Today, I want to share the criteria for choosing to buy a laptop for my office work. Office work here is for things like web, email, online video watching (streaming), meetings, Microsoft Office apps, and even some family photo editing is fine.
Related: What to look for when buying a Gaming Laptop
Here are 5 Criteria That I think really should be considered when you want to buy a new laptop in 2023, and I will go through the details, and explain why I think these criteria are the main focus when you looking to buy a laptop for your office work
What to look for when buying a Laptop:
Thin and Light, Beautiful Design
Well, isn’t the first thing to take care of is the configuration? If you only use a laptop for office work, you do not need to pay much attention to this criteria, because the configuration of nearly every latest laptop generation is enough, even redundant for all the needs of office work. There will also be situations where you have to deal with some very heavy files, usually Excel files, for example, an Excel file with hundreds of thousands of lines, then you will need another solution.
Back to the main topic, thin and light laptops are the most important criterion when you buy a laptop for office work because you have to carry it every day. In the morning, I put the device in my backpack, in the afternoon I also have to put it in my backpack and then put it on my shoulder to ride the bicycle back to my apartment. A light laptop will make you feel more confident at work, when you need to move around in the company to meet your colleagues or bring the device to a meeting, it is also more comfortable.
Beautiful design is obvious, who doesn’t like beauty right? especially for laptops. In my opinion, a beautiful laptop will help you increase work efficiency because you will feel excited when using it, excited to use the laptop to make money for you. Nowadays, to get a nice laptop, you don’t have to spend a lot of money. In the range of $600-$900, there are already many eye-catching models. Asus VivoBook, Acer Aspire, Lenovo IdeaPad Slim … are names you can refer to if you need a low-priced laptop that still looks good.
If you can, please go to the computer shops, such as Target, Walmart, etc. to see the laptop models in real life, test them, feel them, etc… If you like them, make a note of it and then go home to find out more, this is how I often told my family and friends when choosing an office laptop. If someone gives you a reference laptop with a very good price, and very powerful configuration, but you don’t like its design, you feel it’s ugly… then don’t buy that model.
Of course, the higher the price, the more beautiful the laptop will be, this is a common thing. My experience is that you should set a budget that you can spend, let’s say $1000, and then buy the best machine you can find with this amount of money.
High-resolution Screen
The screen is something you look at all the time, don’t underestimate it. Resolution is an important factor, and in my opinion, a good laptop must be from Full-HD 1080p or higher. You buy a device to use for 2-3 years or even longer, so think for the future as well. If possible, please upgrade to models using 2K screens and you will be addicted ?
Most office jobs do not need touchscreen functionality, so you should skip the touch models to save costs, that money to buy something more useful. Unless you know why you need a touchscreen.
Many laptops from $600 have thin border designs that look very sexy, you should choose to buy such devices. And there are many models with the same name but different years of launch, please get the product code and then go to Google to find out more and make sure you buy the newest model. Not because the old model is not good, it is still alive many years after its release, but if you can afford it, why not buy a new model, Right?
Long Battery Life
Battery from 8 hours of actual use or more is fantastic, enough for 1 working day without charging. Many of my colleagues (not in TheInsiderLab.Com but some normal office working companies) no longer have to carry the charger with them every time they need to run to meet customers, partners, go to the field to Information survey, because nowadays, the laptop’s battery life is more than enough. Some models can last up to a dozen hours, but of course, the price is also higher.
In short, the battery part is easy, just buy the models with the highest capacity within your budget. If you don’t have good battery life in your budget, don’t worry about that, because your job may not require that much battery life. 4-5 hours is still fine, enough to go to meetings, meet partners, then come back to the company to recharge. Many friends of mine, their laptop can only run for 2 hours but still works well for many years and they still making bank with that good old laptop 😀
More sharing is that laptops using U series chips (for example, Intel Core i5-XXXXU, or Intel Core i3-XXXXU) often have higher battery life because this chip is designed to consume less power. The U series chips are also enough for office needs, even redundant, so you don’t need to worry about the performance.
Webcam and Microphone
We are in 2021, so don’t forget this criterion, when you will have to have remote meetings, remote calls, not only with overseas partners but also with colleagues in the same company as you. The epidemic can break out at any time, you always have to be ready for Work From Home and a laptop with a good webcam and microphone will help a lot.
Not many reviews talk about this factor, so you may have a hard time finding reviews to read about webcams and microphones. The best way, in my opinion, is to go to the store and try it out in person.
Laptops with SSD Storage
High-end laptops from $900 and above already use SSD Storage, but laptops below $900 often use traditional HDD by default. HDD access data slower, open software longer, and wait time to boot is also longer. Also, it has a higher chance of failure because there are more moving physical components. If possible, give preference to models that use SSD drives.
Capacity is not a huge problem, 256GB is enough, 512GB is more than enough for most office needs. If you need to save more data, you can always use an external hard drive, save it to the cloud, or even save it to a network hard drive in your company rather than save it on your own computer.
That’s it, a few words to share with you guys who also work in the office. I hope this article helped you choose the right Laptop for your needs. You may also want to check out my article about Top 8 Best Laptops For Office Work 2022.
