Your laptop might be the coolest ultraportable, detachable, convertible, whatchamacallit-able thing on the block. But that doesn’t mean a lot if its battery dies halfway through an email. These are the longest-lasting laptops on the market.
Thanks to a dual-battery design, the reliable old ThinkPad T-series takes the crown easily in 2018. But we’ve also made selections for a couple of other common categories, if the button-down IBM aesthetics don’t appeal to you. The longest-lasting Chromebooks and Mac laptops can also be found below, as well as more sleek Windows machines that are easier to slip into a backpack for an all-day out-of-office experience.
The Best Overall Laptop Battery Life: Thinkpad T480 ($750+)
Once the reliable workhorse of the working world, the ThinkPad T-series is looking a bit long in the tooth, and seems to be yielding ground to various Surface and MacBook models. But with Lenovo’s Power Bridge architecture, the new T480 beats just about everything else when it comes to longevity.
The key is a dual-battery design: a 3-cell internal battery that can’t be removed, and an extra 3-cell that can, allowing the user to swap out a fresh battery without shutting the machine down. That secondary battery can also be upgraded to a thicker 6-cell version. Lenovo claims this nine-cell combo can last for an almost unbelievable 30 hours of continuous use. Reviewer battery stress tests say it’s more like 17, so expect 20+ hours of more regular use. That’s still enough to put every other modern machine to shame. A customized ThinkPad T480 with an 8th-gen Core i5 processor, 14-inch 1080p non-touch display, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD can be had for under $1000 at the time of writing, though prices from Lenovo’s online store tend to fluctuate quite a bit. You can go for the bigger T580 if you need more screen space, but skip the popular “S” variants of either model: they don’t include the double battery feature.
The Long-Lasting Thin And light: Lenovo Yoga C630 ($800)
Windows runs on Snapdragon processors now, and the 850 version inside the Lenovo Yoga C630 was built from the ground up for the demanding needs of a full desktop OS. This convertible laptop isn’t a powerhouse—don’t depend on it for thirty Chrome tabs or a huge Photoshop project. But what it lacks in power it makes up for in endurance.
According to Lenovo’s promotional materials, this sleek 13-inch model can go 25 hours on a single charge. That’s probably a bit optimistic, but older Snapdragon-powered Windows machines have been known to get 15+ hours, so 20 seems entirely possible if you can stick to Microsoft Edge and other S-mode applications. As a bonus of its mobile-based architecture, the Yoga C630 also includes built-in LTE capability and a fingerprint scanner at no extra charge.
