Laptops for Business

How to Choose the Perfect Business Laptop for Your Workforce

Are you looking to arm your employees with the perfect laptop? Then, it would help if you considered a business laptop instead of a consumer one. Business laptops are designed for more portability and feature high-quality components to enhance their durability as compared to consumer ones. This is probably why they’re also more expensive. So, compromising with budget laptops may mean compromising productivity for years. You cannot afford to make such a mistake at an initial stage. Let’s understand the essential specifications to consider while buying a business laptop like battery life, processor, memory, storage, and display resolution.

Cheapest is not the Best

It would be best to focus on long-term investment and productivity while buying a laptop for business purposes. Business laptops can cost you anywhere between ₹40,000 to ₹300,000, which basically give you plenty of options to choose from for any business need.

While buying a laptop for your employees, you should focus on a device that will help increase employee productivity. By skimping on the budget and purchasing a lower configuration, you might end up providing them with a slower machine, which will slow them down and reduce their output. For instance, if they’re working remotely on multiple tasks, attending meetings and online calls, all from the same device, then they need decent processing power. Cheap laptops will not be able to handle it. It would help if you considered the perfect price-to-performance ratio on the laptops you buy. So review their specifications thoroughly before finalizing.

Some Really Good Business Laptops

Business laptops can be categorized into three types according to their usage–Basic, Above-average, and Superior. If you have a strained budget go for HP ProBook 430 G8 Notebook PC, but, if you aim to invest for the best productivity, then you could check out the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G8.

What to Look for in a Business Laptop

Let’s discuss the key factors to consider while planning to buy business laptops. If you are on the verge of enabling a remote workforce with performance-oriented business machines, you must carefully review the below points.

Battery Life: A good quality battery that lets your laptop run for 16+ hours can make a laptop expensive. If you compare such a laptop with a typical one with 3-4 hours of battery backup, then you’ll realize how much more output you can expect from your employees. Premium laptops like HP ZBook Firefly 14 G8 Mobile Workstation can enable your workforce to work all day with 15+ hours of battery backup. So regardless of budget, while buying a business laptop, do not compromise on battery backup.

CPU: This is the engine of your laptop that ensures performance and speed. So, make sure to opt for the latest generation of processors, or one gen down at the most, be it Intel’s latest 11th Gen CPUs or AMD’s Ryzen CPUs. For Data Scientists and Machine Learning, CPU power is a must need.

Storage: Here, SSDs are better than HDDs and give a considerable boost to the laptop’s performance, to the tune of 10-20x faster. Plus, they consume much less power than HDDs. Even in SSDs, opt for NVME M.2 SSDs. Don’t go for anything less than 512 GB capacity in storage capacity.

Cooling Capability: This is something that often gets ignored, but the thing to note is that the slimmer a laptop gets, the worse its cooling capacity becomes. If a laptop starts getting warm, its performance throttles down. So, do take a closer look at a laptop’s cooling/ventilation design. Laptops with improper cooling systems often become noisy upon extended usage. So, you must go for a laptop with a proper cooling/ventilation system, which can be used for long hours without any overheating issues.

Memory: Most laptops come with 8 GB DDR4 RAM, which is pretty decent for most business and professional tasks. If your employees need to do graphics designing or video editing tasks regularly, then 16 GB is recommended. Data Scientists may need even higher memory.

Connectivity: Of course, you want your laptop to be compatible with all the latest connectivity features. A business laptop must feature USB 3.2 ports with WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. USB Type-C connectivity is also a must for laptops these days.

Portability: As laptops with long battery backup tend to have more battery cells, it is usually heavier. Some premium laptops are both lightweight and give long battery life.

Durability: There are multiple factors to be considered here. One is whether the laptop has an all-plastic body or is a metallic body. The latter will obviously be more expensive but far more durable. Another aspect is whether a laptop has undergone stringent MIL-Grade testing. Many business laptops offer that, making them far more durable and rugged than other laptops.

Security: This is a very critical consideration in business laptops. The number of security threats is rising, and business laptops will carry many crucial data that could cause a lot of damage if it gets stolen or corrupted. You need a device that can offer protection right from the BIOS level. Moreover, nowadays, even webcams can be hacked, enabling hackers to spy on you. Therefore, having a laptop with a camera shutter makes a lot of sense here. So look for laptops with built-in security features that offer protection from the latest security threats.

Display: Imagine you’re at an airport or a public place and working on your laptop, and people are sitting around you peeping at your screen from the sides. It’s tough to hide your screen from them, making it a security issue. Here’s where you can look for laptops that provide narrower viewing angles. This ensures that people who’re sitting on the sides are not able to see your screen. The HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 Notebook features a 1080p FHD display in the 13.3-inch small form factor powered with the latest AMD Ryzen 5 CPU.

Webcam: Look for laptops with webcams that offer a decent resolution, as remote working and video-based meetings have become commonplace. It’s therefore crucial that your employees look their best in a meeting to create a good impression on your customers. A grainy image will not really be good for your company’s professional image.

Noise Cancellation Features: This is another aspect that has become important in business laptops. As most people have been working from home during this pandemic, they’re bound to have a lot of disruptive background noises during meetings. In such a case, you need a laptop with noise cancellation features so that your employees can attend meetings without disruptions.

What kind of Budget To Consider While Buying Business Laptops

If you go by the quality requirements of business laptops, you should have a budget of at least ₹90,000 or more. If you have a decent budget, go for premium business laptops like the HP ZBook Firefly Mobile Workstation series, perfect business machines. Also, remember that laptops will cost you more if you opt for a model with a dedicated GPU. Many business category laptops come with a decent in-built GPU and are enough for most business needs.

It is better to invest more in CPU, Battery, Build Quality, and Cooling features while buying business notebooks.

Check out https://store.hp.com/in-en/default/hp-business-offers for some good deals by HP.

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