A detailed list of fanless laptops and ultrabooks available in 2018

Laptops are getting thinner and lighter with each generation these days. The hardware is getting faster and smaller, to the point where the actual processor, memory and all the other chips only occupy a small fraction of a modern computer, leaving more room for battery cells.

All these advances lead to a new trend in the world of mobile computing: fanless laptops and ultrabooks, or in other words laptops with a passive cooling solution that does not require a spinning fan. You’ll find quite a few models available in stores already and this post lists all of them based on screen size, weight, the hardware inside, and, of course, price.

There’s one important reason why you’ll want a fanless laptop: it’s going to be perfectly quiet, especially if the passive cooled hardware is paired with an SSD. There are exceptions, though. Fanless machines, especially among the more affordable options, may come with spinning HDDs‒ but even those can be upgraded in order to deliver what the fanless consumer desires: a quiet laptop experience, similar to what tablets or phones have been offering for many years.

You do however have to understand that fanless laptops are mostly built on low-power hardware platforms and will handle most everyday tasks, but won’t be able to cope with multitasking or the more demanding chores you might want to perform on a modern laptop (editing videos and photos, running programming software or modern PC games, among others). At least for the time being.

We’ll talk a bit more about the platforms available at this very moment towards the end of the post, so you’ll understand exactly what to expect from each one of them. In few words though, if you’re reading this article in 2018/2019, Amber Lake-Y builds are primarily the ones to check out, although there are also a handful of faster Core U implementations to consider, as well as some lower-end Pentium/Celeron variants if you’re shopping on a budget (but don’t expect much in terms of either performance or features from these ones).

No fans and no spinning HDDs equals no noise

For now though, these are the available fanless laptops and ultra-portables. Click the links on each product’s name for more details and reviews, as well as the links in the Prices column for the latest offers and discounts on the products you’re interested in.

Full size fanless laptops

This section is reserved for the full-size everyday machines with 14+ inch screens. There aren’t many such options, simply because most fanless laptops are also compact and highly portable, while these large-footprint devices are not. I do have a selection of the best 14 and 15 inch ultrabooks you can find right now, in case you’re interested.

Fanless Ultrabooks and ultra-portables

This section is reserved for the portables ultrabooks and thin-and-light laptops with screen sizes between 12 and 14-inches.

That includes the popular 12.5 and 13.3-inch categories, where you’ll mostly find the best balanced mix between an ergonomically sized workspace, a comfortable keyboard, a fair selection of ports and a fair-sized battery. Here’s where you’ll also find most of the premium fanless offers.

Fanless Mini laptops

Finally, we list here the smallest options, usually built on very low power hardware and thus only meant for basic daily tasks.

They are especially designed with either budget or long battery life in mind (most of them check both these boxes), but if you’re a demanding user or type for a living you might find them either too small or too slow for your needs.

There are a couple of other small-factor fanless tablets and mini-laptops out there, but it would be a huge chore to include them all in here. I do talk about them in my list of 10.1 inch hybrids, this selection of 11.6 inch Mini-laptops or ultrabooks, as well as this list of all the best Chromebooks available these days.

As a side note, you should know that the Price column contains the starting MSRPs for each of the products above. That means that the higher configurations are going to be more expensive, but at the same time there’s a very good chance you can find pretty much all these products discounted by the time you’re reading this post. Click on the links on each price for details and up-to-date numbers.

Also, here’s a short glossary of the terms mentioned above:

• Types:
  • tablet: a standard Windows running slate;
  • clamshell: classic shaped computer whose screen closes on top of the keyboard and does not flip into any sort of tablet mode;
  • convertible: 2-in-1 laptop whose screen rotates and converts to a tablet mode (or similar), but cannot be detached from the base;
  • detachable: 2-in-1 laptop whose screen detaches from the base. These are mostly stand-alone tablets bundled with matching docking stations that most often include docking keyboards, ports, batteries and other features;
  • slider: 2-in-1 laptop whose screen slides up and down on top of the body and usually reveals a keyboard hidden underneath.
• Resolutions: HD ( 1366 x 768 px), HD+ ( 1600 x 900 px), FHD (1920 x 1080 px), WUXGA (1920 x 1200 px) retina (2304 x 1440 px), QHD (2560 x 1440 px), WQXGA (2560 x 1600 px), QHD+  (3200 x 1800 px), UHD (3840 x 2160 px) – also see this post;
• Hardware:
  • Intel Atom BayTrail – 22 nm platform (Silvermont) launched in 2013. There are different lines available for tablets (BayTrail-T),  laptops (BayTrail-M) and desktops (BayTrail-D);
  • Intel Atom CherryTrail – 14 nm platform (Airmont) launched in 2015;
  • Intel Atom Apollo/Gemini Lake – 2nd generation 14 nm platform launched in 2017.
  • Intel Celeron/Pentium Haswell – 22 nm platform based on Haswell hardware;
  • Intel Celeron/Pentium Haswell – 14 nm platform based on Skylake hardware. Both can be found in low-power/affordable laptops;
  • Intel Celeron/Pentium Apollo/Gemini Lake – 2nd generation 14 nm platform launched in 2017. Can be found in low-power/affordable laptops and replaces the Haswell/Braswell Pentium/Celeron lines;
  • Broadwell Core M – launched in 2014 as the low-power version in Intel’s Broadwell family. Offers great balance between performance and battery life, part of the more premium fanless notebooks;
  • Skylake Core M – 6th gen update, low power platform launched in 2015;
  • Kaby Lake Core Y – 7th gen update, low-power platform launched in 2017;
  • Amber Lake Core Y – the late-2018 8th gen update of the Core Y platform, motorizes premium devices.

OK. That’s about it for this post. I do hope you find it useful and if you’re looking for an ultrabook or any other ultraportable laptop, you should also check out the other lists on the site and my reviews.

I’m constantly working at keeping these selections and lists up-to-date, but if you spot anything that should be in here and it’s not, please leave a reply and tell me about it. In fact, feel free to get in touch in the comments sections if you have anything to add, anything to ask or need help choosing your next fanless mini-laptop, I’m around to reply and help.