Notebookcheck's Top 10 Premium Office/Business Laptops

The 1000-series EliteBooks are HP's answer to Lenovo's ThinkPad X1-series. The latest HP EliteBook x360 1040 G5 is a high-quality business laptop and the successor to the HP EliteBook 1040 G4. Instead of a traditional laptop, however, HP now offers a convertible, so it is a rival for the ThinkPad X1 Yoga and not its laptop counterpart ThinkPad X1 Carbon. A successful concept in many ways and we awarded the performance with a rating of 92%.

The advantages of the HP EliteBook x360 1040 G5 include the long battery runtime of more than 10 hours, very bright display options and even an optional 120 Hz display. We also like the fact that the well-equipped and high-quality metal chassis does not attract fingerprints. The rather disappointing CPU performance on the other hand is probably the biggest drawback.

Thanks to its magnesium case the HP Elite Dragonfly is HP’s most lightweight business laptops. It also looks pretty good, with its dark blue exterior and its comparatively narrow display bezels, and HP did not forget to include features important for business users, such as LTE, USB-A, HDMI, various warranty options, a multitude of security features, and a decent keyboard. Its batteyr life and good speakers are also on the pro list.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the grandpa among its ThinkPad siblings. After all, it is the eight reincarnation of a series first introduced back in 2012. Nevertheless, Lenovo manages to keep it fresh and exciting year after year. This year’s update is minor in comparison, and the most significant difference is the support for Wi-Fi 6. A major refresh was probably unnecessary after all, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 remains one of the best business laptops available.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoge are basically two sides of the same coin. Both feature an identical mainboard design and are thus alike yet very different at the same time.  The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2019 convertible features a case made completely out of glass and metal, and plastic is nowhere to be found. And while this makes for a more robust and sturdy case it also increases weight when compared to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Other than that, its strengths and weaknesses are very similar to the X1 Carbon, save for the fact that the X1 Yoga is of course a convertible.

Lenovo redesigned last year's ThinkPad T480s, even though it did not really change the overall design of the lightest T-series laptop. The new ThinkPad T490s also got a new chassis, but the manufacturer now changes the concept of this series completely: With a slimmer chassis and no more options for a dedicated GPU, the ThinkPad T490s is now much closer to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

The new design also limits the options for maintenance and upgrades, but improved the case quality even further while making it slimmer. The excellent performance of the previous model cannot be maintained, but Lenovo improved the battery runtime in return. The manufacturer also finally starts to implement good 1080p screens. Overall, the ThinkPad T490s is not as versatile as its predecessor, but it is still an excellent choice for many business customers – which is also reflected by the high rating of 92%.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T495 takes the place of last year’s Lenovo ThinkPad A485 in our top 10 list but manages to score significantly higher thanks to its lighter and thinner design, its more efficient processors, and its significantly improved display.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad T495s is a new entry to this list of premium business laptops. It is the AMD-based SKU of the ThinkPad T490s and mostly identical apart from the CPU. It shares the lack of a Thunderbolt 3 port with its ThinkPad T495 sibling. In addition, we were also not particularly fond of its high-frequency fan and its limited upgradeability.

The ThinkPad T14 is the new name for what is arguably Lenovo’s best-selling ThinkPad model. It is the successor to last year’s T490, and just like last year it scored 88 % in our test. Updates and changes are few and far between since the design remained largely untouched by Lenovo and the T14 features Comet Lake CPUs. The newer Intel chips don’t really improve performance much, however the T14 does run hotter than its predecessor.

Earlier this year, Dell performed a reset of its model numbers, and accordingly the Dell Latitude 7400 is the successor to last years Dell Latitude 7490. Granted, this does seem pretty confusing at first.

Lenovo's ThinkPad T590 is Lenovo’s 2019 successor to the Lenovo ThinkPad T580 and takes its place in our top 10 list. The least portable ThinkPad T-series model scored the lowest rating of all ThinkPad T-series but still managed a very good 89 %. Lenovo maintained the T-series’ core principles: robust design, excellent input devices, and extensive selection of ports, security and communication features.