TL;DR
- The perfect home office is built around a good notebook, and look no further than a Dell Plus laptop to cater for all your needs in that respect
- Other key potential pieces of the ideal home office setup include an external monitor, a docking station, as well as accessories to facilitate better video chats such as headphones or a speaker
- The Dell store offers competitive prices on all these PC accessories – as well as the laptop itself, of course – with holiday sales providing some even more tempting bargains if you're looking to get going with your home office in 2026
You might be looking to create the perfect home office for yourself as 2026 comes into view, or maybe your partner, or another family member, is doing this, and you may want some inspiration for a gift to give them towards that end this holiday season.
Whatever the case, this article is going to cover how to achieve that ideal home office setup, pointing out the key elements that comprise it – and how they won't cost the earth if you're buying from Dell.
If you're running on a strict budget – for yourself, or your holiday gifts for others – the good news is that all the hardware mentioned here is affordable, and some accessories are very cheap indeed. Of course, you'll never get a laptop for peanuts – not a quality product, anyway – but Dell's notebooks are competitively priced, especially with a holiday season offer. That goes for all the hardware and accessories covered here.
So, whether you're a student, or self-employed, or just someone looking to put together a home office setup to take care of their everyday life admin, read on and find out how Dell can equip you with everything you need – or assist you in finding a great gift to help a loved one achieve that same goal.
How can I ensure the engine of a home office – the laptop it's built around – is a good piece of hardware?
A surefire way of getting the notebook you need is to choose a Dell Plus laptop.
When it comes to the computer – which is the cornerstone of any home office setup, of course – most people usually run with a laptop. Why? Because frankly, a good laptop is capable of handling all home office duties – and more besides – at a cheaper price point than a desktop PC. It also takes up far less space on your desk – you won't have to stuff it under the desk, in fact (where a PC gets clogged with dust and perhaps furballs, it should be noted) – and you can take it with you on your travels, which you very much can't with a desktop unit.
And clearly you want a good quality device, meaning an obvious recommendation is a Dell Plus laptop. These notebooks are powerful performers across a range of tasks, while carrying affordable price tags, particularly with the discounts Dell applies for the holiday season. Not to mention the fact that Dell's online store (in the US and UK) will price match any other vendor of its laptops, in the event you stumble across a cheaper asking price elsewhere.
The key aspect of a Dell Plus laptop is the Intel Lunar Lake processors that these portables are built around. These Core Ultra 200 series chips are very speedy and seriously capable for multi-tasking, so whatever apps you want to run simultaneously, you'll be good to go, whether that's office apps – documents and spreadsheets – or a load of browser tabs, or maybe photo or video editors.
In fact, Dell Plus laptops are a particularly strong choice for creatives beavering away at personal projects at home, or engaging in freelance work, as these Copilot+ devices have a bunch of extra AI-powered features to help supercharge creativity in various different ways. All of this is driven by the beefy NPU in the Lunar Lake processor, which also facilitates other exclusive AI features – like powerful search functions to help find files or other content on the laptop much faster.
Whether you're an entrepreneur with your own business, or a student getting your degree, or a self-employed person working at home, the Core Ultra 200 processor in a Dell Plus laptop will make your life easier.
Dell Plus laptops also benefit from a sharp (2.5K resolution) high-quality screen, with tech to make viewing easy on the eyes (ComfortView Plus for low blue light, and also an anti-glare coating). This makes these notebooks perfect for longer sessions in the home office, when there's a difficult deadline to meet. Similarly, marathon bouts of typing will be a lot less tiring on the fingers with Dell's keyboards, which boast a pleasant feel in terms of the key presses, as well as offering a bright backlight, and a sturdy construction.
Indeed, the overall build quality of a Dell Plus laptop is excellent – these are premium devices (with an aluminum chassis), but without the premium cost. And given that a Dell notebook is designed to last you five years (or more), when you work out the value for money over time based on Dell's asking prices, it's a tempting proposition.
How can I have a bigger screen if my laptop display isn't quite large enough for my needs?
You can easily hook up your Dell Plus laptop to an external monitor, with multiple options for connectivity therein. It can certainly be helpful to have a large-screen monitor for creative tasks like photo editing, or to use an external monitor as a second display for turbocharged multi-tasking, working on both screens (laptop display and monitor) simultaneously.
Dell Plus laptops offer three choices for connecting a monitor, including a Thunderbolt 4 port (using DisplayPort 2.1) or a USB-C connector (using DisplayPort 1.4), or alternatively an HDMI 2.1 port. You can use any of those to plug in your monitor, and ergonomically speaking in a home office setup, it can be a good decision to use a monitor with your notebook too. Pick one that offers a range of different heights and other adjustments, like the Dell 24 Plus Adjustable Stand Monitor, which is a very competitively priced option among the numerous monitors sold by Dell in the US and UK.
How can I connect a whole lot of accessories to my laptop, if I have not just an external monitor, but a bunch of other peripherals too?
In scenarios where your home office might have a plethora of accessories to connect to your laptop – such as maybe a monitor (or two), mouse, printer and scanner, maybe a desktop mic or speaker, and so on – and you don't have enough ports, you can use a docking station.
The Dell Pro Dock (SD25 in the UK, or WD25 in the US) bristles with an array of ports, including six USB connectors (4 x USB-A, 1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, and 1 x USB-C Multi-function DisplayPort) and three further monitor ports (2 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x HDMI 2.1). There's also a 2.5Gb Ethernet port for connecting your laptop directly to the router with a wired connection (for extra speed).
To say you're spoilt for choice in terms of connectivity is an understatement, and for those with a whole load of accessories, a docking station is a smart move to facilitate a more complicated home office setup (without having to connect or disconnect things all the time).
Another benefit here is that if you have a lot of cables, a dock can help keep your desk looking neat and tidy – and a clean, organized office space is conducive to productivity, with clutter being somewhat off-putting for many folks.
How can I take calls or video chats more effectively in my home office?
If you're going to be talking to other people (clients, perhaps, if you're a freelancer) a good deal from your home office, then you might want to pick up a good headset, and for a better video chatting experience, you could even add a standalone webcam to your setup.
These accessories are available from Dell's online store, where you can buy, as one example, a Dell Pro Wireless Headset (model WL3024 in the US and UK), which is a wire-free solution with a built-in mic and AI-based noise cancelation, all for an affordable price. Alternatively, you could run with a Dell Pro Desktop Speakerphone, or a Dell Pro Premium Conferencing Soundbar that attaches to an external monitor (if you opted for one, as discussed earlier) for a truly seamless solution to your videoconferencing needs, if audio clarity is an important requirement.
A standalone Dell Webcam (which again attaches to that external monitor) is also a great addition for those who put a premium on video chatting and want the best visual experience. Note that the Dell store offers webcam and headphone (or speakerphone) bundles for extra savings if you're going this route.
How can I round off my perfect home office setup?
Other accessories that might be worth considering when putting the finishing touches to a home office setup are a good-quality mouse and a surge protector.
A surge protector is a bit of a no-brainer if you've got a lot of hardware – a laptop, monitor, and various accessories – in your office room, and you want to keep it safe from any possible nastiness related to power spikes from the grid. The Dell online store in the US offers a number of surge protectors from Eaton Tripp which don't cost much at all for the basic models.
If you prefer not to use a laptop trackpad, which is likely when you're sitting at a desk with plenty of space for mousing, then the Dell store sells a low-priced wireless mouse (model WM126 in the US and UK) that'll help keep your desk cable-free and tidy.
If you think a Dell Plus laptop is for you, find out more on the Dell website: US readers click here, and UK readers here.
And there’s one more thing to know before you buy: Dell offers a price match guarantee. To learn more about the Dell price match and price guarantee, including the terms, exclusions and restrictions, US readers can click here and UK readers here.