Driverless vehicles are another potential landing spot for 5G, with cars and traffic signals all able to communicate with virtually no delay it would make for vastly safer travel. And returning to a simpler advancement, 5G should make high-speed home internet available to rural areas that can’t access it at present. While 5G isn’t going to change everything in the next year, it’s easy to get excited about what could be possible with it in the years to come.
No matter how stacked their specs are, even the best laptops are useless if they can't hold a charge. Fortunately, there are plenty of notebooks that go the distance. Using our Laptop Mag Battery Test 2.0, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, we've identified the laptops with the best battery life on the market. We're talking more than 9 hours of endurance, which should more than suffice for that cross-country flight, a long day of meetings or multiple, back-to-back classes.
Laptops with the best battery life can fall within the sub-$500 or the sub-$300 range, but other pricey laptops will often go on sale, like the HP Spectre x360 for $899 ($250 off). At IFA 2019, we saw a few laptops that could have a potentially long battery life. We recently reviewed the HP Envy 13, which is worth mentioning because it survived a solid 11:11. We are also currently reviewing the Dell Latitude 7300, which lasted 10 hours flat. With the Microsoft Event and Apple Event coming up in October, hopefully we'll see some new flagship products make the cut in battery life.
Note that, in February 2018, we switched from Laptop Battery Test 1.0, which surfed the web at a lower, 100 nits of brightness, so scores have gone down to reflect the more aggressive (and realistic) test.
The Lenovo ThinkPad T480 was the last one standing among an army of laptops, with a battery life of 17 hours and 19 minutes. Along with its spectacular battery life, you get a great keyboard and solid performance packed into a military durable chassis that can withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, dust and vibrations. You also get an Nvidia MX150 GPU, which is good for some light gaming or productivity apps.
Between the HP Envy x2’s built-in 4G LTE and its 14 hours and 22 minutes of battery life, you can easily go on long trips without worrying about charging your notebook. Its included HP Digital Pen felt natural and smooth to use, and the Envy’s attached pen holster makes it convenient to use on the go. On top of being extremely portable, the HP Envy x2 offers a solid detachable keyboard and an incredibly bright display.
Let me introduce you to one of the best Dell Latitudes around: The Latitude 7400 2-in-1 -- a beast of a business laptop that can last 13 hours and 8 minutes on a single charge. That battery is packed into a super sleek design, measuring just 0.6 inches thick, alongside a strong Core i7 processor. One of the coolest features that the Latitude 7400 boasts is its proximity sign-in function, so you can sign into your computer just by walking up to it.
The Dell XPS 13 still has the slimmest bezels imaginable thanks to its InfinityEdge design, and as a bonus, Dell managed to fit the webcam in the top bezel, which has been a long-awaited feature. And to accompany those thin bezels is a gorgeous 13.3-inch, 1080p display that covered 126 percent of the sRGB spectrum and emitted 357 nits of brightness. This baby is also super light and thin, coming in at 2.7 pounds and 0.3~0.46 inches thick, and boasts a powerful new Whiskey Lake processor.
The Lenovo Yoga C630 sports a gorgeous aluminum chassis paired with a flexible, 0.5-inch thin design. Its battery life lasted 12 hours and 14 minutes on our tests, and when you combine that with its 4G LTE connectivity, it’s great option for people who frequently travel. As an added bonus, the Yoga C630 also features a decently colorful 13.3-inch panel.
HP's Spectre x360 is back and sexier than ever, sporting a gorgeous Dark Ash Silver paint over its aluminum hood. To top off its design, its 13.3-inch, 1080p display blasted us with 150 percent of the sRGB color gamut, and the keyboard comforted us with a tactile 1.4 millimeters of travel. Not to mention that its battery lasted an epic 12 hours and 7 minutes on our tests.