The best laptop for working from home will easily tackle productivity tasks and heavy workloads, keeping you on-track and on-task.
We've put the best laptops and best business laptops to the test - and these are the machines we recommend for when you're a hybrid worker or you're WFH.
We rate the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s as the best work-from-home laptop - it's slim, well-built, and powerful enough for most business and office tasks. Top alternative recommendations based on our benchmarks include the MacBook Pro 16-inch and Dell XPS 14.
You'll find the full round-up right here, where our experts have benchmarked performances, compared specs, and explored the design and build quality to find the best laptops for home offices and workspaces.
The quick list
You need to choose the best laptop for working from home that can handle your daily workload when you don't have access to your work computer. So, we've gathered the best ones for every user and budget below. Take a look at our top picks right here, and be sure to click "Read more below" to dig deeper before you hit buy.
Best overall
There’s a lot to love about the T14s, from its slim, professional design to its glorious keyboard. A compact WFH laptop that easily handles business tasks.
Best MacBook
This is an incredibly powerful workstation with industry-leading screen and battery life, as well as best-in-class performance and power efficiency.
Best Dell
A great laptop from Dell’s XPS range, this 14-inch model boldly challenges the MacBook Pro in performance - and very nearly matches it.
Best for data entry
A great business laptop with a fantastic keyboard experience, a large 16-inch display, and a sleek design, this is just the ticket for handling data.
Best Chromebook
The best enterprise Chromebook ever, this delivers an incredible performance, a great design, decent battery life, and optional security features.
Best for gaming
The Razer Blade 14 is an impressively powerful, professionally designed machine, can run almost any game, great for content creation, with best-in-class performance for its size.
The best laptop for working from home of 2025 in full:
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Best laptop for working from home overall
✅ You want a powerful professional laptop: The ThinkPad T14s will handle almost any business task you throw at it - we’ve never had an issue during months of WFH use.
✅ You want a compact machine: A slimline design and a 14-inch screen makes this a highly portable option.
❌ You’re working to a budget: The T14s is an investment, and while it’s at the lower-end of pricey, it’s not the cheapest laptop for working from home.
❌ You need a big screen: While we champion 14-inch laptops for WFH and business-use, it won’t be ideal for everyone. Check out the ThinkPad T16, or the Dell XPS 15 - 17 models.
In use as our own WFH laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s has proved to be an incredible little machine. Slim and solidly built, it’s fast, light, durable, with an outstanding typing experience. But then, ThinkPads have arguably the best keyboards on any laptop.
We’re recommending the T14s not just because we’ve had extensive time with the laptop. 14-inch is the ideal size for a business or home office laptop- small enough for any carrying or commute, not so large the machine dominates your home workspace. Check out the Dell XPS 14 for an alternative of similar size, specs, and price.
Performance is excellent. It’ll breeze through spreadsheets, video calls, many, many open browser tabs without breaking a sweat. It’s more than comfortable with basic photo editing, and you could probably just about get away with very basic video content production for websites and social media channels. I recommend opting for the AMD version, which has better cooling than the Intel-equipped T14s. Port selection offers general or all-round use: two USB and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a nano-sim slot. In our battery tests, the ThinkPad lasted around eight hours, so you don’t need to be tied to the mains while working.
The ThinkPad T14s isn’t the cheapest laptop around, and it lacks upgradeable RAM - so pick the 32GB if you want to seriously future-proof this as an investment that should last you years. However, as a powerful, durable work-from-home laptop, this sleek, professional machine shines.
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad T14s review
Best MacBook for working from home
✅ You want a content creation machine: Of course the MacBook will slice through spreadsheets and office apps, but when it comes to image and video editing, the laptop silently shines.
✅ You want one of the best screens on a laptop - period: We’ve long-loved the MacBook Pro’s best-in-class Liquid Retina XDR 16.2-inch screen and 120 Hz ProMotion adaptive refresh rates.
❌ You need a Windows laptop: Not every business is set-up for the macOS ecosystem, which might limit your use as a work-from-home or hybrid working laptop.
❌ You need something more portable: However much we love the MacBook Pro 16-inch, we do find it somewhat bulky, which is fine for the home office, but can be a drag on any commute.
Apple continues to push the boundaries of speed and efficiency with its silicon chips, and this machine offers its latest and best M2 chipsets. With an incredible 20 hours of battery life, you could go without needing a charge for a couple of days worth of work.
This machine is a refinement instead of redesign of the 2021 model. You’ll find 3 USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port that now supports 8K at 60 Hz, an SDXC card slot, and an audio jack. The best-in-class Liquid Retina XDR 16.2-inch screen with 120 Hz ProMotion adaptive refresh rates is stunning. Knowing how important conference calls are when working from home, we ran some tests on the FaceTime HD webcam, and found it did a good job of producing clear footage, even in low-light conditions.
Performance-wise, this proved during our tests that it can pump out impressive performance without draining the battery, especially with the M2 Pro and M2 Max-equipped ones. That's while staying virtually silent. Crucially, we found the MacBook Pro 16-inch doesn’t throttle its performance when on battery power either. Throughout our time with the MacBook Pro, we used it plugged in and on battery, and didn’t notice any change in performance, even when running complex video editing tasks.
The base model M2 offers plenty of power at a decent price point for what you’re getting. Like many Apple products, there are options to add extra horsepower but expect to pay a pretty penny for those performance increases.
Read our full Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2023) review
Best Dell laptop for working from home
✅ You want a powerhouse performer: With best-in-class performance for a laptop of this size, the Dell XPS 14 cuts through just about any work project from spreadsheets to video editors.
✅ You’re looking for sleek and slim: One of the reasons we love the XPS 14 is its design - mere millimeters thick, lightweight, and ultra- portable at 14-inch. Ideal for home and office.
❌ You need a cheap WFH laptop: The XPS line is tailored for business, with a price-tag to match.
❌ You need a larger screen: Delightful though it is, if the 14-inch screen is a deal-breaker, it’s worth looking at the Dell XPS 15 and XPS 17. The ThinkPad T16 offers a similarly specced middle-ground.
Dell XPS laptops are always worth exploring when looking for a work laptop, and the Dell XPS 14 is a stand-out for working from home. We lean towards the more compact (but not too compact) laptop for home working, though if you’re looking for a larger screen, there are 15-inch and 17-inch versions, both of which are powerhouse machines.
In our own tests, the XPS 14 offered some of the best performance you can get on a laptop right now. Our benchmark tests showed it holds its own against the MacBook Pro, even if it can’t quite match the Apple device. Battery tests showed it lasted between seven and nine hours, depending on the workload, so you have the freedom to move locations throughout the working day. We also like the port selection here. With three Thunderbolt 4 ports supporting power delivery and DisplayPort output, a 3.5mm audio jack, and microSD slot, it offers good general connectivity for home office peripherals.
However, like many business-centric laptops, the XPS 14 is expensive - especially if you build out the base model. More of an investment for long-term use, than for sending a few emails and joining online meetings. On that score, this is a professional business-grade machine tailored for professional use in and outside the office.
Read our full Dell XPS 14 review
Best WFH laptop for data entry
✅ You want a comfortable typing experience: ThinkPads are known for quality keyboards, and the T16 offers exactly that, with good travel depth and grooved keys for better ergonomics.
✅ You want power: The ThinkPad T16 is an impressively powerful machine that never skipped a beat during our tests.
❌ You need a smaller laptop: The T16 is an admittedly bulky machine, and we’d recommend checking out the ThinkPad T14s as an alternative with a very comfortable keyboard.
❌ You need a lot of ports: With only two Thunderbolt ports, the selection here is a bit limited. A docking station may be needed if you’re hooking up a home monitor and other peripherals.
The newest addition to Lenovo’s ThinkPad T series of laptops, the T16 offers an enjoyable work experience with a beautiful display, long-lasting battery, great keyboard, and durable design. Well-balanced in size and weight and offering a rich feature set, the Lenovo ThinkPad T16 will meet the needs of many looking for a great work from home laptop.
The ThinkPad T16 will be a favorite for those who need to view and work with large amounts of data. We liked the laptop's large 16-inch 16:10 display, providing an extra bit of screen real estate that gave us a few extra rows of viewing space in spreadsheets and documents during testing. Pair that with a full keyboard and numpad, and you have a machine built for data entry, accountants, and those needing to interact with large quantities of data simultaneously.
Whether we were working on spreadsheets, responding to emails, editing photos, or conducting virtual meetings, the ThinkPad T16 never skipped a beat. When we threw benchmark tests at the T16 to see how it would handle more demanding tasks, we scored just above 7,500 for the standard multi-core test - lower than higher-end laptops, but it fared well as a business laptop and performs excellently for everyday business needs.
Made for durability, the T16 passed MIL-STD 810G durability testing and is ready for expeditions beyond your desk or couch. Lenovo has also built great security features such as ThinkShield, camera shutter, fingerprint scanner, and Windows Hello for facial recognition and Self-Healing BIOS.
We did find the trackpad experience a bit clunky, and the limited Thunderbolt 4 ports is a shame. But overall, we were quite pleased with the general performance, and enjoyed using it as our daily driver over several weeks.
Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad T16 review.
Best Chromebook for working from home
✅ You want enterprise-level security: The HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is still our pick for business users who need a secure device, thanks to its security-focused features and tools.
✅ You want a simple laptop for online tasks: As a Chromebook, this laptop is best for online tasks - if you spend your working day in the G Suite, it’s ideal.
❌ You need power: Compared to most laptops, Chromebooks are generally underpowered with very little storage, which is not ideal if you need to edit videos or run demanding software.
❌ You need to work offline: While you can use certain apps offline, the genius of the Chromebook is its online capabilities. If you’re working remotely, you’ll need connection to make the most of the device.
Not everyone needs Windows, and if you’re in the market for an enterprise-grade machine, the HP Elite Dragonfly has plenty to offer that makes it worth considering. By offering 12th Gen Intel vPro processing options, HP provides IS/IT departments the ability to provide multi-layered security for employees’ hardware. After testing out the kit, we can confidently say this is easily the best Chromebook for business we've tried.
With up to i7-1265U processing power, 32 GB of RAM, and Iris Xe graphics, the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook offers plenty of computing power for all-day work. It's one of the most powerful Chromebook we've ever tested, scoring high in our Kraken and Jetstream 2 tests. It also proved fast and snappy with just about any workload we threw at it. Aside from benchmarks, the Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is fast and snappy, handling just about any workload. In our experience, Google apps ran buttery smooth, and there was nothing in the way of serious slowdowns.
The only major criticism we have is its relatively few ports. But these days that feels like criticizing a laptop because it doesn't have an optical disc drive. It's the trade-off for having a thin laptop. And at least you get two Thunderbolt 4 ports along with an HDMI 2.0 output.
HP includes a year-long subscription to Parallels for Chrome OS for those still needing to run legacy Windows apps. While this laptop gets pricey at the top end of the SKUs compared to its Windows counterparts, it has plenty of reasons to consider it a viable work-from-home laptop.
Read our full HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook review.
