This lightweight laptop is almost half finished

On fishing For a lightweight, budget-friendly laptop that won’t let you down? Best Buy has the Asus Zenbook A14 at a discount From its usual price of $1,000 to just $550 for this early Black Friday deal. This lightweight laptop is a Windows Copilot+ PC, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon

At just 2.1 pounds, the Zenbook is one of the lightest laptops we’ve tested yet, with most devices starting closer to 2.4, and only Lenovo’s Thinkpad X1 Carbon comes close at 2.2 pounds. This is largely thanks to a material developed by Asus called Ceraluminum, which is a combination of ceramic and aluminum that is extremely light and extremely durable.

Like a lot of the laptops in the Copilot+ range, the Zenbook features an FHD+ (1920 x 1200) display, but at least it’s an OLED panel, which is great news for those of you who put your laptop on the coffee table to watch movies. Our reviewer Christopher Noll ran a video playback test, and even at full screen brightness, the laptop managed to run for more than 20 hours. This is a truly impressive feat, especially for a laptop that’s so thin and light.

The heart of this device is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Although it helps you provide great battery life, the performance leaves a little to be desired. While it’s perfectly fine for web browsing, text documents, and email, don’t expect to play the latest games or do anything more demanding than some light graphics work.

Qualcomm chipsets are slowly becoming a more attractive option for laptops, and if you’re trying not to spend a lot of money on a laptop, they’re worth a look. While gamers and video editors should swing by our laptop roundup for more serious options, at just $550, the Zenbook A14 offers a surprising amount of value in a small package.