Image: Rudy and Peter Skitterians / Pixabay
Modern laptop designs are a far cry from their predecessors, but only because it’s been a long, iterative process with many major milestones along the way.
The first laptop, the first thin-and-light design, the first 2-in-1 laptop, the first business laptop—they all made their marks on the industry and helped bring us to where we are today.
More like this: The best laptops to get right now
Let’s take a look back at some of the most important, innovative, and iconic laptops in history and how they got us to our current state of high speeds, high connectivity, and incredible battery life.
1981 — Osborne 1
Bilby / Wikimedia
Bilby / Wikimedia
Bilby / Wikimedia
There’s some debate as to what constitutes the “first laptop” or “first portable computer,” but for many it’s the Osborne 1.
Sure, it required a mains power connection and lacked an internal battery, but it was designed to be transported around for computing in different locations, even if it couldn’t be used on the go.
The Osborne 1 was advertised as the only computer that could fit under an airline seat. It weighed close to 25 pounds—so you wouldn’t have wanted to use it on your lap—but that was “portable” for its time.
It included a 4MHz Zilog Z80 processor, 64KB of RAM, and used 5.25-inch floppy disks for storage. Its display was a 5-inch monochrome CRT that could support 52×24 characters of text.
Priced at $1,795 at its launch (about $4,960 in today’s money), the Osborne 1 made waves for bundling around $1,500 worth of software—including a word processor—making the whole package tremendously valuable for early adopters.
1988 — NEC UltraLite
DigitalIceAge / Wikimedia
DigitalIceAge / Wikimedia
DigitalIceAge / Wikimedia
Close to a decade after the Osborne 1 debuted, the NEC UltraLite revolutionized the industry with a design that doesn’t look all that distinct from modern laptops.
The NEC UltraLite is credited as the first true “notebook” laptop with its clamshell design that had its screen on the top half of the system and its keyboard on the bottom half.
Built around MS-DOS 3.3, the UltraLite was powered by an NEC V30 processor that could operate at up to 8.14MHz. Storage was handled by an internal non-volatile RAM drive (an early example of solid state storage) and optionally 3.5-inch floppy disks. The RAM drive required its own battery (with a suggested weekly recharge) to hold its data.
This iconic laptop also featured an LCD display, which came with a resolution of 320×200 or 640×200, depending on the model.
1991 — Apple PowerBook 100
Apple
Apple
Apple
While Apple’s Macintosh Portable from 1989 was bigger and more powerful, its high price and bulky design made it less of an iconic design than its leaner, more affordable sibling: the PowerBook 100.
The Apple PowerBook 100 struck a great balance between performance, portability, and price, all while introducing some unique features that are still common in modern laptops today.
The PowerBook 100 came with a palm rest and trackball navigation, much-more akin to the touchpad designs now used by almost all laptops. It featured a Motorola 68000 processor operating at up to 16MHz, up to 8MB of RAM, and a 20-40MB SCSI hard drive.
It had a 9-inch monochrome LCD display with a 640×400 resolution, and it weighed 5.1 pounds all-in. That would be heavy today, but it was slight for its time, making it a real hit among professionals.
1992 — IBM ThinkPad 700C
IBM
IBM
IBM
The ThinkPad range might be associated with Lenovo today, but it had its humble beginnings in the engineering labs at IBM.
The original IBM ThinkPad 700C was launched in 1992 and became an instant hit. It was designed to look like a cigar box, with a squared-off chassis and professional, utilitarian design. While it might not be the most exciting design today, it was revolutionary for the time.
The ThinkPad drew praise for its active matrix color display that delivered rich colors and crisp text. Built around the Intel 486SLC 25MHz processor, the ThinkPad 700C came with up to 16MB of RAM, had a Western Digital WD90C26 graphics processor, and 20MB of solid state storage.
It wasn’t as svelte as some other designs of the time, but at 7.6 pounds, it was hardly the heaviest laptop on the market.
2007 — Asus Eee PC
Red / Wikimedia
Red / Wikimedia
Red / Wikimedia
The Asus Eee PC was the first ultra-small netbook computer, ushering in a new form factor that surged in popularity during the late 2000s (up until tablets eventually took over).
It weighed less than two pounds and had a compact 7-inch screen. It wasn’t particularly powerful, but its lightweight Linux operating system kept it relatively lean and functional, making it a big hit with students and traveling professionals.
Although the netbook form factor was only popular for a few years, models like the Eee PC informed future laptops and helped them trend towards thinner, lighter designs that prioritized functional portability.
2012 — Dell XPS 13
Dell
Dell
Dell
The Dell XPS 13 is an iconic design today, and it made a big splash with its very first iteration as the world’s first official Ultrabook (a term Intel had recently coined).
When it debuted, the XPS 13 set a new standard for sleek aesthetics with strong performance and its “InfinityEdge” display that all but eliminated bezels, giving the display a uniquely clean look.
It also came with strong battery life and used unique materials like carbon fiber and silicon to provide a lightweight but comfortable laptop design.
The XPS 13 would go on to influence laptop designs for many generations to come, and the XPS series remains one of the premier laptop lines for compact professionalism today.
2012 — Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display
Apple
Apple
Apple
Modern MacBooks are known for their high-resolution “Retina” displays, and that’s all thanks to the 2012 MacBook Pro.
Apple had several popular generations of powerful laptops in earlier MacBook Pros, but it was the 2012 version that introduced the idea of Retina displays: a display with a higher-than-average pixel density so as to make for a much sharper image.
The increased visual clarity not only helped these MacBook Pros stand out from similarly priced peers, but also raised the expectations of laptop buyers in the future. The result? Higher-resolution screens became a must-have in premium laptop designs.
2013 — Razer Blade
Razer
Razer
Razer
Even the best gaming laptops are typically heavy and cumbersome with questionable battery life, but the 2013 Razer Blade proved that they didn’t have to be.
At just four pounds, this 14-inch gaming laptop offered strong gaming performance, an attractive design, and impressive battery life for a gaming machine—up to six hours with some configurations.
The Razer Blade ticked most other boxes, too, with a strong selection of contemporary ports (though notably dropping the Ethernet jack) and fast wireless connectivity.
The backlit keyboard was responsive and comfortable for both typing and gaming, and the overall design was sleek and looked cool without going overboard with the gamer aesthetic.
Further reading: The best gaming laptops right now
2013 — Microsoft Surface Pro
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft had been trying to get its Surface line of products off the ground for years with dedicated tablets, but it was the Surface Pro and its capable 2-in-1 design that helped it find its footing.
The Surface Pro worked well as both a laptop and tablet, and with its kickstand could be a versatile do-it-all device in ways that previous 2-in-1s just couldn’t. It also helped invigorate the 2-in-1 scene, which is today one of the most popular types of modern laptops.
To be fair, the first-generation Surface Pro wasn’t an ideal device, with concerns about its weight, battery life, price, and need for a keyboard as an additional accessory. But it still left a major impact on the industry and helped shape the future of laptop designs like few others.
2020 — MacBook Air M1
Apple
Apple
Apple
When Apple moved its MacBooks away from Intel chips to its own Arm-based chip designs, it was a real game changer for the industry. Not only was it a titanic shift of major corporations, but it also showed that Intel and AMD had serious new competition to consider.
This was highlighted more than ever with the launch of the MacBook Air M1 in 2020, which brought MacBook Pro-like power to Apple’s most affordable and most portable laptops, offering a compelling alternative to mid-range Windows designs.
It wasn’t just that these new chips were powerful, though—they were also incredibly efficient. Apple’s M1 MacBooks could boast up to 20 hours of battery life while competing on performance in a thin and light design.
All of this helped to light fires under both Intel and AMD to seek greater laptop efficiency in recent years, and it led to much-longer battery life metrics in modern laptop designs.
The future of laptops is still exciting
Honestly, there were many other iconic laptop designs that we had to leave out of this list, plus several recent-generation laptops that were too early to put on this list but could end up on it in the future.
Will it be Framework laptops, with their modular, upgradeable components? Foldable 3-in-1 designs? Or something else altogether? We’ll have to wait and see, but one thing is clear: laptops are still evolving and we’re excited about it.
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Author: Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a voracious writer and technology fanboy who loves nothing more than digging into the specs of the latest graphics cards, processors, and displays. He’s passionate about everything PC, but also enjoys experimenting with AIs, and covering new standing desks that can help avoid his worst posture habits.
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