Last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, a solidly built Windows laptop weighing just over two pounds was an exciting and novel concept. The 2.18-pound, Qualcomm-powered Asus Zenbook A14 took over the biggest tech show as the world’s smallest Copilot+ PC at the time. Among other accolades, it won our Best of CES award in the laptop category for its feathery yet sturdy design, beautiful OLED display, and all-day battery life. Even Oprah was a fan.
Soon, the Zenbook A14 will not be out of place: Almost every PC manufacturer has had a thin and light model that is pulling at CES 2026. Like the Zenbook A14, which received a subtle update for the next generation (and its sibling), the new laptops have a premium magnesium alloy chassis, OLED displays, and build those 22 pounds. They make the 2.7-pound Apple MacBook Air feel awkward.
If 2025 was the year of the thinnest phone, then 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the Windows laptop.
It’s a chip from Intel’s new Ultra Core Series 3 line, formerly codenamed “Panther Lake.”
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
Most of these Windows laptops are powered by the new Intel Ultra Core Series 3 chips, which offer wider application compatibility than Qualcomm’s ARM-based models and promise up to 27 hours of battery life. The updated Zenbook A14 and the new HP OmniBook Ultra 14 will come with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 chips, with the former rated for up to 35 hours of durability. (The 2025 model lasted about 22 hours in our testing.) The OmniBook’s spec sheet only lists “multiple days” of battery life for now.
Top CES 2026 awards announced: See all the winners and nominees
Stay tuned for final pricing and availability details for many of these laptops at CES – and brace yourself for the impact, as the ongoing RAM shortage is expected to drive up costs. We hope to test as many as possible in the near future.
Acer Swift Edge 14 AI
Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI is very bright but durable.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
Acer’s new ultra-ultraportable offering features a 14-inch 2K or 3K OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, “multi-day” battery life, and up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H processor. Its chassis is made of stainless steel-magnesium alloy that meets the durability level of the US military standard MIL-STD-810H, yet it comes in at just 2.18 pounds and 13.9 millimeters thin. There’s a laser-etched geometric design on its lid, but otherwise it’s a small silver laptop. Look for it sometime in Q2.
Asus ExpertBook Ultra
The Asus ExpertBook Ultra will come in Jet Fog (left) and Morn Grey.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
Asus’ new 14-inch business laptop is configured with an Intel Core Ultra X9 Series 3 processor, Intel’s new high-end chip, and comes standard with a 3K tandem OLED display with a variable 120Hz refresh rate and a matte finish. (Kind of like Apple’s nano-texture upgrade for the MacBook Pro, but it doesn’t cost more.)
Surprisingly, it weighs only 2.18 pounds and measures 10.9 millimeters thin, yet manages to cram in a haptic touchpad; The Asus rep told me there is a divot in its battery to make room for it.
Here’s the bad boy on the side. VERY THIN.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
The ExpertBook Ultra has a thermal design like a wind tunnel with large fans that can rotate slowly for less noise. The chassis itself is made of a strong magnesium-aluminum alloy with “Nano Ceramic”, which is also used in airplanes and Formula 1 cars, said the representative. It’s a slightly different material than the Ceraluminium on the Zenbook A14, but it uses the same assembly process and is scratch resistant.
Mashable Light Speed
An Asus spokesperson said the EliteBook Ultra “will be at the higher end of the price range.” It doesn’t have a launch date yet.
Asus Zenbook A14 (and A16)
Asus had the 2026 Zenbook A14 on display in Iceland Gray at CES, but the rep told me that the US models will only come in Zabrinskie Beige. (See Zenbook A16, back.)
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
Asus has given my beloved MacBook Air competitor a bit of a follow-up. The 2026 version of the 14-inch, Ceraluminum-clad Zenbook A14 will have a new Snapdragon X2 Elite chip with more AI processing power, up to 35 hours of battery life, smaller bezels, 24GB of basic RAM, and a new matte keycap coating. It still starts at just 2.18 pounds and is 13.5 millimeters thin with a 2K 60Hz OLED display.
The Zenbook A14 also gets a 16-inch counterpart. The new Zenbook A16 will be the first next-generation laptop to market with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, Qualcomm’s most powerful processor yet. It will have a 3K 120Hz OLED touchscreen and an additional SD card reader slot, and will weigh just 2.65 pounds — making it about an ounce lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air and more than half a pound lighter than the 15-inch model. It should get at least 21 hours of battery life.
Asus has not set a price or release date for the size of the Zenbook A series yet.
HP EliteBook X G2i
The lightweight HP EliteBook X G2i comes in Atmospheric Blue.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
The new HP EliteBook X G2 series of 14-inch business laptops includes Intel’s lightweight clamshell model (G2i) with an Atmospheric Blue chassis made mostly of magnesium. It weighs only 2.2 kilograms and measures 14.4 millimeters in the back, but only 9.2 millimeters in the front. It comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 or 7 processor (in business or consumer configurations), an anti-glare 3K 120Hz OLED display, and a haptic touchpad. Its price will be announced closer to going on sale in February.
HP OmniBook Ultra 14
Here’s the Qualcomm-powered HP OmniBook Ultra 14 in Stone Blue.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
This 14-inch consumer model from HP has a chassis built (read: very sturdy) of anodized aluminum with nice metal accents around its edges; it is a really stylish and beautiful device. It’s the only model on this list that doesn’t weigh 2.2 kilograms or less – it comes in at 2.81 pounds – but it deserves a place because of its leather texture.
Measuring just 10.7 millimeters on the back and 7.4 millimeters on the front, it’s the smallest laptop I saw at CES 2026. Come to think of it, it might be the smallest laptop I’ve seen, like, always.
The OmniBook Ultra 14 can be configured with an Intel Core Ultra 3 chip in Eclipse Gray and Silk Sand finishes, or with a Snapdragon X2 Plus or Elite chip in Stone Blue. All models have a 3K OLED touchscreen with a variable refresh rate of 120Hz. Its pricing and release timeline are not available yet.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Ultra Aura Edition
The Yoga Slim 7i Ultra Aura Edition will come in Seashell (pictured) and Cosmic Blue.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable
“Wow.” That’s what a colleague of mine said when he first held the 14-inch Yoga Slim 7i Ultra Aura Edition at Lenovo’s private showroom. It’s 13.9 millimeters thin and just 2.15 pounds, making it the lightest laptop we’ve seen at CES.
It’s equipped with a 2.8K 120Hz POLED (flexible Plastic OLED) display and a top-of-the-line Intel Core Ultra X9 Series 3 processor. It also has a “Force Pad” trackpad that you can draw on with a stylus (sold separately). Its magnesium alloy chassis is available in fingerprint-resistant Cosmic Blue and Seashell finishes.
This one actually has a limited price point: It’s slated to start at $1,649 when it drops this June.
Honorable mention: Dell XPS 13
A silver finish and an island-style keyboard… yes, it offers a MacBook Air.
Credit: Dell
Dell’s new XPS 14 and XPS 16 no longer come with discrete graphics, so they are much smaller than the previous generation. (Didn’t you hear? The XPS is back from the dead.) But Dell is promising its thinnest, lightest, and cheapest XPS laptop ever with an upcoming 13-inch model, which will come in at less than 13 millimeters. For reference, the 2023 XPS 13 weighed 2.6 pounds, measured 15.3 millimeters thick, and started at $1,299.99.
Dell showed me a prototype of the XPS 13 behind glass in its CES showroom, and while I won’t tell you anything about it, I can assure you that it’s real and set for release later this year. I will point out that the first image of the product provided by Dell appears to show an island style keyboard rather than a lattice style XPS row keyboard. If that makes it productive, it will look very MacBook Air-y.
