I’ve been testing and reviewing laptops for nearly five years, and nothing makes me sadder than a dim, lifeless display. While business laptops like the Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 I reviewed recently can get away with having duller displays than creator-focused machines, any laptop worth the money should still have a decent display even if it isn’t a workstation.
If your work doesn’t need you to handle any creative-focused tasks, like editing images or video, creating graphics, or evaluating creative tasks, you can get away with a DCI-P3 gamut volume of 70%. But anything below 70% is grim even if all you need to do for most of your day is look at spreadsheets and emails.
So I’ve put together this list of three business laptops with quality displays.
Asus ExpertBook P5
The Asus ExpertBook P5 (P5405) features Intel‘s new Core Ultra 200V “Lunar Lake” chipset. The full specs include an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, integrated Intel Arc graphics, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and a 14-inch 144Hz (2,560 x 1,600) IPS anti-glare display.
The ExpertBook boasts a bright 144Hz display, over 14 hours of battery life, more ports than you could need, solid productivity performance, and an excellent 3-year warranty.
Sean Riley said in our review, “Using the ExpertBook to power through my typical workday, the display looks sharp and crisp, rendering the myriad Google Workplace documents and spreadsheets that comprise a large part of my day. While the colors didn’t blow me away, I could immediately tell that Asus didn’t hold back on the brightness of this anti-glare panel; it remains easily visible even in direct sunlight.”
The ExpertBook P5’s anti-glare IPS display hit an average peak brightness of 465 nits, making it one of the brightest IPS displays we’ve ever tested at Laptop Mag. The display is also rather colorful, capturing 77.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. While it won’t blow you away, the colors are enough to give you an accurate portrayal of general web content.
HP Elite x360 1040 G11
The HP Elite x360 1040 G11 is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 100H “Meteor Lake” series processor with a strong 2-in-1 folding hinge. The full specs include an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, integrated Intel Arc graphics, 16GB of memory, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 14-inch (1,920 x 1,200) touchscreen display.
The Elite offers a svelte design, superb keyboard and touchpad, strong performance, and a 3-year warranty with 3 years of security features.
Rami Tabari said in our review, “The teal dust that sparked off the door in the trailer for Secret Level was colorful. But it didn’t look as sharp as I’d hoped. When in the space pod, the panel was bright enough to capture the shadowed details on the console, but a direct glare washes out a chunk of the screen on the opposite side.”
The HP Elite x360 1040’s 14-inch FHD+ matte touchscreen display boasts an average peak brightness of 410 nits and covers an impressive 80% of the DCI-P3 color gamut that will help give you a better video streaming experience than most business laptops.
Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M4, 2024)
While Apple’s MacBook Pro 14 (M4, 2024) isn’t exactly a business laptop, the MacBook Pro is certainly a laptop that you’ll find in plenty of professional environments. Featuring the powerful new Apple M4 CPU, M4 GPU, 16GB of memory, 1TB of SSD storage, and a 14.2-inch 120Hz (3,024 x 1,964) Liquid Retina XDR display.
The MacBook Pro 14 also offers outstanding performance, over 18 hours of battery life, a brilliantly bright display, unmatched build quality, and incredible stereo audio.
Sean Riley said in our review, “I watched the trailer for Squid Game: Season 2, and the vibrant pink, yellow, and teal Escherian staircases in the opening scene popped on the MacBook display. The nearly 4K panel is exquisitely sharp, showing every detail of the green jump-suited players and pink jump-suited guards.”
The MacBook Pro 14 (M4)’s 14-inch 120Hz Liquid Retina XDR display boasts an average peak brightness of 556 nits in SDR brightness, which is increased to 1,096 nits when viewing HDR content. The MacBook Pro 14’s mini-LED panel also covers a solid 80.2% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
Outlook
A grim display doesn’t just look bad, a low-quality display panel can contribute to eyestrain thanks to screen flicker. So it isn’t just a matter of me being picky about color gamut coverage, though knowing the content you’re looking at is accurately portrayed on your laptop can help with a variety of jobs even outside of the artistic sphere.
I’ve provided a few options here for the business-minded laptop buyer, but if you need something a bit more powerful or with a better display, we’d recommend one of our best laptops for Photoshop or one of our best laptops for video editing instead. You can also opt for one of our best workstation laptops as well, as these top-of-the-line creation machines feature high-fidelity displays and powerful performance.
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