Working from home as a transcriptionist is an exciting career. The first transcription equipment you need is a laptop. Hence not every laptop is considered to be the best laptop for transcription. Luckily, finding an ideal laptop is not difficult.
It needs a laptop with an efficiently designed keyboard, RAM and Processor that can run it smoothly. Laptops that allow you to record at a high sound quality are probably your best bet for transcription. Working for long hours, only a functional keyboard and a text editor is not enough. In fact you’ll need an efficient, reliable, slim and sleek laptop that has a satisfying feedback. Because you don’t know when or where inspiration will strike.
Best Laptops for Transcription at a Glance
Transcription work requires a lot of brainpower but not computation power. There are many laptops for transcription that a writer would love to buy. Technically, it is not important to get an expensive Desktop or laptop, but the thing is choosing a clever option is a pro approach to any professional writer.
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1. Lenovo Chromebook C330 for Transcription Work
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Durable battery life
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Bright and vibrant display
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Compact and portable size
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Can be used as a tablet
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Great in performance
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Low-resolution display
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No backlit keyboard
Lenovo Chromebook C330 is an editor-choice laptop for transcription. Lenovo is known for making quality, lightweight laptops. The Chromebook is designed as a complexion of off-white plastic with glossy black bezels around the display. At 0.8 inches thick and 2.8 pounds weight, the Lenovo Chrome book c330 has no stability problem in the display.
It has most of its ports on the left side including its HDMI, USB-C type port for charging, USB3.0, and Card reader slot. On the right side, it has a volume rocker, a power button, and an audio jack. Due to the 360-degree convertible property, is the best choice if you are a writer and planning on using the keyboard a lot, to always have it with you.
The Lenovo Chrome book c330 has an 11.6 inches touch screen display running at 1,366 x 768 dimensions which is bright enough for indoor activities, colors are clear.
Intel Core i3-i5 series is best for Chrome books as they prefer better performance.it allows you to multi-tab browsing smoothly and the system doesn’t get slowed down with multi-tab browsing for hours.
If you are a tech person. Then you can estimate the processing speed by the fact that Chrome book can be used for running bots too.
Lenovo’s are well known for its excellent keyboard, Lenovo brings up the best features which also enables comfortable typing, but keep in mind its lack of page up /down and Home/End keys it’s Lenovo c330 also supports multitouch, Built-in virus protection, the sound is soft in bottom-mounted speakers, it is suitable for video streaming.
The system comes with 100Gbs Google Drive storage. Its 45Wh battery manages an average battery life of almost 10 to 11 hours approximately.
The Lenovo C330 is perfectly capable of multi-web browsing, Documentation/ Google Docs in productivity work, and gaming. If you are on a low budget then buy Lenovo with versatile features at a low price.
The Lenovo C330 is fanless and completely silent, this feature of Lenovo is much best for transcription. Despite its fanless property, it manages its heat level well. The low-powered MediaTek SoC is very efficient and produces limited heat.
So, Overall the Lenovo c330 is a great choice for intensive writing work. It would be the best option for writers who write books that include pages of long content with a lot of pictures.
2. HP 2019 14" Laptop
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Faster in performance
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Can easily be carried
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Bright screen keeps high vivid colors
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Superfast builtin SSD that makes fast startup
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Soft keyboard
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Basic OS
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Less battery life
Next, we have is the HP laptop for transcription. It comes in an iconic ash silver color to blow your mind. Bright 14 inch (1366 x 768) color display, it has a 14-inch thin body. It has a relatively compact size and has the lightest weight of about 3pounds. The ideal size of a laptop is 3 pounds for writers and better for a transcriber to lift around. HP logo stamped in the center of the screen.
The speaker just vent on the keyboard, its screen is very clear and the sound is great too, it has a decent number of ports including a Card reader slot, USB Type-C port on its left, RJ45 Ethernet port, power slot, an HDMI 1.4 port, headphone jack and two USB ports on its light side.
The HP gives a glossy colorful display, which is suitable on an average laptop. It is more than it looks. It’s pretty impressive as well when it comes to performance; HP 14 laptop comes with a 7th Gen Intel Core i3-7100U chipset to manage your workload at a swift rate. HP 14 has 8GB of DDR4 RAM allowing for fast booting and decent system performance.
Coming to the keyboard, the most important part of a laptop for a Transcriptor. HP 14 has a backlit keyboard with a stylish font on its keys. Thus provide a pleasant typing experience, having great key action, not mushy like many other laptop keyboards. The writer will be comfortable with this HP 14 keyboard.
If you’re just looking for a great budget-price laptop to send emails, for documentation and videos, etc. This HP laptop will do that. I wouldn’t recommend the HP 14 laptops for gaming, hence It’s easy to use and does what I need them to do. but, overall HP 14 laptop is an excellent laptop for intensive writing works.
3. HP 15: Wonderful for Office Writing Work
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Soft keyboard buttons
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Best in performance
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Lower resolution
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Less battery life
HP is a known brand in laptops which brought HP 15-bs234wm multi-touch laptop having Intel Quad-Core processor, 64-bit computing with 2.7 GHz
Speed.IT runs on Windows 10 Home 64-bit Edition operating system. The multi-core processors are ideal for writing.
HP 15 also comes with a huge number of connectivity options, including one, an HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.1 port, an Ethernet port, a card reader port, and also the most desired headphone and microphone combo in a single place. There is also a DVD player and burner for those who prefer to backup or share data with DVDs.
This HP 15.6-inch Simply wonderful, brilliant color stylish Laptop offers extreme performance and long battery life so you can easily browse, stream, and stay in touch with what matters most. Although HP 15bs234wm has the best feature, unfortunately, it’s not a good choice for high-end gaming, HD graphic editing but Photoshop 2016 and lightroom 2016 works a decent amount on it and you can also enjoy mid-level games on it as well.
Unlike other laptops that are designed in black, grey, or white, the HP 15 is designed in blazing red. Both the lid and the area surrounding the keyboard are made of dark red contrasted with a black bezel around the screen. HP 15-bs234wm has an excellent screen image that looks like a glass picture, which shows graphics more 3-D instead of a flat-screen.
It Provides you with a clear picture no matter what you are looking at and where you are using it whether at home or even in the field. For transcription you don’t need high resolution or large display screens, smaller screens are more sufficient for readability. The support of multi-touch for easy navigation makes the screen more outstanding. This is one of the most responsive touchpads good laptops for field sites.
The HP 15 offers an excellent keyboard, its bright red keyboard LED backlight catches the eye. The individual buttons provide a satisfying click and pleasant soft feel but they do not have a backlight. It also has a long battery life of about up to 7plus hours on mixed laptop usage. HP 15-bs234wm is not a lightweight laptop, it weighs almost 5.5 pounds, However, you won’t have to struggle while carrying it anywhere. It brings extreme performance at a reasonable price.
4. Lenovo B50: Type Comfortably
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High-speed performance
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IPS(in-plane switching) display
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Marvelous design
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3d graphics
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In and out HDMI ports
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2TB with 8 GB solid-state hybrid drive (SSD)
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Large battery consuming
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Some unwanted software included
The Lenovo B50-30 is a low-cost notebook that can only manage low-level processes. The 15.6-inch notebook speed at 2 GHz. It is equipped with 4 GB of Primary memory and storage is almost 320GB. The weight of the B50 is 2.15 kg which is approximately 4.739939 pounds. Here no need to be worried, almost 5 pounds is the recommended size of any laptop for transcription.
It has an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, one USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader jack, and a DVD drive. Its performance is likely to be notebook as like the notebook computer cannot load games it can also not support games. The battery life of the Lenovo B50-30 is average, it lasts for almost 4 to 5 hours.
The Lenovo B50-30 does not have a high resolution like high-level laptops but it has a better standard resolution, its screen resolution is 1366 x 768 pixels which is good on the budget laptop. It is a touchscreen laptop and it is a great choice for medical transcription.
The Lenovo B50-30 has a keyboard with a full-size numeric keypad. It offers a nice typing feel. It is not touch-sensitive and its overall performance is quite satisfactory.
Lenovo B50 comes with Windows 7 OS and the feature makes it great especially if you consider its low price point. The salient and striking features of the Lenovo B50 make it a great laptop for users. Lenovo is a budget-friendly laptop. It provides a decent amount of performance for your daily needs. It is a multi-tasking laptop made for both home and business users, which means it is capable of performing multiple tasks simultaneously.
Lenovo B50 allows you to run MS Office apps, browsing the web, and other apps smoothly without getting slow. It provides great space for saving office & personal documents, graphics, and videos also much more space for apps, etc. so if you’re looking for a budget laptop, then it’s a great choice for writers on a low budget.
5. Toshiba CB35-b330: Efficient Laptop for Writers
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Luminous display of 13-inch
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Full HD resolution
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Cheap price
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Larger battery life
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Best speakers of Skullcandy
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Have 100GB cloud storage with 2 months of unlimited google music
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Don’t have a touch screen
Toshiba CB35-b330 possesses a good stylish and array of salient features. The Toshiba CB35-B3330 Chrome book is a mid-sized laptop featuring a 13.3 Full HD IPS display with 1920×1080 maximum screen resolutions. Its display is brighter and more accurate. The Toshiba CB35-B3330 Chrome book features an Intel Celeron N2840 processor with 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM memory, on a frequency of 2.16GHz, which makes it so fast and very power-efficient; you are assured of almost 9 or 10 hours of battery life on a single charge.
The Toshiba CB35-B3330 is a lightweight laptop that weighs just 3 pounds, which is the ideal weight of a laptop for writers. This compact device is great for carrying with you. It has a built-in webcam, Full SD Card slot, security lock, USB 2.0 port, USB 3.0 port for high-speed data transfers. The Toshiba CB35-B3330 has a unique layout Keyboard, which replaces the caps lock key with a dedicated Google search button; it has a row of Chrome-specific function keys. Internally it has 16gbs of storage.
As someone who writes a lot, the keyboard is a delight to use. The keys have a nice little spring to them, and it feels natural and Pleasant. The touchpad is very authentic.
The Toshiba CB35-B3330 provides the versatility of your daily demands. A good feature of this model is 100 GB of free cloud storage on Google Drive, Microphones, and speakers are hidden inside the keyboard. At first, the sound is a bit tinny like other laptop speakers, but the quality is assuredly improved, it gets daily loud on the music. The Toshiba CB35-B3330 is fanless. Even after several hours of use, it gets just slightly warm.
It provides multi-tasking as the web as multiple browsing simultaneously. If you are looking for normal use, the Toshiba Chrome book 2 is more capable of working fast. For a laptop to be an ideal choice for writers, it should have powerful battery life. Toshiba claims up to 9 hours of battery life on a single charge.
The Toshiba CB35-B3330 will be an ideal choice for users who do not require much performance for HD games, It comes with an embedded Quick office editor or Google Docs and provides convenient typing speed and slight touches for documentation, writers, and transcripts. The Toshiba CB35-B3330 delivers great performance, good battery life, and even serves up some decent speakers.
On the subject of specs, Excellent Keyboard, Long battery life, and performance, the Toshiba CB35-b330 is more than sufficient for writers.
6. Lenovo Y50
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Marvelous design
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Best for gaming
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Slimmer design
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Best in performance
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Slight keyboard
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Sometime jumpy cursor
The 15.6-inch LED screen has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, but the laptop stays relatively quiet when running, and also gets a little warm even when cranking through demanding games.
The keyboard is a pretty fantastic keyboard having a consistent white backlight, you will feel comfortable with the keys. Keys feel responsive and comfortable which makes it perfect for a writer.
It has most of its ports: 1 USB port, 2 Red color USB ports, a full-size HDMI port, a compact Ethernet port, and a card reader. There is also dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Lenovo Y50 provides a 1TB hard drive that offers lots of storage space for all your Data, with an extra 8GB cache of flash memory which boosts performance. The sound level is excellent with the Advanced Audio speakers featured on Lenovo Y50.
Lenovo Y50 has an Intel Core i7-4700HQ quad-core processor with a 2.4GHz speed and 8GB of RAM. When thinking about day-to-day work and high-end gaming it is more valuable for its performance. Lenovo Y50 comes up with built-in several apps and programs, with a 30-day trial of them like McAfee, a 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 365, LiveSafe Internet Security, Amazon Kindle Reader, Evernote Touch, etc. Overall, the Lenovo Y50 is the best laptop for writers right now.
How to Choose the Best Laptop for Transcription Work?
Here, we decided to give you a short guide on selecting the best laptop. To buy a laptop for transcription, you will need to consider some important factors of a laptop. According to our expert opinion, the ideal configuration will be as follows:
Fastest Processor
This is an essential part of a laptop, if the processor is fast then your work will be faster otherwise it will take much time for loading large documents etc. Preferable on a low budget is Core i5, and on a high budget, you can choose i7. Also if the processor is multi-core then it will enhance speed and will work excellent for writers.
Long Battery Life
The battery is an important factor that must be considered when choosing a laptop for transcription. The minimum battery life is 4 hours. But on the other hand, if you plan to take your laptop anywhere at all maximum battery life of 8+ hours is ideal.
Light Weight
The laptop should be lightweight, the recommended size for a laptop is under 5 pounds and approximately 3pound weight is ideal for transcription. Choose smaller laptops as they are of less weight.
Ergonomic Keyboard
The most important factor for the list of transcription is a comfortable keyboard to avoid pain in your wrist and forearm.
RAM
If you need to use your laptop for occasional typing the 512, or 1GB RAM works better but if you are planning on high documentation, bloggers, journalism then buy at least 4GB RAM, but more than 8GB is preferred.
Latest Operating system
OS guarantees that your work is according to standards. Choose the best one and the latest OS that enhances your day demands. Microsoft windows are best for medical transcription.
The above-stated configurations are very very important for a transcriptionist laptop. Other specs like webcam, no. of ports, and DVD do not affect performance and transcription work.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best laptop for audio transcription?
Finding the best laptops for writers is to find the one which has all specs into one: strong performance, extremely long battery life, and even more important an Ergonomic Keyboard.
What laptops do writers use?
Writers use laptops that meet their daily demands. One which has smaller size and lesser weight to carry all-around easily.
Are Chrome books good for writers?
Yes, if you wanna buy a laptop for writing purposes Chromebooks are ideal for writing and editing on the go. Chromebooks are lightweight and have fantastic battery life.
What is a great inexpensive laptop that would be great to use for transcription?
There are many laptops available online on a low budget. At the above, we cover almost all the laptops available on a low budget among them the HP Laptop is a more inexpensive laptop that can perform well on a low budget.
Which laptop brand is best for transcription?
In this era, we cannot suggest the only brand for Transcription almost all laptop brands can do voice transcription or can be used for writing and editing purposes.
We have prepared a buyer’s guide for the best laptops for voice-over recording and transcription.
Conclusion
The above laptops are our favorite recommendations for writers. They will hopefully increase your productivity and comfort while you are writing. If you are budget-oriented, these are the best models for you in the affordable range. I highly recommend you to take a closer look at the above laptops, we have covered all the aspects for writers. But you should be assured that anything you choose will support you in your writing goals.