The Best Business Laptops To Navigate All Of Your Workday Tasks

Just because you need to run business apps and get productive during the day, that doesn’t mean your laptop needs to be boring or slow. In fact, some of the best business laptops are anything but, delivering high performance in compact, lightweight designs that can keep you working wherever you go. Many of these machines come with enhanced integrated security. They can even handle casual gaming or movies in your downtime—just don’t tell your boss.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is lightweight and durable.

Illustration: Forbes / Photo: Retailer

If you want the laptop which continues to define business laptops, look towards our top pick, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10. HP has some solid and affordable alternatives, like the HP ProBook 445, and Dell has intriguing designs of its own.

Whether you need a bright and responsive 2-in-1, a powerhouse for more demanding tasks, or something cheap and lightweight, there’s a business laptop for you. Here are the best options available today.

Best Business Laptop Overall: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10

Best 2-In-1 Business Laptop: HP Elite x360 G9

Best Budget Business Laptop: HP ProBook 445

Best Business Laptop For Everyday Use: Dell Vostro 7620

Best Portable Business Workstation Laptop: Dell Precision 5470

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Best Business Laptop Overall

The Icon Keeps Delivering

Lenovo

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10

Best for: Professionals who crave a featherweight yet sturdy system.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 14-inch is an iconic laptop design that has been one of the world’s favorite business laptops for generations. The latest design builds on that legacy with robust, reliable performance in a sturdy chassis. At the heart of this configuration is an Intel Core i5-1240P processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. This configuration comes with a 14-inch, 1080p touchscreen display. Lenovo rates the battery to last 12 hours, enough to get you through most of the workday, but there are business laptops with longer battery life if you need it.

Like other ThinkPads, this laptop’s build feels sturdy and solid, backed by military-grade durability testing. Despite all this, it only weighs 2.5 pounds, making it a surprisingly portable and lightweight business laptop. It has full support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 for the latest wireless connection standards, and it has two Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C ports and two USB Type-A ports. For those who want added security, this laptop has built-in biometric fingerprint scanning, helping you login quicker and more securely than a password alone. There’s also a built-in privacy screen for the webcam.

Pros:

Good performance
Diverse selection of inputs
Lightweight and durable

Cons:

Expensive

Best 2-In-1 Business Laptop

Excellent Security And A Responsive Tablet Mode

HP Elite X360 1040 G9

Best for: Demanding touchscreen tasks on the move.

The HP Elite x360 1040 G9 is a powerful convertible laptop with impressive hardware, a lightweight design and a dazzling bright display. With a rated 1,000 nits of brightness and 100% support for the sRGB spectrum, this is a display that can shine in daylight and darkened environments. The robust port selection includes two USB4 Type-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, a pair of traditional USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an HDMI 2.0 output, 3.5mm headphone jack, and 5G micro SIM card slot for cellular networking. It also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

The touchscreen is responsive and feels good to use, and if you’re more of a scribbler than swiper, you can use the included stylus pen for note taking and doodles to equal effect. It has an unusually high-quality 5-megapixel webcam in the top bezel, so you can have better image quality during video meetings. And this laptop’s security is top-notch, with its included suite of enterprise-level PC protection systems for small- and medium- sized businesses.

Pros:

Includes enhanced security
Impressive port selection
Bright and responsive touchscreen

Cons:

Expensive

Best Budget Business Laptop

A Lot Of Laptop For Under $1,000

HP ProBook 445 G9

Best for: Affordable business work with added security.

Even HP’s more modest business laptops, like the HP ProBook 445 G9 come with the Wolf Pro Security Edition software, for which you get a three-year license to help keep your data safe. It’s an affordable business laptop with mid-range performance from its last-generation AMD CPU and AMD Radeon graphics, for smoother video live streams and casual gaming in your downtime. When you’re working, though, this model is up to the task for everyday office tasks, intense data crunching and web research. Its 16GB of RAM ensures the system can handle plenty of browser tabs and larger documents and photos for editing, without slowing down.

Ports include a single USB4 Type-C port with up to 40Gbps data transfer support, three USB 3 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a gigabit ethernet port, an HDMI 2.0 output and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It also supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 for excellent wireless connectivity.

Pros:

Bundled security services
Good selection of ports
Bright and responsive touchscreen

Cons:

No Thunderbolt support
Display is a little dull

Best Business Laptop For Everyday Use

Thin, Light, And Good For Anything

Dell

Dell Vostro 7620

Best for: Performing a range of daily work tasks.

The Dell Vostro 7620 isn’t a powerful high-end laptop, but it can do just about anything reasonably well, making it a versatile everyday machine. Its Intel 12th generation Core i7 CPU is powerful enough to propel everyday office tasks, as well as light video and photo editing. This configuration comes with 8GB of RAM, which is limiting (you can upgrade the system memory if you prefer). It also includes 512GB of SSD storage. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 might be an entry-level GPU, but it’s still a dedicated chip, making it more than capable of some casual gaming in your downtime.

At over four pounds, this isn’t the lightest laptop around, but it’s still easy to carry around with you thanks to its relatively thin and compact 14-inch chassis. Battery life isn’t the best, at only up to 9 hours of mixed usage, so you need a power cable on hand for all day use. You get a Thunderbolt 4 port, though, as well as two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a headphone jack, gigabit ethernet and an HDMI output—enough for you to connect a wide range of accessories and peripherals.

Pros:

Great port selection
Versatile performance
Affordable price with big discount

Cons:

Lacks graphics power for rendering
Disappointing battery life

Best Portable Business Workstation Laptop

High Performance In A Thin And Light Design

Dell Precision 5470 14

Best for: High performance computing on-the-go.

The Dell Precision 5470 workstations is a business laptop on steroids. Its default configuration hits all the sweet spots, with a powerful 12th-generation Intel Core i7 CPU at its heart and pairs it with 16GB of fast DDR5 memory and Nvidia RTX A1000 graphics. It also has a 512GB SSD. There are other workstations with this kind of hardware, but few can fit it all into such a compact and lightweight chassis. At 14-inches, the Precision 5470 is small enough to slip into most backpacks, and at just over three pounds, it’s light enough to carry around all day.

The overall design is attractive, but understated, and there are a couple of USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports for connecting accessories, or outputting to external displays using DisplayPort alt mode. If that won’t help with your particular accessories, this laptop comes with a pair of USC Type-C to USB 3.2 Type A and HDMI adapters, to further expand your connectivity options. This laptop’s battery life can last up to 15 hours, and it tends to hit that in mixed usage, though in more processor-intensive tasks you can expect it to trend closer to 10 hours. Either way, you’re getting more than a full workday from this laptop.

Pros: