Computer pc formfactors: A full e-book to every form, use case, and special characteristic

Until about 15 years within the past, the term “pc” supposed one thing: a portable PC that unfolds to whisper a display shroud on one half and a keyboard on the many.

Nonetheless with the open of Apple’s iPad in 2010, PC distributors’ subsequent push into touchscreen designs, and the ongoing maturation of the PC market, the definition of “pc” has broadened. Picking a pc isn’t correct about tech specs and invent quality. It’s now about the classic form of the object.

Let’s strive to interrupt all of it down with a taxonomy for every roughly pc it is most likely you’ll maybe maybe settle on presently.

Extra studying: PCWorld’s high pc recommendations

Clamshell laptops

Dominic Bayley / IDG

Dominic Bayley / IDG

Dominic Bayley / IDG

The most worn class of them all, clamshells enact not flip, bend, or transform. They merely middle of attention on letting you work with a keyboard and trackpad (or mouse) with doubtlessly the most environment pleasant designs that it is most likely you’ll maybe maybe middle of attention on.

Even here, though, we are able to stipulate a handful of subcategories:

• Touchscreen laptops: These let you govern the display shroud at once while aloof such as a typical pc. Some typical laptops offer a touchscreen as an not compulsory upgrade.
• Ultraportable laptops: Excessive-halt particular person laptops with top price designs centered on portability. These may perhaps maybe maybe be informally is regularly known as “Ultrabooks” — stemming from Intel’s early-2010s marketing push against the MacBook Air — or correct “skinny-and-mild” laptops. HP’s Dragonfly G4 is our recent high grab in this subcategory.
• Gaming laptops: Clamshells with devoted graphics cards and various gaming-centric formulation, such as customizable keyboard lights, unusual cooling alternate suggestions, and flashy designs. You know them while you occur to arrangement them. Alienware’s m16 R2 is our high grab correct now for a gaming pc.
• Desktop replacements: Heavier laptops with larger displays and tough CPUs, with battery existence and portability as afterthoughts. These have a tendency to luxuriate in some overlap with gaming laptops, as viewed in our simplest laptops for video editing.

2-in-1 laptops

Previous the major clamshell, many PC makers offer laptops that may perhaps maybe transform into pills for drawing, taking notes, studying ebooks, and playing touchscreen games. While there are a full bunch forms of 2-in-1 laptops, they mainly tumble into two camps: convertibles and detachables.

Convertibles

IDG / Brendan Nystedt

IDG / Brendan Nystedt

IDG / Brendan Nystedt

With convertible laptops, the keyboard section is permanently linked to the display shroud, nonetheless it folds out of the vogue so that it is most likely you’ll maybe maybe lay the display shroud flat in your lap or on a desk. While convertibles are heavier and bulkier than detachable laptops, they feel extra love outmoded clamshells when outmoded in pc mode. (They enact, nonetheless, have a tendency to be bulkier than non-convertible laptops.)

Interior the convertible subgenre, there are a pair of subtypes:

• 360-stage hinge convertibles luxuriate in displays that fold the total arrangement around under the keyboard — a fabricate made accepted by Lenovo’s Yoga line.
• Easel-vogue convertibles luxuriate in pivoting displays that lay down on high of the keyboard. These are rarer, but Microsoft’s Ground Computer pc Studio and HP’s Elite Folio are important examples.

Detachables

Mattias Inghe

Mattias Inghe

Mattias Inghe

With detachable laptops, the display shroud fragment pulls other than the keyboard and becomes a standalone tablet. This provides you an uncompromised tablet expertise, but with some substitute-offs on the pc front: For the reason that total computing formulation must take a seat within the aid of the display shroud, it will even be high-heavy and may perhaps maybe maybe need its personal kickstand, so it’s extra cumbersome to withhold on your lap. Detachables also will seemingly be much less performant than typical clamshells, whose formulation can use the total dwelling under the keyboard to dissipate warmth.

Detachables themselves tumble genuine into about a subcategories:

• Detachables with kickstands, such the Microsoft Ground Pro and Dell’s Latitude 7320 Removable, luxuriate in mild-weight keyboard covers that snap magnetically to the tablet fragment.
• Detachables with hinges, such as Microsoft’s Ground E-book and Lenovo’s drawing near near ThinkPad Plus Gen 5 Hybrid, recognize extra love outmoded laptops when docked. (The latter in actuality has a Dwelling windows PC within the keyboard unhealthy and Android within the display shroud fragment.)

Exotics

Mattias Inghe

Mattias Inghe

Mattias Inghe

Need one thing a shrimp extra outlandish? Computer pc makers luxuriate in started experimenting with unusual forms of laptops that web loads of displays or foldable portray tech.

These gadgets have a tendency to be famous pricier than outmoded laptops, and so that they can infrequently feel love alternate suggestions wanting for a mission. It’s not outlandish for pc makers to desert or overhaul their ideas after a generation or two, so these experimental laptops are simplest-suited to other folks who don’t mind living on the bleeding edge.

Let’s wreck down the many styles:

• Foldable laptops consist of a single, versatile portray, whose two halves offer a pc-love ground when in part folded or a larger, freestanding portray when unfolded. A separate keyboard and trackpad deck permits for interaction with out relying on the touchscreen. HP’s Spectre Foldable and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold are most up-to-the-minute examples.
• Twin-display shroud laptops change the common keyboard section with a second display shroud, seemingly with an attachable keyboard and trackpad deck for input. Standing the displays up and the utilization of the keyboard individually approximates the texture of having two displays. Asus did a mountainous job on this belief with the 2024 ZenBook Duo.
• Laptops with extra displays can complement the most important display shroud with extra knowledge, as viewed with Asus’ ROG Zephyrus Duo 16.
• Twistable laptops luxuriate in a display shroud that rotates around to present extra functionality on the many aspect. An example is the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4, which has an OLED display shroud on one aspect and E-ink on the many, with the latter aimed against notetaking, studying, and centered writing.