Business notebooks are efficient solutions for modern New Work work models. […]

According to the digital association Bitkom, half of all employees in Germany currently work wholly or partly in the home office or mobile. Notebooks are very popular with the New Work work models.

Because workstation-like performance is rarely required for home office applications, higher-end notebooks are the best choice for almost all application scenarios. And they usually meet exactly the requirements that mobile users and frequent travelers expect from a business notebook: it should be as light and robust as possible, last a long time, have many interfaces and offer good performance.

These six had to prove in the comparative test what the current devices in this segment can do: Acer TravelMate P6 TMP614-52, Dynabook Tecra A40-J-12E, Fujitsu Lifebook U7311, HP ProBook 630 G8, Lenovo ThinkBook 13x and Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 .

At the time of testing, the devices cost between 1100 and 1600 euros, they each use a quad-core CPU from Intel and display at least a Full HD resolution on their 13.3 to 14 inch screens.

Upgrade to Windows 11

All business notebooks in the comparison met the system requirements for Windows 11, including a compatible CPU, TPM 2.0, and a UEFI BIOS.

However, not all laptops were equipped with the new operating system. Because Microsoft is only rolling out Windows 11 gradually, it will be available through the Windows Update feature on some Windows 10 laptops earlier than others.

This also explains the colorful mix of different Windows versions in our test candidates. Of the Windows 10 laptops, only the HP ProBook 630 G8 benefited from the upgrade during the test period and then ran Windows 11 Pro instead of Windows 10 Pro.

Weight, battery life and volume

If every gram counts in a business notebook, three test candidates are particularly recommended: Acer TravelMate P6 TMP614-52, Fujitsu Lifebook U7311 and Lenovo ThinkBook 13x each weighed only about 1.1 kilograms and thus fell from A particularly comfortable sleep B.

At nearly 1.3 kilograms, the HP ProBook 630 G8 and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 barely felt any heavier. Only the Dynabook Tecra A40-J-12E exceeded the 1.4 kilogram mark and was not as slim in dimensions as its competitors.

In addition to weight, battery life also plays a major role in mobility. The Acer TravelMate P6 TMP614-52 and the Dynabook Tecra A40-J-12E were particularly convincing in the test.

In simulated office use with PCMark 10, they achieved an excellent run time of over eleven hours.

At 10:44 a.m., the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 lagged behind the two, but in practice a full working day away from the mains with the trio should be possible without any problems, even when the notebook is under considerable pressure.

As expected, typical office tasks such as web searches, video conferencing or email correspondence did not cause any problems for the test candidates.

In such usage scenarios, the fans of the business laptops did not start at all or ran so short and quietly that we had the impression that we were mostly working with passively cooled notebooks.

Even at full load, which would rarely happen in practice, the majority of laptops could hardly be provoked beyond a subtle fan noise. Only the Fujitsu Lifebook U7311 got loud, reaching up to 45.1 dB(A).

Standard Feature Thunderbolt 4

With the exception of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4, all devices in the test had at least one Thunderbolt 4 port. The versatile interface has the appearance of a regular USB-C port, with a lightning bolt icon next to it to indicate that it offers more functionality than a standard port.

Thunderbolt 4 is backwards compatible with existing USB cables and devices such as external hard drives and fulfills three additional functions: With its bandwidth of 40 Gbit/s, the interface enables very fast data transfer, allows the connection of up to two 4K monitors or a 8K display and charges mobile devices at up to 100 watts, provided the laptop’s power supply can deliver the right amount of power.

In terms of interfaces, the Fujitsu Lifebook U7311 and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 were the two extremes in the comparison test: while the Fujitsu notebook had the most comprehensive set of interfaces, the Surface Laptop 4 had practically nothing except a USB and a USB port. C port Connection.

The Lenovo ThinkBook 13x, which was limited to 2x Thunderbolt 4, fared better. The classic USB stick then also fitted to the Lenovo laptop using the included USB adapter.

The following six business notebooks have com! professionally tested: