, eschewing aesthetics (it’s literally only available in gray) in favor of strong performance and a bright, vibrant display. It also comes with a stylus, which is always nice.
This laptop nails the fundamentals, delivering performance that’s in line with its price, a bright, vibrant display, and strong battery life (with a bit of care). The $1,399 model we reviewed is great, but if it's too pricey for your budget you can find an older model for $1,000 or less that's an excellent value.
Read our full Acer Spin 5 review.
The best premium 2-in-1
The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 improves upon its excellent predecessor, delivering better battery life and performance in the same premium 2-in-1 chassis. It's a bit more expensive than our general top pick the Galaxy Book Pro 360, but in return you get a higher-resolution screen, better speakers and a bit more power under the hood.
While it's still far from the longest-lasting laptop on this list, the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8's 10+ hours of tested battery life ensure it should last you through a day of work or school. It's easy to carry all day too thanks to its relatively light chassis with its rounded corners, and the carrying sleeve and active stylus included with every purchase are a nice touch.
Factor in the great speakers and a vivid 14-inch OLED touchscreen and you start to see why this is a compelling convertible, even if it can't match the performance of more traditional clamshell laptops in key areas.
Read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 review.
The best OLED 2-in-1
The Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED isn’t perfect. Its 720p webcam is from a bygone era and its 9-hour battery life is short in comparison to the best MacBooks. That said, its strengths are substantial.
The sharp OLED display is wonderful for watching videos, and it has one of the best laptop keyboards we’ve tested. We also love the minimalist design and zippy performance. The LED number pad is also a nice touch. Combine all this with the fact it’s $1,199 at its most expensive, and this device becomes all the more attractive.
Overall, the Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED provides excellent value for what it offers. If you’re looking for a dependable 2-in-1 with a svelte design and eye-pleasing OLED panel, this is the machine to get.
Read our full Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED review.
The best 2-in-1 Chromebook
The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 ($729 to start) is a powerful 2-in-1 Chromebook with good battery life and a handy stylus, making it a great tool for getting things done on the go.
The HDMI out and USB-A port mean you still have basic connections without needing a dock or adapter cables, but USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 are also on tap for current- and next-gen devices.
The 16:10 display looks good in person and is bright enough, even if it can't compete with other premium Chromebooks in that department. The included mouse and stylus give you lots of options for getting work done in either laptop or tablet mode. And with Wi-Fi 6E, you're set up to take advantage of the fastest wireless networks. Most importantly, the battery should last you an entire workday.
Read our full Acer Chromebook Spin 714 review.
The best dual-screen laptop
The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i could start a trend for 2-in-1 laptops. Uniting two 13.3-inch OLED displays in one device, the Yoga Book 9i offers a bevy of different usage modes meant to boost your productivity. This notebook can function as a traditional Windows 11 laptop or tablet, plus it can go into tent mode for presentations.
Thanks to the included folio kickstand, you can use the Yoga Book 9i with two displays stacked on top of each other or spread the two panels side by side. If you’re not keen on typing on a touchscreen, you can use the included attachable Bluetooth keyboard.
The Yoga Book 9i is a Swiss Army knife of a laptop given all its modes. Though it’s expensive at $1,999, it offers enough singular value to be included in this list.
Read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i review.
Also tested
We test and review many 2-in-1 laptops each year, and many are great machines that don't deserve one of the top spots on this list.
But I wanted to make sure to leave room to recommend them here because these laptops are good enough to be a contender for the top slot. If you don't like our top recommendations or they aren't available, these are also great 2-in-1 laptops we've recently tested.
The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 is a lovely 2-in-1 that comes with a stylus, and if you can get it on sale (or trade in some Samsung gear for credit) it's a good value.
The Intel Core Ultra chip inside gives it more than enough power for basic work and some light gaming, and everything you do looks lovely on the 16-inch AMOLED touchscreen. It's easy enough to toss in your bag and carry through a day of work or school, too, given it weighs under 4 pounds and lasted just over 12 hours in our battery life tests.
However, the performance is not quite as good as the latest Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops and the screen, while great, is not quite as bright or as colorful as the screen on the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8. Plus, the power cable for the Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 is a little short for my tastes, and you can only plug in from the left side, so it can be awkward to charge in a crowded conference room or coffee shop.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 review.
Performance test results compared
We run every laptop we test and review through the Geekbench CPU benchmarking utility to get a sense of how capable it is in terms of raw CPU power.
Geekbench assigns the laptop a score for its performance in single-core workloads and multi-core workloads, which we then report to you against similar laptops to help you decide. The single-core workload score is typically a little more meaningful because not all apps are optimized for multi-core performance, but many are so it is important to know.
| Laptop | Single-core | Multi-core |
| Microsoft Surface Pro 11 | 2813 | 14432 |
| Acer Spin 5 | 1741 | 10084 |
| Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 | 2445 | 10753 |
| Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED | 2524 | 10540 |
| Acer Chromebook Spin 714 | N/A | N/A |
| Lenovo Yoga Book 9i | 2317 | 8887 |
| Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 | 2308 | 11979 |
Battery life test results compared
Battery life is one of the key things you should look at when deciding which 2-in-1 laptop to buy, which is why we run every laptop we review through a series of battery tests to see how long it lasts on a full charge.
These tests do not reflect real-world use patterns since we have to set every laptop to the same settings in order to do fair comparisons. Thus, while the times listed here are accurate and useful as a comparison point, your own experience with a laptop's battery life will likely vary.
This is because when we run our battery test we set the laptop's display to 150 nits of brightness and have it endlessly browse the web via Wi-Fi until it dies. However, when you use your laptop you're likely adjusting brightness on the fly, doing all sorts of different tasks while perhaps listening to music or watching a video at the same time, and generally putting the machine through more of a workout than it gets in our test.
So while I stand by our testing and the battery life results we compare in the chart below, I want to be clear that your own experience will vary!
| Laptop | Battery life (tested) |
| Microsoft Surface Pro 11 | 12:10 |
| Acer Spin 5 | 12:31 |
| Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 | 10:10 |
| Asus Zenbook 14 Flip OLED | 8:24 |
| Acer Chromebook Spin 714 | 10:02 |
| Lenovo Yoga Book 9i | 9:18 (two displays) | 12:13 (one display) |
| Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 | 12:04 |
How to choose the best laptop for you
How to choose the best 2-in-1 laptop for you
Performance: If you only need something basic for surfing the web and checking email, consider a cheap machine like the Acer Spin 5. If you need more power to multi-task, run demanding applications, or edit photos/videos, look for a 2-in-1 packing plenty of RAM and newer CPUs, like the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 or Lenovo Yoga 9i.
Graphics and gaming: To function as both tablets and laptops, 2-in-1s are typically designed to be as thin and power-efficient as possible, so they don't pack discrete GPUs and thus aren't great at running the latest games. However, they can usually run older games pretty well, so if game performance is important to you, your best bet is to look for a 2-in-1 with the latest Intel CPUs to take advantage of their integrated graphics (currently Intel Iris Xe) hardware, then splurge for extra RAM and storage. A great display will also help your games look their best.
Size: Consider how portable you need your new 2-in-1 to be: is this a laptop you occasionally want to use as a tablet, or vice versa? If you prefer the lighter weight and smaller size (typically) of a tablet, and can live with having a flimsy/detachable keyboard, then something like the Apple iPad Pro 2021 (12.9-inch) or Microsoft Surface Go 2 is a good choice. If you'd rather have the larger screen and extra power/versatility of a laptop that doubles as a tablet, and don't mind the extra size and weight, consider something like the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 or Lenovo Yoga 9i.
Operating system: 2-in-1s mostly come with two varieties of operating system: Windows and ChromeOS.
Windows is the most common, and if you want to run any app you can download and have access to Windows 11 you'll want a Windows laptop like the Acer Spin 5 or Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8. ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system that relies on Internet access to work to its fullest, so only get a Chromebook like the Spin 714 if you only need a machine for writing, browsing the web and other lightweight activities. Because if you lose your Internet connection, you can't do much on a Chromebook except interact with apps that support offline mode.
How we tested these laptops
How we test the best 2-in-1 laptops
To find the best 2-in-1 laptops we run every machine through a rigorous suite of benchmarks and real-world tests to gauge how it will perform during everyday use.
We measure the average brightness and color quality of each laptop's display using our in-house light meter and colorimeter. For general performance, we run our machines through tests that include Geekbench 5 (CPU performance), as well as various 3DMark tests to measure graphics capabilities. We also run a file transfer test to measure how fast a machine's hard drive is, and a custom battery test that has the machine browse the internet over Wi-Fi until it runs out of juice.
Since these aren't dedicated gaming laptops we don't run benchmarks for popular games (like Far Cry: New Dawn); 2-in-1 laptops don't have discrete GPUs, as a rule, and thus will rarely deliver satisfactory performance in modern 3D games. However, they are capable of running older or less demanding PC games, so we do run a benchmark test to measure their performance in Sid Meier's Civilization 6: Gathering Storm.
For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test.
