It's not easy to make a decision with all the 13 inch laptop choices on the market. The market has so many options, not to mention ultra portables, desktop replacements, and now tablets. Our focus here on 13-inch-laptop.com is obviously — 13 inch laptops! The reason for this because this is an emerging sector of the laptop market that we anticipate will become gradually more popular since it fills a "size void" that ultra portables, netbooks, and standard sized notebooks can't fill. It will likely become a size that a typical computer user who occasionally needs to go places with it will choose.
Recommended 13 Inch Laptops on sale!:
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Apple MacBook Pro MD313LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop | |
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Acer Aspire TimelineX AS3830T-6417 13.3-Inch Laptop |
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Toshiba Satellite L735-S3375 13.3-Inch Laptop |
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ASUS Zenbook UX31E-DH52 13.3-Inch Ultrabook |
13 Inch Laptop – A category on its own
First, let's understand the naming of laptop categories. 
The main categories of laptops are netbooks, thin and lights (or ultra portables), standard notebooks, and desktop replacements. Netbooks are generally laptops that have screens less than 12" in size and under. They are the least expensive because of their size and components used. They typically have a small Intel Atom processor and a little RAM and storage space. Screen resolutions are generally lower which I've personally found to be a bit annoying since I can't fit as much on the screen and many websites such as Yahoo Mail are optimized for at least 1024×768 resolution. Thin and light notebooks include 13 inch laptops and are optimized to balance performance, size, battery life, portability, and usability. Standard notebooks are generally 14 and 15 inch laptops and desktop replacements have screens measuring 16 inches and more. They often have the most elaborate designs and high-end parts. They are designed to stay on your desk, hence the term desktop replacement!
13 Inch Laptops – Recommended Specs
To keep things simple, some things to look for in a 13 inch laptop are :
- Weight: <3 pounds ( 1.3kg)
- Battery life: ~ 7 hours
- Screen resolution: 1366×768 or more
- Processor speed and memory: Intel Core i3 or i5; 4GB DDR3
- Storage capacity: >128GB SSD (Solid State Drive) or 500GB Hard Drive
Obviously weight is an important factor otherwise everyone would be buying huge desktop replacements. A main reason for having a laptop is portability. Even if you mainly use your laptop at home, it's nice to be able to bring it from room to room or even onto the patio or balcony. You can't do that with a big, heavy desktop machine.. (well you could, but most people probably won't). With portability, another important factor is battery life. What good is being portable but being tethered to a wall socket constantly? This is particularly true if you travel with your laptop and may not have ready access to a wall socket like during a flight.
Screen resolution is important because higher resolution allows you to see more things on the screen at the same time. Looking at photos, you'll be able to fit the photo on the screen rather than scrolling up and down, left and right to see it. Working on documents and spreadsheets is also more convenient because you can see more without scrolling around. Netbook resolutions, which can be quite low due to their small screen sizes and focus on low power consumption, can be very limiting. For example, many websites are optimized for at least 1024×768 and buttons, text boxes, or menus at the edges of the page will be cut off the screen. On a 13 inch laptop, a resolution of 1366×768 will give you decent screen real estate and be comfortable to look at (not to small).
Processors can sometimes be a difficult choice because of all the options out there. The two main players are Intel and AMD. We'll focus our article on Intel processors since at the time of this writing, AMD is still playing catch-up to Intel. My suggestion is to look for either a Core i3 or i5. 
These are designed to appeal to the budget-minded and medium-level performance consumer respectively. The mobile versions have been tuned to consume less power and scale their speed/power consumption based on the task at hand. The Core i3 and i5 are a good compromise on power consumption, performance, and price for a 13 inch laptop.
I recommended 4GB of RAM because the minimum nowadays is about 2GB with resource hungry operating systems and media intensive applications. So 4GB on a 13 inch laptop gives a little more breathing room over 2GB and room to grow. If you can afford it, which you probably can given that RAM prices have dropped so much in the past few years, upgrade to 8GB or even more!
The cost of storage has also fallen to the point that you can find massive amounts of storage at relatively cheaper prices. I personally can't make full use of 1 Terabyte of space but that depends on your own use. If you find your need for massive amounts of storage space isn't too great, you should consider Solid State Drives (SSDs). These drives, unlike hard drives which store data on magnetic spinning platters, have no moving parts. This allows them to store and retrieve data at very high speed. You'll find that applications load up almost instantaneously! One downside is that with repeated usage, the flash memory chips on SSDs gradually wear out. You'll see this as reduced read/write speeds and potential errors. This shouldn't scare you away from SSDs actually. The time it takes for this to happen on average, in many cases, can be several years and puts SSD lifespan close to an average consumer grade hard drive's lifespan. It all depends on whether you value speed and battery life or capacity for your 13 inch laptop. The lesson here is to make regular backups of your important data!
Hopefully this guide has helped you in your decision making. Stay tuned for reviews of some of my favorite 13 inch laptops!
