Notebookcheck's Top 10 Premium Office/Business Laptops

Intel is no longer the performance king of the hill thanks to AMD’s Ryzen 4000, and it is thus only logical for an AMD Ryzen 4000-based laptop to storm to the top of this business notebook top 10 list as well. Lenovo’s Renoir-based Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 1 is leaps and bounds ahead of the more expensive ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 while offering the same level of quality as its more expensive sibling. In some areas the T14s even manages to outshine the X1, such as for example with its better keyboard thanks to longer key travel.

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 Yoga 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. Like its predecessor, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5 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.

Yet another AMD Ryzen 4000-based ThinkPad that made our business top 10 list: the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 1. Its list of pros and cons is mostly identical to the AMD-based ThinkPad T14s’s, compared to which the display, keyboard, and case are slightly smaller, and the battery life is slightly shorter. In addition, the ThinkPad X13 performed slightly worse than the T14s. In return, unlike the T14s it offers an easily replaceable keyboard.

The Latitude 7310 is the professional cousin of Dell’s popular XPS 13. Instead of an eye-catching metal display lid it features a more refined and unobtrusive professional design with a dark-gray carbon-fiber-based display lid. Unlike the XPS 13 the Latitude 7310 comes with various ports, built-in LTE, and other business features. In addition, it is lightweight, quiet, and it offers a long battery life. It is optionally available with aluminum case.

To everyone’s surprise Dell decided to redesign its premium Latitude 700 series once again this year. With its robust aluminum case the Dell Latitude 7410 is supposed to compete against Lenovo’s ThinkPad T14s and X1 Carbon. And while it fails to outshine its competitors in every aspect it does offer a few benefits, such as for example the large touchpad, integrated WWAN, and a very long battery life.

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.

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.