Image: Foundry/Pixabay
Back in 2020 we had an excuse for our less-than-ideal work from home office setups. The unorthodox arrangement was sprung on many of us with little warning, and we had no choice but to make do. But by now, working from home has become the new normal for many professionals, and to do our jobs well and maintain some semblance of physical comfort and personal dignity, it behooves us to have the right gear.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to say goodbye to the cramped laptop screen and 720p webcam, to avail yourself of ample ports for connectivity and even a second or third monitor to stretch out on, and to upgrade to a mouse and keyboard that make work life more comfortable and productive.
Here we present our favorite work from home tech of 2023/2024, all of which has been personally tested and approved by PCWorld’s hardware and software experts.
For even more acclaim, check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best PC hardware and software of 2023 and our Full Nerd awards.
HP Dragonfly Pro – Best work from home laptop
Price When Reviewed:$1,399Best Prices Today:$1549.99 at HP
A capable, reliable laptop is the centerpiece of any self-respecting home office. The HP Dragonfly fulfills that brief while also being an excellent value. This laptop can match Apple’s premium offerings in terms of materials and styling thanks to its high-quality aluminum and polycarbonate body, sleek lines, and mere 0.7-inch profile, making it suitable for forays outside your home even — say, on a business trip or to a coffee shop.
But rest assured, this looker has plenty of performance muscle, with an AMD 7 processor, a Radeon 680M graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, all ready for deployment on any job. (And even for gaming, if that’s how you let off steam at the end of a workday.) Connectivity consists of two high-speed USB-C ports capable of up to 40Gbps, and one 10Gbps USB-C port. Sadly there’s no headphone jack. But in a surprise twist, the Dragonfly features a truly impressive quad speaker system that plays just about anything without distortion.
Its light-touch keyboard and smooth glass touchpad are a pleasure to use. The 14-inch screen has a standard 1920×1200 resolution, but it’s a high-contrast, colorful, and exceptionally bright 16:10 display. A 5MP webcam and two microphones are ready for videoconferencing with panache, and an infrared sensor enables facial-recognition unlock.
All in all, the HP Dragonfly brings a very compelling mix of features and style to your home office while still respecting your pocketbook.
Read our full HP Dragonfly Pro review
Acer Chromebook Spin 514 – Best work from home Chromebook
Price When Reviewed:$699.99Best Prices Today:$531.05 at Walmart$699.99 at Acer
Granted, for many jobs, a top-notch CPU and GPU can be overkill. In such cases, you can save a significant portion of your paycheck by getting a Chromebook. These cloud-based ChromeOS devices have come a long way in recent years and are capable of striking an attractive balance of practicality and professionalism. The Chromebook Spin 514 is a prime example.
Mind you, its hardware might be more modest than the HP Dragonfly above, but the Spin 514 is no slouch, featuring an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, AMD Radeon graphics, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage. Its two USB-C ports have Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, so either port can be used to charge another device, such as your phone, or to run video out to a second monitor. It also features a USB-A port, an HDMI-out port, and a 3.5mm audio jack.
The versatility doesn’t end there. The Acer Spin 514 has a 2-in-1 form factor, so its 1920×1080 touch-enabled screen can be folded back and used as tablet. Its battery lasted a respectable 13 hours, 13 minutes in our rundown test. The webcam is just 720p, but we appreciate that it includes a privacy shutter.
Yes, it’s pricier than many Chromebook offerings, but one look at its specs and high-quality, durable build, and you’ll understand why it’s the right tool for professionals.
Read our full Acer Chromebook Spin 514 review
Anker PowerConf C200 – Best work from home webcam
Price When Reviewed:$59.99Best Prices Today:$59.99 at Amazon$59.99 at Anker$59.99 at Walmart
Working from home can mean spending lots of time in front of a webcam. If you want to make a strong impression, a higher-resolution device will help. Enter the PowerConf C200. It goes a step further than even 1080p resolution, offering 1440p for a cleaner, more professional look. It also offers various crop modes with a 65-, 78-, or 95-degree field of view so you have more choice in how much background you want in frame.
You will need to install Anker’s software to take full advantage of its options, but the camera can work out of the box with a Windows driver. It comes with a USB-A cable.
Noise-cancelling mics will ensure you come across loud and clear, a privacy shutter will protect against prying eyes, and the camera’s low-light performance is very good. Furthermore, the price for all this is exceptional.
iDrive Online Cloud Backup – Best work from home online backup service
Price When Reviewed:$79.50Best Prices Today:$79.50 at iDrive
Obviously, having a solid backup plan at home is critical. You would hate to lose that PowerPoint you spent all week working on because of a drive failure, wouldn’t you? A good online backup service will keep a copy of all your data safely protected in the cloud and ready for recovery when you need it. In our opinion, there’s no better online backup service than iDrive.
It offers support for multiple PCs and devices, online and local backups, snapshots, syncing, even two-way physical shipment service for emergency data recovery. The amount you pay per year (starting at $2.95 and going up to $99.50) determines the number of users per license and storage space. Other than that, all tiers (including free) enjoy the same comprehensive feature set. Besides being well-appointed, iDrive is a simple client to use, making it an obvious recommendation.
Read our full Online Cloud Backup review
Philips Creator Series 27E2F7901 – Best work from home monitor
Price When Reviewed:$499.99Best Prices Today:$369.99 at Amazon$369.99 at B&H$400.99 at Best Buy
Whether you are still using just a laptop screen or a single desktop monitor, Philips’ Creator Series 27E2F7901 is a must-have upgrade for your home office. This excellent 27-inch IPS Black display not only provides great image quality, but it adds useful connectivity that will having you feeling like your all your work needs are being met.
What do we mean by that? For starters, the display accepts video over HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C. What’s more, the display offers multiple USB downstream ports including one USB-C port that offers 96W of power delivery for device charging. An additional DisplayPort-out port allows you to daisy-chain a second monitor.
Of course, this connectivity extravaganza wouldn’t mean much if the 27E2F7901 didn’t offer an amazing picture. The 4K panel indeed delivers, with colors that look vibrant and details that look razor-sharp.
This monitor wouldn’t be our pick if it didn’t also let you adjust the stand every which way — height, swivel, rotate, and tilt, it’s all here. It also has a 100x100mm VESA mount if you prefer to use a monitor arm.
Read our full Philips Creator Series 27E2F7901 review
Anker 7-in-1 USB-C Hub (A83460A2) – Best work from home USB-C hub
Price When Reviewed:$39.99Best Prices Today:$34.99 at Amazon$39.99 at Anker
For a simple and inexpensive upgrade in connectivity, you can’t go wrong with this USB-C hub. It’s an easy solution for a laptop with limited ports. Providing a good mix of new and legacy ports, the Anker 7-in-1 USB-C hub offers: a USB-C port for pass-through charging to your laptop, another USB-C port for data at 5Gbps, two USB-A ports at 5Gbps, and an HDMI port capable of running single external display at 4K/30Hz or 1080p/60Hz, as well as a MicroSD and standard SD Card reader.
All the ports are nicely spaced on a compact device that’s both lightweight and even elegant looking.
Plugable TBT3-UDZ – Best work from home Thunderbolt dock
Price When Reviewed:$369.00Best Prices Today:$199.95 at Amazon$199.95 at B&H$229.95 at Walmart
We considered recommending the Kensington SD5780T Thunderbolt 4 dock here — and that’s one of the best Thunderbolt docks, to be sure — but the Plugable TBT3-UDZ Thunderbolt 3 has a few key features that will probably make it appealing to even more people.
For starters, being a Thunderbolt 3 dock, Plugable’s dock is much more affordable, while still offering comparable bandwidth to the newer spec. It also offers a veritable boatload of ports, including a pair of DisplayPort 4.1 ports and HDMI 2.0 ports — so no additional dongles are needed if you want to run two displays of either persuasion. Both of those displays can run at up to 4K/60Hz, to boot.
Those ports are complemented by a 10Gbps USB-C and 10Gbps USB-A port — the latter of which delivers 7.5W of power for phone charging — MicroSD and SD Card slots, five USB-A ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. A nicely lengthy 30-inch 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cable connects the dock to your laptop and can charge your laptop with up to 96W of power. Home desk jockeys will also appreciate that this dock can stand vertically, preserving valuable desk space!
Read our full Plugable TBT3-UDZ review
Keychron Q1 Pro Keyboard – Best work from home keyboard
Price When Reviewed:$199Best Prices Today:$199 at Keychron$219.99 at Amazon
As our keyboard reviewer said of the Keychron Q1, “It’s absolutely without equal in this product category.” What features warrant such high praise? The 75% layout mechanical board has a premium all-aluminum body that feels solid and sturdy. It has full arrow keys and a function row. It features high-profile PBT keycaps, and offers an optional rotary dial upgrade. It can be used with the quality braided USB-C cord or wirelessly via Bluetooth. Its 4,000mAh battery can last for a couple weeks with the board’s RGB lighting on.
Most importantly, typing on the Q1 is a joy thanks to the double gasket key mounts, the tall, old-fashioned keycaps, and two layers of sound-absorbing foam. Tinkerers will appreciate the QMK and VIA programming for all keys and lighting, as well as the hot-swappable switches. If you spend a lot of time typing, you can’t do much better than this fantastic board.
Read our full Keychron Q1 Pro Keyboard review
Logitech MX Vertical – Best work from home ergonomic mouse
Price When Reviewed:$99.99Best Prices Today:$94.18 at Amazon$94.18 at B&H$95.99 at Best Buy
Mousing can be a source of repetitive stress injury (RSI), making work life most unpleasant. Logitech’s MX Vertical is a solution for that. The upright design is more ergonomic and designed expressly for extended use. The orientation plus the contoured body are meant to reduce the pressure at the wrist, while still offering familiar controls. It takes a little getting used to, but once mastered it’s sure to improve your productivity by making mousing more comfortable.
It can operate both wirelessly (using Logitech’s Unified Receiver or Bluetooth) and wired (using the included USB-C charging cable), and the buttons settings can be customized. It’s a no-brainer upgrade if you’ve experienced even a twinge of discomfort from a conventional rodent.
Logitech MK540 Advanced Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo – Best value proposition
Price When Reviewed:$59.99Best Prices Today:$44.99 at Adorama$44.99 at Best Buy$44.99 at Lenovo
If you want a one-and-done keyboard-and-mouse combo for your work-from-home setup, Logitech’s wireless MK540 Advanced combo is solid option. It’s all business, in that it lacks backlighting or other flourishes. But it nails the essentials with a roomy and comfortable design, a quiet yet tactile typing experience, programmable function keys and mouse gestures, and a pleasing sloped plastic palm rest.
The mouse is ambidextrous with snappy buttons and a smooth glide. And the whole package is attractively priced at less than $60.
Read our full MK540 Advanced Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo review
EaseUS – Best work from home PDF Editor
Price When Reviewed:Free I $29.95/mo I $49.95/yr I $79.95/lifetimeBest Prices Today:$49.95 at EaseUS
Straight talk: There is no better, more robust, more feature-rich PDF editor than Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC. But it’s also quite expensive and probably overkill for most home office-workers’ needs. Luckily, there is a lower-cost, but still extremely capable alternative in EaseUS PDF Editor.
For just $49.95 a year, or an incredible $79.95 lifetime subscription, you get a full set of PDF editing tools, including a variety of annotation tools for easy collaboration. The app is extremely straightforward, making it possible to jump right in and get started. Add and remove text; add images; change font type, color, and size; add watermarks, background, headers and footers; enable permissions and password protection. It’s all here.
The one caveat is that it’s Windows only. For more suggestions, see our roundup of the best PDF editors.
Read our full EaseUS PDF Editor review
Author: Katherine Stevenson, Managing Editor
Managing Editor Katherine Stevenson is a tech media veteran who was Editor in Chief of Maximum PC before joining PCWorld.
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