Top 10 Best Backlit Keyboard Laptops (2021)

You would know the importance and need of a backlit keyboard laptop if you are a scholar who is writing down research papers or assignments in a dark room or even if you are a game freak who loves to spend hours playing the latest entries.

The backlit keyboard considered the most essential integration in any laptop. I have seen many brands coming up with ample specifications, lacking an illuminated Keyboard. Though, the latest entries of gaming laptops are especially focused on the availability of this facility.

Whether you are an Engineering student who is browsing down the internet for completing your assignment, or a business guy crafting slides for your presentations the illuminated keyboard laptop comes to help you even when there is no light in the room. This makes your typing easy and seamless.

And today I am going to share the list of best laptops with backlit keyboard that are available in the market. The list is crafted after a great research and reading many reviews.  Whether you are in the darkroom crafting a piece of code or playing games these illuminated keyboard laptops can perform all tasks without any difficulty. So without further ado, here are the Top 10 best backlit keyboard laptops in 2020:

• Apple MacBook Air
• Asus Zenbook 13
• MSI PS42
• Dell Inspiron 13
• Acer Chromebook 14
• Dell XPS 13
• Acer Aspire E 15
• ASUS Vivobook S15
• Acer Swift 3
• HP Pavilion Business Laptop

Best Backlit Keyboard Laptops

1. Acer Aspire 5

Acer Aspire 5  is one of the most popular laptops with an illuminated keyboard. This is not the only feature or recognition of this beast, dozens of others. The laptop comes at a price but the cost feels right when we look at the features and its performance. The laptop features a white backlit keyboard, with the option to enable the brightness manually. Just press the FN button and take the brightness at your favorite level.

Acer Aspire 5  equipped with 256GB SSD hard drive. If you really cannot afford this much, alright, skip and look at other cheaper options. But, if you have this amount of money to spend and need something spectacular, must not overlook this.

The Acer Aspire 5 features 8GB DDR4 RAM, to handle Browsing, Adobe Photoshop, video editing and much more on the go. The Acer Aspire 5 is integrated with latest Dual-core 8th-Generation Intel Core i5 Processor. The graphics card is enough to handle normal graphics and visuals.

The book is known for its long battery backup. It would not run short of battery despite using it for entire a day. The brand itself proclaims battery life as long as 14 continuous hours.

2. Asus Zenbook 13 UX331UA

ASUS is ruling in the gaming laptop world. The brand always offers something new with every latest entry. The ASUS Zenbook 13 is a high-ended Windows laptop with impressive Backlight Keyboard. The laptop features good specification, enough to handle any video game you desired to play on your computer. ASUS launched its finest product with glowing display and powerful specs.

The machine features the latest Intel processor which has the capacity to handle any amount of processing you throw at it with core i5 8th generation. The laptop is not known with its backlit keyboard feature, but its slim and robust design. When we look at the performance and compare it with MacBook Air, it is far better than MacBook Air. It’s cheaper and features the latest generation process with a 256GB SSD hard drive and fingerprint reader.

The laptop can equally be used for editing as long as gaming. This can take intense loads without rendering graphics error or freezing, 8GB RAM helps it improves multitasking. The speakers are good and deliver clear audio with the best audio quality. The speakers are from Harman Kardon which is world-known due to their quality audio features.

The battery of this laptop cannot be compared with MacBook Air. The battery lasts as long as 4 continuous hours with browsing, video editing, and other heavy tasks. For normal casual tasks, you can expect 6 hours.

Overall if you look at the features, it houses everything that a normal and an entry-level gamer uses. It’s a great performer, with a backlit keyboard in 2020. If you are looking for a budget gaming laptop featuring the latest specifications, must opt-with this product with.

3. MSI PS42 8M-064 (Thin Bezel Laptop)

In the world of the super-light laptop, MSI PS4 is the biggest competitor of MacBook Air. Both of the Backlit integrated mid-range laptops are super fasts and offers ultimate performance. If you are to compare the lightweight, MSI is lighter than Apple’s biggest beast. MSI weights 1.19kg while MacBook Air weights 1.25kg.

MSI PS4 is quite capable of mid-range gaming, and you can handle photo editing, video editing, bulky apps handling, animation and much more in the row. This is not a gaming laptop, the company never advertises it a gaming laptop, and the features assist you to play games though. You can easily handle Overwatch, Dirt Rally and other few games using the average graphics setting though.

The laptop is integrated with the latest 8th generation Intel processor. The Intel Core i5-8250U CPU is quite handy in handling any type of processing without any delay. You will enjoy seamless processing without any hiccup. The addition of NVidia GeForce MX1050 Graphics card help gamers throws many mid-range games at this. The storage department even would not let you down. It has a 256GB SSD storage with 8GB DDR4 RAM.

The laptop features an amazing fingerprint sensor, on the left corner of the touchpad. This offers users a speedy sign in via Windows.

The battery life is the downside of the machine. This laptop shares a disappointing battery life with 4 hours of battery life. The MacBook Air can easily surpass 10 hours of battery with continuing work. MSI must work on this section and fix it to stand out in every department.

Related: Best Gaming Laptops Under 1000 Dollars

4. Dell Inspiron 13 5000 (2-in-1 Laptop)

Dell Inspiron series one of the most ranked and old laptop series you ever come across. It’s a 2 in1 laptop with a touchscreen and keyboard. A user can flip the screen around and use it as a tablet. There is nothing specifically new about this machine, but it seems dell has put all of its experience into crafting this laptop.

As it features almost all advanced features including the facial-recognition feature. It’s a 13.3 inches laptop integrated with latest Intel Core i5-8550U Quad-Core processor. The processor speeds up to 4Gz while allowing it to convert from normal laptop to a tablet. The RAM size is good enough to handle multitasking and many apps running simultaneously. The Storage section is powered with a solid-state drive for fast retrieval.

The dell has done another fantastic job in designing fantastic keyboard layout with illuminated keys. You see two backlight brightness level as well as the option to turn the brightness on/off.

The display is good to go. You would not notice any downside in the display as long as you use it normally. The day you play games and get into high-ended gaming zones, the technical annoying will come across annoying you.

The brand has done a fantastic job in the touchscreen element. The touches are accurate and very responsive. You would not get any issue using the touchpad not even when browsing. Most of the laptop touch and type, I come across, fails when coming across browsing.

5. Acer Chromebook 14 – Cheapest Laptop With Backlit Keyboard 

If you want to roll your hands on a machine installed with Chrome OS, Acer Chromebook 14 is a good option to choose. Acer is among one of the few brands adopted Chrome OS, instead of the Windows operating system. The Chrome OS is a better option to go with for someone who browses the internet and involved in online activity more than often. Acer has various other laptops integrated with Chrome OS. You have others from low to the high range if needed.

The Chromebook 14 houses Intel Celeron N3160 Quad-core process with up to 2.24 GHz clock speed.The Acer’s lightest Chromebook features a 4GB DDR3 RAM with 32GB storage capacity. If you look at the price, all these features would look more like a bonus. The Acer Chromebook 14 is one of the cheapest laptops with a Backlit keyboard.

The machine boasts a backlit keyboard to offer you a comfortable typing experience. The fanless design of it makes you do your tasks without any disruptive fan noise. Though without the fan, it starts getting hot and you must have to turn it off, saving it from permanent damage.

I cannot say it is a better option than Acer’s spin 11. That was good with touchscreen and offered splendid performance in 2 in 1 laptops. Yet, this has a simple and sleek design, somewhere you see it mixing with the Apple MacBook styling.

6. Dell XPS 13 

Dell’s XPS 13 has been one of the great looking, favorite consumer laptops for years now. The entire credit goes to its borderless display, sleek design, aesthetic looks, and performance. After years of sticking with the same design, finally, Dell officials realized the design should be integrated with sober looking aesthetics.

The XPS 13 boasts a 13.3 inches Full HD, infinity-edge Display with wide viewing angles. If you look closely you would notice that there is no frame around the top and sides of the screen offering maximum display section.

If you talk about the keyboard, it renders a solid experience. The keys are little shallow on the side, it is because the laptop is so thin and bezelless. The Keys have 1.2 millimeters of travel time and you get a splendid typing experience. The laptop features an illuminated Keyboard; you can control the illumination extent manually. The keyboard comes with dedicated settings to control Backlit illuminations. This adds to your typing and gaming life and you carry out your tasks even in low light conditions.

Dell’s Flagship comes in three different specifications. You can have a core i3, Core i5, and i7 whiskey lake processor. We checked the performance for a mainstream model with Core i5-8250U processor accompanied with 8GB of RAM, and 128GB SSD hard disk. The laptop offers a seamless experience from playing light games to writing portions to this review and browsing the internet.

Dell also integrated this latest model with a new cooling system. The cooling system is capable of delivering better-sustained performance for prolonged working and gaming sessions like compressing 4k videos or running high-loading apps.

7. Acer Aspire E 15 – Best For Light Gaming 

Another mid-range Acer laptop with light keys. This laptop is good to go machine for mid-range laptop seekers. Acer Aspire E 15 features almost everything what a casual user would need, from a backlit keyboard to good screen display with wide-viewing angle. The laptop is one stop shop for day-to-day tasks handlings such as video editing, graphics designing, blogging, and writing. It has great boot-up speed and handles many apps or programs simultaneously without any freezing error.

You see it boasting 256GB SSD hard drive, with an extra slot for External SSD or HDD hard drive. You get 8GB DDR4 RAM with extended slot of up to 32GB RAM. Acer has offered quite a good range of options for customization and tasks handling which must not go unnoticed. The laptop also features a dedicated graphics card of 2GB, GeForce MX 150.For the casual gamers who use to play once a while, can play their favorite games with average gaming settings

As long as the battery department is concerned you can easily have it onboard for 8-hours. The laptop will never run short of battery whiles doing casual tasks, in gaming, the battery would not last even for 3 hours. Aside from the fact, Acer advertised this laptop with 15 long battery life.

If you look at the overall picture and sum up all the specs, it is a good option to go with. You would not get a better option than this in 600 dollars price range.

8. ASUS F512JA-AS34 VivoBook 15

It’s not a secret that Vivo’s flagship laptops are Zenbook line-up. These laptops have reached a new milestone and make the brand successful, reachable, and popular around the world.

Zenbook falls right on today’s criteria with flying colors. It features premium quality material with a backlit keyboard. The body of the unit is mostly made of aluminum with a fingerprint add-on. It’s one of the best budget backlit keyboards and if you cannot afford a premium backlit keyboard featuring machine must go with VivoBook 15-inch laptop.

I love the wide arrays of colors options. The laptops feature exciting colors with bold accents. Choose what you style the most, there are many to choose from.

Asus VivoBook S15 featuring a 15.6 inches Full HD LCD with IPS panel for good viewing angles. The brightness is not that good, just offering an average level of luminance experience. The laptop skips the Numpad, which I think would not be that much of sacrifice if we talk about today’s laptops. Still, ASUS has managed to come up with some more extra keys on the right side, the altered layout did a fine job.

If you talk about the specification, ASUS has summed up with some nice numbers. You get the latest Core i5-8265u Processor which reaches up to 3.9 GHz speed. The processor is quite powerful and handles day to day tasks quite efficiently. The processor is accompanied by 8GB DDR4 RAM & 256GB SSD storage to boost up your overall speed.

The laptop features a good range of specification. At the price of under 700 Dollars laptop, you cannot get a better option than this. It seems like ASUS wanted to come up with a premium featured backlit laptop, at an affordable price.

9. Acer Swift 3

Acer Swift 3 is no more the laptop you have seen last year; lots of changes have been made to the way. The screen size has been upgraded up to 15.6 inches along with AMD Ryzen CPU with Vega Graphics card rather Intel Chips and NVidia Graphics cards.It’s a thin laptop, good-looking easy to carry adds to the portability. The laptop feels and looks seems more like a premium high-ended model but in actual you have it under 700 bucks.

The laptop features AMD Ryzen 7 2700U Quad-Core Processor which is accompanied by AMD Radeon RX 540 with 2 GB of the dedicated graphics card. You receive an 8GB RAM to handle your tasks simultaneously. The laptop is made of Aluminum material, apart from the sides of it which are designed with high-quality plastic. If you are looking for an aluminum laptop under the price range with a larger screen, this is a solid product.

Be careful while purchasing Acer Swift 3, as the brand has produced Intel version with a 14-inches screen. So, if you see difference specs, it’s actually a different laptop you are showcased with under the same price and GeForce Graphics card.

There has not been anything specifically great to mention about the keyboard apart from its Backlit feature. The travel speed is average; the key actions are solid and responsive. The White LED backlit is overwhelmingly great, though the control intensity option is not there, we are glad it has a backlit option. The mid-price laptops do not feature an illuminated Keyboard, as it’s an expensive feature to go in a budget laptop.

The battery backup is good to go. You get 8-hours of continuous battery to work from home or office without notifying any battery draining options.

10. HP Pavilion 15.6″

Over the past few years, HP has been seen rebuilding reputations for high-ended laptops. The brand earned a great name in a budget laptop and business laptop. Its flagship product HP Pavilion Business is ranking high on the biggest shopping portal. The laptop is designed to go through normal business and day to day tasks, not for playing high-ended games such as Fortnite, Minecraft PUBG, and GTA V. The laptop features Intel UHD 620 graphics card ensures a smooth video streaming along with the mid-range video games.

The powerful processor Intel Core i5-8250U and 12GB of memory can process the hardest task you throw at it. The RAM amount ensures reliable and faster speed with higher bandwidth. You see it housing 1TB HDD storage to store your collections of movies, songs or games. The ample amount of space will add a great value to the storing capacity as at the range of 500 dollars laptop you never imagined this much of plenty of space.

The business flagship laptop boasts a Backlit Keyboard with illumination controls. I am quite happy to see this Backlit keyboard feature like a laptop at this price can never come with this amazing feature.

The laptop offers a great battery backup. The beast stays powered up at least for 7-hours and offers you a good backup without thinking much of power drain. Although, the battery backup largely depends upon the action you are dealing with, power and load management.

What To Look While Choosing a Backlit Keyboard Laptop?

For a good quality laptop, Backlit Keyboard with good key travel speed can make you accomplish your work much faster. For a gamer or a casual user, housing a backlit keyboard enhances its usability. You get your work done in any environment and get a continuous illumination around. There are many benefits of owning a laptop with Backlit Keyboard and the aforementioned guide has also showcased the benefits.

Now, let’s shed a light on what to look in choosing a laptop featuring a Backlit Keyboard. As we do not know the key features to look in a keyboard and to what extent a particular feature helps us in doing our tasks.

Brightness Buttons

The backlit keyboards come with brightness buttons or keyboard shortcuts on all laptops. Like, I can turn on or off using “FN+Spacebar” key on my ThinkPad T series laptop. This is manual settings and you can easily find this setting on your Keyboard.

The point is whether the laptop houses a dedicated setting to adjust the brightness on the laptop?

So, you need to look a dedicated brightness button on a keyboard while purchasing a laptop with a backlit keyboard. If you cannot find this option, manual integration can help you but you will have to go for special short keys as mentioned above.

Layout

When choosing a laptop with a backlit keyboard, you do not only focus on the type of mechanism lies underneath each key. You also stare at the number of keys and their functions the entire layout. Some budget laptop with illuminated keyboard comes with 88 buttons while some with 101 keys.

The number matters to those who play video games and needed dedicated keys to go through each task. If you are not a gamer and does not need separate dedicated keys or numbers keys specifically any illuminated keyboard would fill the bill.

I have seen people opting with relatively smaller keyboards layout with ten keyless decks which omits the number pad in the keyboard.

If you do gaming or programming and do commands for your gaming, there are options to choose from. For casual or day to day tasks dedicated keys or Numpad, the omission is all right.

Colors Controls/Programmable Lighting

Laptops with illuminated keyboards with color controls can be a great acquisition. Keyboards with these controls can help you remember the special keys when gaming. You can set the illumination with segments like one area with a red segment and another area with a blue segment to remember which segments to go with for doing a particular task. Like the blue keys or area for Attack or shoot and Red Keys or area for defense.

Sensor

This feature is really impressive if you could have it on your Laptop Keyboard. Yes, we must look this on a laptop as this helps adjust the brightness level automatically on your surroundings.

Like if you are using the default settings of the illuminated keyboard, the light sensor will judge the brightness of your surroundings and can totally turn off it during day-time in an open room.

Backlit Bleeding

Do you think backlit bleeding really matters a lot when typing or playing video games? Yes, the best top-notch laptops with backlit keyboards come with lighting isolated under each key. The keyboard will illuminate lighting from the top of the keys, not from the edges or sides. Looking lights or bleeding it from the edges is often referred to as backlight bleeding.

When purchasing a fine-tuned laptop with backlit keyboard, look for the backlight bleeding feature and see at which extent the light is being leaked out from the edges. There will always be some degrees of bleeding, this happens due to the keys are not placed properly. There are laptops in our list with perfect keys placement, no backlit bleeding.

Key Travel

The Key travel is mainly referred to how far ups/down keys travel to register a command. The gamers or designers most of the time love to use a keyboard with little more ups and down movement. This creates engaging tactile feedback and users satisfy if the key is registered or not.

In normal casual laptops, the keyboards feature thin and shallow vertical movements, which create a less noise around.

If you are a gamer and want to engage with high-ended games, must look high travel keys settings. For normal day to day task handling thin keyboards with shallow vertical travel would be ideal.

Guru’s Verdict

Backlit keyboards are a great source to add convenience to your gaming or typing life. They not only simply work but get along versatility. You can work in any environment without lowering the typing speed

Without any doubt, Illuminated keyboards are one of the most essential components of your laptop. With better quality, convenience and extra features you hit new milestones in your work.

The Above Laptops with Backlit keyboards are a great choice for a casual, gamer and office workers. You can check their specs and get along as per your preference. We really worked hard to search for the top-notch products in the budget range. Hope, our little struggle bring help to your life and you get a better laptop with an illuminated keyboard.