Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?
I'm looking for something as small as possible but can still be used in a decent way for coding. The goal isn't to code super complex things but use it more as a tool to quickly write tiny JS/PHP/Html programs. The small form factor is important so I can keep it with me like you would keep a physical paper notebook with you
MacOS: check out the latest MacBook Air 13", the one just released - it has a new keyboard, better base disk configuration and it's cheaper than before.
Windows: Dell XPS 13 has been the go-to laptop for years, they keep refreshing it, so make sure to get at least the 2019 model (which has a camera on the top of the screen, not the bottom), or ideally the 2020 model, which features a new keyboard and even smaller bezels (and a new, 16:10 screen).
Windows runner up: look at Surface Pro 7 (x86) and Pro X (ARM), if the form factor, performance and ergonomics fit your needs, they might be preferable to the XPS 13. The Pro X is quite a wild card, since the compatibility is not quite there yet, but it's closer to a paper notebook than laptops or even the Pro 7.
I would advise against anything smaller than 13", because it will be fairly suboptimal to type on.
Nearly all comments are completely missing the most important point in the OP question: "The small form factor is important so I can keep it with me like you would keep a physical paper notebook with you".
When one says a physical paper notebook, it means something that is small and portable and you can put it in your pocket or a small bag, not a 13" laptop that weighs 2 kilos that you need a special and when you open it takes up huge space so you need to clear the table. Even a 10-11" laptop is not really something you would keep with you all day long.
I recommend a mini laptop that is at most 8" in size. I don't have spare cash for a second laptop at this moment and I use a 14" Latitude for all coding, but I would love to have something with the following form size:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L7DVDL3
If you REALLY value compactness, the smallest nice computer you can get is probably the discontinued 12-inch macbook. It really is amazingly small. It is underpowered but "quickly write tiny JS/PHP/Html programs" is about the least demanding thing you can do, work wise, so I think it would be fine.
It's a sacrifice for compactness though. It also has the "bad" keyboard, though some people don't mind.
The just released macbook air is probably an all around good choice though.
Really surprised not more people are mentioning the X1 Carbon. It is extremely lightweight, thin, loaded with ports, has great battery life and has tons of ports.
I use one plugged into a thunderbolt 3 dock so I can have a great desktop setup with a single wire, and quickly unplug when I need to move.
Take a look into a few chromebooks. The models with crostini have a full built in Linux dev environment complete with a terminal and the ability to run standard Linux apps like vscode. The pixelbook go had my favorite keyboard and is a nice size. You might like that! The discontinued slate is really nice too.
I do something a bit different:
I have a Surface Pro, which is OK in its own right. But I don’t develop straight on it. Instead, I spin up a VM on Azure with all my dev tools. I use RDCMan as a RDP client to connect to that, and code there. When at home or office, I dock the surface and have 2 big screens and a nice keyboard. When at a coffee shop, I just use the Surface as-is. If I upgrade my laptop or decide to use my MacBook etc, I just use that to remote into the dev VM instead. My dev environment is agnostic to the screen I use to connect to it. I’ve been doing this 5+ years and wouldn’t go back. I will say I’m more productive with 2 screens, but I routinely worked from coffee shop just fine.
The 12" Macbook is probably your best bet size and weight-wise, but it is now a bit outdated and definitely overpriced within Apple's lineup itself (Given the MBA has a 10th gen processor, better keyboard and is $300 cheaper than the macbook now)
I believe there's an updated version too.
Thinkpad X2xx - 12", very reliable, coreboot-able, excellent keyboard.
OpenPandora, the Pyra would be better but not readily available immediately. Fit in pocket easily, keys might be a tad too small for you?
Another pocket sized device is GPD Win, which I believe you can install Linux onto the first version.
Just some options, leaning more on the small form factor side/.
I love my ASUS ZenBook 13!
* The best laptop keyboard I've ever typed on!
* Great screen
* Weights 1 kg
* Solid 8 hours of work on battery
Two words: MacBook Air.
You can't go wrong with that little workhorse. The new one (high spec) will even do Java development just fine and run two 4K screens.
I have a Surface go, and I use to write scratch ideas in F#/C# Typescript in visual stuidio code. I then punt them via git to my main dev box later. It's a really nice way of keeping ideas flowing with out letting them go flat, or forgetting about them.
You will need to purchase a keyboard (Doesn't have to be a microsoft one), but not a stylus. Battery life is about 6 hours for me.
It's small, fits under myarm, in my bag. I can code on it, look up recipies on it, messaging, Spotify etc.
I like compact devices, I miss 11" form factor netbooks Samsung NP netbooks, great for sticking in my bag and just using/code with.
I have written small js/html tools on my iPhone with help of a Bluetooth keyboard. No PHP though as iOS doesn't allow code execution environments except for the browser.
In my experience the biggest drawback on these kinds of setups is the small screensize (I strongly prefer coding with three giant displays), and this limitation cannot easily be overcome while keeping the device tiny. I'm looking forward to the Lenovo X1 Fold though to see if this reduces the pain a bit. And I love my Asus ZenScreen as a second-screen solution that easily fits in my backpack.
I have tried many, believe me.
First thing, if it has glossy screen I would quickly discard it - your vision health is worth much more than a pretty picture in Facebook.
Having said this, I would go for dell XPS family.
They are not cheap but they are very robust. In addition, screen border is almost nonexistent so all it's size is for your screen.
Very good Linux support (there is a a version that ships with Ubuntu).
Keyboard is fantastic and the combination of carbon fiber with aluminium works great, in my opinion.
Give it a try.
Anything with SSD and 8-16GB RAM should do the work.
Personally i would buy a 13" macbook pro.
iPad Pro 11"?
I mean there aren't that many "small" laptop, just reading between the line of your needs.
Today most laptop starts at 13". I am not sure if that fit your definition of Small. But the new MacBook Air is pretty decently priced for an Apple product.
I've used a fully loaded MacBook and it works well. It's quite slow compared to a desktop but it's fast enough and has the Retina screen. This laptop is basically a tablet in laptop form factor; it is ultra tiny and very nice to use from a physicality standpoint.
I'm currently using an X1 Carbon ThinkPad Gen 4 with a 4K screen and it is pretty nice too. It's a step up both performance wise and size wise from the MacBook.
Great timing on this post as I'm looking for something to replace my aging Dell Inspiron 1420n from 2008. Thanks for asking! It sounds like you just need something to run an editor (maybe VIM?), PHP and a browser... Like others have mentioned, if you need to run docker it will require something quite modern.
What's your budget?
Can anyone chime in about the Asus Eee PCs, or the Dell Inspiron Mini series? Or anything else near the 10 to 11-inch form factor? Would they be hard to type on for someone under 6ft tall?
I'm personally looking for something that can run Linux (perhaps even as slimmed down as Puppy Linux), Vim (or maybe VSCode) can run a browser (preferably Firefox but Pale Moon or other might be fine). Just bought an Asus VivoBook X202E on Ebay, but that's an 11.6" display, so I'll see how it goes.
What I'd really love is to find a blog post of the "Best Linux-compatible Netbooks Through the Ages". Has anyone come across anything like this? Would help me search Ebay for successively older machines until I get to the price point I'm looking for.
No mentioned yet, https://system76.com/laptops/galago might not be the smallest of the bunch, but well worth it if you need the performance to compile and test while on the go. I run several VMs and QUME instances with your fave VIM scripts. :) For size vs perf, Air 13” is hard to beat... I had a Pro X (arm) for about a week and I tried to get Linux on it ASAP after all the issues, even then it was flaky at best, running VIM on Windows is usually a hard sell even if you are running the Windows Subsystem for Linux and you spend the hours of getting to where you like it, only to find glitches after glitches... only if the thinkpad came in 16:9 :) I have an older one and it’s horrid only after an hour... I tend to leave it...
I managed to get my hands on a Lenovo X280 before they were discontinued. I think it's fantastic and really hits the sweet spot between weight and performance - it's my main driver and weightwise I have a hard time telling it apart from my iPad Pro 11 with a keyboard case.
I spent a number of hours coding in and around Berlin parks with my trusty Acer 1810TZ (11.2", ca. 2010). It was portable, and compact, but it wasn't too convenient with the 1366x768 resolution and the tight keyboard does cause an extra typo or two here and then, but it got the job done.
Because that was a tad too small, I then went for a 17" workstation, which turned out to be a little bit too big.
So now I've settled on a 15.6" Asus FX-505. Love the design and hardware, hate having to use Windows 10. Not quite ready to make the jump to Linux, yet.
Overall, I settled for one device compromising size, comfort and portability. I think I could go for a 13-14" device, if I wanted more portability, but 11" is just about the limit for comfortable coding, IMHO.
How large is the paper notebook? :D
I.e. fit into messenger bag? Maybe even Macbook Air would fit. You actually have some selection of smallish notebooks around ~10 inch, or x86 based tablets. Old EeePC line might be a good fit, if you don't need much power. You might even opt for iPad and keyboard-cover.
Personally, I have bought myself an underpowered arm-based 10' lenovo chromebook. Has decent enough keyboard for touch-typing, and I can run most of my dev-setup with the linux support.
Do you need to go smaller? You are then entering a niche teritory, where you might want to try Gemini PDA (a Psion 5MX clone running android or linux with surprisingly good keyboard that can fit your pocket), but every time I considered it, I figured it is too expensive for what it would give me.
Dell Latitude 7390: it's basically a better XPS13.
Same size, same small bazel, weighs meaybe 100g more, but has all of the ports you could need and ram, disk and battery are easily replaceable. Probably has better thermals too, since less compromises were done in head dissipation.
I can't really understand why people are buying the XPS13 when the Latitude 7390 is available (probably for less money).
the size is 13", basically the size of an A4 sheet of paper. My 7390 from work is equipped with an 8th gen i7 (4c8t) and 16gb ram and an nvme add, more than enough to do most things. Lower end models exist too of course.
If youre looking for something on the cheap, probably an used thinkpad will do: X or T series, 40-50-60 series (X2[456]0, T4[456]0)
RAM upgradable to 16gb
Good enough for android dev.
As others have pointed out, 8" is probably a bit too small, and you'll have to make a painful tradeoff between performance vs. battery life as well. I'd go with something in the 10-11" range. There are plenty of tablets that you can get keyboard covers for, but those are IMO poor choices due to lack of a real OS supporting real apps (though they can be great as "terminals" for real systems elsewhere).
The two I'd consider would be the Microsoft Surface Go or the Asus Chromebook Flip C101. One is Intel (but Windows). The other is real Linux underneath (but ARM). Both are pretty cheap and seem to do well on most measures considering their size.
JS/PHP can pretty much run on everything from 2018+.
When adding Docker or NPM and some non-interpreted compilation involved that's where machine's power shines.
Pretty much any 8th gen / 10th gen ulta-low-voltage quad core would be more than sufficient.
As suggest,
If you'd like the lockdown. the 2020 MacBook Air is finally an Apple machine balancing it all for developers.
The Lenovo Carbon X1 is also a power machine.
Main advantage choosing non-Mac machine is ability to replace key components.
Most PCs even the slimmest, allow replacing at least the NVMe so you could get even 2TB for ~200$.
Smallest size you could go imho is 12".
but keyboard is the 2nd key factor for a dev I guess.
I used to write some code on a 11.6" chromebook years ago. Nowadays the smallest laptop my eyes are comfortable with is 14". Preferably a Thinkpad for the way superior keyboard.
While we're brainstorming and day dreaming about ideal tiny rigs, has anybody ever heard of a good paperwhite/e-ink screen for programming? Imagine an e-ink tablet that only had a terminal emulator. Plug a keyboard into it, ssh to your workstation, save your eyes the strain of a bright screen. I've seen e-inks with an additional red color, but imagine if you could get just a handful of colors. I would read my code in light-themes for the first time ever.
Been using 2016 13" MBP. No issues with web or app development.
Also been using iPad 10.5" with keyboard as a thin client to do dev work on Linux VPS. With Blink shell and Working Copy, it is quite enjoyable. Also I got Shadow PC for my game dev projects (my MBP is not powerful enough to do that), I can use Shadow PC app on iPad and it is mostly usable.
I am definitely using iPad as a carry around notebook. I just wish it had real local dev environment so I don't need to worry about wifi.
Looking for the same thing made me actually jealous of my tiny friend. She's maybe 5"1 90lbs. Her small hands comfortably handle smaller keyboards and phones while my fat meat sticks constantly mash the wrong letters. Same with laptops. We got these little Chromebooks for data entry at a co-op job and it was just hell for me. Before then I really hadn't thought about the inadequacy of "one size fits all" technology.
I was using an ancient Acer Aspire One for years. The thing was gutless, so I had to customize the linux installation heavily to be able to do things like run my app's build script and chrome at the same time.
These days I'd probably use it as a terminal for an AWS workspace instead.
These new touch-screen tablet/PCs with a detachable keyboard, plus a virtual remote server, may be the future for this kind of thing.
I did some coding on my old aspire one - but in the end I find the keyboard too cramped, not to mention the screen.
The surface pro typecover is surprisingly good - AFAIK it's the best keyboard option for any new laptop these days. And the surface kinda-sorta can be lugged about like a notebook.
Going smaller... A foldable/clamshell Bluetooth keyboard to pair with your phone? Optionally a suitable size android tablet?
I have a Lenovo X1 Yoga (7th), the new Dell XPS 13 and a X1 Carbon.
My preferred one is X1 Carbon with FHD display which saves battery, it's also pretty lighter and thinner than the X1 Yoga. If you like touch screens and embedded pen, I'd go with the Yoga, still better than XPS13 for me.
Reasons? Better ports (HDMI, USB3.0) and better keyboard (yes, you can switch the Fn and the CTRL keys, it's a BIOS option).
I've used two things in the past that have worked very well for me. I used an 11 inch sub 100 dollar chromebook for a couple of years as my mobile workhorse. For true transportability, I've used a tablet (with a terminal emulator for some local capabilities, and with ssh for broader capabilities) and a folding bluetooth keyboard. I keep these in my bag.
I have used an iPad in a keyboard/case combo that was absolutely fantastic as a form factor, but I'm not sure that would meet your needs based on the application.
Maybe a different tablet device that can run Linux or an Android variant capable of providing the tools you require.
A nice thing about tablets is instantaneous sleep to on even vs. modern desktop OS.
I have written software on a Toshiba Libretto 70CT [1], also have an original ASUS EE Pc 701.
My Pinebook is probably a bit bigger that you are asking for but it is light in weight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto
Used an Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA-GS041T for a very long time for exactly that purpose. Ran Linux on it, loved the keyboard, didn't like the trackpad so much but since it was really only for writing (code) on-the-go it worked perfectly fine. Not sure if there's an updated version of that.
I'm guessing since you said "laptop", you want something bag-sized rather than pocket sized but for pocket, there are products like the GPD Pocket: http://gpd.hk/gpdpocket2
I have an old 11” MacBook Air that I sometimes use for development on the go.
It’s a bit weak on vertical screen resolution but perfectly capable of building and running small web apps.
It weighs almost nothing and the keyboard is comfortable.
I'm still loving my 2013 MacBook Air 13" with an i7 and 8 GB RAM.
I mostly do Python development with Vim (web, DevOps, ML/NLP) and Dart/Flutter stuff with VSCode. For bigger workloads I ssh into my iMac.
Maybe the Cosmo Commnicator?
25 ears ago i would have recommended the amazing IBM PC110 Palmtop.
12" MacBook with the i5 or i7 (it's rare now, though). I've made do with the m3 version and while PHPStorm runs slow, it's bearable.
I've written JS + HTML code on my phone using Termux in the past. If you use a small bluetooth keyboard it works surprisingly well.
I‘d recommend buying a Surface Go. Using WSL you can tool up, like on any other machine. However, remember to grab the 8GB model.
if you are looking at Macs, mac book air.
Chromebook is a fantastic option in terms of price, though everything may have to stay in the cloud.
I own a Samsung Chromebook 3 with GalliumOS, it has 4Gb of RAM and it pretty fast thanks to that lightweight Debian distro.
You can run Emacs on virtually any laptop.
12" Macbook would probably be optimal.
Surface Go is an option to consider, however it can't really be used on a lap.
Any tablet + x2go or apache guacamole
Most important for me is a descent keyboard. I always bring my k800.
Has anyone tried the Dell XPS Ultrabook for coding?
iPad Mini (or an iPhone Pro Max) + external or foldable keyboard is a decent compromise if you really value a small form factor.
The new Dell XPS 2020 or the MB Air.
get a secondhand or refurb macbook, the completely solid ones. Just plain ol macbook, now discontinued. I love mine.
No no no. No!
Don't take it from me. Take it from Drew here:
https://drewdevault.com/rants/2020/02/18/Fucking-laptops.htm...
As he says:
> The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200
In these sad deprived days, coding means typing text. For text, you need a good keyboard.
And Lenovo made the best keyboards in laptops, later than anyone else... until they went chiclet. As chiclets go, Lenovo's are good, but they're still chiclets and chiclet keyboards are inferior.
Trackpads are large, hard to be very accurate, and you accidentally hit them while typing. All you need is a Trackpoint.
And if you're some kind of current-kit fetishist, or some poor sucker working in Javascript or worse still some Electron abomination, then you can stick a new motherboard in it for your hideous bloatware to get the CPU cycles it needs to pointlessly burn.
https://hackaday.com/2018/03/12/new-guts-make-old-thinkpads-...