1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best Chromebook
4. Best Lenovo
5. How to find the right laptop
6. How we test
7. Why trust Laptop Mag
The best 4G LTE laptops are essential if you’re a mobile professional and your job requires you to travel frequently. Even in 2024, you can't find free or secure wifi everywhere, so purchasing a laptop with 4G LTE capabilities ensures you can remain connected wherever you go.
We’ve identified the best 4G LTE laptops, each balancing solid performance, a vivid display, and affordable pricing.
An important thing to remember is that 4G LTE is typically an optional feature, so even for the laptops on this list, make sure you are selecting a configuration with 4G LTE. Some companies will advertise 4G support as if it's a stock feature. For example, the page for the HP Spectre x360 says it has “Gigabit-class 4G LTE,” but you need to select it and spend an additional $130.
If you are wondering why we are talking about 4G LTE and not 5G, many laptop makers have stuck to the older standard for connected laptops. However, 5G is starting to appear more commonly, and some of the laptops on our list can be configured with 5G if desired. While this page includes some laptops that offer both, check out our best 5G laptops page for expressly 5G laptops.
Momo Tabari graduated with a bachelor's degree in Journalism & Media Studies at Brooklyn College and has been covering tech for four years. She has written over fifty reviews and has plenty of experience testing and critiquing laptops.
The Quick List
Best overall
The HP Dragonfly G4 is our top pick for those who need 4G LTE. It combines great battery life, solid vPro performance, and an awesome keyboard that will let worker bees type away without the fear of fatigue.
Best Chromebook
The HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is simply the best Chromebook you can get if you need a 4G LTE connection. It offers a solid display, tons of security features, and a compact design that's perfect for lovers of light, reliable laptops.
Best Lenovo
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11) is an absolute gem. It's our best business laptop, period. You can expect phenomenal battery life, solid performance, and an impressive ultralight for those on the go.
The best 4G LTE laptops in 2024
Why you can trust Laptop Mag Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best overall
The HP Dragonfly G4 is our number-one choice for those needing the best laptops with 4G LTE. While you'll have to configure it with 5G, it'll still support 4G broadband and allow you to seamlessly get work done on the go with a data plan. But beyond just its connectivity capabilities, what makes this laptop so special?
HP built the Dragonfly G4 with an Intel Core i7-1365U vPro, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 13.5-inch, 1920 x 1280-pixel display. Its thin chassis and light weight contribute to a compact form factor, coming in at 2.2 pounds and measuring 11.7 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches. You'll have no issue slotting it into your backpack and taking it on the go to get work done (or to watch movies or TV shows).
While its display is far from perfect, it boasts enough coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut with a score of 80.2 percent to fulfill most people's needs. We recommend at least 80 percent to avoid lackluster and ensure you enjoy films comfortably. Its 391 nits of brightness are also solid enough to ensure your screen well-lit areas don't wash out your screen.
Best of all, longevity is pretty essential when on the move. And considering you're on this list to find the best 4G LTE laptops, you'll want something that can last when you're not in a space that offers wifi and, thus, probably won't have outlets. The HP Dragonfly G4 has you covered in that regard, as on the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits of brightness, it managed a 12-hour, 44-minute runtime.
Its only real flaw is that its overall performance left a bit to be desired. On the Geekbench 6 benchmark, it managed a score of 7,408. This is decent and will still be capable of handling moderate workloads. Still, considering that Intel Meteor Lake laptops can hover around 12,000, you are trading a bit less performance for its other features.
See our full HP Dragonfly G4 review.
Best Chromebook
The HP Elite Dragonfly is the best Chromebook you can buy if you want 4G LTE connectivity, but you will absolutely have to pay top dollar for it. It's built with an Intel i5-1245U processor, 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, and 256GB of NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD storage space. Its 13.5-inch, 2256 x 1504-pixel touchscreen also delivers a phenomenally bright and sharp panel.
The Elite Dragonfly managed to reproduce 79.3 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and we generally recommend anything around 80 percent and higher, so it's absolutely within that range. However, Chromebooks often suffer from significantly inferior color depth, with our average being 59.3 percent. It's unsurprising that this does much better, considering it's more expensive than most Chromebooks. It has an average brightness of 392 nits, whereas the average Chromebook comes in at 297 nits. There's also a display option that HP claims can hit 1,000 nits.
Its greatest weakness is that it doesn't last long when on the go. If you're looking for a great 4G LTE experience, a laptop that won't die when separated from an outlet is necessary. In this case, it lasted 9 hours and 14 minutes. At the same time, that is decent enough in general, as our Chromebook average is 9 hours and 31 minutes. We generally recommend laptops lasting between 9 and 10 hours, but in this case, we'd expect a little more from a Chromebook designed for those on the move.
Overall, the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is an absolute winner for business users who prefer the Chromebook platform. If you need a great laptop for your business, you'll love the security that comes with Intel vPro, Google's Titan C chip, and a built-in privacy shutter.
See our full HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook.
Best Lenovo
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11) is still our number one best laptop for the business category. Best of all, it can be built with 4G LTE or 5G LTE. So not only are you getting the best of the best for business users, but you are also getting precisely what you need out of it. Not many laptops come with mobile broadband support, and you'll often have to settle for a lesser laptop to get one with compatibility, but this isn't the case here whatsoever. If you're a business user searching for a Windows laptop and have a good bit to spend, this is what you should buy, period.
It's built with an Intel Core i7-1355U processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and a 14-inch, 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution touchscreen. These specs are solid on paper, but what really makes the ThinkPad X1 Carbon shine is what you get when you take a peek at our tests.
In the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits, it lasted 13 hours and 45 minutes before powering off. We normally recommend longevity between 9 and 10 hours, so to put it bluntly, this is an absolutely awesome score. When thinking about taking laptops on the go, especially because mobile broadband means you'll likely be away from an outlet, knowing they can last a long while is a necessity.
Its performance is also good but certainly not exceptional. On the Geekbench 5.5 overall performance test, it managed a score of 8,628 and beat the premium laptop average of 7,768. This should be decent enough to handle moderate workloads, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about a processor slowing you down.
Unfortunately, its display leaves a bit to be desired, a sacrifice you'll have to make to reap the benefits of its other remarkable features. It covered 69 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is not only significantly below the category average of 94 percent but also falls flat in the face of our recommended 80 percent minimum.
See our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11).
How to choose the best 4G LTE laptop for you
Beyond needing to tick the essential box of offering 4G LTE connectivity, the rest of the features you are looking for in a 4G LTE laptop are the same things you look for in any great laptop.
Budget: What you get for the money.
You aren't going to find a cheap laptop with LTE support. This feature is most closely associated with business laptops, which are always more expensive than their mainstream counterparts. You can expect to spend at least $1,100 - $2,000 for these laptops.
Screen Size: What's the right size for you?
Typically, laptops with 4G LTE are going to be 14 inches or smaller since the presumption is that you are trying to stay mobile. Between 13 and 14 inches is our sweet spot for most mainstream laptops anyway, as it strikes an outstanding balance between size and screen real estate, so the lack of options in this category isn't a significant concern. If that feels confining, either opt for a higher resolution to fit more on your display or consider adding a portable monitor to your bag when needed.
Battery Life: 9+ Hours
Given that you wanted 4G LTE built-in, battery life is crucial for you for two reasons. The first is that the assumption is that if you want to stay connected on the go, that also potentially means being unable to plug in and charge up at a moment's notice. Secondly, using a cellular radio is an additional drain on your battery versus just wifi, so expect to see far fewer hours on a charge than our wifi-based testing shows.
How we test the best 4G LTE laptops
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing—both synthetic and real-world—before we send it to our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers, and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the laptop's display's brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 5 and 6 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop with converting a 4K video to 1080p resolution and duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is Sid Meier's Civilization 6 Gathering Storm benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits of brightness. You want to see at least 9 hours and preferably 11 or more if you are a frequent traveler using the cellular radio and a higher brightness setting.
These tests are complemented by extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers, who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops yearly, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.
We are 100 percent independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades and continues to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
One of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing, enforces our editorial trustworthiness. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.
