Best by the numbers
Best lightweight laptops under 1.3 kg
Under 1.3 kg is the weight you stop noticing in a bag. These are the lightest machines that are still worth carrying.
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The picks
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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4)
Apple finally killed the 8 GB base and cut 100 dollars, making this the best-value Air in years, but Linux on M4 barely boots.
€ 1.199 8.3/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Battery 9Build 9
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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M5, 2026)
The new M5 keeps the 1.23 kg fanless body, 13.6 inch 500 nit Liquid Retina panel at 60 Hz and 18 hour video runtime, with 16 GB unified memory and 512 GB now standard from 1099 dollars.
€ 1.299 8.2/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Battery 9Build 9
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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M3)
Outstanding battery and build for macOS users; a poor pick if Linux is the goal.
€ 1.299 8.2/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Battery 10Build 9
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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M1, 2020)
Apple discontinued it but Walmart still sells the M1 Air around 549 to 599 dollars, and with the most mature Asahi support of any Apple Silicon machine it is the cheapest realistic way to put Fedora on an Apple laptop.
€ 929 8.0/10 Linux, minor tweaksStrong on Battery 9Build 9
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Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 Gen 9 (Snapdragon X Elite)
A 14.5 inch 3K 90Hz OLED and roughly 16 real hours of battery make this one of the best Windows-on-Arm ultrabooks, but on Linux it is work-in-progress with no speakers or webcam and firmware you must pull off Windows first.
€ 1.115 8.0/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Battery 10Screen 9
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Apple MacBook Air 13 (M2, 2022)
The first M2 Air with a flat redesign, MagSafe and a 500-nit 13.6 inch panel; Asahi M2 is mature enough to run Fedora as a daily driver, which makes a used M2 Air the most interesting Linux-on-Apple-Silicon buy.
€ 1.115 8.0/10 Linux, minor tweaksStrong on Battery 9Build 9
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ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405CA (2025)
The 2025 Arrow Lake refresh of the Zenbook 14 keeps the excellent 2.8K 120Hz OLED and adds a faster Core Ultra 9, but it inherits the same CS35L41 silent-speaker problem on Linux unless you hand-load an SSDT patch.
€ 1.399 7.8/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Screen 9Battery 8
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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition
982 grams, the best keyboard here and a strong Linux story on a current kernel, with two catches: the IPU7 webcam needs kernel 6.13+ and a firmware bug can pin the CPU at 400 MHz.
€ 2.700 7.8/10 Linux, minor tweaksStrong on Build 9Keyboard 9
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Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (2026)
A 1.19 kg 13.9 mm Panther Lake ultrabook with a 2.8K 120 Hz OLED at 750 nits, 32 GB LPDDR5X-9600 and a 75 Wh battery, from 1449 dollars.
€ 1.348 7.7/10 Linux unverifiedStrong on Battery 9Screen 9
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ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405MA
Light, cheap for the spec, and a genuinely good OLED.
€ 1.399 7.7/10 Linux not supportedStrong on Screen 9Battery 8
