No one likes shackled to an outlet all day, or worse, finding out that you don’t have your charging cable and you’re stuck with a useless, dead laptop. As such, if a laptop can manage to last hours upon hours on a charge while still delivering excellent performance, it deserves the biggest, shiniest trophy one can earn. We test our laptops using our in-house Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness until the device conks out. Which one of our laptops ended up having the best battery life, surpassing the runtimes of 61 notebooks, Chromebooks, workstations, and more? Stick around to find out!
1. The Getac S410 — 29 hours and 38 minutes
No, Getac isn’t as well known as Apple, Dell, HP and other laptop OEMs, but it crushed all of the popular brands by a landslide. The Getac S410 lasted a whopping 29 hours and 38 minutes! That’s nearly 30 hours — wow! To give you some perspective on how spectacular this battery life is, the average laptop runtime is 10 hours. Getac, launched in 1989 as a joint venture with GE Aerospace, has roots in the defense electronics industry. In other words, if you need a fleet of rugged computing products for your military base, Getac has your back. In fact, the US Air Force selected Getac as its trusted rugged manufacturer in 2021. So if you’re a soldier, free solo climber, a storm chaser, a rough-terrain camper, or anything else that requires you to battle unforgiving conditions, Getac is one of your go-to OEMs for laptops, tablets, and other devices. The Getac S410 rugged laptop has a starting price of $1,600, (opens in new tab) but the one we reviewed is packed with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 GPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch FHD display. It will set you back $4,001! But with nearly 30 hours of battery life, solid performance, and an ultra-durable chassis, it may be worth every penny (especially if you want your laptop to escape a hostile environment unscathed).
2. M2 Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch) — 18 hours and 20 minutes
While the aforementioned Getac laptop may only appeal to a niche cohort, this Apple laptop casts a much wider net. The M2-equipped, 13-inch MacBook Pro will seduce anyone who needs a powerhouse that can handle on-the-go editing, design, and production work. This bad boy lasted a shocking 18 hours and 20 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test. You can thank the MacBook Pro’s power-efficient M2 chip for delivering such an impressive battery runtime. The M2 also wowed us with its breakneck Geekbench 5.4 and gaming performance scores. Plus, it has a lightning-fast SSD and a good webcam (the latter seems to be a rarity among laptops these days). The unit we reviewed costs $1,899 (opens in new tab). It’s equipped with the 8-core M2 chip (which features a 10-core GPU), 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and a 2560 x 1600-pixel, 13.3-inch display. The cheapest configuration you can get has a starting price tag of $1,299. Our only complaint is that we wish it had more ports and we’re getting bored of the same tired design.
3. Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 — 16 hours and 7 minutes
The Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1 is a business convertible laptop designed to manage heavy workloads that entry-level laptops can’t keep up with. The Latitude 9520 2-in-1 lasted a whopping 16 hours and 7 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test. The configuration we reviewed came with an Intel Core i7-1185G7 GPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 15-inch, 1080p display. Speaking of the display, this Dell laptop is a 2-in-1, so it has a touchscreen panel. Plus, it can transform into a number of different postures, including tent and tablet modes. Aside from its battery life, we fawned over the Latitude 9250’s crisp, bright, colorful display, impressive audio, quality design, and spectacularly designed chassis (its design reminded our review of a chromed-out Audio R8 sports coupe). The unit we tested costs $2,803, but don’t worry, it has a starting price of $1,989 (opens in new tab), which is much more palatable, especially if you don’t need the powerful specs packed in our configuration. Although the Latitude’s battery life is stellar, it’s worth noting that its performance scores and webcam are mediocre.
Bottom line
Since we listed the laptops with the best runtimes we’ve tested for 2022, it’s only fair that we call out the laptop with the worst battery life, too. That crown goes to — drumroll, please — HP Pavilion Plus 14. It’s not even a gaming laptop, but still, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 disappointed us greatly with a measly battery runtime of only 5 hours and 10 minutes. Oof! Be prepared to be shackled to an outlet with that one. Now that 2022 is winding down, we look forward to seeing which laptop OEMs will deliver battery life runtimes beyond our wildest imagination in 2023. Our money is still on Dell and Apple!
