The best business laptops in 2024 can deliver powerfully productive performance while staying thin and light at around 3 pounds or less. Whether you need to keep it affordable or want the absolute top-of-the-line, we've got you covered. Consider us your outsourced team of dedicated laptop experts who review dozens of laptops annually to help you find the very best business laptops.
When it comes to business laptops you can't shortchange security and durability — the best business laptops typically come with fingerprint sensors, IR cameras, security chips, and many have military-grade durability. These are key components that differentiate business laptops from typical consumer laptops. The best business laptops from every major manufacturer are put through our rigorous lab and real-world testing so we can judge their blend of portability, performance, battery life, and more.
The HP Spectre x360 14 is our current pick for the best business laptop, ticking all of the boxes above and offering a gorgeous display, excellent performance, and over 11 hours of battery life in a flexible 2-in-1 form factor.
However, if you prefer Lenovo, Dell, MSI, or Apple there are compelling options at varying price points from them all.
Read on for a look at our top picks and we'll find the perfect fit for you.
Sean Riley has covered a wide variety of tech over his 13 years as a journalist, but found his home at Laptop Mag in 2020. As the managing editor he takes a part in every laptop review that is published on Laptop Mag, whether as reviewer or editor. Sean works remotely from home, but travels regularly for work, including trips to Laptop Mag's office, so he has ample opportunity to test the latest business laptops in many settings.
The Quick List
The best business laptop overall
The HP Spectre x360 14 is our current pick for the best overall business laptop. At just 3.2 pounds it packs impressive power, a great keyboard, over 11 hours of battery life, and a gorgeous 2.8K OLED display.
The best budget business laptop
For under $1,000, the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 is an excellent choice for budget-conscious businesses. It offers solid performance, a bright display, and an excellent keyboard. Battery life is the one concern to overlook for the price.
The best long-lasting business laptop
The MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo is that employee who always goes the extra mile. Over 13 hours of battery life, a super vivid and bright display, standout performance, and a blistering fast SSD; it's a frequent traveler's dream.
The best MacBook for business
MacBook Air M3 is a top-tier option for Mac-friendly businesses. You get over 15 hours of battery life, outstanding performance, a comfortable keyboard, and MagSafe charging.
The best workstation for business
A 5-star laptop, the powerful Dell Precision 5470 may be overkill for some, but nearly 12 hours of battery life with a dedicated GPU in a 3.3-pound package is power user paradise.
The best ChromeOS business laptop
We called it the “corner office Chromebook” because the Elite Dragonfly offers the simplicity of Chrome OS with a striking design, strong performance, and a beautiful 13.5-inch display.
Best Business Laptop Overall
The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is the best 2-in-1 business laptop available today thanks to its blend of performance and battery life. It edged just beyond 11 hours in our Laptop Mag Battery test, which is nearly an hour beyond the premium category average. Add in the beautiful OLED panel, the comfortable keyboard, and the sleek design and you can see why this laptop tops our 2-in-1 business charts.
Performance is more than enough to juggle all the browser tabs you forgot to close during the day along with every productivity app in your arsenal. It scored 12,358 on the Geekbench 6.1 test, which was on par with or beyond it's nearest competitors the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 (Core i7-1360P, 11,133), Acer Swift Go 14 (Ultra 7 155H, 12,434), and MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 11,968).
If you need to make regular video calls the Spectre has an ace up its sleeve for you with a legitimately good 4K webcam built-in. It's not perfect, our reviewer did see some grain in the image making video calls from their home office, but it's always improving thanks to software updates and AI enhancements and it's a massive upgrade from the typical laptop webcam.
Add in excellent enterprise-grade security from its discrete Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and convenient login via its 9MP IR camera or fingerprint reader and you have a business laptop that justifies its admittedly high price.
See our full HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) review.
Best Budget Business Laptop
The Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 delivers fantastic value for a budget-conscious business. I'll get the caveat out of the way right at the top, the battery life is its weakness at 7 hours and 48 minutes in our testing. So regular travelers will need to look elsewhere, but if you are at a desk or have access to an outlet typically this is a worthwhile tradeoff for the rest of what you get.
The ThinkPad E14 beat out the mainstream laptop average in both our Geekbench 6 testing and our SSD transfer test, a notable feat for a business laptop that you'll find for around $750. It nearly matched our previous overall pick the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 11's Geekbench score, while outscoring the vastly more expensive HP Dragonfly Pro on the SSD transfer test.
As you would expect from Lenovo, the keyboard is a super responsive chiclet-style that should allow you to type quickly and comfortably all day. Lenovo also boasts MIL-STD 810H certification on this affordable laptop, so don't worry that you're getting a cheap build due to the low cost.
While you can find a laptop for under $500, most business users will be better served by stretching that budget to reach the ThinkPad E14 Gen 5.
See our full Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 review.
Best Long-Lasting Business Laptop
The MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo was one of the first "AI" branded laptops that we tested in late 2023 and whether you care about AI or not, it proved itself to be an excellent all-around laptop.
The battery life was one of the first things that jumped out at us reviewing the Prestige, it delivered 13 hours and 22 minutes in our Laptop Mag battery test, far beyond the 10 hours we consider to be a solid result in this category. However, this often means an underpowered CPU, but not so for the Prestige 16, its 13,310 in the Geekbench 6.1 overall performance test beat even the likes of the MacBook Pro 14 M3 (12,024).
As the name suggests the Prestige 16 gives you a 16-inch display, but that's underselling the 4K OLED panel which also delivers outstanding color and brightness. Nothing else on this page comes close to rendering the 139.2% of the DCI-PC color gamut that the Prestige 16 achieved. If you do any creative work, or just love a colorful display, the MSI deserves your consideration.
If your work tends more towards the spreadsheet realm, the full keyboard with number pad should be a boon for you. Our reviewer found the well-spaced chiclet-style keys extremely responsive.
Security is handled by a fingerprint reader and the built-in camera supports Windows Hello login as well. While the larger 16-inch display isn't going to be for everyone, if you want a long-lasting powerhouse of a business laptop that still tips the scales at just over 3 pounds the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo is the right fit for you.
Read our full HP Elite Dragonfly G3 review.
Best Apple Business Laptop
The MacBook Air M3 is a nearly perfect laptop, it's our current choice for the best laptop overall. However, in the business realm, it takes a backseat to some of the more purpose-built business laptops. With that said, if you or your business don't mind supporting macOS, it remains an excellent choice for business users.
The MacBook Air 13 M3 offers excellent performance that matches up with the latest Intel Core Ultra options on the Windows side, while boasting over 15 hours of battery life. Looking at the Air 13 M3 vs. the new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12, the MacBook scores a narrow win on Geekbench 6.2 (12,087 vs. 11,638) for multi-core performance, but the battery life difference is massive with the ThinkPad only reaching 9 hours and 27 minutes.
One of the only knocks against the MacBook Air is that it only offers a pair of Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 ports along with the MagSafe charging port. If an HDMI or USB Type-A port are critical to your setup you are going to need to pick up a USB-C hub or a docking station. If it's just the HMDI port or an SD card slot, you could also opt for the MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 2023), which adds both, along with a third Thunderbolt 4 port (sadly, still no USB-A).
See our full Apple MacBook 13-inch M3 review.
Best Workstation Business Laptop
With 5 out of 5 stars, how is the Dell Precision 5470 not higher on this list? It's simple, not everyone needs this much power in a business laptop. This is a workstation laptop with the Nvidia RTX A1000 GPU and Intel Core i9-12900H CPU to prove it. It can't go toe-to-toe with the best gaming laptops, but it will run circles around any typical business laptop.
If your productivity work ever dips into the realm of content creation, if you are like me and you just overload your laptop with a million seemingly small tasks, or you are frequently transferring large data files, the blazing performance of the 5470 will be worth its 3.3-pound weight in gold.
All that power doesn't cost you battery life either with the Dell going for 11 hours and 39 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test. That's an incredible feat for a laptop with a discrete GPU, nearly double what we saw from similar competitors like the MSI Creator Z16 (6:27).
Lastly, I'll touch on the display, which is a gorgeous 14-inch anti-glare InfintyEdge touchscreen with a 2560 x 1600-pixel resolution and the ability to overpower any brightly lit environment with its 499 nit max brightness.
See our full Dell Precision 5470 review.
Best ChromeOS Business Laptop
Chromebooks...for business users? Yes, we mean it. The HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook Enterprise is the best option available today. Boasting Intel vPro security, a Titan C chip, and a fingerprint sensor the Dragonfly far surpasses the security of your average Chromebook. A free year of Parallels for Chromebooks gives you full access to any Windows apps you might still need.
The security and ease of management offered by the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook are two strong selling points, but the rest of the hardware doesn't let down from there. The 13.5K 2K display with up to 400 nits of brightness looks outstanding. The 2-in-1 form factor, light 2.8-pound chassis, and optional 5G support make it a dream for frequent travelers.
If you are doing most of your work on the web, the Dragonfly Chromebook is ready to serve you. It crushed the Jetstream 2 web-browsing performance test with a score of 214, almost double the Chromebook average of 114.
At just over 9 hours in our Laptop Mag battery test the battery life could be better and the price makes it a tough sell if work isn't paying for it, but for businesses that will save considerable money on support, it is worth the investment.
See our full HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook review.
Recently Reviewed Business Laptops
How To Choose a Business Laptop
Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing the right model of business laptop for you or your company.
- Do you need Intel vPro or AMD Pro? Many business laptops are available with CPUs that have Intel vPro technology, which lets a support person log in remotely, even if the computer can't boot. However, unless you have a large IT department and a huge fleet of laptops that you need the ability to service remotely, you probably won't use this feature.
- How fast do you need it to be? While the kind of blistering performance you need in a gaming laptop isn't necessary, business users don't want to be bogged down while multitasking. RAM is one concern here, opting for at least 16GB and 32GB isn't ridiculous if you are a power user who likes to keep numerous apps and browser tabs open. For your CPU most will be fine with a Core i5 or higher Intel P-series or U-series options from Intel 13th Gen or Intel 14th Gen, or an Intel Core Ultra 5 or higher.
- Long battery life: Nobody wants to run out of juice in the middle of a long workday or a cross-country flight. Unless you're getting a giant workstation or a budget laptop, look for a laptop that gets at least 10 hours on a charge.
- The right ports: Nobody likes to carry a bag full of dongles. Consider which kinds of connections you or your employees will need the most. If you connect to a wired network a lot, make sure the laptop has an Ethernet port. If photography is a key part of the job, choose a laptop with a memory card reader. No matter what your needs, a Thunderbolt 4 port is a huge advantage because it will allow you to connect to high-speed peripherals, universal chargers, and powerful laptop docking stations.
- A great keyboard: It almost goes without saying that every laptop should have a good keyboard. But with business systems, a comfortable typing experience is even more important. Look for snappy feedback, deep travel and absolutely no flex.
How We Test Business Laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including GeekBench 5 and 6 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 25GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test includes the Assasin's Creed Valhalla benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 11 laptops, a runtime of over 10 hours is considered a good result.
These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
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We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades, and we continue to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
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