Whether you're a home worker, hybrid worker, or always on the move, these powerful, portable devices will make sure that you're effective.
Working practices are in a state of flux. We've never been so free to work from where we like and even when we like, with flexible working practices now very much part of the mainstream. Yet some businesses are pushing back, with many larger enterprises now asking employees to return to the office for more days per week. According to the latest figures from the UK Office of National Statistics, only 13% of workers now work completely from home, down from 26% in early 2022. A larger proportion – 28% – are hybrid workers, working between the home and office.
Meanwhile, more and more of us are embracing a different lifestyle, working full-time or freelance from a wide range of locations – or even working while we live abroad or travel.
This makes it all the more important to have devices that are as flexible as possible; that deliver a balance between size, weight, and portability, without sacrificing performance or battery life. Different workers will have different requirements, prioritizing mobility, speed, or screen size according to their location and their workloads. The trick is finding the right laptop to meet your specific needs.
What is the best laptop for home workers and digital nomads?
If you're working primarily from home, comfort comes first. You need a device that enables you to stay productive all day long, with good ergonomics and a screen that's fit for multitasking. Size, weight, and even battery life aren't so important on a laptop that spends most of its time on one desk.
The same can't be said for hybrid workers. Size and weight matter on a device that you'll be carrying between home and work, while a longer battery life gives you more flexibility over when and where you charge. Connectivity is crucial if you're moving between home and office networks, or connecting to different desktop keyboard, mouse and monitor setups across the two locations.
For fully remote workers or digital nomads, the requirements shift again. You need to balance comfort with having a device that can work effectively in a wide range of scenarios, whether that's a client's office, the kitchen table, the hotel desk, a coffee shop, or on your lap. If you spend a lot of time on trains, planes, or in airports, you may need something that can work in cramped conditions, and that weighs as little as possible.
Performance is important, but most mid-range business and consumer laptops will be fast enough for mainstream productivity applications, and it's only when you get to creative applications or more demanding specialist roles that you'll need to push the boat out on a high-end CPU or GPU.
The big trend this year is towards AI PCs, which feature dedicated neural processing units (NPUs) to power through complex AI operations with a lower power overhead. Right now, neither Windows, Microsoft Office nor most applications make enough use of the NPU to make an AI PC a must-have, but it's arguably worth investing in one anyway. Not only do these devices give you a degree of future-proofing, but the new processors tend to be the most energy-efficient, giving you significantly more battery life. As any digital nomad knows, this is actually more useful than raw speed.
When you're making your choice, don't neglect the less interesting stuff. Warranties, repair packages, insurance, and replacement services are a sound investment for laptops that spend some or all of their time out in the wild. There are higher risks of damage, loss, and theft, and you may need European or global cover. If your chosen manufacturer or supplier can't provide the after-sales support you need, either look elsewhere or find a third-party service specialist or insurer.
The Inspiron 14 Plus isn't the thinnest, lightest, or most exciting laptop on this list, but it's a fantastic option for remote workers on a budget. With a compact 314 x 224mm footprint and a 1.3KG weight, you can use it just about anywhere, while its 14in 2.5K screen makes for comfortable multi-tasking. It's basic, with a 60Hz refresh and mediocre color gamut coverage, but bright and fine for everyday productivity tasks. Two USB 4.0 ports and Wi-Fi 7 give you future-proof connectivity, while the keyboard, trackpad, and webcam are all perfectly respectable.
This is one of the cheapest devices around with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X CPU, and while it's the lower-end Plus variant, it's still impressively fast. Battery life isn't quite up to the levels of the top Snapdragon X laptops, thanks to a smaller 54Wh battery, but you can still get through a full day of intensive graft without serious concerns. And with prices starting at £708 ex VAT, it's a device that even cash-strapped small businesses can afford.
Read our full Dell Inspiron 14 Plus review here
The MacBook Air has become the iconic laptop for digital nomads and a highly desirable one for any remote worker. The latest 13.6in version now features Apple's M3 processor and is better value than it was at launch, with the base £1099 inc VAT model now shipping with a more sensible 16GB of RAM. The design hasn't changed much since the M2 version, but why fix what isn't broken, especially when it's just 11.3mm thick and 1.24Kg in weight. The keyboard and haptic trackpad are difficult to fault.
You're still stuck with an IPS screen, but it's a good one, with a sharp 2,650 x 1,664 resolution and the ability to cover 97.1% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Meanwhile, the M3 processor is monstrously fast, if not quite as speedy in multi-core performance as the latest Snapdragon X and AMD Ryzen 9 AI CPUs. Connectivity is fairly limited, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, the MagSafe power connector, and a 3.4mm headphone jack, while battery life is a little worse than the last-generation MacBook Air M2, though 14 hrs and 33 minutes remains very good. You'll pay a premium for extra storage, but this is a great ultra-portable device.
Read our full Apple M3 MacBook Air 13.6in review here
Creatives and power users need look no further than the Yoga Pro 9i 16. The 16-inch screen and high-performance spec means a bigger desktop footprint and 1.68Kg weight, but it's worth it to have a massive mini-LED display and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU. The screen hits eyeball-melting levels of brightness – up to 1060cdm/m2 in HDR mode – with superb contrast and near-perfect color reproduction. Meanwhile, the 16-core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 GPU give you awesome performance across creative applications, 3D rendering, scientific apps, and even games – and the slightly cheaper RTX 4060 version doesn't stint on power, either. Fan noise stays surprisingly low.
On top of this, you get an excellent keyboard with slightly concave keycaps and a smooth 1.5mm of travel, a large and effective trackpad, and a 1440p webcam that delivers good results even in less-than-perfect lighting. You also have two USB 3.2 ports, one with the faster USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 spec and one supporting Thunderbolt 4, plus an HDMI 2.1 video output and Wi-Fi 6E. It's the perfect powerhouse laptop for mostly home-based creatives but light enough for mobile use as well, even if the 84Whr battery can only power it for around 9 hours. If you do want to go smaller and lighter, take a look at the equally brilliant Asus ProArt PX13.
Read our full Lenovo Yoga 9i Pro review here
Microsoft's latest Surface laptops come in 13.8in and 15in flavors, with either suiting mobile professionals or digital nomads well. However, the 15in model is especially good for home-based or hybrid workers, giving you a large but still exceptionally sharp screen with a tall 3:2 aspect ratio, that's much more comfortable for all-day productivity or handling complex tasks. It's still smaller than a 16in laptop, and thoroughly portable at just 1.45Kg.
What's more, Microsoft has done a great job of refining the design. The keyboard has an almost perfect typing action, while the touchpad is one of the best haptic touchpads you'll find on a Windows machine. The 1080p webcam delivers crisp and well-exposed video, while the OLED screen is bright with punchy yet accurate colors. The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 is impressively speed, especially in multi-threaded workloads, and the battery life is exceptionally good, lasting over 18 and a half hours in our tests. You may or may not be interested in the AI features of Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs, but this is a stellar business laptop for use at home or on the go.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 review here
The one downside of the new Qualcomm-based Copilot PCs is that compatibility can be an issue. Between improved ARM64 processor support and Microsoft's Prism emulation layer most apps and drivers work well at decent speeds, but there are always exceptions. This is where the Asus Zenbook S14 wins. It uses Intel's new Core Ultra 9 288V 'Lunar Lake' CPU, which gives you equivalent or better AI performance and a faster GPU than the equivalent Snapdragon X processors. Multi-threaded performance isn't quite as good, but battery life can be phenomenal, with the Zenbook S14 lasting over 19 hours in our tests.
What's more, the Zenbook S14 is a superb thin-and-light 14in laptop, with the kind of footprint you'd expect from a 13in device and a very manageable 1.2Kg weight. It comes in a lovely matte ceramic finish and features an excellent keyboard and responsive touchpad. Connectivity is better than average, with Wi-Fi 7, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB Type-A, and an HDMI 2.1 output. The OLED screen doesn't go incredibly bright, but you get perfect contrast and unimpeachable color reproduction. It's a brilliant option whether you're a hard-working mobile creative or an executive clocking up the air miles.
Read our full Asus Zenbook S14 review here
It's best to see the Surface Pro 11 not as a clever, convertible tablet, but as an excellent ultraportable PC. The click-on, click-off keyboard is pretty much a requirement, and even with it attached the whole shebang weighs just 1.23Kg. The ingenious kickstand holds the screen up in a wide range of positions, and the unit is extremely robust. You can even switch out the supplied storage yourself for a 30mm M.2 NVMe SSD. Not all ultraportables can say the same.
There's a limit to the connectivity you can fit into a tablet form factor, but with two USB 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, and the standard Surface power/data connector, this isn't a huge issue. Microsoft's new Pro Flex keyboard can now work unconnected to the tablet and makes up for its limited travel with a lovely fast and clicky feel. And while entry-level versions have a decent 2880 x 1920 IPS display, mid-range, and high-end variants have a stunning OLED screen with vivid colors and a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate. Throw in the Snapdragon Elite XE-80-100 processor, and you have strong performance and formidable battery life, with nearly 16 and a half hours of video playback in our tests. If your priority is packing light, the Surface Pro 11 is a hard device to beat. Just remember to budget extra for the keyboard.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Pro 11 review here
How we test
For laptops, IT Pro runs a series of tests on the display, CPU, battery, and storage, with the exact line-up of tests dependent on the laptop and its main usage scenarios. Our aim is to give you a metric for comparison so that you can make an informed decision.
For performance testing, we use Geekbench 6 as a cross-platform, baseline test, and PC Mark 10 and 3Dmark to provide a measure of real-world application and 3D performance. We may also incorporate other benchmarks, including the Cinebench R24 and 2024 3D rendering tests, the SPECViewPerf 2020 professional graphics benchmark, and the Geekbench AI and Procyon AI Computer Vision and AI Inference benchmarks.
For the display, we use a colorimeter to measure maximum brightness, contrast, and color reproduction for the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts. We also test against the sRGB profile for color accuracy. We also use the CrystalDiskMark and AS-SSD storage benchmarks to test the sequential and random read/write speeds of the onboard SSD.
Finally, we test battery life with a looped video test. The device is fully charged and the screen set to a specific brightness level of 170cd/m2. We then time how long the video keeps playing before the laptop reaches a critical brightness level and switches off. This gives us a time score we can compare with other laptops and helps us estimate how long the laptop will last during working hours.
