By and large, work laptops are ideal whether in a cubicle in the office or the comfort of your home. But, if you want a fantastic work-from-home laptop, we have a few additional factors to consider, like portability if you're commuting to an office for part of the week or camera quality so you can look your best while working remotely.

One of the major concerns is portability, which includes a laptop's size, weight, and battery life. You might be able to tote a laptop under an arm or nestled inside a laptop bag, but you also want to use it without being tethered to an outlet. If you're going to a coffee shop, on an airplane, back and forth from an office to your home, or wherever your remote work happens, choosing a lightweight, long-lived laptop will pay off.

But stationary use is also a concern. If you work from home more often than you take your laptop on the road, you'll want to take advantage of dedicated desk space and the accessories and peripherals a desk allows. That means an external monitor, a proper keyboard and mouse, and any other peripherals you want for your workspace.

Finally, look for a laptop with a 1080p camera, which will help you look better on video calls than the 720p cameras many office models default to. Most of our favorite models listed above feature these higher-quality cameras for better virtual meetings.

The biggest two brands by market share are Lenovo and HP. Each offers a wide variety of models, from thin-and-light ultraportables to larger, more powerful models for gaming content creation. Lenovo’s ThinkPads have long been a favorite among business laptops, and its Yoga models are usually highly rated two-in-one laptops. Dell is third behind Lenovo and HP and is in the midst of a major rebranding effort. Familiar names like Inspiron and XPS are going away in favor of a simplified structure where its laptop will be labeled as Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max. Dell’s Alienware line of gaming l

Price and portability are arguably the biggest reasons why a business might consider a Windows-based tablet for work. Some tablets sell for less than $500 and can quickly adapt to a corporate environment. While specialized (i.e., expensive) tablets have been in vertical markets, such as healthcare, for years, the ubiquity of the Apple iPad means that people are used to carrying a computer that doesn't have a physical keyboard or that uses a detachable, basic one.

You might look for a Windows tablet if you need to run critical in-house or third-party apps created initially for PCs, but that emphasize touch or pen input. True enterprise-class Windows tablets are still evolving, but most business users expect their work computers to behave like their personal tablets. Apple fans will have to be content with using the iPad or iPad Pro for business, as a tablet-optimized version of macOS doesn't exist.

Most Windows tablets are built to surf the web, run Office apps, and perform other super-light computing tasks. Still, they are also compatible with the gamut of security applications, VPN and email clients, and countless hardware peripherals such as printers, scanners, and network-attached storage (NAS) devices. We wouldn't run an entire business on a tablet, but one can be a helpful take-along unit for an offsite meeting or as a portable alternative to your six-pound big-screen bruiser of a workstation. Microsoft (with its Surface line) and Lenovo (with its ThinkPad variants) are the key players for business Windows tablets in this market.