Choosing the best laptop for working from home can be daunting, thanks to the enormous range of makes and models available. However, away from the office, you'll need a business laptop that offers the performance you need to be productive. HP provides a range of laptops that are ideal for this purpose. Here, we aim to find the best HP laptops for working from home in the UK.
Time spent waiting for your laptop to finish a computational task so you can use the results for the next step in your business processes is lost revenue that you can only recover by extending your working day. Therefore, the primary focus when looking for the best HP laptop for home working is performance, but this will depend on the nature of your work.
Data processing, machine learning and information analysis require high computational throughput. Video editing or digital media creation requires high graphical processing performance. Simultaneously running multiple applications requires multicore processors that can handle sufficient threads for all these programs.
Home working needs
Working from home creates different challenges when using a computer compared to an office environment.
Using a laptop from home rather than the office means you'll spend extended periods staring at the screen rather than interacting with other people in face-to-face meetings. Now, communications will be predominately through the screen or on the phone.
Offices typically have ergonomic desks, controlled lighting and low noise levels. The home environment is often less well managed:
Space for the laptop and its peripherals can be more restricted
The computer may need to be packed up at the end of the day to allow you to use the area for other purposes
Home lighting is harder to manage, meaning the laptop screen may be subject to unwanted illumination from lamps or sunlight
Sound levels may also be more challenging; children and pets can create noise at the most awkward times
Ideally, it would help if you considered the following factors for managing the challenges of the home working environment:
Enough processing power to do your work efficiently and effectively.
A clear screen that can be comfortably viewed for extended periods, even where home lighting may create glare or the sun shining through windows creates reflections.
A good sound system that ensures you can hear video calls but that filters out background noises in your home working environment so everyone else can listen to you.
A good battery that will allow you to carry on working if there are any problems with your home mains powers or if your working position is out of reach of a socket
Great security protection applications to keep your business information safe outside of your company's professionally managed security solution.
Sufficient static memory to keep a local copy of all the data you need to do your job without relying on the internet to maintain a link to your business's data stores.
If you need to travel or periodically return to the office, then you'll also want a laptop that's small and light enough to carry with ease while rugged enough to handle bumps and knocks.
Ranking the best five home-working laptops
HP has developed a range of business laptops that deliver the performance home workers require to perform their duties. The range includes various computational and graphical performance options to meet each homeworker's needs.
We have provided this list of recommendations for the five best laptops for working from home in the UK to help you find your perfect business laptop from HP's extensive range. These laptops offer different combinations of performance and features to help meet your needs.
The HP website offers further help by allowing you to set a broad range of filter options to perform your search and find the perfect model.
Best 5 HP laptops for working from home
HP ZBook Fury G8 - Best big-screen high-performance laptop
Your display must be as big and bright as possible if you must spend studying documents or debugging spreadsheets for extended periods. If having a separate monitor is impractical or impossible, then theHP ZBook Fury G8 17.3 Mobile Workstation with Xeon and NVIDIA RTX A5000 has an impressive 17.3-inch screen.
This display offers full 4K ultra-high definition (UHD) to create crystal clear pictures with flawless accuracy and sharp detail. Over one billion possible colours recreate digital images with remarkable precision.
The HP ZBook™ Fury laptops come with a range of processor, memory, storage and display resolution options. This model features the Intel® Xeon® processor, designed for business-related computational processing that crunches vast data sets. This model is also available with Intel's i7 and i9 core processors if graphical processing by the central processor is more important for your work.
However, choosing this model with the Xeon processor means the laptop can handle complex graphical processing. This model includes the NVIDIA® RTX™ A5000 graphic processor unit that delivers exceptional performance for the most intricate image creation and manipulation tasks.
The design of this laptop aids in working on the move. It includes dual volume storage with an enormous 2 TB solid-state drive (SSD) supported with a second 512 GB SSD. This capacity will allow offline data processing tasks with ease. In addition, HP's suite of security applications is available to protect such critical and potentially commercially sensitive information.
The SSD storage uses PCIe® NVMe™ technology, up to six times faster than traditional SATA SSD technology and more than twenty times faster than old-style hard disk drives.
Because working from home often means juggling home and job activities and coping with distractions, accidents may occasionally happen. This laptop features a spill-resistant keyboard that can handle minor spillages.
The powerful processing performance and productivity features make this one of the best laptops for working from home.
HP ZBook Studio G9 - Best graphical processing laptop
Suppose your homework is in the creative industry, where graphical processing is the focus of your day-to-day job. In that case, you need a laptop with the best processing performance to maximise productivity. TheHP ZBook Studio G9 16" Mobile Workstation with i9 and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070 delivers professional performance, from real-time rendering to data visualisation.
The outstanding graphical processing capability comes from NVIDIA's RTX 3070 cards with 8 GB of dedicated onboard memory. This card is one of NVIDIA's latest and most potent General Processor Units (GPU). It has been designed for complex graphical processing operations, delivering the results of complex computations in near real-time to boost productivity.
Graphics-based tasks require a display that will replicate images accurately. This laptop features the latest Wide Quad Ultra Extended Graphics Array (WQUXGA) technology with its 3840 x 2400 resolution. In addition, Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology delivers impressive colour replication with its high dynamic range.
Other great homeworker features include HP's suite of security applications to protect your work, a spill-resistant full-size keyboard to cope with everyday incidents, and a three-year limited warranty to provide peace of mind.
The exceptional processing power packed into this laptop does not compromise its portability. Its low weight and slim case combine with an impressive twelve-hour battery life. These features make this laptop ideal for working at home or on the road.
Like all HP's business laptops, this model features the latest connectivity technology, including support for the latest WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 standards to get the best possible data rates.
If your work revolves around digital graphics processing, this ranks as the best laptop for home working.
HP ZBook Firefly G9 - Best battery performance laptop
If working from home requires regular reliance on battery power, then theHP ZBook Firefly G9 16" WUXGA Mobile Workstation offers an impressive thirteen hours of off-grid use that will cope with a long day's work without mains power.
When mains power is available, HP's ultra-fast charge system allows the battery to go from discharged to 50% charge in just thirty minutes.
This long battery life doesn't require any compromise of processing power. Intel's 12th Gen Core i7 processor can handle arduous workflows. In addition, its multicore technology allows you to run several processor-heavy applications simultaneously without loss of performance to help you maintain high productivity, whatever your processing requirements.
HP ZBook Fury G9 - Best heavy workflow performance laptop
If your work revolves around intense workflows such as editing 8K videos, 3D rendering or training machine learning models, you'll need a computer to handle this workload. TheHP ZBook Fury G9 16" Mobile Workstation with i9 and NVIDIA RTX™ A3000 is an excellent example of such a laptop.
Processing power is thanks to a 12th Gen Intel Core i9 processor. This processor can run 24 threads across 16 cores at speeds up to 5.0 GHz using the state-of-the-art Intel WM690 chipset.
An impressive 32 GB of DDR5 ram delivers data transfer speeds of 4800 mega-transfers per second to support processing performance, backed with a 1 TB SSD using the high-speed PCIe® NVMe™ technology.
The 16-inch display offers 1920 x 1200 resolution with its Wide Ultra Extended Graphics Array (WUXGA) technology with 100% sRGB that includes in-plane switching (IPS) and anti-glare technology and a slim-bezel design.
This laptop also includes various features supporting collaborative work across a dispersed homeworking team. For example, an artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced auto-framing camera delivers excellent image quality under challenging lighting conditions while the audio system blocks background noises.
This business laptop comes with a long list of pre-installed productivity, support and security applications, making set-up quick and simple.
Suppose a small physical footprint is your priority, or you are looking for a laptop that is easy to carry around. Options that won't require you to compromise on processing power are available. For example, the HP ZBook Firefly G8 14" FHD Mobile Workstation with i7 and NVIDIA T500 is 32.3 x 21.46 cm and has a slimline depth of 1.79 cm. Weighing around 1.35 kg, it offers excellent mobility.
Processing power is courtesy of Intel's 11th Generation Core i7 processor, which runs at speeds of up to 4.7 GHz. However, the exceptional graphical processor comes from the integral next-generation NVIDIA Quadro® T-Series graphics card.
The processing capability means you can open large files and run multiple applications simultaneously for fast multitasking to maximise productivity.
The display might be a compact 14 inches, but it still delivers full-high-definition (FHD) images on a colour-accurate DreamColor display. Also, an anti-glare screen makes viewing comfortable when used on the move.
Which will be your work-from-home laptop?
Professional business users looking for a new laptop for a home working role will need dependable performance and useability features. For example, do you process vast data sets or generate high-resolution images? You'll need a laptop to handle your work quickly and efficiently.
Choosing the best laptop for working from home will require understanding your workflow priorities. These may be computational processing performance or graphical processing power, the biggest possible screen or small size for portability.
If you are looking for the best home-working laptop, HP has a model that will be perfect for your business's requirements.
About the Author
Stephen Mash is a contributing writer for HP Tech Takes. Stephen is a UK-based freelance technology writer with a cybersecurity and risk management background.
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