I don’t want a thinner laptop. I want a better one

I used to think thinner laptops were the better option. I don’t anymore.

Thinner just seemed like the natural direction for laptops, especially given how they first started out (big and boxy!). I get the appeal, too. A featherlight laptop is seriously impressive, especially the first time you unbox it. But on the flip side, you can’t really ignore the tradeoffs piling up in the corner over there.

Fewer ports. No upgradeability thanks to soldered RAM. Performance can also take a hit because there’s less room to cool the system properly. At some point, it stopped feeling like progress to me. You probably wouldn’t even notice the compromises at first because they show up in such a quiet way.

Where thin laptops start to fall apart

The first place where it feels particularly limiting? Memory.

In most thin laptops, you can’t swap out the RAM because it’s soldered to the motherboard. This makes the laptop a bit thinner and more portable, but it also means you’re kind of stuck with whatever configuration you picked. That’s a bigger deal than it used to be.

With AI workloads driving demand for RAM, prices have gotten really unpredictable. Plus, modern browsers and apps chew through memory faster than you’d expect, so 8GB may feel tight in a year and some change.

And without an upgrade path in sight, you’re left kind of stuck (unless you buy a higher-RAM configuration upfront). This wouldn’t be such a big deal if laptops were cheap and easily replaceable, but that’s just not the case nowadays. And you really start to notice it when you’re doing a more heavy-duty task like exporting a 4K video. It starts off plenty fast, but then the heat builds up over time and performance starts dropping off even faster.

This has pushed me into thinking laptops are more of a long-term commitment than something to replace in a year or two. While memory is more of a long-term limitation, ports are more of a daily annoyance and I’ve got to get it out of my system.

With laptops getting thinner and thinner, people are losing the ports they really need like HDMI for displays. Some of the more luxurious models we’ve reviewed here at PCWorld hardly have any ports at all. Some even exclude the headphone jack! Heresy!

Maybe the lack of ports isn’t a huge deal for a lot of people, but it gets really annoying for me when it doesn’t have the ones I actually need. If I’m traveling with my laptop, I don’t want to deal with carrying extra stuff like a dongle–I just don’t. And if I’m paying a good amount for it, shouldn’t it already have the ports I need anyway?

Take the Dell 16 Premium, for example. It costs north of $3,000, but it skips HDMI and USB-A entirely. The Acer Aspire Go 15 is around $400 (and I’ve seen it drop under $300 on sale) and it still has both. The difference between them is only about 0.17 inches. So yeah, that’s a pretty big tradeoff for a little extra thickness.

And then there’s the performance aspect of it, where the physical limits of a thin design start to show.

When you push a thin laptop hard for some time, you may notice a drop in performance. There isn’t a lot of room inside those thinner bodies, so airflow suffers and that’s why they’re more likely to throttle than thicker laptops. The thicker ones can run harder for longer because they’ve got the space for bigger heat pipes and better airflow.

And then there’s the smaller things that add up over time. While yapping away to my boss about this article, he mentioned how he wasn’t the biggest fan of low-travel keyboards on thinner laptops, which made me mentally revisit the importance of laptop feel. It absolutely plays a role in day-to-day usability (a keyboard should work with you and not against), and I think it’s just as important as the cooling system or battery life.

There’s still a place for thin laptops

By the way, in case you’re wondering, this isn’t a blanket dismissal of thin laptops. As with all things in life, there’s nuance to be had. Some people just want a lightweight laptop that works, and I’m not out here trying to pop everyone’s balloon. Do what works best for you.

Generally speaking, thinner laptops are very good at the lighter stuff like tooling around in Microsoft Office and listening Spotify. If your workload looks anything like that, then you’re good.

Here at PCWorld, the HP EliteBook 6 G1q took me by surprise with its diverse port selection. It’s got USB-A, HDMI, and Ethernet. That selection alone makes it more practical than most thin machines. Honestly, I think it comes down to the fact that it’s not chasing extreme thinness at all costs — though that could be because it’s designed more for workers than everyday consumers.

Closing thoughts

Let’s face it. Thin laptops aren’t going anywhere… nor do I think they should! But thinner isn’t synonymous with better, and it certainly doesn’t necessarily mean more practical. 

If anything, I’ve started to see a little extra thickness as a good thing. It usually means the laptop wasn’t stripped down just to look sleek.