The best laptops for drawing can be a great option for anyone who doesn’t want to have to buy a separate dedicated device for digital art. Touchscreen technology has evolved a lot, and many laptops now have 360-degree hinges or detachable screens that enable tablet-like functionality for the best of both worlds. Add in a digital stylus, and you have a great drawing device that can also handle all the everyday computing tasks you might need.
We’ve reviewed a wide range of the best hybrid laptops and specifically tested them for drawing. As well as running benchmark tests, we tested what it really felt like to draw on each device using different software. We paid particular attention to the colour accuracy and resolution of their screens, and the responsiveness of the screens when using a stylus, as well as performance, battery life and price to pick out the best laptops for drawing for different needs and budgets.
For more options, see our guides to the best laptops for animation and the best 2-in-1 laptops for creatives.
The Quick list
Below you’ll find our quickfire picks for the best laptop for drawing. You can get a quick overview of each machine here, or jump down to more detailed information on those that catch your eye.
1. Surface Laptop Studio 2
This is our top pick for the best laptop for drawing because of its brilliant screen, battery life, and performance, especially when teamed with a Surface Slim Pen 2.
Read more below
More tablet than a laptop, the Surface Pro 9 still offers a fully-fledged Windows 11 experience but with added portability, and and you can add an optional keyboard.
Read more below
3. HP Spectre x360 16 OLED
We love this sleek 14-inch laptop for its excellent 3K OLED screen which boasts great colour coverage, brightness and responsiveness for drawing.
Read more below
4. Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3
Offering extremely good value for money for a laptop for drawing the Chromebook Duet 3 sports excellent battery life and decent grunt for a Chromebook. It supports digital pens.
Read more below
5. Asus ZenBook Pro 14 Duo
This unique laptop unique in its versatility, with a handy second screen for references or quick access to other apps. It also boast excellent specs, a glorious main OLED screen and robust build quality.
Read more below
The best laptops for drawing in full
Why you can trust Creative Bloq
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
The best laptop for drawing overall
Our testing determined that this is the best laptop Microsoft has made to date, and we think it’s a great laptop for drawing thanks to a lovely 3:2 touchscreen, with a very nice mechanism for positioning it like an easel.
On many hybrids, the screen folds back to convert the laptop into a tablet. But the Surface Laptop Studio works in a different way, with a split hinge design that allows the screen to be slid over the keyboard. It can also be propped up in an easel-like position, which we found to be great for drawing and eliminates the need to buy a stand or use the screen flat, if you want to use it hands-free.
The screen is bright – we measured 505 nits when we reviewed the laptop, and we found the 3:2 screen size is convenient for drawing too. We also found stylus support to be very responsive thanks to a zippy 120Hz refresh rate, which eliminates any frustrating lag when laying down digital ink. Just note that the Surface Slim Pen 2 stylus is sold separately.
More generally, we were impressed with the performance upgrades on this second gen model, with powerful 13th Gen Intel processors and up to Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics. Memory support has been boosted to a hefty 64GB too. We found battery life to be another highlight, giving us 12 hours of use. It could do with more ports, but overall this is a gorgeous laptop for drawing and other creative work.
See our full Surface Laptop Studio 2 review for more details.
The best drawing laptop for portability
Yes, strictly speaking, the Surface Pro 9 is a tablet rather than a laptop, albeit one that runs Windows 11, allowing you to use fully fledged desktop software on a compact device. However, attach the optional Type Cover keyboard, and you’ve basically got a fantastic thin and light laptop. Of course an iPad can also do this, but we haven’t included iPads in this guide since they don’t run desktop software.
We found Windows 11 to run fast, and the screen offers an excellent drawing experience with the Surface Slim Pen 2. The design works well. We recommend the optional keyboard since we find Windows awkward to use using touch alone, but whether you go for the Type Cover or not, the solid stand provides adequate support to hold the device upright when drawing at a desk, while you also have the benefit of being able to use this handheld and draw on your lap.
We like the range of colours available too: Graphite, Sapphire, Forest and the original Platinum, and these are matched in the keyboard. Note that like with the Surface Laptop Studio 2 above, the stylus is sold separately.
Read our full Surface Pro 9 review for more on our experience.
The best laptop screen for drawing
The HP Spectre x360 16 is a great looker, and we found it to be a very flexible device, thanks to the 360-degree hinge that allows the screen to flip back into tablet format. We found this to be solid and dependable for drawing in tablet mode, and we loved the 4K+ OLED screen, which boasts great colour coverage and decent brightness at 400 nits.
We tested a configuration with Intel Core i7-1260P, 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD, and found this to have more than enough power for drawing and other light content creatin tasks. Battery life was good too – we measured 12 hours looping a 1080p video with the screen at half brightness. As for connectivity, along with Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and a microSD card reader, you also a pair of fast 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 ports.
As for drawing, the laptop comes bundled with an HP Rechargeable MPP2.0 Tilt Pen for drawing and inking support as standard, and there are magnets on the right-hand side of the display to hold the pen when it’s not in use. We found that the OLED panel’s 60Hz refresh meant it wasn’t quite as responsive as higher refresh screens, and sensitivity is perhaps a little lacking at the lower end of the touch scale at lighter pressures, but we think we would be able to get used to that.
See our full HP Spectre x360 16 2-in-1 review for more details.
The best budget laptop for drawing
Looking for a good laptop for drawing but on a budget? We think the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 is a great choice. As a Chromebook, this hybrid tablet is way more affordable than most other options on our list, but still pretty capable of handling drawing, as long as you don’t want to use software that’s only available for Windows or macOS.
Chromebooks run Google’s Chrome OS rather than Windows or macOS software, so not all of the usual desktop drawing applications will be available. However, it can run Android apps, which provides access to quite a good selection of mobile drawing and digital art applications, including a slimmed-down version of Photoshop.
Chromebooks tend to be cheap while offering great battery life thanks to their low power needs, and we found this to follow that tradition find out more in our buying guide for the best Chromebooks.) It supports the Universal Stylus Initiative 2.0, so digital pens from any company using that standard should work. Just note that the screen size is only 10.9 inches, which does make the space available for drawing feel a little cramped.
The best dual-screen laptop for drawing
The ASUS ZenBook Duo 14 is a brilliantly unique laptop for drawing on thanks to its dual-screen design, which has been taken to the extreme in the latest version. Not content with one screen, or even the previous generation’s one-plus-a-smaller-screen setup, the latest Zenbook Duo has two full-size 14-inch screens, with one cleverly hidden underneath the removable keyboard.
When we reviewed it, we found the two touchscreens with stylus support allowed an incredibly versatile use, with different layout options making it supremely adaptable to different drawing tasks. As well as the unique design, the laptop comes with powerful internals and solid build quality.
See our full ASUS Zenbook Duo OLED review for more details.
The best compact laptop for drawing
The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is another premium device with a touchscreen that we found provides an excellent drawing experience. It’s super thin and lightweight and offers long battery life.
We loved the detachable screen, which we found gave a decent amount of brightness and excellent colour – and the edge-to-edge display is ideal for drawing, especially in the 3:2 aspect ratio that gives you a bit more vertical space than traditional ratios. Its size, weight and dimensions make it perfect for using on the go as it’s one of the most compact on our list and pretty much level with the Surface Pro 9 in terms of weight.
We found the Surface Pro to offer the best experience all round, but this did give us better battery life. However, we weren’t so keen on the keyboard, which we found to be too flat, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made for portability. Note that there is no stylus included: you will have to buy that separately.
Read our full Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 review for more details.
The best all-round laptop for drawing
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 isn’t the most groundbreaking update in the history of Microsoft’s Surface line of portable PCs, but it remains an absolutely excellent all-round device. Physically, little has changed, but that means you get the same super-high-quality chassis as before along with a reasonable price for the entry-level 13.5 model, which comes with 8GB of RAM, which we found to be workable for drawing.
We found the 10-point touchscreen to be very responsive, with a solid 201 PPI pixel density. It’s not a true hybrid device because you can’t flip the screen into a tablet mode. That means your only option for drawing is with the keyboard still there in front of you and no additional support to hold the screen firm. Fortunately, we found that the screen did hold up to stylus pressure, and like several of the devices we’ve chosen, that taller 3:2 aspect ratio provides a nice amount of space for drawing.
Like with the Surface devices above, you’ll have to add that as an optional extra. Read our full Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 review for more details.
How to choose the best laptop for drawing
We’ve done a lot of the legwork for you in my top picks, but there are a few things that are up to you to make the final call on. The most obvious one is budget; which is why we’ve included products at a variety of price points. For instance, the powerful Surface Laptop Studio is obviously a very different price point to the more affordable but less powerful Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook.
The right choice for you might also depend on how much you will be using it for drawing compared to other tasks, and how portable you want your laptop to be. The HP Spectre x360 has a lovely big high-resolution 16-inch OLED screen for drawing, but that makes the laptop physically larger than other options on our list. If you’re after an all-round laptop that offers reasonable portability and a good build for general everyday computing tasks, we think the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is the best option overall, while also providing a very good build and design for drawing.
How we tested the best laptops for drawing
All the laptops in this guide have been tested by a Creative Bloq hardware expert, and every laptop we include as a top choice for drawing has been tested using drawing and artworking software. We run different benchmark tests on each device we get depending on its intended use by its maker, but the laptops we’ve included in this particular guide have all been run through the following:
• Cinebench R23/2024 – this assesses the performance of a computer’s CPU and GPU using real-world 3D rendering tasks
• Geekbench 5/6 – this tests the CPU’s processing power, both by using a single core for a single task at a time as well as all the CPU’s core to see its ability to multitask
• PCMark 10 – this test assesses a computer’s ability to run all everyday tasks from web browsing to digital content creation, testing app launch speeds, running drawing and animation software, performing 3D rendering, and it also tests its battery life
But perhaps more importantly than technical benchmarking, we evaluate machines in real-world situations, pushing them to the limit with multiple applications running to see how they perform in real project-like conditions. Power, speed, portability, and what a laptop looks and feels like are all criteria in our reviewing process. In addition, every laptop we recommend for drawing has to have a good screen that’s comfortable to work on for extended periods. We do much more than simply unpack a test unit, run some benchmarks and then pack it up again; we have lived and worked with all of the above computers, running them in real-life scenarios and completed projects relevant to the subject of this guide, otherwise, we wouldn’t recommend these models to you. For more details, see our article on How we test.
FAQs
Why should I use a touchscreen laptop for drawing?
Generally speaking, when it comes to digital drawing, your options are using a graphics tablet with a laptop or PC, a tablet with a stylus or pen display, or a touchscreen laptop. Some artists may prefer the feeling of graphics tablets, but the technology isn’t perfect, and the need to coordinate your hand separately from your screen can be disruptive when you’re in the flow of things. They’re not as portable as all-in-one devices. They are, however, very affordable, and purpose-built to deliver precision.
The best tablets and pen displays with a stylus are generally the easiest devices for drawing, and are supremely portable – but they can get pretty pricey if you want something durable and robust, and they often lack the versatility to serve for functions other than drawing.
Touch screen laptops, on the other hand, are easily the most versatile for their price point when you consider the functionality they offer.
Do I need a hybrid laptop for drawing?
No, you don’t need a hybrid laptop for drawing – but it can certainly help. 2-in-1 laptops are growing in popularity thanks to how versatile they can be, and with touch screen technology improving year on year, you’ll be hard-pressed to find such flexibility at such a low price point in any other kind of device. Generally the ability to switch the laptop to tablet mode, getting the keyboard out of the way, provides better support and lets you draw in more situations.
There are, of course, cons to hybrid laptops. Although software is becoming more accessible and popular for drawing, you won’t get the same experience as you would on a pen display or tablet. If you specifically want a laptop for drawing, hybrid laptops are generally the way to go, though. Drawing on a regular touchscreen laptop can be a little awkward and uncomfortable due to the obstructive lower half of clamshell, and many laptop screens will move slightly under pen pressure if they don’t have the support of an easel mount.
Take a look at our guide to the best 2-in-1 laptops for creatives for more details.
