How long should a laptop last?

One of the most important to factors to consider when purchasing a laptop is the battery life. But how long should it last, and what kind of stamina should you be looking to avoid?

Having tested multiple laptops over the last few years, we’re in the perfect position to answer that question. So without further ado, here’s everything you need to know.

How long should a laptop last?

This is a very subjective question, and will differ depending on what kind of laptop you’re after.

For your average laptop designed for basic productivity workloads, we usually set a 10-hour target. This means the laptop can last through the working day without you needing to worry about plugging it into the mains.

However, we also appreciate that certain high-end features will drain a battery quicker. These include a high screen resolution, refresh rate beyond 60fps and having a discrete GPU.

That latter point is very important, as it means gaming laptops and portables aimed at content creation usually have an extremely poor battery life. A flagship gaming laptop will rarely be able to last longer than 5 hours on a single charge. Although that’s not too problematic considering you need to plug in a gaming laptop in order to get an ideal performance.

We don’t recommend trusting manufacturers when quoting battery life figures. Companies will usually list the maximum battery life the laptop is capable of. This is arguably misleading, as the battery life can be affected by your chosen settings.

A high screen brightness will drain a battery quickly, as will performing intense workloads such as playing video games or editing video. As a result, we suggest checking out our individual laptop reviews to check out average battery life figures. For our battery tests, we make sure to use the exact same benchmark for every laptop, while also setting the brightness to 150 nits to ensure a fair test. This means you can expect a more reliable battery estimate than what the likes of Apple, Dell and Lenovo will offer.

Another good way to ensure a laptop has a good battery life is to look out for the Intel Evo badge, which is found on select laptops. Intel awards its badge to laptops that pass its strict criteria, one of which is ‘long-lasting’ battery life. Of course, you’ll only find Intel-powered laptops with this certification since it won’t be awarded to machines with an AMD or Qualcomm chip.