Recommendations for a portable laptop

Hello,

I’m looking for a secondary laptop to use while away from home. Mainly for admin work, research, and some light programming.

My current laptop is a Lenovo Legion with a 3060 which I’m keeping for my game development work but it’s difficult to carry around.

My main requirements:

  • Good battery life
  • Good performance while unplugged
  • I prefer intel (but I’m open to Mac or Snapdragon if I can’t find a suitable alternative)
  • Portable
  • Bonus points if it can handle some light game development work in a pinch

After some research, my ideal laptop would have been the Asus Zenbook S14 (386H, 32 GB). However, the only configuration I could find in my country (Saudi Arabia) had a WUXGA 400 nits screen instead of the advertised 3K, which I found to be somewhat blurry (161 PPI). I looked at it next to last year’s model (which was available in 3K), the screen looks underwhelming, especially at its price point.

Any suggestions?

Thank you

What’s ur budget? At least for ur requirements an Intel Panther Lake X chip would be the best option

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Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Asus VivoBook S16, Dell 16 Plus, or HP EliteBook 6 G1a. All these laptops are thin and portable with great battery life, great for light programming work. 12 Best Laptops for Programming & Coding in 2026

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Any decent model with Panther Lake will deliver what you need .

Like the options Clinton mentioned above.