Laptops With the Best Battery Life
Life is too short to worry about whether you'll make it through the day on a single charge. These laptops from Acer, Dell, LG, and more can help.
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There are a few things you can do to stretch the battery life of a laptop.
But if you want a device that delivers a full day’s work without any fussing around, you’ll want to buy one that offers great battery life right out of the box.
As of June 2023, more than 30 laptops in our ratings (out of nearly 200 in total) have batteries that can last more than 16 hours off a single charge while doing productivity work like browsing the web.
Two full days without having to grab a power cord sounds okay to us.
Naturally, we test the battery life of every laptop that enters our labs. According to Antonette Asedillo, who oversees that testing, the protocol is designed to resemble real-world use.
We start by setting the brightness of the computer’s display to 200 nits, a level that’s bright enough to be seen easily both indoors and out. Then, with the battery fully charged, we cycle the laptop through a series of 10 web pages, downloading them continuously until the laptop shuts down.
The web pages are stored on a server in our lab and transmitted over a WiFi network set up specifically for this purpose. We use the laptop’s default web browser, rather than a third-party browser, to be more representative of how we think everyday consumers work.
In a second test, we play 4K video (locally stored, not streamed over the internet, because using WiFi can deplete the battery even faster) until the power is fully drained.
“It’s a good way to gauge how well a battery will hold up during heavier workloads,” Asedillo says.
While your actual battery life will vary depending on what you’re doing, what’s important is that we test each laptop the same exact way so you can compare models with confidence.
The following list highlights laptops from brands like Acer, Dell, and LG, listed in descending order. If you’re shopping for a laptop with killer battery life, one of these should be on your list.
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Just like LG Grams of the past several years, the latest edition of the laptop delivers very strong battery life. How strong? This year’s 14-inch model lasts nearly 27 hours while browsing the web and 19 hours in our more demanding test of watching 4K video.
Not bad at all.
Add the fact that the LG Gram is highly portable, weighing a feathery 2.2 pounds (which is light for a laptop this size), and you’ve got a very good laptop indeed.
Our model has an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and 512GB of solid-state storage. Those specs are all about average here in mid-2023.
You may not know it, but the LG Gram is available in several different sizes, including 17- and 16-inch models, which also deliver good battery life for their sizes.
Another long-running line of laptops is the Dell Inspiron, which is aimed at everyday consumers looking for value more than the highest-end specs. (For that, Dell has the XPS line of laptops.) As it turns out, this latest version of the Dell Inspiron delivers very impressive battery life of nearly 26 hours while browsing the web and just over 16 hours doing more demanding tasks. Nice.
Beyond the all-day battery life is good all-around performance. Our model has an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and 512GB of solid-state storage. Nothing earth-shattering there, but it’s more than enough for typical productivity tasks like crunching numbers in Microsoft Excel, editing text documents in Word or Google Docs, and churning through email after email.
The Acer Swift line of laptops usually delivers lengthy battery life, and this latest 14-inch model is no exception. Featuring an Intel Core 5 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of solid-state storage, this Acer Swift 3 has a battery that lasts more than 23 hours in our web browsing test and more than 13 hours in our high-res video test.
In other words, if you’re looking for a laptop with gobs of battery life, you can’t go wrong with the Acer Swift 3.
There are other things to like about this laptop beyond its multiday battery life, including its light weight (a hair under 3 pounds); high-res, color-accurate display (which will come in handy while streaming video); and useful array of built-in ports including HDMI and USB-C.
The 14-inch MSI Summit has a lot to offer, not least its battery, which lasts more than 17 hours in our web browsing tests and nearly 14 hours in our more demanding hi-res video test.
Our model has an Intel Core i7 processor, 32GB of memory, and 1 terabyte of solid-state storage, all of which are high-end specs here in the spring of 2023. It’s a 2-in-1 convertible, as well, giving you the flexibility to use it as a tablet.
It weighs about 3.5 pounds, which is better than average figures for a laptop this size.
