Best battery life laptop 2023 – our top picks

The laptop with easily the best battery life overall is the latest version of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, equipped with M2 Max chipset. Such is the efficiency of Apple’s newest chipsets, that when all battery saving features are enabled and the laptop is only being used for general web browsing etc., this MacBook pro is capable of lasting over 18 hours! For those unfamiliar with laptop duration, this is ridiculously good.

It’s particularly impressive in that the M2 Max chip is quite powerful – ideal for creative rendering tasks and the like. Although it is capable of gaming, most games still aren’t well optimised for MacOS, though you’ll be able to run some less demanding Mac-optimized titles on it, if not the latest AAA releases. The 120Hz maximum refresh rate of the display also helps in this area.

As with virtually every MacBook the aesthetic design and build quality of these laptops are exceptional. The webcam and mic quality are solid, both the keyboard and trackpad are sturdy and of a good build, and the audio quality of the 6 speaker setup is far and above the best you’ll find in any laptop.

The Liquid Retina XDR display the laptop comes with has a resolution of 3024 x 1964 and a 254ppi, and one of the highest max brightness values you’ll find on any laptop: a standard 1,000 nits or around 1,600 nits in HDR mode. It covers 100% of the sRGB spectrum and has a high degree of color accuracy – making it ideal for colo-creatives in this space.

Really the only major issue with this device is the price. Like all MacBook Pros, the markup you pay for the brand is quite significant, however if you can afford it, you can rest assured that you’re getting the most high quality device available.

The thinner and lighter but not quite as powerful of Apple’s laptop range, the 13.6-inch MacBook Air (2022 version) has a terrific battery life of around 14 hours of non-strenuous use with battery saving settings enabled. Not quite as impressive as the MacBook Pro, but still one of the best available on the market.

Once again, there aren’t a great deal of downsides to this machine, and we can even say (amazingly for an Apple product) that the base-model variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage is actually reasonably priced, though if you want to upgrade either the memory or the storage this does cost quite a bit extra.

The M2 chip is powerful for a general-use, non-gaming machine, and the integrated GPU can handle light rendering tasks for any video/photo/audio editors looking for a portable device. The high resolution (2560 x 1664) is very bright (capping out at around 490 nits) meaning you can use it outside on a bright day, and the 100% sRGB coverage and high color accuracy mean it’s ideal for color-accurate work on the sRGB gamut. The webcam ‘notch’ which cuts intothe top of the screen is a bit irritating at times, but aside from this its a beautiful display.

As with all Apple laptops the build quality and aesthetic design is the best of any laptop out there. Weighing a mere 2.7lbs and with wafer thin dimensions, it’s very easily carried in a small bag – perfect for using on the move. The trade-off is the smaller 13.6” screen but if you’re not fussed about this then it’s ideal.

The speaker quality is good, if not as good as the MacBook Pro line, but it’s still up there with the best of the Windows laptops. The webcam quality is above average, though again not quite as good as the chunkier Pro. All-in-all, a terrific premium machine.

If you want a laptop for coding that has a long battery life, then you should check out the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 – which we think is one of the best laptops for programmers.

The laptop sports a 16-inch display with a 3840 x 2400 resolution – so, much like some of the best 16-inch laptops, you can expect it to deliver good visuals. Plus, the display is a touchscreen, which should give you more intuitive controls. Further, it is an IPS display, which means you can get wider viewing angles.

Under the hood, the laptop comes with an Intel 12th Gen i7-12800H processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU – a combo that is powerful enough to run resource-intensive programming software with ease. Plus, if you play video games on your laptop, then this laptop should be able to handle those effortlessly.

Now, usually, gaming-oriented laptops have mediocre battery life. However, depending on your usage, you should be able to get 8 to 10 hours of battery life from this laptop, which, considering that it packs a lot of power, is quite decent.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022 variant) is one of the best gaming laptops on the market if you’re looking for an easily portable device, which can also be used for creatives on the move. It’s often very reasonably priced – being frequently on offer, and has the best battery life of any gaming laptop, which are notoriously poor in this department due to the power-hungry nature of their GPUs and CPUs.

Although a 2023 model of the G14 is available with the latest Ryzen 7000 series CPU and RTX 40-series graphics cards, however these are more power hungry devices, with a battery life a couple of hours lower than you’d get with the 2022 mode, plus cost considerably more money.

The highest powered 2022 G14 comes with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU and either Radeon RX 6700S or RX 6800S graphics cards, so it’s an all-AMD affair. Even the more powerful RX 6800S model (which performs about the same as an Nvdia RTX 3070 laptop) has a hugely impressive 10 hour battery life when being used for general purpose tasks on battery saving mode – obviously gaming on battery alone is not recommended (as with any gaming laptop) and will sap the battery life in a fraction of the time.

The Zephyrus G14 looks great, and has decent build quality, even if it doesn’t quite match up to the Mac models on this page. The keyboard is merely okay and the keys can feel a bit loose and cheap, though are still nice to type on, the trackpad is however top-notch. The speakers are definitely above average for a gaming laptop, though admittedly still inferior to those on a MacBook. It has a good array of ports including a MicroSD card reader. The microphone and 720p webcam are pretty rudimentary, but more or less than standard you’d expect in gaming laptop.

The 16:10 1600p screen is generally very good: it is nice and bright, covers 100% of the sRGB gamut, and has a 5ms response time (with Overdrive enabled) which is the best you will find in a laptop of this size, and effectively removes all ghosting at this refresh rate. Regarding the refresh rate we would have liked to have seen something higher than 120Hz for those competitive shooters, however it’s still quite enough for most gamers.