Since apple introduced the M-Series chips, the best Macbook has been a champion of battery life, but things are getting more competitive. This year, the best Windows laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors not only rival the durability of the Macbook, but surpass them. With Apple laptops at risk of lagging behind battery life, the Apple M4 chip is coming up to give these laptops a chance to fight back.

We reviewed the MacBook Pro14-inch (M4, 2024) and MacBook Pro16-inch (M4Pro, 2024), both ranked as one of the best laptops for battery life.1 The former endured for a staggering 20 hours and 46 minutes in our battery life test, while the latter sped along like a certain toy rabbit for an incredible 18 hours and 31 minutes! This makes the MacBook Pro, powered by the new 16-inch M4Pro, the most durable consumer laptop Tom's Guide has ever reviewed.

The MacBook Pro16-inch M4Pro is currently the reigning champion for laptop battery life, but how do competitors stack up? Let's find it! The M4Pro MacBook Pro 16-inch reviewed includes a 16.2-inch (3,456x2, 234) Liquid Retina XDR display, an Apple M4Pro chip with 14CPU and 20GPU cores, 48GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD rated at Valued3,499, our review unit has an entry2,499 edge, which is the perfect fit for a MacBook Pro with a high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, high-speed, It features the same M16PRO chip as the country-level 4-inch MacBook Pro, but this laptop starts with 24GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Running this 16-inch MacBook Pro in a battery test, which consisted of loading web pages and playing video at a screen brightness of 150nit, Apple's new laptop achieved an average battery life of 21 hours and 46 minutes. As I said, it crushes the durability of any consumer-grade laptop we've ever reviewed.

The graph above compares the MacBook Pro16-inch M4Pro to some of the Windows laptops and Macbooks that we tested and reviewed. This list does not include rugged laptops that are in their own class. As you can see, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro is surging ahead of both competitors and fellow Macbooks.

The top 5 most durable laptops all come with Snapdragon X or Apple M-Series chips. Lenovo ThinkBook16G7 (20:23) and Dell XPS13 (19:41) ranked 2nd and 3rd, respectively, while the 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 (18:31) and HP OmniBook X (17:16) are not far behind. The 13-inch Surface Laptop 7 (15:44), the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 (15:10), and the 15-inch MacBook Air M3 (15:03) will also turn into respectable times, but at this point the gap will start to widen.

You may have noticed all the Intel Lunar Lake laptops at the bottom of the list. While notebooks like the Asus ExpertBook P5 (14:21), Samsung Galaxy Book5Pro360 (14:12) and Asus Zenbook S14 (13:51) would have swept us in with their respective battery life results, the Snapdragon X and Apple M series that said, the Acer Swift14AI (15:53) managed to get us close to the middle. It's a good idea to take a look at some of the things you can do to help you get the job done. 

Most of the story and marketing surrounding laptops in 2024 revolves around the promised AI capabilities. The prospect of "smarter" laptops is interesting, but the real tangible benefit these machines offer is the exceptional battery life, especially the Snapdragon X and Apple M Series, which should (hopefully) be easier to find a long-lasting laptop, regardless of the manufacturer, by focusing on this energy efficiency. . Currently, Apple's M4-powered Macbook leads battery life. I can't wait to see how competitors respond to the challenge.