Fortunately, there are plenty of notebooks that go the distance. Using our Laptop Mag Battery Test 2.0 (opens in new tab), which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, we’ve identified the laptops with best battery life on the market. We’re talking more than 14 hours of endurance, which should more than suffice for that cross-country flight, a long day of meetings or multiple, back-to-back classes. These laptops can be anything, from premium consumer laptops to business laptops to even gaming laptops, yes, gaming laptops, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, which achieved more battery life than the 16-inch MacBook Pro thanks to its AMD Ryzen CPU. Read our best of CES 2023 article to see the future of tech. Note that, in February 2018, we switched from Laptop Battery Test 1.0, which surfed the web at a lower, 100 nits of brightness, so scores have gone down to reflect the more aggressive (and realistic) test.
The laptops with best battery life
Apple has a tough act to follow with the new MacBook Pro 13 ($1,899 reviewed, $1,299 starting). Its predecessor took the world by storm back in 2020 with its show-stopping M1 chip. And the climb seems even steeper this time. There’s no snazzy design update, no extra ports to get excited about. That means everything riding on the new M2 SOC, and as per usual, Apple rises and surpasses the challenge. The next chapter in Apple computing continues and the company’s bet on custom silicon continues to hit the jackpot. M2 is 18% more powerful than its ancestor with an 8-core CPU. M2 is also bringing a new 10-core GPU that’s 35% faster than the previous model. And if that isn’t enough to get you excited, Apple has found a way to improve on the laptop’s power efficiency, delivering over 18 hours of battery life. Read on to learn more about Apple’s latest home run. See our full Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, M2, 2022) review (opens in new tab). Willing to sell your soul to the devil for the longest-lasting laptop ever? Forget about it, this product is real and purchasable. The Dell Latitude 9510 comes with battery life that’ll last you two work days, a bright 15-inch screen and solid performance packed in a super slim design. The Latitude 9510 continuously surfed the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness for a whopping 18 hours and 17 before it inevitably tapped out. That is almost double the 9:37 premium laptop average. If you have money to blow and don’t care about display resolution or discrete graphics, the Latitude 9510 is for you, and certainly makes its mark as one of the best business laptops and laptops with best battery life. See our full Dell Latitude 9510 review (opens in new tab). It’s not easy to stand out in the crowded business laptop category. Competitors like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and HP’s Elite Dragonfly have raised the bar, making it difficult for others to make their case. But Dell is proving that it’s up to the task with the Latitude 9410 2-in-1, a sleek and sturdy business notebook with unmatched battery life. It might not attract as much attention as those aforementioned models, but the Latitude 9410’s all-aluminum chassis is thin and durable. Housed within are powerful components, including a 10th Gen Intel Core CPU capable of running demanding workloads. And when you’re off the clock, the Latitude 14-inch, 1080p display captures rich colors, although it could get brighter. But what makes the Latitude 9410 2-in-1 a true contender to the other best business laptops is its nearly 17 hours of battery life, which distracts from some minor pitfalls, like a high price and comparatively hefty weight. See our full Dell Latitude 9410 2-in-1 review. The Asus ExpertBook B9450 wowed us with its battery life score. If you need a laptop with one of the best battery life scores of all time, the ExpertBook will keep you comfortable for an insane 16 hours and 42 minutes. You can literally get through two workdays without having to charge this beast. On top of that, you get an incredibly lightweight yet durable design covered in an attractive midnight-blue shade. You’ll also get some useful security features like an IR camera and fingerprint sensor. Its 14-inch, 1080p display is fairly bright and colorful as well, but its biggest asset is an anti-glare coating. Asus also equipped the ExpertBook B9450 with a speedy SSD – Its 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD duplicated 4.97GB in 6 seconds at a rate of 771.1 megabytes per second. See our full Asus ExpertBook B9450 review. Call it the emancipation of Apple, the company’s freedom song or just plain liberation. With the advent of the M1 chip, Apple is free –– free to be faster and stronger, free to dominate. And the company’s wasting no time in asserting its dominance. Not only does the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 have better overall and graphics performance, it has some of the longest battery life we’ve ever seen on a laptop. Apple could have stopped there, but instead, you get faster web page loading times, a more powerful camera and seamless integration between Mac, iPad and iPhone thanks to native Universal apps. The 5nm chip even improves the camera and microphones. If you’re looking for the fastest, most powerful premium laptop in the land, say hello to the new king. See our full Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) review. The HP Elite Folio is packed with innovative, solution-solving tech — not gimmicks — that substantiates its $2,000 price tag. It also gives the Energizer Bunny a run for its money; it lasted a jaw-dropping 16 hours and 21 minutes on a charge. Not only does the Elite Folio have the endurance of an Olympic champion, but it breaks records like one, too. The Elite Folio is the world’s first business convertible with a spectacular pull-forward mechanism. The feature lets you transform the display into a digital easel so you can get your Bob Ross on. The Elite Folio comes with an awesome stylus — a plus for users who have an affinity for digital note taking and doodling. See our full HP Elite Folio review. It may not be as glamorous as the Elite Dragonfly, but the EliteBook 1040 G7 is every bit as capable. It flaunts an attractive metal chassis, boasts lightning-quick performance, and lasts for more than 15 hours on a charge. The 1080p display is a good one for work and play, plenty of ports mean you don’t need a dongle, and a spattering of default and optional features make your work experience more secure and efficient. The sky-high price means the 1040 G7 is only meant for the high-rollers; execs making the six-figure salaries, invaluable researchers working long nights, and the paper pushers with a Fortune 500 company attached to their LinkedIn profiles. But if you have the cash, or your money has the budget, then this is easily one of the best business laptops on the market. See our full HP EliteBook x360 1040 G7 review. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 is a refinement of the best 2-in-1 laptop for business users. Taking a page from the X1 Carbon, the newest Yoga now flaunts a 14-inch display with a taller 16:10 aspect ratio for more vertical screen space — a boon for enterprise users. Also improving productivity are a wider touchpad and a human presence detection sensor for convenient login and enhanced security. Swapping the engine for 11th Gen Intel chips adds considerably faster performance, but the battery life upgrade is even more enticing; the Gen 6 model lasts for nearly 15 hours on a charge. These perks are packaged in a sleek aluminum chassis with a convenient 2-in-1 design and a handy stylus slot. It may not be as lightweight as the ThinkPad X1 Carbon or as alluring as the ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga, but the ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6 could just be the best overall package of the trio. See our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 6) review. It’s amazing what a new heart can do for a laptop. The latest MacBook Air ushers in a new era for Apple with its custom-made M1 chip. Yes, Apple’s long-awaited transition away from Intel and into the ARMs of custom silicon has arrived, and the new chip blows us away. I’ll start by saying the new MacBook Air is an improvement over the previous model in every way, bringing monumental performance and battery life enhancements. Those bold claims Apple made about the M1? They weren’t exaggerations. This MacBook Air out-muscles every laptop in its class while lasting a full day on a charge. And it does so with a fanless design, meaning the Air is pin-drop silent. Along with record-setting performance, Apple Silicon adds iOS and iPadOS apps to the Mac App Store. You also get better webcam quality, and macOS Big Sur is a gorgeous redesign of Apple’s desktop OS. The new MacBook Air may have a few faults, but it’s the closest Apple has ever been to crafting the perfect laptop. See our full MacBook Air with M1 review. No matter what your configuration, the MacBook Pro 14 is in a class of its own. The laptop retains its stunning good looks, powerful speakers, high-resolution camera, and comfortable keyboard. But the real stars of this story are the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, which bring even more power and efficiency to the table. True to its word, the M2 Pro and Max MacBooks consistently outperform their predecessors as well as the Intel-powered competition. Seriously, look at those benchmarks, outside of the display section, the MacBook Pro 14 was rarely not on the winning edge of the spectrum. And if that wasn’t enough Apple is finally addressing the gaming issue, teaming with Capcom to make its case with a port of Resident Evil Village that played just as well as if it were PC or console. All the company has to do now is to get more AAA titles into its roster, and we’re having a seriously interesting conversation on just what a Mac can and can’t do. See our full MacBook Pro 14-inch (2023) review.
How we test the laptops with best battery life
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 sRGB color gamut of the laptop’s display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 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 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 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 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise. 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.
