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Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the top 10 laptops with the best keyboards in 2024.
One of the most overlooked aspects of a laptop is its keyboard. When you’re shopping around for your new portable PC, it’s usually pretty easy to find information on the performance specs. It’s often much more difficult to find any significant details about a laptop’s keyboard. This is kind of unfortunate when you consider that you’re stuck with whatever keyboard the laptop comes with.
Unlike buying a desktop PC, you don’t have the liberty of choosing what specific keyboard to pair with the other aspects of your setup, such as performance and display quality. It all comes in one bundle.
What further complicates the issue is the fact that one’s experience with a keyboard is largely subjective. What makes a keyboard ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can vary a lot depending on the individual’s preferences and typical use case.
A loud, clickity clackity mechanical keyboard with no num-pad might be great for someone gaming in the privacy of their own home, but would be a terrible tool for someone doing data entry in a shared and quiet office space.
We’ll break things down to help you find laptops with the best keyboards for you and for the kinds of things you’ll be using them for.
Some of the things we’re going to look at are: What situations the laptop might be best for, what kind of qualities the keystrokes have, how the keyboard is laid out, the overall typing experience, and how the laptop compares as a whole.
Laptops with Best the Keyboards in 2024 Round-Up
The table below will give you a quick look at our selections for the top 10 laptops with the best keyboards currently available on the market. To read a full review, simply click on ‘review>>’ in the respective row.
Product | Image | Rating | |
1. Google Pixelbook Go ''Superior Typing Experience'' |  | 9.7 | |
2. Alienware X17 R2 ''The Best Keyboard on a Gaming Laptop'' |  | 9.6 | |
3. Apple MacBook Pro ''The Best Keyboard on an Apple Laptop'' |  | 9.8 | |
4. Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 ''Windows Alternative to the Pixelbook Go'' |  | 9.6 | |
5. Dell XPS 17 9720 ''Excellent All-around Laptop with Fantastic Keyboard'' |  | 9.8 | |
6. ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition ''Most Unique Keyboard'' |  | 9.7 | |
7. HP Spectre x360 ''Best Keyboard on a 2-in-1 Laptop'' |  | 9.7 | |
8. LG Gram 16Z90Q ''Editor's pick'' |  | 9.6 | |
9. Lenovo IdeaPad 3i Gaming ''Best Keyboard on a Budget Gaming Laptop'' |  | 9.3 | |
10. Acer Spin 3 ''Honorable Mention'' |  | 9.2 |
1. Google Pixelbook Go
”Superior Typing Experience”
Display: 13.3” LCD Touchscreen | Screen Resolution: FullHD (1920 x 1080) | CPU: Intel Core i5-8200Y | GPU: Intel UHD Graphics | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 128 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 12 hours | Weight: 2.3 lbs / 1.06 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Phenomenal typing experience
- Tactile, quiet ‘Hush Keys’
- Excellent build quality
- Overall great laptop for the money
- High-quality display
- Highly portable
- Thin, compact design
- Impressive 1080p webcam
- Long battery life
REASONS TO AVOID
- Weaker performance (in this price range)
- No fingerprint scanner/facial recognition
- Thicker bezels
Our Rating: 9.7/10
Google’s Pixelbook Go’s keyboard might just be the ‘Goldilocks’ option of laptop keyboards. Not too firm, but not too soft. Not too loud and clicky, but not too mushy either. The keys take all of the good from the Pixel Slate and leave the bad.
When Google released their Pixel Slate in 2018, it was met with some mixed reviews. One of the major complaints was that it was a tablet that was ‘trying too hard to be a laptop’. The tricky thing was it was actually very close to being an incredibly good laptop.
Its Pixel Slate Keyboard was a bit flimsy and didn’t attach to the tablet too well. However, users across the board were falling in love with the feel of the actual keys themselves.
Google is calling their take on quiet, shallow, but tactile keys with their ‘hush’ keys. These keys aren’t quite as shallow as something like Apple’s butterfly, or ‘magic’ keys might be but are still small enough to fit in a laptop that has an impressively thin profile.
They’re also incredibly quiet without sacrificing much of the ‘clicky’ feel that can make typing on louder mechanical keyboards so satisfying. With the Pixelbook Go, you’re essentially getting what the Pixel Slate could have been if it was designed as a laptop instead.
What’s more, Google didn’t just solve the problem of flimsiness with this new design. They didn’t just make it ‘not wobbly’. Instead, they went all in on appeasing the desire for a more firm-feeling product and used a magnesium alloy to create what might just be the sturdiest feeling laptop on the market today.
We wouldn’t advise testing this theory, but if you were to drop it on your driveway, it has the kind of build quality that might make you worry more about the state of the concrete it fell on than the actual laptop itself.
Beyond the incredible build quality, the Pixelbook Go comes with a surprisingly good pair of speakers for such a small machine. It also has a high-quality 1080p display with great color fidelity and brightness. This combo makes it great for general media playback. On top of that, its 1080p webcam is a rare find in laptops in this price range, especially in laptops of such a small size.
The only reason you wouldn’t want to buy a Pixelbook Go is if you intend to use it for gaming or other demanding tasks such as video editing. It doesn’t have a very impressive lineup of hardware. Operating on Chrome OS, it doesn’t need to have a whole lot to run with basic functionality. At such a low price, though, performance isn’t much of a concern.
With all of these qualities in mind, the Pixelbook Go is an amazing all-in-one purchase that offers one of the best typing experiences we’ve come across. It’s always a pain to get a new laptop just to realize the webcam is poor, the display is washed, the speakers are inaudible, or the keyboard is mushy. Since all of those things are built-in, you’re stuck with them for as long as you have the laptop.
The Pixelbook Go really leaves you wanting for nothing. It’s built to be long-lasting, portable, and reliable.
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2. Alienware X17 R2 (Mechanical Keyboard)
”The Best Keyboard on a Gaming Laptop”
Display: 17.3” IPS | Screen Resolution: FullHD (1920 x 1080) | CPU: Intel Core i7-12700H | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 1 TB SSD | Battery life: Up to 6 hours | Weight: 6.8 lbs / 3.1 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Incredible mechanical keyboard
- CherryMX switches
- The keyboard is also comfortable for typing
- Top-of-the-line cooling system
- Buttery smooth 360hz display
- Excellent gaming performance
- High-quality build
- Attractive aesthetics
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price tag
- Loud fans when under load
- Short battery life
Our Rating: 9.6/10
If you’re a gaming enthusiast, you’ve probably heard of Cherry MX mechanical keyboard switches. They’ve come to define what it means to be a ‘mechanical’ keyboard. They offer an arrangement of different switch types to cater to the needs of keyboardists of all varieties. Silent and tactile, linear and clicky, among other characteristics that all suffer from one major problem in a mobile setting.
All of these standard Cherry MX switch types are quite large. More specifically, they are 18.6mm (¾ in) tall. Once you’ve packed these kinds of switches into a laptop along with a motherboard, chassis, and cooling system, you end up with a laptop that’s already going to be at least an inch and a half thick. By typical laptop standards, this is simply unacceptable.
For a short time, there existed an in-between solution to this dilemma known as the ‘desktop replacement’. While there was definitely a user base that benefited from this design, it ended up being short-lived as it inherited the worst of both worlds. They were too large and clunky to comfortably take anywhere but were still limited by the performance constraints of an all-in-one mobile design.
Enter Alienware’s M17 R2. Instead of trying to cram the standard Cherry MX switches into a mobile device, something those switches were never designed to do, why not team up with the renowned keyboard switch manufacturers to design a new kind of switch from the ground up?
From this union, the Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile mechanical switch was born. At an astoundingly thin 3.5 mm, this kind of switch gives you all the responsiveness of standard mechanical switches while still fitting snugly into a low-profile mobile device.
The X17 is their latest build that uses these incredible switches, and it’s up to date with the latest hardware as well. This particular model is rocking the 3070 Ti, which is going to absolutely demolish basically any game you want to run on it.
It only comes with a 1080p display, but that display refreshes at an astounding 360hz. This makes it one of the best displays you can get for competitive gaming, but single-player games with a bigger focus on graphics and cinematic experiences might be better suited with a lower refresh rate and higher resolution.
Three major drawbacks that naturally come with a mobile machine of this caliber are heat, noise, and battery life. With such powerful components in place, your battery is going to run dry very quickly without severely debilitating your performance. Either way, you’re only going to get a maximum of about six hours unplugged.
While consuming all that power, your components are also going to be generating a lot of heat. To be clear here, Alienware has an incredible cooling system built into this machine. There’s just only so much you can do without having the ventilation you’d get with a desktop tower.
If you’re looking for the best keyboard on a gaming laptop, look no further than the X17 from Alienware–the mechanical switches on this laptop’s keyboard are just brilliant and on par with premium stand-alone keyboards. If you’re a gamer who’s willing to invest a decent bit of cash into an incredible mobile gaming system, Alienware’s X17 R2 is one of the best that money can buy.
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3. Apple MacBook Pro
”The Best Keyboard on an Apple Laptop”
Display: 14.2” Liquid Retina XDR | Screen Resolution: 3024 x 1964 | CPU: ARM 7100 | GPU: Apple M1 Pro | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 1 TB SSD | Battery life: Up to 17 hours | Weight: 3.5 lbs / 1.6 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- ‘Magic’ scissor switches
- Highly responsive, spacious, and comfortable keyboard
- Phenomenal display
- The design we all love
- Highly durable yet lightweight construction
- High-performing and well-balanced M1 Pro (GPU/CPU Combo) chip
- Long battery life
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price
- No upgradability
- Camera notch
- No USB type-A
Our Rating: 9.8/10
Some of the previous iterations of Apple’s MacBooks came with a fatal flaw that affected many users who purchased them. This fatal flaw was known as the ‘butterfly keyboard’. Failing users in a multitude of ways, the poor design of the butterfly switches led Apple to launch a worldwide program offering free repairs to affected users, as well as recalling many of their devices.
If you’ve heard the horror stories about keys that suddenly stopped working, frequently double-typed characters, got stuck, or became squishy and unresponsive, don’t let that scare you away from their newer MacBook models. They’ve learned from the mistake and, since 2019, have reverted back to a more traditional ‘scissor-switch’ design, with a few improvements, of course.
One of the major improvements here is in the keyboard’s durability and reliability. Apple wasn’t interested in compromising their thin design with just any kind of scissor switch, but they definitely weren’t going to keep the faulty butterfly design. Instead, they opted to design a super thin scissor switch that uses a more durable glass fiber material.
Along with that, a rubber dome in the center of the key provides a bit of extra feedback. Together, these features produce a keyboard with a more tactile feel and a fantastic typing experience that isn’t as prone to degrading over time.
Another endearing ‘we were wrong’ moment from Apple is made apparent with the removal of the Touch Bar. While it is still being included in the 13” model, this 14” model, as well as the 16” one, have ditched it. It might have been a feature that seemed like a good idea on paper, but most users (including us) ended up being more annoyed at the lack of function keys rather than grateful for the versatility the touch bar offered.
This was especially problematic given the fact that many app developers ignored the feature in their designs entirely. Instead of wasting space on an under-utilized design, Apple has replaced it with more of those ‘magic’ scissor switches.
Now, as with all MacBooks, you’re getting an amazing display and a product with excellent build quality as well. With the new M1 chip to boot, this is a very well-rounded and well-performing machine. There are only two drawbacks to this particular iteration.
First off, there isn’t any USB type A port. USB type A is far from being fully phased out, so for now, this just exacerbates and adds to the ever-growing list of adapters you’ll need to functionally use an Apple product.
Another sub-par design choice is the camera notch in the top center of the screen. It definitely allows the bezels to be smaller, but in doing so, it also feels like it’s taking up a bit of screen space. Not only can it be a bit distracting, but it can also occasionally block out that which would otherwise be visible on the display.
We love to see companies responding to feedback and learning from mistakes. Apple has definitely done as much with their recent release of the MacBook Pro. Now, apart from the amazing display and build quality, you’re getting truly an excellent keyboard with superb typing experience–you simply cannot go wrong with this one.
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4. Microsoft Surface Laptop 4
”Windows Alternative to the Pixelbook Go”
Display: 13.5” PixelSense | Screen Resolution: 2256 x 1504 | CPU: Intel Core i7-1185G7 | GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 950 | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 17 hours | Weight: 2.8 lbs / 1.3 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Excellent build quality
- Highly responsive keyboard and touchpad
- Fantastic typing experience
- Highly compact and portable
- Bright, color-accurate display with a touchscreen
- Great speakers
- Long battery life
REASONS TO AVOID
- Thick bezels
- No thunderbolt support
- Only a 720p webcam
Our Rating: 9.6/10
If you aren’t a fan of MacBooks or Chrome OS, there’s a Windows option that comes very close to delivering the same kind of typing experience you’d get with the MacBook Pro or Pixelbook Go.
It isn’t quite as thin as the MacBook Pro and isn’t quite as rigidly built as the Pixelbook Go, but the Surface 4 is an excellent alternative for Windows users who would like to avoid the hassle of switching over to and learning a whole new operating system.
It might not look like anything too impressive with its simple and straightforward matte black design, but as far as productivity goes, this is definitely one of the best options on the market.
If you’ve used a Surface laptop before, you’re familiar with how exceptional the typing experience is. This carries through to the Surface 4 as well. Its keycaps are large and rigid. Without a Numpad, the layout is comfortably spacious. The area where the keys are is recessed to make the tops of the keys stand out just a bit more. And while the switches don’t have any fancy names, they still provide a nice tactile feel.
As a bonus, if you opt into one of the Alcantara versions, you’ll have one of the nicest wrist rests on any laptop. It’s soft and cushy, and as a more insulative material, it doesn’t ever feel excessively warm.
As far as display, you’re getting a very bright, color-accurate screen that also features a touchscreen. The overall picture quality is great (comparable with the Pixelbook), and the touchscreen is highly responsive as well. The biggest drawback of the display is the thick bezels, which don’t look great at all compared to something like a Dell XPS or a MacBook.
Like most productivity notebooks, it was definitely designed to be thin and relatively low-profile. One good thing about the Surface 4 is that it doesn’t obsess over achieving this goal like some other manufacturers do (looking at you, Apple).
This means you still get, while minimally so, a potentially better lineup of I/O options. It does only have one USB type-C port and one USB type-A port, but hey, that’s infinitely more USB type-A ports than the MacBook Pro has. However, unlike the MacBook, there is no Thunderbolt 3 or 4 support on the Surface 4, which is a bit of a shame in 2024.
In terms of overall performance, it’s a bit better than the Pixelbook Go but not quite as good as the Macbook Pro, obviously. This observation falls in line with what we would expect from the price points. It’s a more middle-ground option, and the price definitely reflects that.
All in all, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 offers a great set of features, with probably the best one being the keyboard. As another laptop with an exceptionally good keyboard, we would highly recommend the Surface 4 to anyone in need of a mobile device that offers a great typing experience.
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5. Dell XPS 17 9720
”Excellent All-around Laptop with a Fantastic Keyboard”
Display: 17” IPS | Screen Resolution: UHD+ (3840 x 2400) | CPU: Intel Core i7-12700H | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 12 hours | Weight: 5.3 lbs / 2.4 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Impeccable build quality
- Fantastic, color-accurate, and sharp display
- Highly comfortable and responsive keyboard
- Tactile keys with good travel and large keycaps
- Superb typing experience
- The perfect laptop for content creators
- Upragable both RAM and SSD
- Beautiful, elegant design
- Stays nice and cool
- Great speakers
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price
- Quite heavy
- Only a 720p webcam
- No USB type-A
Our Rating: 9.8/10
Hands down, Dell’s XPS lineup of laptops is consistently one of the best products money can buy. It doesn’t matter what quality you’re measuring; it’s almost certain that it’s going to be better than or equal to every other productivity device on the market. However, while they are consistently great, they are also consistently expensive, especially at the higher end.
This begs one very important question. Who is this laptop for? If you simply want the best of the best, and money is no object, then without a doubt, this laptop is for you–it’s one of the best laptops we’ve come across, definitely our top 3. However, it’s safe to say that the majority of buyers do care about how much money they’re spending. More importantly, they care about whether or not that money is worth it.
As far as typing experience, the laptop comes equipped with one of the best keyboards of any laptop we tried. It features highly tactile keys and a carbon fiber deck that feels both soft to the touch and suitably firm. The keys have good travel, plenty of space per key, and feel overall highly responsive and comfortable. Typing on this laptop is a treat.
The same goes for the trackpad. It’s a large trackpad with plenty of space for maneuvering that feels responsive and accurate. And to round out the input, the touchscreen is easy to use and feels just like using an iPad or an iPhone. As far as input on this laptop, we have no complaints whatsoever.
The best feature of this laptop (besides the keyboard) is the display, hands down. It’s an extremely vivid, bright (rated for 500 nits), and color-accurate display. If you’re a content creator or an editor, you’ll love the sharpness and color fidelity on this one, with UHD resolution and 100% sRGB, 100% Adobe RGB, 96% DCI-P3, and 98% NTSC color gamut coverage.
Our only gripe with the display is the low refresh rate at 60hz. Yes, it’s a 4k display, and the Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics card isn’t really able to push more than 60 FPS in the vast majority of current games or videos; however, having at least 120hz would round up this fantastic display perfectly. Oh well.
In terms of build quality, this is a premium laptop, and you can see and feel that from a mile away. Starting from the durable aluminum chassis, followed by the carbon fiber deck and premium keyboard, you really get the full package here. The only thing that feels out of place is the 720p webcam, which, to be honest, is a huge letdown when paying this kind of money.
Connectivity is fantastic with this laptop. While there is no USB Type-A, you get 4 (that’s four) USB Type-C ports, all supporting Thunderbolt 4. What’s nice is that Dell included a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box, so we really cannot complain about the connectivity. To sweeten the deal, there is also a full SD card reader, which you kinda expect on a laptop with this good of a display.
Overall, we have to say we really like this laptop. You get a top-notch performance, impeccable build quality, phenomenal display, super clean design, and an outstanding keyboard. The only thing we’d consider a real drawback (besides the 60hz display and lack of USB type-A port) is the weight of this laptop–at 5.3lbs, this doesn’t really fall into the portable category.
But, apart from that, this is truly an amazing laptop we highly recommend to content creators, editors, or simply someone looking for a premium laptop from top to bottom.
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6. ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition
”Most Unique Keyboard”
Display: 15.6” IPS | Screen Resolution: QHD (2560 x 1440) | CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX | GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800M | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 512 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 10 hours | Weight: 5.3 lbs / 2.4 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Impeccable build quality
- Striking aesthetics
- High-quality, super-responsive keyboard
- Super-smooth QHD display
- Standout WASD keys
- Per-key RGB backlighting
- Deeper key travel
- Excellent gaming performance
- Excellent battery life for a gaming laptop
- Great cooling system
REASONS TO AVOID
- No webcam
- Gets loud when under heavy loads
- Excessively ‘Gamer’
Our Rating: 9.7/10
At 15.6” in size, you often see two schools of thought with laptop keyboards. You’ll either see a full-size keyboard that takes up the entire width of the laptop, or you’ll get a TKL keyboard with larger keycaps to take advantage of the available space. In both cases, one feature that often seems to be left out of the conversation is media control. One of the most unique features offered by ASUS’ ROG Strix G15 is a variety of included media control keys.
While there are other laptops on this list that also have dedicated media control keys, and pretty much every laptop is going to have basic media control functionality via the F keys, the ROG Strix G15 seems to be taking one of the most unique approaches. Its media control keys are laid out in a vertical column on the far right side. That makes it super quick and easy to pause, play, skip, or repeat songs during gameplay.
Sometimes, you’re in the middle of an intense gaming session, and ‘that one song’ you’ve been meaning to take off of your playlist for months now starts playing. You’ve only got moments to pull off the sick play that’s going to win or lose you the match. You simply don’t have time to tab out and skip that annoying song. It’s much more convenient to simply move your right hand over and quickly tap a button.
Whether or not you often find yourself in such high-octane situations as that, quick and easy media controls like that really do come in handy. Before I bought the keyboard I’m currently using, I had never experienced one with all the extra bells and whistles before.
Out of all the extra features mine came with, I’ve gotten the most use out of my media control keys by far. When I’m writing, gaming, or simply have way too many windows open to alt+tab all the way over to my music player, it’s actually way handier than I’d expected to have those extra buttons.
On the top left part of the keyboard, above the F1 through F4 keys, are volume controls, a mute mic button, a performance mode switching button, and one more extra button for quickly opening the ASUS Amory Crate software.
As far as typing and gaming experience, the keys feel incredibly durable and very firm and tactile–if you owned a ROG laptop in the past, you’ll know exactly what I mean by that. ROG laptops have always had great keyboards, and this one is no different. However, the keys might be too firm for some users, especially if you’re used to something like a Lenovo with super soft, easy-to-press keys.
Compared to Alienware’s X17 R2, the ROG Strix G15’s performance gets knocked down a few pegs. However, so too does the price. In terms of price-to-performance ratio, these two machines are about on par with one another. If the X17 R2’s price tag was a bit too high to justify a purchase, then the Strix G15 might be a better option.
Fortunately, the same relationship that existed with the X17 R2’s high-powered components and its battery life also exists with the Strix G15. Since the hardware being used isn’t quite as beefy, you’ll benefit from about double the amount of battery life that you’d get with the X17 R2. This also makes it a potentially better option for anyone who intends to use their new laptop for more than just gaming.
As far as display and build quality, this laptop is exactly what you’d expect from the ROG lineup–top-of-the-line on all fronts, delivering a premium gaming experience for enthusiasts and hard-core gamers.
Overall, the ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition is what you want from a proper gaming laptop. Quality on all fronts, coupled with a great keyboard with excellent gaming experience, per-key RGB backlighting, and dedicated media control keys. If the mechanical keyboard on the X17 was too much for you and you prefer a classic, quality laptop keyboard, the G15 would be our top recommendation.
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7. HP Spectre x360
”Best Keyboard on a 2-in-1 Laptop”
Display: 13.5″ Touchscreen | Screen Resolution: WUXGA (1920 x 1280) | CPU: Intel Core i7-1165G7 | GPU: Intel Iris Xe | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 1 TB SSD | Battery life: Up to 16 hours | Weight: 2.9 lbs / 1.3 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Premium build quality
- Great performance with a lot of memory
- Premium keyboard with large, tactile keys
- In-bag detection (hibernation)
- Great, color-accurate display with a 3:2 aspect ratio
- Adaptive color gamut
- Excellent battery life
- Pen and carrying sleeve included
REASONS TO AVOID
- Expensive for a 13” laptop
- Missing right Ctrl key (replaced by a fingerprint reader)
- Excessively shiny
Our Rating: 9.7/10
If you’re going to be buying a 2-in-1, chances are you’re probably interested in having a good keyboard. Otherwise, why not just go with a tablet, right?
Sometimes, manufacturers acknowledge the need for a keyboard by delivering the bare minimum. What you end up with is something flimsy and cheap with deck flex that makes it better suited for a trampoline than a typing surface. When it comes to HP’s Spectre x360, that is absolutely not the case.
One issue that often comes up with smaller laptops is that there isn’t enough space to rest your wrists without shrinking the keyboard itself to an uncomfortably small size. Since the Spectre x360 has a more squarelike aspect ratio, the distance between the keys and the edge of the laptop gets expanded by a bit.
This gives you plenty of space to rest your wrists and comfortably type while still being a relatively small mobile device. It also uses its space well by having the keyboard take up the entirety of its horizontal surface area. Some 13” laptop keyboards can feel pretty cramped, but the Spectre x360 does all that it can to make sure that isn’t the case.
Once you have your typing posture comfortably set, the actual keys themselves feel amazing to type on. They are tactile, super firm, and well-secured, with a surprising amount of travel distance for a 2-in-1. Just make sure that when you open it up, you don’t get blinded by the excessively shiny bronze elements, and you’re good to go.
Out of all the reasons one might get a 2-in-1, it seems to be that the most compelling reason is to use it as a mobile digital art canvas. HP definitely seems to be aware of this selling point and has delivered one of the best 2-in-1s out there for digital artists. Its non-standard aspect ratio creates a bigger canvas to work on. It also includes a rechargeable stylus, which can be conveniently stored in the accompanying carrying sleeve.
Speaking of the carrying sleeve, one super handy feature that HP built into the Spectre x360 is what they’re calling ‘In-Bag Detection’. One of the most horrifying moments a mobile device owner can have is pulling their device out of the bag they’ve stored it in, only to realize they forgot to power it off first.
Now the device is concerningly warm, and the battery has completely run out just when you need it the most. The Spectre x360 automatically knows when it’s time to work and time to nap, slipping into hibernation mode whenever it detects that it’s been stored away.
Finally, the Spectre x360’s display and its features are pretty incredible. It covers almost all of the existing color gamuts in their entirety, just like the Dell XPS laptop–100% of sRGB, 98% of DCI-P3, and 98% of Adobe RGB.
On top of that, it can automatically detect the best color space for whatever application you’re currently using. If you’re streaming a video, it’ll default to sRGB. Do you want to open up Photoshop and get some editing done? You know it’s already switched to Adobe RGB colorspace.
Overall, the HP Spectre x360 is one of the best 2-in-1 laptops and comes with a highly responsive and comfortable keyboard. Digital artists, look no further; if you’re serious about your art and want to have the best mobile device for both drawing and typing, this is the 2-in-1 for you. It’s a bit pricey for a 13” laptop, but if you want the best typing experience on a premium 2-in-1 laptop, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything better.
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8. LG Gram 16Z90Q
”Editor’s pick”
Display: 16” IPS | Screen Resolution: WQXGA (2560 x 1600) | CPU: Intel Core i7 Evo | GPU: Intel Iris Xe | RAM: 16 GB | Storage: 256 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 20 hours | Weight: 2.6 lbs / 1.2 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Incredibly lightweight for a 16” laptop
- Excellent overall performance
- Fantastic, color-accurate display
- Responsive, quality, and full-sized keyboard
- Quality build
- Outstanding battery life
- Great connectivity
REASONS TO AVOID
- Dimmer display
- Unupgradable RAM
- 60hz refresh rate display
Our Rating: 9.6/10
If you’re looking for a generally good productivity laptop with a great keyboard, an excellent display, and a reasonable price tag, LG’s Gram 16Z90Q is the laptop for you. Aside from having a great keyboard, two of the most compelling reasons to choose this display over any others are its amazing display and lightweight construction. We would recommend this laptop to anyone working in the media industry and frequently on the go.
While the keyboard doesn’t have any spectacularly unique or standout qualities, it delivers one of the best experiences you could hope for from a typical laptop keyboard. It doesn’t break any new ground or reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t cut any corners either.
It’s spacious, has a nice bit of tactile feedback, relatively deep key travel, and has firmly set keycaps that don’t wobble. The keys require a decent amount of pressure to register, which is great for making sure there aren’t any accidental key presses.
You can safely rest your fingers on the keycaps without their weight causing them to trigger. As a bonus, this larger model has plenty of room for a Numpad without making everything too cramped.
The only two complaints we have about the Gram 16Z90Q keyboard stem from the way the deck was built. When pressing down on the keys in the center, there is a noticeable amount of bendiness or ‘deck flex’. This is likely just due to the choice of material. It is an unfortunate truth that lighter materials tend to be a bit less rigid, and in order to make this laptop as light as it is, some sacrifices need to be made.
The other issue is that a full bottoming out of the keys results in the surface of the keycaps going beneath the laptop’s surface. People with large fingers might find themselves feeling that edge while they type. It’s a small annoyance but definitely one to consider if you plan on using this laptop for a long time.
With the keyboard out of the way, let’s talk about the Gram 16Z90Q’s other main selling point: the Display. When it comes to productivity, we’re starting to see a general trend away from the standard 16:9 rectangular ratio into some more squarelike ratios like 16:10 or even 4:3. In the case of LG’s Gram 16Z90Q, you’ll be working with a 16:10 display.
This just gives you a bit more room on your screen, which is especially noticeable when working with two or more windows open simultaneously. Furthermore, this display has an impressive resolution of 2560 x 1600. With that much real estate on your screen, it’s actually possible to comfortably work with 4 windows open at once.
Resolution isn’t the only thing that plays an important part in a display’s overall quality. It’s also important, especially for individuals creating media, to have a screen with good picture quality. The LG Gram 16Z90Q’s display covers an impressive 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making it ideal for professionals in the film and TV industry.
Whether you’re creating the media yourself or receiving it for review, everything you’ll be looking at will appear just as it should.
The last two features that stick out in a good way are the build quality and battery life. While you’d expect an ultra-lightweight 16” laptop to suffer from feeling fragile and having short battery life, neither of these two is the case with the Gram.
Despite its low weight, the laptop feels solid; the hinges are nice and stiff–the only issue is with the keyboard flexing. However, you probably won’t even notice that during your everyday use.
Plus, you get anywhere between 12-20 hours of unplugged use (depending on how hard you push the laptop), which is by far the best battery life on a 16” laptop that only weighs this much (2.6lb).
All in all, if you’re looking for a large laptop with a quality, spacious keyboard and don’t want to sacrifice portability, the LG Gram 16Z90Q is by far the best option you have without going overboard on the price compared to something like the MacBook Pro. We highly recommend this one to anyone looking for a laptop with a great keyboard in the $1500 price range.
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9. Lenovo IdeaPad 3i Gaming
”Best Keyboard on a Budget Gaming Laptop”
Display: 15.6” IPS | Screen Resolution: FullHD (1920 x 1080) | CPU: Intel Core i5-12500H | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 512 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 5 hours | Weight: 5.1 lbs / 2.3 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Great performance for the money
- Full-sized keyboard with full-sized arrow keys
- Very comfortable, soft keyboard
- Durable construction (mostly plastic, though)
- Both RAM and storage are upgradable
- Good connectivity
REASONS TO AVOID
- Off-center touchpad
- Terrible color accuracy (50% sRGB)
- Dimmer display
- The keys are a bit wobbly
- Shorter battery life
Our Rating: 9.3/10
‘Affordable’ isn’t exactly the first word that comes to mind when thinking about a gaming laptop. That, however, is exactly what Lenovo’s Ideapad 3i is made to be. If the Alienware X17 R2 and ASUS ROG Strix G15 have price tags that are a bit difficult to justify, then the IdeaPad 3i Gaming is a much more affordable alternative with a great keyboard.
Its keyboard doesn’t have custom-designed switches or an outstandingly unique design, but the keyboard still feels amazing to use, given how affordable it is. Since this laptop isn’t hyperfocused on being as thin as possible, there is a little bit more room for the keyboard to breathe.
Its key presses still aren’t nearly as deep as they would be on a standalone mechanical keyboard, but they’re much deeper than what you would get with any other laptop, especially at such a low price. The switches also feel a bit more robust than your average laptop keyboard switches, which gives them that nice tactile ‘clicky’ feel.
Aside from the keyboard’s general ‘feel’, the keyboard also includes a full Numpad. Even more impressively, Lenovo has opted into including full-sized arrow keys. Many laptops tend to compress the up and down arrow keys into the space of a single key in order to save room.
While this might make the keyboard look a bit more uniform, having such tiny keys can be quite a pain, especially if you have larger fingers. It does seem like this design choice may have forced Lenovo into offsetting the trackpad a bit to the left, which does feel a bit awkward to use at times.
However, since this is a laptop targeted toward gamers, it’s usually a safe bet that it’ll be used with a mouse. Because of that, it makes this minor design oddity even easier to disregard.
As a gaming laptop, we’re also going to be judging this computer based on its performance. Since it is a budget-friendly option, it definitely isn’t going to be knocking any socks off. However, at 1080p, it performs very well across the board.
For the most part, you can expect to be running games at 60fps with high settings on the display’s native resolution. Newer triple-A titles are where you’re going to see it start dropping down to around 50fps, but that’s still an amazing benchmark for such a low price.
The biggest drawback of this laptop is, by far, the display. While it’s not bad compared to other budget gaming laptops, it’s not at a point where we’d feel comfortable recommending it for anything else except gaming and basic use.
Activities like video editing, photo editing, or graphics design are out of the picture with this laptop, with only 50% coverage of the sRGB color gamut. Plus, the screen isn’t very bright, with 306 nits peak brightness. That’s slightly better than last year’s model (290 nits) but still not suited for use in brightly-lit environments.
All things considered, gamers who are new to the hobby or who aren’t looking to spend more than $1000 on a new gaming laptop should absolutely consider getting their hands on an IdeaPad 3i Gaming. In terms of mobile gaming on a budget with a solid keyboard, we highly recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i.
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10. Acer Spin 3
”Honorable Mention”
Display: 13.3” IPS | Screen Resolution: WQXGA (2560 x 1600) | CPU: Intel Core i5-1135G7 | GPU: Intel Iris Xe | RAM: 8 GB | Storage: 512 GB SSD | Battery life: Up to 15 hours | Weight: 3.1 lbs / 1.4 kg
REASONS TO BUY
- Highly affordable laptop
- Surprisingly good keyboard for the price point
- Highly responsive key switches
- Backlit keyboard
- 2-in-1 functionality with touchscreen
- Thin and lightweight
- Long battery life
- Plenty of connectivity
REASONS TO AVOID
- Unupgradable RAM
- There are better keyboards available
- Plastic touchpad
- Off-center trackpad
Our Rating: 9.2/10
Acer’s Spin 3 doesn’t have the best keyboard in the world. However, we’re including it on this list as an honorable mention because it has what we would consider to be a laptop with one of the best keyboards for buyers on a very tight budget. For less than $500, it’s possible to get your hands on one of these laptops and get away with enjoying a highly pleasant typing experience without breaking the bank.
One thing that sets this laptop’s keyboard apart from others at this price range is the interesting decision to put the page up and page down keys right on top of the left and right arrow keys. If I’m being honest, I rarely use page up or page down. However, that might just be because of how out of the way those keys usually are.
It actually feels kind of intuitive to have ‘page up’ and ‘page down’ right by the arrow keys. It just makes it that much more convenient to jump around in a long document or webpage.
Beyond that notably unique feature, the Spin 3’s keys are also very responsive. The travel distance isn’t amazing, but it still manages to feel clicky, tactile, and firmly set. The keyboard is very comfortable for long typing sessions, and frankly, it is the best keyboard you can get in this price range.
What’s also really surprising about the Spin 3 is the overall build quality. The materials used aren’t of the highest grade, but the way it was constructed makes it sturdy nonetheless. Compared to other machines in this lower price range, which often feel flimsy and cheap, the Spin 3 has commendably good build quality.
When it comes to performance, you also get some decent bang for your buck. As a thin and light 2-in-1 computer, you wouldn’t expect it to be a suitable gaming machine or anything like that. What it is great for, though, is essentially any productivity task. As long as you aren’t dipping into any demanding video editing or 3D rendering workloads, the i5 processor should handle things just fine.
As a bonus, it can sustain those lighter workloads for longer than average while unplugged. The battery will keep you working smoothly for roughly up to 12 hours. Even better, it stays cool while you’re working, allowing you to kick back and relax on the couch while browsing the web, getting some work done, or watching your favorite shows.
It might feel a bit odd to see this laptop on a list that includes some of the very best laptop keyboards that have ever existed. We’re just hoping that this recommendation is useful to buyers who want a great keyboard but can’t quite justify paying an arm and a leg to actually get their hands on one of the very best.
- READ ALSO: Best Gaming Laptops Under $1200
In Conclusion
Buying a new laptop can be tricky. You wouldn’t want to receive your brand new laptop in the mail just to open it up and find that while it has all the right specs, the keyboard sucks. It might be possible to put up with a bad keyboard for a few sessions or even a few days.
However, after days, months, or years of use, the poor quality can really start to grate on you. Laptops with the best keyboards, in addition to having some great hardware, are much more likely to last you for years and years of happy typing.
We hope our list of laptops with the best keyboards was helpful to you. There are countless laptops on the market now, and we hope our reviews have saved you the hassle of having to scroll through each and every one of them to find the ones with the best keyboards.
As always, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below in the comment section, and we’ll be more than happy to help you out. We love hearing from you!
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