Best workstation laptops in 2022 | Laptop Mag

The best workstation laptops are the only laptops that can handle crunching hordes of data or video-editing big files in 4K.

Of class, the best workstation laptops are targeted toward professional person users who need to run graphics-intensive apps. The key difference betwixt some of the best gaming laptops around and a workstation is its GPU, as it’southward primarily optimized for tasks such as pattern and 3D rendering instead of sheer gaming functioning. And workstations generally have stronger CPUs too, like an Intel Core i9 or Intel Xeon processor, instead of the typical Core i7 you lot’d find in most gaming laptops.

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To speed up your workflow in apps like Adobe Premiere or Blender, your workstation needs a beastly processor (such as Intel’south Xeon series); a vibrant, color-authentic brandish; and a powerful GPU. If you’re looking for a beast with a 30-series GPU, meet our beginner’due south guide to Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series mobile GPUs. Looking for something on the artistic front? — Bank check out our Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 review. Also, see our Apple MacBook Pro 2022 (fourteen-inch) review.

While the quest to procure the all-time workstation laptop is no feeble task, we will help y’all pick the best system for your needs and budget. Whether you need a huge, vibrant display or an affordable powerhouse, here are the best workstation laptops y’all can buy right now.

What are the all-time workstation laptops?

The best workstation laptop that you tin can buy correct now is the MSI WS66 10TMT. The WS65 packs a powerful 10th-Gen Cadre i9 processor and Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q GPU into a superslim, durable chassis. Acme that off with solid battery life and a gorgeous 15.half-dozen-inch, 4K display. Meanwhile, the HP ZBook Studio x360 G5 is also an excellent selection, equally you’ll get an indomitable beast with an Intel Xeon processor and a Quadro P1000 GPU. Between its dazzling 4K brandish, bouncy keyboard and long battery life, the ZBook Studio is quite amazing all around. Not to mention that its chassis is military-durable and pretty sexy at the same time.

If you’re looking for a 17-inch workstation, you can’t go wrong with the Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro W700G3T. The StudioBook Pro has i of the nearly stunning designs I’ve e’er seen on a laptop. In its gorgeous, 0.7-inch-slim blueprint lies a potent Intel Xeon E-2276M processor and an Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 GPU forth with a vivid, 17-inch, 16:x display and a comfortable keyboard.

If you need a gaming laptop that tin double as a workstation, then look no further than the Alienware Area-51m. Armed with a desktop Intel Cadre i9 processor and 1 of Nvidia’s superpowered RTX GPUs, it absolutely demolished every test we put in front of it with svelte aplomb. It will besides make a big dent in your wallet. But if you consider that this is the first future-proof gaming laptop, it seems a small cost to pay for a truly upgradable system and what Alienware is calling its commencement real desktop replacement.

The best workstation laptops y’all can buy today

Is the HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 the best workstation on the market? I suppose that depends on your budget and configuration, just if your pockets are deep enough for an Intel Xeon processor and Nvidia RTX A5000 graphics (boy howdy!), this is about as future-proof as laptops get right now.

In terms of raw power, this notebook is tough to beat, and even if it runs out of battery when you’re on the get, information technology’s still heavy enough to fight criminal offence with. Granted, the $6K configuration we tested is overkill for most laptop users; information technology’s about impossible for this kind of mobile muscle to fail besides hard on our standard benchmarks. And that’s partially the point, in my opinion. The world of mobile tech continues to march forward at an exponential rate, and if you don’t have the right laptop for your corresponding career, opportunity might very well pass you past.

Only that’s hardly a concern with the ZBook Fury 17 G8 cheers to a stunning 17.3-inch touchscreen, intimidating specs under the hood, and plenty of ports to power your pertinent peripherals.

See our full

HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 review
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The new generation of best workstation laptops is hither. The MSI WS66 10TM is blasting through fools with an Intel Core i9-10980HK processor and a beastly Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU with 16GB of VRAM. Our workstation benchmarking gauntlet was no friction match for the WS66 10TMT, nor were its direct competitors. The WS66 scored a monstrous 6,735 on the Geekbench v.0 examination.

Combo that with a superslim and lightweight design, a ridiculously vivid 4K display and a decent bombardment life. Although the MSI WS66 is skinny and low-cal, it doesn’t sacrifice the durability that consumers can wait from a workstation. Information technology surpassed several MIL-STD 810G tests, so it tin withstand sand and dust, vibrations, shocks, low- and loftier-pressure altitudes, even extreme temperatures. Regarding security, the MSI WS66 packs both a discrete TPM ii.0 chip and a congenital-in fingerprint reader, located within the touchpad. Yeah, the MSI WS66 10TM is a straight-up beast.

Run into our full

MSI WS66 10TM review
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Armed with an Intel Core i9 processor and an Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, this workstation is ready to take on all challengers. Wrapped in a sleek, graceful chassis, the laptop is easy on the eyes, but thanks to MIL-SPEC certification, it tin can take a bump or two. Plus, yous’ve got a captivating 4K OLED touch panel that serves up scenic picture quality.

At $4,559, HP ZBook Create G7 is pricey, merely yous’re getting premium performance, so information technology’south coin well-spent production pros. Still, for all the money you’re forking out, I would prefer a brighter display and the battery life could definitely be longer.

See our total

HP ZBook Create G7 review
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The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 is a unique dual-screen laptop with a 15-inch, 4K OLED console up top and a smaller OLED screen above the keyboard. Asus’s take on dual-screen laptops has evolved since the starting time iteration of the Asus ZenBook Duo (UX481), with improvements in build quality and ergonomics addressing some of the original problems. Has it grown plenty to make Asus’s vision of a dual-screen laptop something consumers clamor for? In some regards, yes, merely information technology still feels like a niche device for a subsection of content creators (who have big budgets).

The ZenBook Duo Pro fifteen UX582L brings a lot to the table with powerful specs for those who demand them, and a second screen not only adds a wow factor only functionality. Some may not be fond of the keyboard and touchpad location, and the price is a serious deterrent, simply the ZenBook Duo Pro 15 should be considered past content creators who need more than screen existent estate while on the go. While information technology’southward not technically a workstation, its operation and utility has earned its manner on our all-time workstation laptops page.

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Asus ZenBook Pro Duo (UX582L) review
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Meet the workaholic’s dream. The Dell Precision 5760 is priced at $2,059 to showtime, with our review unit of measurement costing $3,941, is a sleek, sexy workstation that offers power and endurance in a thin, portable bundle. But the Precision’s just getting started.

Information technology has a massive 17-inch bright, colorful WLED 4K touch brandish that renders shine eye-catching images and video. And you’ve got some solidly strong specs, including an11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia RTX A3000 GPU, and a 2TB SSD. Plus, you get a heaping helping of security features.

The Dell Precision 5760 is packed full of wins and earned its mode onto our best workstation laptops page.

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Dell Precision 5760 review
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This year’s HP ZBook Studio G8 holds on to the accolade-winning G7 series styling but bumps upwards the power to help content creators with their creative projects either in the studio or in the field. The $four,727 system is gorgeous, powerful, MIL-SPEC tough, and is one of the best content creator laptops on the marketplace. Oh, I forgot to mention, its OLED 4K touchscreen is bright, brilliant and positively stunning.

This salacious attention grabber comes with an 11th Gen Intel Cadre i9 processor, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU that will more than than handle all your Adobe Creative Suite power-hungry needs and then some. It’s hands one of the best workstation laptops that we’ve tested, fifty-fifty if it’due south priced at a whopping $4,727 as reviewed.

See our full

HP ZBook Studio G8 review
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Alienware continues to raise the bar of what a gaming laptop can and should be. The latest improver to the family is the X17, a beautiful bruiser of a desktop replacement that’s but 0.8-inches thick. The ultra-premium organisation comes with all the fixings including an Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and dual SSDs. Need more than? How’s a 17.3-inch, 4K display, powerful speakers and a Cherry MX keyboard sound?

Of course, something this pretty and powerful is also seriously expensive at $three,679 ($2,199 starting), so it’s not for the faint of heart or modest of bank account. But if you can afford it, the Alienware X17 is a hell of a powerhouse that hands makes its fashion onto our all-time workstation laptops page.

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Alienware X17 review
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The Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen two improves on what was already a winning formula with the original ThinkPad P15 with upgraded operation and stellar battery life for the 1080p model.

The laptop’s 11th Gen Intel Core i9-11950H CPU, Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU and 32GB of RAM make it an absolute workhorse of a workstation. If raw performance is your goal, it will be hard to beat the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2. The i concern for creatives will be the brandish, but if that’s crucial for you consider the OLED console option or maybe an external display.

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Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 review
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HP continues to design lightweight, powerhouse workstations and I keep enjoying them. The HP ZBook Firefly G8 14-inch mobile workstation is some other Zbook meant for those who push their mobile workstations to the limits. Practise you demand to write documents? No problem; Do you run graphics-heavy programs? Not an issue. Need to connect to a 5G network? The ZBook Firefly can practise that too.

You become all that and a gorgeous, colour-accurate, 14-inch DreamColor display. Nosotros’re always eager to go our hands on a new laptop and for our lab to vigorously test information technology. Sometimes we’re thrilled with the results, and other times, our little laptop-loving hearts are cleaved. Despite that, it’s one of the best workstation laptops on the market.

See our full

HP ZBook Firefly 14 G8 review
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How much does a workstation laptop cost?

Workstations showtime around $1,000, merely many models at that toll lack the discrete graphics menu you’ll need to take on tasks like video editing or 3D modeling. And it’ll most likely have a 1080p brandish at that cost range, so y’all might desire to leap for a 4K model if your work involves editing high-res photos and videos.

Yous can get some work washed with ane of the top cheap gaming laptops, which has a GPU similar an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti or greater, but they’re not optimized specifically for media creation like Nvidia’s Quadro GPU is. If you lot’re looking to get some real piece of work done, you’ll need a workstation with a Quadro GPU and a colorful, high-resolution display, which volition most definitely run you over $2,000. While it’s not necessarily a workstation, the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo can handle rigorous tasks with multiple screens all for $two,999.

How to cull the best workstation laptops for you

Choosing the right workstation for yous comes downwards to why you need it in the first place. You can option up an affordable workstation to do some heavier work than your average laptop, merely if you lot need a straight up tank to handle taxing programs, you’re going to pay a hefty toll. If it’s the former, we recommend looking at something like the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 or Dell Precision 5540.

If money is no object, you can option upward some abominable workstations like the MSI WS65 9TM and the HP ZBook Studio x360 G5, which are incredibly powerful and durable machines that tin withstand most tests that you lot’ll throw at them. The WS65 9TM is great if you want your display to be super colorful and bright, but the ZBook Studio x360 is amend if you lot need a stylus to get into graphic designing or something else.

How nosotros test the best workstation laptops

We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both constructed and real-world — earlier they finish upward in the easily of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat direction.

In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop’s display. For operation testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench four.iii and v.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.

To determine existent-globe functioning, we chore the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a iv.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics exam is the Clay 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.

We also run rut tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous spider web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 laptops, a runtime of over ix hours is considered a expert issue whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than v hours deserve praise.

These tests are complemented with all-encompassing hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop’southward materials to the feel of its touchpad.