Sadly, some laptops are slow and hide poor quality components in jargon and marketing speak, making it difficult to find a quality laptop that meets all your needs and doesn’t offer poor value for money.
Thankfully, the laptop market is also incredibly competitive, and if you know what to look for, incredible value can be found, making life much easier if you need to close a deal out of your car, or attend meetings on the go.
In this guide we’re going to look at 5 of the best laptops for estate agents currently available, taking into account their components and design to ensure that you get the best performance for your money, and to provide you with all the knowledge you need to make the right choice for you.
We’ve also included a buyers guide with some helpful tips and features to look out for in a great work laptop, providing helpful tips on what specific features and components to look for in a great laptop.
We’ve also included an FAQ section where we’ve answered some of the most common questions about laptops for productivity, to help you get the most out of your system and ensure you can be as productive and efficient as possible.
Let’s take a look at the laptops themselves and their various pros and cons.
Review of Laptops for Real Estate Agents
Microsoft Surface Pro 7
Microsoft’s Surface series of laptops are one of the most impressive and feature rich, and benefit from decades of industry leading design and technology.
The components list is excellent and delivers reliable, high speed performance to give even the busiest estate agent plenty of headroom for intense workloads.
Even better, this laptop is incredibly portable and can be easily manipulated and used in different formats to suit your needs, whether it’s typing, presenting or showing clients pictures on a high quality and clear display.
Pros
- Excellent display
- Portable
- Flexible and versatile
- Excellent components including 10th Gen i5 processor and 8GB of RAM
- Great battery life
Cons
- 128GB of SSD storage is quite small and may make it difficult to store a lot of information, documents and assets on this laptop.
- Next-gen, best-in-class laptop with the versatility of a studio and tablet, so you can type, touch, draw, write, work, and play more naturally
- Faster than Surface Pro 6, with a 10th Gen Intel Core Processor – redefining what’s possible in a thin and light computer. Wireless : Wi-Fi 6: 802.11ax compatible. Bluetooth Wireless 5.0 technology
- More ways to connect, with both USB-C and USB-A ports for connecting to displays, docking stations and more, as well as accessory charging
- Standout design that won’t weigh you down — ultra-slim and light Surface Pro 7 starts at just 1.70 pounds.Aspect ratio: 3:2
- All-day battery life upto 10.5 hours, plus the ability to go from empty to full faster — about 80% in just over an hour
Apple MacBook Air Laptop
One of the world’s leading laptop designs is the MacBook Air, known for its lightweight and highly portable design and incredibly high performance, this laptop will deliver both style and substance to busy estate agents.
There are a host of great features including a quality integrated webcam and speakers, as well as an amazing display, fantastically ergonomic keyboard and superb battery life.
Pros
- Excellent battery life
- Fast M1 processor and superfast 8GB memory
- Beautiful 13.3 inch retina display
- Extremely light and portable
- Biometric security with TouchID
Cons
- 256GB of storage is better than some laptops but is still quite small and may lead to the need for an additional external hard drive.
- Apple-designed M1 chip for a giant leap in CPU, GPU, and machine learning performance
- Go longer than ever with up to 18 hours of battery life
- 8-core CPU delivers up to 3.5x faster performance to tackle projects faster than ever
- Up to eight GPU cores with up to 5x faster graphics for graphics-intensive apps and games
- 16-core Neural Engine for advanced machine learning
Acer Aspire 5 Slim
Acer are one of the leading laptop brands and their Aspire series have been a reliable quality performer for many years.
The aspire 5 Slim brings additional performance and portability to make an estate agent’s life that little bit easier, and this laptop comes with some great components too.
Pros
- 15.6 inch IPS Display
- AMD Ryzen 3 processor with integrated Vega 3 graphics
- Windows 10 in S mode
- Backlit keyboard
- Lightweight
Cons
- Only 4GB of RAM may make some workloads slow and unresponsive
- 128GB of Storage isn’t very much to work with.
- AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Dual Core Processor (Up to 3.5GHz); 4GB DDR4 Memory; 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD
- 15.6 inches full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen LED backlit IPS display; AMD Radeon Vega 3 Mobile Graphics
- 1 USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports & 1 HDMI port with HDCP support
- 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Backlit Keyboard; Up to 7.5 hours battery life
- Windows 10 in S mode. Maximum power supply wattage: 65 Watts
Lenovo Flex 5
Lenovo’s Flex 5 embodies Lenovo’s strategy of innovative design that has helped them expand rapidly into the laptop space. This laptop has excellent versatility and delivers astounding performance in a very small package making it perfect for business on the go.
The Ryzen 5 processor is a particular highlight, as is the 16GB of DDR4 RAM, meaning this laptop can handle the most demanding workloads with relative ease!
Pros
- Excellent components including Ryzen 5 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and ample 256GB of storage
- Digital Stylus included
- Windows 10
- Touch Display
- Highly adjustable and lightweight
Cons
- Touch screen can take some getting used to
- Thin, light, and stylish – This 2-in-1 laptop weighs just 3.64 pounds and is only 0.82" thick. It's soft and comfortable to the touch, with a durable paint that creates a better user experience. Digital pen included
- The 10-point, 14-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS touchscreen allows the Lenovo Flex 5 14" 2-in-1 laptop to be comfortable, fun, and easy to use. It's also great to look at, with 4-side narrow bezels
- The 360⁰ hinge lets you use your 2-in-1 touchscreen laptop in whatever mode works best for you; Use it in 'Laptop' mode for everyday computing, 'Tent' mode for sharing things, 'Stand' mode for binge-watching, or 'Tablet' mode for more intuitive interaction
- Enjoy up to 10 hours of battery life, plus quick charge to 80% in just 1 hour
- Powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U mobile processor with Radeon graphics, you have the performance to do more, from anywhere. With more cores, you'll experience responsiveness that leaps into action for productivity, gaming, and content creation
Acer Spin 5
Finally we have Acer’s Spin 5 which is an excellent and versatile laptop with some excellent components, arguably the best on this entire list in terms of raw processing power and speed.
The 10th generation Intel Core i7 is an excellent choice and will be able to handle very intense workloads, while the 512GB NVMe SSD delivers unparalleled performance and speed alongside ample space for video and pictures.
Overall this is a fantastic option and one of the best performers on the list and in the market.
Pros
- Excellent internals, including 10th generation Intel Core i7, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD and Wi-Fi 6.
- Rechargeable Active Stylus
- Quality IPS display
- Flexible
- Touch display
Cons
- Touch displays can take some getting used to.
- 10th Generation Intel Core i7-1065G7 Processor (Up to 3. 9GHz) 16GB LPDDR4X Memory 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
- 13.5" Acer VertiView 2K 2256 x 1504 Widescreen IPS LED-backlit Touch Display (3:2 aspect ratio) Intel Iris Plus Graphics
- Intel Wireless Wi-Fi 6 AX201 802. 11ax Backlit Keyboard fingerprint reader up to 15 hours battery life
- 2 - USB 3. 1 Type C port supporting USB 3. 1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps), DisplayPort over USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, USB Charging, DC-in, 2 - USB 3. 2 Gen 1 port (one featuring power-off charging) & 1 - HDMI 2. 0 port
- Co-Engineered for Mobile Performance by Intel and Acer Rechargeable Acer Active Stylus with Wacom AES 1. 0
Buyer’s Guide
Finding the right laptop can be difficult for many reasons, but the most difficult can be differentiating between them as they often look very similar and even have quite similar components and names.
Making sure your laptop has the performance you need in a package you can use on the go can be extremely difficult, especially trying to separate the jargon from the real information! Tech speak is enough to put most people to sleep, and even the most dedicated tech enthusiasts can often find keeping up with the latest designs and components extremely difficult.
To help you get a better idea of what you need and what to look for in a laptop we’ve collected some key features to look out for in a great laptop and given a bit of explanation about each to help you make sure your next laptop is capable of everything you need.
CPU
A good CPU is important for any laptop, but for someone like an estate agent this is even more important as you’ll often be handling multiple demanding applications simultaneously, whether it be dealing with large and complex spreadsheets, making new listings on property directories, managing large photo files and videos or conferencing with buyers and sellers.
The role of an estate agent requires many different skills and a relatively powerful CPU is needed to keep pace with this kind of dynamic and weighty workload.
Good options start with Intel’s i3 series of processors, and anything from the 10th or brand new 11th generation are the best value to performance. The same rules apply to Intels slightly more powerful i5 processors, which make a great choice for particularly demanding workloads and very smooth performance for video editing and the like.
AMD also produces some solid processors, with their Ryzen 3 series being particularly good, however its found more use among laptops for gaming than for productivity, however some laptops do take advantage of the power of these processors.
RAM
When it comes to productivity, a solid amount of RAM is really important to make sure your applications work smoothly, particularly when you’re using more than one at a time. A busy desktop will quickly become sluggish and unresponsive if there isn’t enough RAM available.
There are many laptops that offer 4GB of RAM and while this will suffice for basic browsing and word processing, this amount of RAM is considered very minimal by modern standards and this amount of memory will make multi-tasking very difficult and slow which is the last thing any estate agent needs.
8GB of RAM is the sweet spot for a laptop that needs to be able to multitask confidently, and this is the ideal amount to look for to allow effective productivity. 16GB is also very effective but this may be considered overkill and won’t see a significant performance boost except in the most demanding scenarios, so saving some money here may be best.
Regarding the two main formats of memory, there is DDR3 memory which is a much older type of memory, and far slower than the current DDR4 standard which is the latest and fastest type of RAM. Make sure your laptop has DDR4 RAM to get the very best speed possible.
Connectivity
Estate agents need to be able to print documents, download photos and videos as well as deliver presentations, and laptops used for these purposes need great connectivity to facilitate these dynamic demands.
Look for the latest USB slots and as many of them as possible, as well as SD card readers and Bluetooth to make sure you’re able to use your laptop as the hub of all your business.
Webcam
A good webcam is essential for estate agents, as meetings will need to be hosted with prospective buyers as well as key stakeholders such as landlords and developers.
The ability to host meetings digitally and professionally relies on a quality webcam, with good resolution and a decent integrated microphone to make sure you’re seen and heard clearly and can deliver your messages with clarity and precision.
Size
The size of a laptop is one of its most key features, as laptops are designed to be as portable as possible and this is especially important for estate agents who need to move around a lot between different locations throughout the workday.
Modern laptops are also capable of being incredibly powerful despite their size and they often pack some excellent features into a very small package, so don’t be afraid to pick something that’s convenient for you and which will be easy to carry around throughout the work day.
Storage
The storage on a laptop for estate agents needs to be ample because they will handle a lot of information, from hundreds of photographs and videos to documents of all kinds related to many clients.
Being able to store all this information and access it swiftly is very important, so a good amount of SSD or NVMe space is critical to ensure that estate agents can get the information they need as soon as they need it, and can store their documents without having to worry about running out of space.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Get A Mac Or PC?
This is a tough question, and there are great products from Apple as well as those based on Windows, and both offer many useful services and functionality.
If you’re someone who spends a lot of time editing and managing photos, a Mac may be the way to go for you, however Windows PC’s offer decent functionality for this also.
Really, it’s mostly a matter of taste and what you’re most comfortable using, as both laptops offer many of the same features in a different package with slightly different functionality, so pick something you’re already confident using or enjoy using as this will make your life much easier in the short and long term.
Is A Tablet Good Enough?
It depends how productive you can really be using a tablet. Some people can manage to type on tablets, however they aren’t as useful for conferencing or managing documents or spreadsheets. In terms of flexibility, a laptop is the best option however if portability is more important to you a tablet may be a viable alternative.
Do I Need An SSD?
An SSD is highly recommended due to its increased speed. They will make booting up and loading applications and documents much faster and will make your OS much more responsive than an old spindrive.
Laptops generally include SSD’s as standard these days because they are also smaller and easier to fit into a laptop case than older hard drives. If you want the very fastest SSD look for an M.2 drive or NVMe drive to maximise your drive performance.
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