What Laptop Should I Buy For Work

Powerhouse Laptops For Working From Home

Remote working? Hit the ground running with these speedy and powerful laptops.

06 Jan 2021

If youre working or creating remotely, you need to make sure youve got the best laptop for working from home. Dont let lockdowns hold you back – a powerful new laptop will help you get right up to speed, and be as productive as you are in the office. So, what are the best laptops for productivity?

There are lots of different laptops to choose from, of course. So lets take a look at three of the most popular types: Windows laptops, Apple MacBooks and versatile 2-in-1 devices. Let’s help you find the best laptop for your home office.

Why Price Isn’t The Only Thing To Consider When Buying A Business Laptop

Focusing on long-term usage rather than cheap pricing can help you choose the right business laptop to improve your work productivity and ensure it’s hassle-free. While the costs for laptops range from $300 to $3,000, opting for high-end laptops in the $1,200 to $2,500 range can save you stress and frequent repair costs in the future.

Although everyone loves a bargain and it’s easy to be drawn in by low prices and sales discounts, you should focus on finding a laptop with the specs that will allow you and your employees to perform your daily work tasks most efficiently. Cheaper laptops typically have cheaper components, which can result in low-quality work performance due to issues like slow processing.

An underperforming machine can impede your employees’ ability to do their work. To work more efficiently from home, most businesses will need machines with more functionality, longer battery life, larger solid-state drives and faster processors. Here are a few things to consider.

How Much Do Business Laptops Generally Cost

The cost of business laptops ranges from $500 to $3,000 depending on the model, processing power, quality of the screen display, battery life and how much built-in RAM is included.

Business laptops tend to be more expensive than consumer models. However, for this extra price, you’ll receive a higher-quality product with additional components that can last for years. These components can include stronger batteries, a better graphics processing unit or additional USB ports.

“You can get solid business laptops that you could use for at least three to four years for $1,200,” Petrova told Business News Daily. “However, when you need more performance, high-end GPU and processing power models can cost anywhere from $2,300 to $3,000. These models will be good for the next four to five years.”

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What Is A Chromebook

The Dell XPS 15 is a portable yet powerful laptop that can handle serious productivity and most 3D Games.

• Screen: 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,200, 4K and OLED available
• Processor: Starts at 11th-gen Intel Core i5
• Operating system: Windows 11 Home
• Memory and storage: Starts at 8GB of RAM, 256GB storage

Pros: Attractive design, strong performance, excellent display options, good battery life, upgrades allow 3D gaming

Cons: Can run hot and loud, limited port selection

The Dell XPS 15 is a luxurious do-it-all laptop ideal for a wide range of shoppers. The base model is an attractive premium laptop that’s enjoyable for everyday tasks. Hit the upgrades, however, and the XPS 15 becomes a beast of a machine with an eight-core processor, Nvidia RTX graphics, and up to 64GB of RAM. It can handle professional photography, video editing, programming, 3D gaming, and more.

Dell pairs performance with several attractive display options. The base 1,920 x 1,200 display is good, but you can choose an optional 4K LCD touchscreen for improved sharpness. Those craving a superior display can pick the optional OLED touchscreen, which delivers excellent contrast and vibrant color.

Power does lead to a problem: heat. The Dell XPS 15 can run hot and loud in top-tier configurations. But you can use the laptop with a dock to avoid feeling that heat. Dell goes all-in on Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, ditching USB-A entirely. Thankfully, a 3.5mm audio jack and SD card reader remain.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 9 Specs

We won’t try to keep you in suspense: When we reviewed last year’s model, we called the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon the best laptop in the worldthough we later decided it shared that title with the Dell XPS 13 OLEDand it hasn’t done anything in its latest revision to change that state of affairs. The X1 Carbon Gen 9 catches up with the Dell and other elite ultraportables by moving to an 11th Generation Intel “Tiger Lake” Core processor and a slightly taller 16:10 rather than 16:9 screen aspect ratio. Its premium price and lack of an SD card slot still knock half a star off what would else be a perfect five-star rating, but it effortlessly collects yet another Editors’ Choice award as the most desirable executive notebook on Earth.

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What Is A Usb Port

USB ports let you connect your laptop to a number of different accessories and devices including your external mouse, printer, camera and mobile phone.

USB-C is a new type of USB port. It is smaller and has no right way up, so cables and devices can be plugged in first time, every time. USB-C is backwards compatible with older USB ports too, although youll need an adapter to connect devices with USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports.

USB 3.1 is a variety of USB-C, which features the fastest data-transfer speeds ever from a USB port. Although currently not that common, USB 3.1 is worth looking for if you regularly transfer large files between your laptop and other devices, such as uncompressed images or external storage.

Go Solid State If You Can: Storage Solutions

With businesses using video, multimedia PowerPoint slides, and multi-megapixel photos in staff meetings virtual and in-person, opting for a spacious drive is a good idea. If you’re going to go with a traditional platter, a 1TB hard drive is a good balance between economy and space.

That said, we’re huge fans of solid-state boot drives. While pricier and more meager in their storage capacities, solid-state drives don’t have any spinning parts and are therefore better suited to take a licking on the road. SSD-equipped systems also boot and launch apps more quickly. If you’ll travel or commute much with your laptop and don’t need maximal storage capacity, an SSD is the right choice. SSDs tend to be pricier than hard drives, which means that you’ll likely be looking at 256GB or 512GB capacities to maximize your budget.

Optical drives have all but disappeared on business laptops. If you need to retrieve older files or records stored on CDs or DVDs, an external drive can help that’s a smarter move than buying a bulky laptop equipped with an optical drive if you know you’re not quite done shuffling discs yet.

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Where Are The Laptops With Amd Graphics Cards

Your guess is as good as ours. A few gaming laptop SKUs offered the RX 5000-series cards, but they were thin on the ground. But AMD has promised RX 6000, Big Navi mobile GPUs will be on their way to gaming laptops in the first half of this year, but so far we haven’t seen them in the labs.

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 . He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.

The Best Laptop For Business Travel

In many ways, the ThinkPad X1 Nano is a run-of-the-mill ThinkPad. Its got a solid sturdy chassis, discrete clickers, a physical privacy shutter, a red TrackPoint in the middle of the keyboard, and all kinds of business-specific security and management features.

But the Nano is special because its the lightest ThinkPad Lenovo has ever made. Its also one of the lightest laptops you can buy, at just 1.99 pounds. Youre not sacrificing performance to get that mindblowing weight: The Nano kept up with our heavy testing workloads without any fan noise or noticeable heat. If youre looking for a reliable business laptop that will feel like nothing in your briefcase, this is the one for you.

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What Is The Difference Between A Laptop And A Notebook

A notebook is just a slim, light laptop. In general, notebooks tend to save space by using SSD storage rather than the traditional HDD storage of older laptops. However, these days most bigger laptops are using SSD storage as well.

The one that is a bit different is a Cloudbook or Chromebook. These are smaller laptops with almost no storage whatsoever. The idea is that you store all your files and data in the cloud and just download them when you need them. All well and good, as long as youve got a decent internet connection, but if youre travelling a lot, these may not be ideal.

Dont Get Overwhelmed By Sticker Shock

Its one thing if your employer is springing for the tab, but if youre self-funding this laptop, price can be an important consideration. While top-of-the-line machines might run above $1,000, you can get great laptops under a grand too and weve included a range of prices below.

Now, read on for our 2021 business laptop picks.

• Storage: 256GB/516GB/1TB M.2 PCle NVMe SSD
• Memory: 8GB
• Features: Two USB-C , one USB-C 3.1, microSD slot, 13.4-inch FHD+ 1,920 x 1200 Non-Touch Anti-Glare 500-Nit display , Killer Wi-Fi 6, 11th Generation Intel® Core i3-1115G4 Processor , Intel UHD Graphics

The Dell XPS 13 is a powerful laptop thats designed for business thanks to its ultraportable build and powerful performance with Windows 10 Pro as its operating system. The computer company designed the laptop for people who want to remain productive with about 14 hours of streaming time on the FHD+ model and Killer Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to keep streams smooth. Plus, it comes with a suite of productivity applications like Microsoft Office 365 built-in a 30-day free trial is standard, but you can upgrade it to arrive with the full suite installed. While your programs will look just fine running on the 13.4-inch FHD+ 1,920 x 1200 Non-Touch Anti-Glare 500-Nit display, an even sharper option is an upgrade to the Ultra HD 3,840 x 2,400 InfinityEdge Touch Anti-Reflective display, though itll cost you some $$$.

Read our full review of the MacBook Pro .

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What Is A Good Laptop For Business

Business laptops, compared to those built for consumers, are typically designed for portability and sustaining longer periods of use. Before you buy a laptop, you should understand how your device will be used.

Tiffany Bloomer, president of Aventis Systems, says there are three different levels of laptop usage to consider.

The Best Laptop Of 2021

The late-2020 MacBook Air, powered by Apples M1 processor, is the best laptop you can buy. The base model, which includes 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, starts at $999.

Appearance-wise, this laptop has a lot in common with the Intel-powered MacBook Air that Apple released earlier this year, including the same 2560 x 1600 screen, Touch ID, 720p webcam, fingerprint sensor, and scissor-switch keyboard.

But the new processor is the star of the show here its fast. In our testing, it handled intense photo- and video-editing workloads better than almost any Intel-powered laptop weve tried this year. It was also able to run Shadow of the Tomb Raider at close-to-playable frame rates, which is quite a feat for integrated graphics. At launch, these apps hadnt yet been optimized for the M1 processor and were running through Apples Rosetta 2 translation layer but they still worked fine.

And the processing power didnt even weigh down the battery life: we got between eight and 10 hours of sustained work.

• $900at Best Buy

Another benefit of the M1 processor is that it enables the MacBook Air to run iPhone and iPad apps natively on macOS. As of this writing, there still isnt a huge selection of mobile apps available, and some that have been released arent quite optimized for the laptop screen. Still, its a benefit we can look forward to as time goes on.

The MacBook Pro is an excellent laptop for video editing and intensive work.

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Do I Need A Rugged Laptop

Rugged laptops are essential for some businesses, especially those that employ workers in rugged or remote conditions. The Panasonic Toughbook is the highest-profile rugged laptop line, and it’s very popular with public service professionals as well as private companies that require ultra-resilient laptops .

Rugged laptops and tablets often offer accessories that are not available for mainstream laptops, such as vehicle mounts and vehicle battery packs . Rugged laptops are also typically waterproof, drop-proof, and able to be used with gloves on . However, they’re also usually larger and clunkier than consumer or business laptops, and they can be expensive once you factor in accessories.

Most businesses do not need rugged laptops, but if yours does, don’t even bother looking at standard consumer or business machines. Instead, start by checking out the Toughbook by Panasonic, Dell Rugged Extreme and Getac lines.

Which Is Better Macos Or Windows

For the money, though, you’re getting great hardware top to bottom, inside and out. Apple recently moved to using its own processors, which resulted in across-the-board performance improvements compared to older Intel-based models. But, the company’s most powerful laptop, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, still hasn’t been updated to Apple silicon.

But, again, that great hardware comes at a price. Also, you’re limited to just Apple laptops. With Windows and Chromebooks , you get an amazing variety of devices at a wide range of prices.

Software between the two is plentiful, so unless you need to run something that’s only available on one platform or the other, you should be fine to go with either. Gaming is definitely an advantage for a Windows laptop, though.

MacOS is also considered to be easier and safer to use than Windows, especially for people who want their computers to get out of the way so they can get things done. Over the years, though, Microsoft has done its best to follow suit and, with Windows 11 here, it’s trying to remove any barriers. Also, while Macs might have a reputation for being safer, with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad helping to drive Mac sales, they’ve become bigger targets for malware.

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Check That Keyboard And Touchpad

The most impressive specs in the world don’t mean diddly if the laptop you’re shopping for doesn’t have good ergonomics. If you plan to do a lot of work on your computer, make sure the keyboard offers solid tactile feedback, plenty of key travel and enough space between the keys. If you’re buying a Windows laptop, be sure it has Precision touchpad drivers.

Look for an accurate touchpad that doesn’t give you a jumpy cursor and responds consistently to multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. If you’re buying a business laptop, consider getting one with a pointing stick between the G and H keys so you can navigate around the desktop without lifting your fingers off the keyboard’s home row.

Apple Macbook Air M1 2020

This is our go-to recommendation for those in search of a MacOS laptop for everyday basic use. The MacBook Air was updated in the first half of 2020 with new Intel processors and, most importantly, a new keyboard. However, in November, Apple announced its new homegrown M1 processors would be replacing Intel’s CPUs in the Air. Using Apple’s M1, the company promises an operating system with better performance and longer battery life — up to 18 hours. The Intel-based models will still be around, though, and regardless of which chip is running the Air, you’re getting a great little Mac laptop starting at $999.

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Performance And Portability For A Mobile World

• Laptops let your employees work anywhere and respond instantly to customer demands.

• The key to choosing the best small business laptop is to set a budget, evaluate performance, and prepare for future needs.

• When youre comparing costs with desktops, remember that laptops come with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and connectivity built in.

When mobility is an integral part of your business, your employees must be able to work on the go. Learn how to choose the right small business laptop, what specs will have the greatest impact on performance, and what other features to consider.

When mobility is an integral part of your business, your employees must be able to work on the go. Learn how to choose the right small business laptop, what specs will have the greatest impact on performance, and what other features to consider.