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25 laptops with the best battery life – CNET

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The top 25 laptop battery life performers from CNET Labs

Acer Chromebook R13

Lenovo Yoga 920

Samsung Notebook 9

Dell XPS 13 (late 2017)

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon

Microsoft Surface Book (2016)

Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016)

HP EliteBook x360

LG Gram 13

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2017

Apple MacBook (12-inch, 2017)

Lenovo Flex 5

Microsoft Surface Laptop

Apple MacBook Air (2017)

Toshiba Portege X20W-D

Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2016)

Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (13-inch, 2016 )

HP Spectre x360 (15-inch, 2017)

LG Gram 15

Dell Inspiron 15 7000

HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2016)

Acer Swift 1

Lenovo ThinkPad X270

Samsung Chromebook Pro

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1

The most important feature for many laptop shoppers is battery life, and rightly so.

Based on the extensive battery testing conducted in the CNET Labs, these are the 25 PCs with the longest battery-life scores that we’ve seen over the previous 12 months.

More details on our top battery performer list and how we test are here.

This new Chromebook tops our current list at 782 minutes, which is 13 hours and 2 minutes.

A new addition, this Yoga hybrid ran for 12:50, or 770 minutes. 

This 15-inch laptop impressed us with very long battery life at 12:16. 

The latest XPS 13 from Dell ran for 12:16. 

The latest X1 Carbon, a professional laptop, ran for an impressive 11:50, or 710 minutes. 

Last year’s version of this Microsoft hybrid, which has an extra battery in its keyboard base, ran for 709 minutes, or 11:49. The new Surface Book 2 ran for even longer in initial testing, but some battery runs were inconsistent and we’re conducting additional tests to confirm those scores. 

The best MacBook is now the 13-inch Pro, without the OLED Touch Bar, at 696 minutes, or 11:36. 

HP’s x360 version of the EliteBook ran for 694 minutes, even with a powerful Core i7 processor.

LG’s lightweight Gram 13 ran for 690 minutes, which used to be a Top 5 score, but no longer. 

The latest generation of MacBooks haven’t changed much, but the 15-inch model has a huge battery, which helped it run for 10:43 (643 minutes). 

The newer third-gen 12-inch MacBook was essentially tied, coming in at 626 minutes, or 10:26. 

Another new addition, this is a great budget hybrid with excellent battery life at 10 hours and 23 minutes. 

Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop had excellent battery life, despite a thin design and high-res screen. It ran for 621 minutes. 

The ever-so-slightly updated MacBook Air is still a battery champ at 10 hours and 10 minutes. 

This slim, biz-ready Toshiba also ran for 610 minutes, or 10:10. 

Last year’s bigger MacBook Pro has a big battery, which helped it run for 608 minutes, but the newer 2017 version lasted longer. 

Adding a Touch Bar and a more powerful processor to the 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro gets you battery life of 607 minutes. (We haven’t tested a 2017 13-inch Pro yet.)

HP’s updated 15-inch hybrid shows some real improvement over the 2016 models and ran for 594 minutes.

The larger LG Gram is incredibly light, and also a decent battery performer, at 582 minutes, or 9:42. 

A gaming laptop is a surprise here, but note that despite the graphics chip inside, this is actually a standard mainstream Inspiron with a big battery, running for 578 minutes. This is the version we tested earlier in 2017. The late-2017 update has a smaller battery and did not make our Top 25 list. 

This slightly older version of HP’s 13-inch x360 ran for 561 minutes.

Acer’s midprice laptop is a strong performer at 9:16. 

Lenovo doesn’t mess around when it comes to office laptops, and this no-frills model ran for 555 minutes on its standard battery (an extended battery is also available). 

The Chromebook Pro is a great all-around budget hybrid and ran for 537 minutes, just three minutes shy of 9 hours.

Dell’s XPS hybrid uses a low-power Core M chip and ran for 536 minutes, which was 8:56.