We’ve tested hundreds of laptops to find the ones that last the longest between charges. These battery-life champs will take you through a day of work, plus a night on the couch.
How long a laptop lasts on its internal battery is one of the most important considerations for PC shoppers. Business travelers and students are often at the mercy of their computer’s remaining juice, since so many conference rooms, aircraft, and lecture halls are woefully short on accessible power outlets. Just a few years ago, it was necessary to buy and charge an external battery pack to get long battery life, or to insist on a machine with a removable, swappable battery. Today, though, swappable batteries are just a memory. Still, many thin ultraportables with sealed-shut chassis show impressive endurance away from an AC outlet. These recent improvements in laptop battery life are thanks to CPUs and other components that are more power-efficient than ever. (It’s not just battery technology that deserves the credit.) That’s especially true of Intel’s newest Core processors, which power many of the longest-lasting models currently on our list. Most of the systems here use the chip maker’s previous 11th Generation CPUs, which steadily took over laptops released in 2021; so far, 2022’s 12th Generation-based models haven’t broken into our list. CPU alternatives from Apple (the Apple M1 series) and Qualcomm’s Snapdragons are starting to make a showing, too, in today’s longest-lasting laptops. A laptop that can last for more than eight hours without a trip to a power plug should be enough to get you through a day’s work, but that’s not nearly good enough to make it to the upper echelons today. Each of the laptops and 2-in-1s we’ve selected lasted for more than 16.5 hours on our tests, which means that they can survive a full day of work (whether that’s at home or in an office) and still offer plenty of juice for your commute or for watching videos on the couch.
