Finding a new laptop that’s reliable and performs well this Black Friday week can be hard — and it’s getting harder. I’ve been testing laptops for seven years and the standard has never been higher than right now; there are plenty of great value picks that offer exceptional performance.
Whether you’re after one of the best laptops for programming or a top laptop for photo editing, you should ideally be looking to spend more than $1,000 — so it’s important not to rush things.
We’ve already rounded up our pick of the best Black Friday laptop deals, and you can pick out plenty of great options depending on your needs.
If, however, a lengthy battery life is high on your agenda, I would recommend a laptop with one feature above all others: A Neural processing unit (NPU).
You may have seen new branding around ‘AI PCs’ or ‘Copilot+ PCs’. These machines are fitted with the very latest hardware and are geared towards on-device AI tasks — meaning you can tap into AI-powered tools like Microsoft Designer or Copilot without needing to use an internet connection.
Right now, there are only a handful of apps that let you take advantage of on-device AI — and you may not actually find them that useful. But that’s not important. Thanks to the NPU they come with, Copilot+ AI laptops are an absolute game changer when it comes to battery life. That’s because an NPU is way more energy efficient than the components traditionally found in laptops.
An NPU is a specialized type of microprocessor that sits alongside the central processor unit (CPU) and the graphics card and is designed to process large amounts of data in parallel.
Their power is measured in ‘trillions of operations per second’ (TOPS) — with NPUs that are 40 TOPS and higher given the Copilot+ branding. These chips often take on work that CPUs or GPUs normally handle. So, if you’re using photo editing software or you’re compiling code, for example, you may now find the NPU hard at work. This frees up the CPU and GPU in a massive boon for multitasking — while also consuming much less power. The result? Battery life that is massively extended.
From personal experience, as well as in testing laptops week in and week out, I’ve found that devices that include NPUs usually last much longer in a typical day — by several hours at least. And during Black Friday week, you can find plenty of hefty discounts on machines that come with NPUs.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (13.8-inch version featured above), for example, lasted 17 hours and 31 minutes in my battery test — while the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, geared more towards enterprises and developers, lasted a staggering 26 hours and 9 minutes.
By contrast, a decent laptop for students in the form of the HP Envy x360 2-in-1 lasted just 11 hours and 10 minutes, while another personal favorite of mine — the HP Spectre x360 14 — fared slightly better at 14 hours and 29 minutes. But neither model included an NPU. The sample size isn’t massive — but it rings true for me anecdotally and through testing.
When looking for one of the best laptops this Black Friday week, keep an eye out for whether it includes an NPU — if you can afford to stretch your budget that far, you won’t regret it in the long term.
Check out our roundup of the best Black Friday week deals for laptops in 2024. We update it daily with the latest offers on laptops, 2-in-1s and workstations. Also check out our main Black Friday deals hub for more deals on cameras, electric toothbrushes, fitness equipment and others.