Pandemic has popularized work-from-home culture and many organizations are open to hiring employees working remotely. Even people attending offices full time often have to work remotely or from their homes. To remain productive while working from home, you will obviously need to be equipped with the right laptop.
Choosing one that perfectly fits the bill involves shifting your perspective a little to address the requirements of a flexible workspace. You will also run into Intel Evo branded options. Evo is a certification that Intel and OEMs have collaborated on to deliver the best consumer experience. Intel sets minimum specs guidelines and extensively tests the laptops for performance, battery life and several other aspects that are crucial for uplifting the end-user experience.
Let’s discuss a few pointers that you should keep in mind while narrowing down on your perfect work-from-home laptop!
Whether you are working from your home, office, or for that matter any place else, the performance is one constant that needs to be reliable and snappy. When deciding between CPUs, more cores, faster clock speed, and the latest generation are a few things you should be looking for. As for graphics, the iGPU should suffice for most thin and light laptops, but if you often work with demanding creative apps, you can opt for options with discrete graphics cards.
Performance is, however, a function of multiple factors including the amount and quality of RAM and Storage. For most users, 8GB of RAM should be sufficient. As for storage, we’d recommend you pick SSDs or solid-state drives over HDDs or hard-disk drives for durable performance in the long run.
If you are unsure, you can always go for Intel Evo-certified laptops that need to stick to certain minimum performance specs and are tested to meet set performance standards for practical applications. These laptops are quite snappy and also have a wake-up time of less than 1 second!
On a rainy day, you might want to shift to the couch next to the living room window and enjoy the soothing pitter-patter while working. Or you might just want to move to your study for some extra quiet. The point is, that working from home isn’t about being tethered to a workstation, and you will often need to make necessary adjustments to your work environment. You won’t always have to adapt just within your home – It’s likely that you will occasionally have to carry your work laptop to outdoor meets or your office when needed.
To be able to make such adjustments without hampering your productivity, you must opt for a thin and light laptop that doesn’t compromise battery life. Just remember that any option that measures under 15mm in thickness should be easy to slip into your backpack. Also, go for options that promise at least 9 hours of battery backup under moderate workloads. It must also be mentioned, that all Intel Evo-certified laptops are extremely portable and are tested to deliver more than 9 hours of battery life with practical usage.
While working from home, you’ll frequently need to connect with co-workers and clients through video conferences. It’s therefore imperative to go for a laptop that doesn’t treat the webcam and video calling as an afterthought.
You should go for options that employ at least a 720p HD webcam and output clear audio. Intel Evo-certified laptops also have multiple microphones and can intelligently suppress background noise. These laptops also include features like background blur, face-framing, and lighting correction to remarkably uplift the video calling experience.
A wonderful display is a luxury always good to have, but this might or might not be the absolute priority. If you ask us, all work-from-home laptops should have sharp displays (at least Full HD resolution) that are light on the eyes and have reasonable colour accuracy. Touch input and stylus support can also be convenient, especially for users who need to often sign documents remotely.
Attributes like HDR600 screen, wide colour gamut support, or a peak brightness of beyond 500 nits are, however, optional unless you frequently need to dabble with creative work. While at home, most people have access to bigger screens for consuming multimedia content, so factor that in while making a decision.
We can’t stress enough how incredibly convenient a USB Type-C charger can be at home or while travelling. That’s because you will be able to use just one adapter to charge your laptop and accessories like wireless earbuds, smartphones, tablets, or even your trimmer in close proximity.
A USB Type-C port with power delivery will also let you fast charge most modern smartphones. High bandwidth Thunderbolt ports and HDMI ports will make it easier for you to pair external displays, docking stations and other accessories.
When you are working from home, access to fast and dependable internet is an obvious priority. Latest Wi-Fi standards like Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E have been designed to handle multiple connected devices in modern homes in a better manner. Having these latest wireless connectivity standards supported on your work-from-home laptop will be advantageous.
The right keyboard can make a world of difference to your laptop experience. You must look for options that have well-spaced keys and have proper handrest space below the keyboard for comfortable typing.
Make sure that the touchpad is aptly positioned, broad enough and supports precision drivers. You should also keep in mind that keyboards from different brands have slightly different layouts and it can take some time to accustomed to them if you switch brands.
Your individual preferences and requirements may differ, but the search for your next work-from-home laptop will get easier if you keep these tips in mind. If you are still unsure or confused, you can straightaway opt for Intel Evo-certified options that assuredly comply with all of these requirements, thus offering a premium experience.
Intel set strict specs guidelines and collaborates with manufacturers to co-engineer Intel Evo laptops to match high consumer experience standards. These laptops are tested to perform in several practical scenarios, which is why you can trust real-world usage to match expectations.
Intel Evo laptops deliver more than 9 hours of battery life, employ powerful Intel Core processors, ensure a fabulous video calling experience, and more. To know more about Intel Evo check our detailed explainer.
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