The pros and cons of using your laptop with the lid closed

Laptops have come a long way since they became popular in the mid-to-late 2000s. Back then, they were bulky and heavy, with very short battery life. They were also seen as a lesser version of the desktop, with weaker hardware and limited capabilities. Today's laptops are much thinner and lighter, their battery life is far better, and their hardware can go toe to toe with most standard tower PCs.

For that reason, many people now buy a laptop as their main computer and connect it to a regular monitor, keyboard and mouse. Some like to keep the laptop open and use its screen as a second display. Many others prefer to leave the lid closed.

So which approach is better? What are the pros and cons of using your laptop with the lid closed?

Let's start with the bottom line: There's no huge advantage or disadvantage to keeping your laptop open or closed. There are a few small differences, but at the end of the day it's mostly an aesthetic choice. Some people just like the clean look of a desk with nothing on it but the essentials: keyboard, mouse, cup of coffee. The laptop is tucked away and doesn't add to the clutter.

A few small advantages come with that, and they can help your laptop last longer and stay looking new. There's the regular wear and tear of opening and closing the lid, for one. The keyboard stays clean and protected inside the closed lid and, above all, dust doesn't pile up on the screen, the laptop's surface and between the keys.

With the screen off, the laptop also draws much less power, and you don't have a second panel lighting up the room when you're working late.

Other people prefer the look of a workstation with two, sometimes three, screens. Keeping the laptop open next to a bigger monitor gives you extra screen space for things you want in view, like a second browser window, a music player or, these days, an always-on AI assistant working away in the background while you keep one eye on it.

Open also usually means better heat management. Many laptops push heat out through the keyboard area, and an open lid lets it escape. It matters most on gaming laptops, which run hot. PCWorld notes that some, like the Razer Blade 16, vent air out of the top of the keyboard. Some laptops are also designed to lift up off the desk when the screen opens, which gets a lot more air moving across the parts that heat up.

Which one should you pick? It depends on the laptop and on what you ask of it. A fanless MacBook Air or any thin, low-power machine is fine closed all day, and you can even buy stands made for exactly that. If you're running a gaming laptop or any workstation that gets properly hot, leave it open. And if you're unsure, check the manufacturer's site to see whether it's happy running under load with the lid shut.

If you go closed, there are a few things worth doing. Keep the power adapter plugged in, since the laptop draws more power with an external monitor attached, and you don't want the battery draining quietly in the background. In Windows, open Control Panel and look for Choose what closing the lid does, then set both lid options to Do nothing, or the laptop will go to sleep the second you shut it. Put it on a stand so air can get under it, and don't count on a cooling pad to do much; those only lower temperatures a little and don't cool the gap between the screen and the body.

There's also a middle road. Close the lid just far enough to switch the screen off, but not all the way, and as long as hot air isn't blowing straight onto the display, it should be fine indefinitely. It won't keep the dust out, though, so plan on cleaning the laptop every so often.

Overnight jobs are the easy case. A render, a big download or an old laptop acting as a home server can all run with the lid shut, as long as the vents are clear and the work is light to medium. Heavy loads are another story.

If you keep it open, the tips are simpler. Give the laptop some space so the air can move, keep the vents clear and, if it's a gaming laptop, tilt it up on a stand.

One tip works for both approaches: Get a docking station. A good one takes the keyboard, mouse, network cable, HDMI and audio out, so the laptop only needs one cable to connect to all of it. When you want to take the laptop somewhere, you unplug that one cable and go, instead of pulling five. Most also hold the laptop tilted, so there's room for air to get around it.