Things to Consider Before Buying the Best Mini Laptop

Do you want to know what things to consider before buying the best mini laptop? You are in the right place to know the answer of this question.

Laptops are constantly evolving, and the concept of the mini laptop is gaining popularity for several reasons.

It is no longer useless to buy a product of this type, so we tell you why it can be interesting and we reveal the key tips.

Things to Consider Before Buying the Best Mini Laptop

Before, buying a mini laptop was a waste of money and time because it would be obsolete in 1-2 years. Furthermore, they came with very little storage and RAM, as well as a lackluster screen.

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Manufacturers have worked on it and today we see mini laptops with very good performance. Join us in this article to learn the keys to choosing the perfect mini laptop.

1. Design

The first advice is to look at the design, what is a mini laptop or what can be considered as such? Well, we believe that it is a team of no more than 13 inches.

In this way, the 15.4-inch and 17-inch models would be the normal laptops in use, and everything below 15.4 inches could be considered as such.

However, a 14-inch laptop (there are some) is in “no man’s land” because 1.4 inches less is not an abysmal size difference either. However, the change from 13 inches to 15.4 is noticeable, so I’m going to put “13.4 inches “as the limit.

Clarified the definition of mini laptop, let’s go with the design of the equipment. Here we must refer to the thickness of the equipment, and it is unsightly to buy a mini laptop that is “fat”, but small.

His thing is to maintain the “harmony” in the dimensions, so the ideal is that the equipment has a decent thickness.

What thickness is recommended? Let’s start with the thinnest on the market: the Microsoft Surface Pro X with 7.3 mm thickness.

Logically, this is an exception, so you have to find an “average thickness” that serves as a guide: between 10 and 15 mm thick is ideal.

What is the problem with mini laptops with this thickness? Its price is high, despite the fact that it comes with a thousand interesting technologies.

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The cheapest models slightly exceed 15 mm, but we can reassure you that up to 20 mm is an acceptable thickness.

With all this, I give you 3 tips:

• Note if the screen bezels/frames are thin, the more the merrier!
• The maximum thickness I would recommend is 17mm, but if your budget doesn’t allow it, you can find mini laptops with 18mm at a very low price.
• The weight should not exceed 1.5KG because we move less than 13.4 inches; in fact, I would recommend 1.4 KG at most.

2. Screen Size, Technology and Resolution

Closely related to the design, we find the size of the screen and we remember again that it must be a maximum of 13.4 inches.

Some of you will not agree with me and will consider 14-inch computers as mini laptops, but it is impossible to agree on everything.

You can find many different screen sizes:

• There are mini laptops from 10 to 11.6 inches, although with less powerful processors.
• From 12.3 inches the serious proposals begin; yes, from the hand of Microsoft Surface.

What technologies and resolutions do we find in a mini laptop? Well, we usually find the following:

According to your dashboard:

• IPS
• OLED

According to your technology:

• Pixel Sense (Microsoft)
• Retina (Apple)
• Tactile

According to your resolution:

• HD+ (1366×912)
• 1536 x 1024 pixels
• Full HD
• WUXGA (1920 x 1200)
• 2736 x 1824 pixels
• 3000 x 2000 pixels

Interestingly, the mini notebook offers us a market with very good screens, but at the cost of a lot of power under the chassis.

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However, the target audience in this market will pay more attention to the screen than to the processor because it is already assumed that its size complicates things.

3. Integrated Graphics Processor (APU or iGPU)

Most options are x86 processors with integrated graphics, with the abundance of Intel Celeron or Pentium Gold standing out.

If we go to the high range, we will see the low consumption Intel Core (U) as well as those for professional use (G).

And AMD? There is very little supply of AMD Ryzen processors in mini laptops, finding more Ryzen 7 4700U than Ryzen 5 or 3.

Manufacturers opt for Intel when it comes to the low end, although AMD has more presence when we go up to the high ranges with the Ryzen 7. Even so, the offer is still low.

Except for specific cases, we will not see dedicated graphics cards, but processors with integrated graphics ( iGPU ) or APU in the case of AMD.

For those interested in dedicated GPUs, we recommend you go up in size because the most we will see in 13.4 inches will be a GTX 1650 .

This makes sense because of the following:

• Little space to refrigerate .
• The CPUs used are usually low power, so efficiency prevails and not high performance.
• The target audience for these laptops is not usually gamers.

4. M.2 SSD and RAM

The appearance of M.2 SSDs was great news for this segment because it allowed manufacturers to equip their laptops with high-capacity SSDs without resorting to 2.5-inch ones. Also, these SSDs have higher transfer speeds than 2.5-inch SATA SSDs.

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Since we are going to buy a mini laptop, choose one that comes with a PCIe SSD (with 3.0 you will have plenty) and that brings an extra M.2 slot if it can be for a future expansion. The latter is more complicated, if it is not possible go to higher capacities (1 TB, for example).

Turning to RAM memory , good sense takes us from 8 GB due to the amount of resources that applications consume today.

If you can opt for a team with 16 GB perfect; if not, we will be able to expand it in the future, so it would be good if it brought an extra slot. In case there is no extra slot, don’t worry, you can always buy more memory and replace it.

5. Keyboard layout and Size

Be careful with this! Cutting dimensions everywhere brings a disadvantage: less space for the keyboard. The “ace up the sleeve” of manufacturers is to use the FN key to activate missing keys, but be careful with the keyboard layout because we will see more options in US or EN than in ES (which is the one for Spain and contains the N ).

Even if you don’t use the «Ñ», I notice that not only that changes, but also the distribution of other keys such as «><«, for example.

My recommendation is always to have a Spanish layout because, otherwise, we will have to reassign the keyboard keys and it is a nuisance.

Not only does the «N» key disappear, the Catalan public will not be able to use the «C», having to copy and paste it when they need to write it.

6. Ports

Another consequence that we find in mini laptops are fewer ports on the sides of the laptop, although everything is solved with a HUB . Of course, there are certain requirements that your mini laptop should meet:

• Have USB-C, whether for charging or not
• Jack
• RJ45
• HDMI or DisplayPort

That said, with a simple HUB in a USB-C port, all kinds of ports can be extended, including HDMI or RJ45 to connect via LAN.

Mini Gaming Laptop: Do they Exist

At least in Europe, ASUS is the only one that bets on a mini gaming laptop that has 13.4 inches . In the market we find the ASUS ROG Flow X13 as the quintessential mini gaming laptop, and curiously it is only available with AMD Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 5800HS .

The Taiwanese manufacturer has 2 gaming ranges of this type: one with a GTX 1650 and a Ryzen 9 5900HS , which are accompanied by 16 GB and 1 TB SSD and another with a Ryzen 9 5980HS with a GTX 1650 and RTX 3080 , accompanied by 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD.

They are not cheap at all, but they have a very compact size that can convince many, in addition to giving spectacular performance.

We hope this information has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, comment below and we will respond shortly.