The best HP laptops are commonly used in business, but they have plenty to offer a range of people; you just have to know which one to pick. That's exactly what we're here to help with.
HP – originally called Hewlett-Packard – is a trusted name in tech, and known for delivering excellent value, premium looks and high-end performance. And that applies to the best HP laptops, too.
If you’re a professional working in photography, photo editing, design or video, most of them won't be powerful enough. There are exceptions, though; most notably the ZBook series. That's we've included HP ZBook Studio G9 and HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 on our list. However, if you already have a powerful desktop PC at home for editing, and you just want something to travel with, you have more options.
To help you choose the best HP laptop, we've curated a list covering all needs. We'll explain what each laptop has to offer and give you the facts and figures you need to choose between them.
The best HP laptops in 2023
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The HP Spectre line offers a lot of power, versatility and long battery life, in a hybrid design that's perfect for both productive work and consuming media. It’s a lovely looker as well, fitting its robust innards and high-end features – not to mention its gorgeous 13.5-inch OLED touch display – in an elegant gem-cut chassis that's unlike all the other laptops in its class.
As the name suggests, this is a 2-in-1 laptop that offers genuinely usable tablet functionality once you detach the keyboard. You also get an input pen with inking support, high-class Bang & Olufsen speakers, a speedy Intel Core i7 processor, and lots of lovely ports to connect all your devices, including two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports.
For more details, see our full HP Spectre x360 14 review.
Looking for a 2-in-1 HP laptop that's on the larger side, with a big, beautiful OLED screen? Then the HP Spectre x360 16 OLED has a lot to offer.
Like its 14-inch sibling above, this 16-inch premium laptop has a screen that can fold over a full 360 degrees, making it a great choice for anyone who wants to swap between laptop, tablet and tent mode.
The combination of an Intel i7 processor and an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU means you're going to get above-average performance, making it powerful enough even for tasks like video editing and gaming. (It's not a gaming laptop per se, but to give some context, our reviewer played GTA V and got decent graphics settings and a frame rate of 50-60 fps.)
Best of all, the razor-sharp 16-inch 4K+ OLED screen offers fantastic contrast, rich blacks, up to 400 nits of brightness and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. The quad-speaker system designed in partnership with Bang & Olufsen is pretty decent too.
For more details, see our full HP Spectre x360 16 review.
Need a lot of power, either for gaming, or resource-intensive creative software? The HP Omen 17 has a robust RTX 3070 or 3080 that will handle the heaviest AAA titles or video rendering and batch photo editing workloads.
This is the HP laptop you want, then, if you need a primary device for video editing, especially since it gives you 17.3 inches of beautiful screen. And as a bonus, because it’s a gaming laptop, you can use it to de-stress with your favorite PC game after a long, hard day of editing work. Note, though, that at almost 3kg, it's not light by any means.
Using your laptop for business, and concerned about security? Here's our top pick. The HP Elite Dragonfly G4 is not just one the best business laptops out there, it boasts excellent security features and also claims to be the first to support two cameras simultaneously, for dual video streams. Plus you get long battery life, quiet operation, and more than enough power for heavyweight tasks such as photo editing and light video editing.
Budget-friendly premium laptops are rare, but HP’s got you covered here. Even though it's one of its more affordable laptops, the HP Envy x360 15 still delivers great performance and long battery life. You have a choice of AMD or Intel chips, and its touch display is both large and lovely. Yes, there are a couple of compromises: it isn’t as portable as the Spectre, for example. But if you want something more affordable, this comes highly recommended.
Chromebooks are a great alternative to Windows laptops for two reasons. Firstly, because the manufacturer isn't having to pay for a Windows licence, they're cheaper. And secondly, because they don't have to run Microsoft's buggy and bloating operating system, they tend to be much faster. The flipside is that you won't be able to use a lot of popular Microsoft software, although Google Drive has a lot of good equivalents.
If you like the idea of a Chromebook, or are already on board with the concept, then here's the best model from HP. This hybrid device boasts a lovely 11-inch touchscreen with 2.1K resolution (2160 x 1440) and comes with an attachable keyboard, which is nice and comfortable.
Other highlights include getting up to 11 hours 15 minutes of battery life, and the two mics and noise reduction software which make you sound nice and clear on Zoom calls. On the downside, it's not the lightest Chromebook around, but at this price, the X2 offers excellent value overall.
If you work as a visual creative, you should get a proper creator’s laptop that’s designed specifically for graphics-heavy tasks. And here's a great option. The HP ZBook Studio G9 is among HP’s most powerful laptops, armed with up to Nvidia T550 Laptop GPU that makes everything beautifully effortless, including 4K video editing and 3D design.
The high price means this won't be the most appealing option for everyone. And on the downside, the max 250 nits of brightness means it's not ideal for working outdoors. But overall, it does come with the power that photographers, designers, videographers, and other content editors need to get through any creative task, however intensive.
Laptops that greatly exceed the average amount of processing power and graphics capabilities are popularly known as workstations, and here's the best from HP. The HP ZBook Fury 17 G8 will be overkill for most users, but for people performing highly intensive tasks such as rendering CG animations will find a lot to like. That includes a beautiful 4K, 17.3-inch screen, audio by Bang & Olufsen, the superior HP Premium Quiet Keyboard and, most importantly, the incredible CPU/GPU performance.
How we test laptops
When reviewing a laptop, we assess its internal hardware features, build quality, ergonomics, performance in a variety of usage scenarios, value for money, and its overall suitability for its target buyer. Although we'll evaluate a laptop with a typical user in mind, we will also pay particular attention to the perspective of photo and video enthusiasts, with special focus given to screen quality and color space coverage. Where possible, a monitor calibrator will be used to measure a laptop's display performance to assess whether it matches a manufacturer's claims, and software benchmarks like GeekBench are used to measure a laptop's processor and graphics card capabilities.
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