Looking for the best laptop for financial modeling? You’re in the right place.
Below, in the table, you’ll find 5 best laptops for financial modeling. These models have been picked after hours of extensive research so we know that these are the best options for financial modeling at this point in time.
Best Laptop for Financial Modelling
Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 - Editor's Choice
The Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 is our editor’s choice for the best laptop for financial modeling.
This Dell laptop comes with all the essentials and offers a bit more in each department to take the top spot on this list.
With an able processor, ample memory and other well-rounded specs, we don’t see any other laptop to do better than this Dell model when it comes to financial modeling.
The overall performance of the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 is more than just impressive. It comes with an Intel Core 8250U processor which is a quad-core chip and has a base clock speed of 1.6GHz. With turbo boost, you’ll be able to get that number to a max of 3.4GHz.
The processor also comes with a smart cache memory of 8MB which should come in real handy when you’re dealing with large documents which is something you’ll always be doing in financial modeling.
The laptop is also pretty impressive when it comes to memory management as well. It comes with 16 gigs of DDR4 type memory which is more than enough for a business laptop of this caliber. You can run multiple excel sheets or other spreadsheet applications at the same time without worrying about performance.
Also, the laptop comes with a dedicated number pad which is super handy for handling numbers on a large scale. For financial modeling, you have to have the best keyboard so that you don’t miss or mess up with any numbers on the database. Thankfully, this Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 covers this base for us. The keys are nice to type on and come with good key travel. A good thing here is that you don’t lose any speed when you use this keyboard and can get used to this quickly.
The model comes with a 15.6″ touchscreen display that has a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Having a touchscreen is very helpful when you’re making a presentation or when you’re working on something interactive. Also, this makes up for a better business look in a conference room or during a discussion with clients.
One of the most important things for a business laptop is its portability. The Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 model weighs around 4.85 pounds which is a lot lighter than other models in the same class. If you travel a lot, you can easily pick this up and slide it inside your backpack before going out.
The laptop also offers you a range of connectivity options that are best suited for the best of the best business users. You get USB 3.1 Type-A ports for data transfer, an Ethernet port for high-speed internet access, an SD card reader, and also an HDMI port. The laptop also comes with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth.
How good is the battery life on this laptop? Pretty good. With normal usage, you should get around 9 to 10 hours on this laptop which is great. With some heavy usage, that number might drop down, but it still is a solid laptop when it comes to battery life.
To end things here, the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5570 is the best laptop for financial modeling. It gives you all the specs you need for a smooth operation. You get a touchscreen, a solid processor, more than enough memory, super-fast storage, and excellent battery life at a price that is very reasonable.
- Touchscreen is a nice addition
- Excellent battery life
- Good overall performance
- Lack of USB Type C port
Lenovo ThinkPad E590
The Lenovo ThinkPad E590 is the runner up for our best laptop for financial modeling list and rightly so.
The Dell Inspiron edges out the Lenovo ThinkPad E590 in very few areas and makes the top of the list. If you ask us, you can’t go wrong with either of these two excellent laptops.
The Lenovo ThinkPad E590 is a solid 15.6″ inch laptop that comes with all the features you need to be on top of your game when it comes to financial modeling.
The very first that catches your eye on this laptop is the keyboard. We have a solid keyboard that comes with excellent key travel. The keys are shaped differently than in most keyboards and that comes in handy when you’re typing. The arrow keys are a bit cramped but you can get used to that over time.
Like the Dell model, we also have a dedicated number pad in the Lenovo ThinkPad E590 model as well. When you’re crunching numbers, this will come in quite handy for most users.
The Lenovo ThinkPad E590 model comes with an HD 15.6″ display which is also a widescreen as well. Unfortunately, this one here is not a touchscreen but it does everything else very well. The display comes with excellent colors and you get the best picture when it comes to business laptops.
You can enjoy doing presentations on this laptop. Especially when you can almost place the laptop on its back. It is easy to make people dive into data without making them stick their necks. The widescreen is also very useful when it comes to handling spreadsheets and other number-related applications.
The Lenovo ThinkPad E590 model also comes with a lot of processing power in the name of the Intel Core i5 8250U processor. This is the same processor we found on the Dell Inspiron model and it does well here as well. It clocks at 1.8GHz and can be scorched up to 3.4GHz with a smart cache memory of 6GB.
The processor is well complemented by the 16 gigs of RAM in the memory department. You can multitask on this laptop without having to worry about any lag in the performance of the device. You can also upgrade this memory later if you feel the need for more memory.
One of the main reasons for the snappy performance of this Lenovo laptop is the storage we have here. The storage is a 512GB PCIe 3.0(x4) NVMe solid-state drive. This is a superfast SSD and comes with excellent read and write speeds. The operating system boots up in seconds and you can see that apps are much faster in opening and closing.
The Lenovo ThinkPad E590 weighs in at 4.7 pounds which is even lighter than the Dell laptop. You can easily carry this around when you’re traveling to make presentations. You can also use this notebook to work on the go as well.
In terms of connectivity, the Lenovo ThinkPad E590 gives you quite many options. You get a USB type C port for superfast data transfer and connectivity. There is also a couple of USB 3.0 ports and a USB 2.0 port for the same purpose as well. You’ll also find an HDMI port and also an SD card reader as well.
You can use the Ethernet port for getting high-speed internet access. Or you can simply make use of the built-in WiFi to achieve the same results. However, the former would be a lot more consistent if you ask us. There is also built-in Bluetooth as well.
One of the best selling points of this Lenovo ThinkPad E590 model is its battery life. With normal usage, you should easily get around 12 hours of battery life which can get you through a whole day without having to plug the laptop into a power socket. This is particularly great if you’re someone who travels a lot.
- Stellar battery life
- Excellent allround performance
- SSD is superfast
- No touchscreen
Acer Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC
The Acer Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC is a recent upgrade of an older model and makes perfect sense to be on this list.
With a reasonable price point, the laptop comes with all the hardware you need for a business laptop. Though it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, you do get the most bang out of the buck when it comes to the specs and pricing.
This is one of the best-designed laptops on the list and comes with a super cool finish. The laptop comes in a light shade of black and just screams premium. With dimensions of 14.3 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches, the laptop weighs around 3.97 pounds which also makes this laptop a very portable one.
The display we have on this Acer laptop is a 15.6″ one with full HD resolution. The bezels are not that thick and that leads to an immersive viewing experience. The best part about this screen is that it is an IPS panel. The IPS panel gives you excellent colors and they are vibrant and come with good contrast. You get brilliant viewing angles on the screen allowing you to take a peek at a screen from almost any angle.
The widescreen is just fantastic for media consumption. The colors are perfect for an evening or night marathon of Netflix. It also makes up for an excellent work display. You can get clear information on the screen and thanks to the sharper texts, your presentations are more attractive than ever.
The keyboard on the Acer Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC model is a solid one. It comes with backlighting so that you can work in places where there is not a lot of light. The keys are pro and can be used without compromising on your typing speed. There is also a dedicated number pad if you ever wondered. The touchpad is also nice and comes with support for multitouch gesture support.
How good is the processing power of the Acer Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC? We have an i7 processor from the 8th gen of Intel chips. This is a low-power quad-core processor and comes with a maximum clock speed of 4.6GHz. Simply put, this piece of silicon is one of the best ones you’re going to get at this price point.
With this Intel chip in place, the laptop can run pretty much anything you want. Even some of the resource-hungry applications run fine without any hiccups. The 12GB DDR4 RAM complements the processor in a sweet way and helps you get the most out of this laptop. You can increase the laptop’s memory later in the future as there is a provision for that.
The storage in the laptop is made of a 512GB SSD which takes good care when it comes to performance. All the operations on the operating system are quick and it’ll be a rare thing to find something that moves slowly. You can copy even huge files in record time, thanks to the reading and writing speeds of this SSD.
Having a GPU is not that important for a laptop that focuses on financial modeling. But having one didn’t hurt anyone. The notebook comes with an Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU which allows you to some graphically intensive work. You might also be able to play some mid-range games without any issues.
The Acer Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC comes with a vast lineup of ports when it comes to connectivity. You get a USB type C port which will be the standard for years to come. You also get a couple of USB 3.1 gen A ports of which one comes with power-off charging. There is an HDMI port with HDCP support and can be used to connect with high-end monitors and projectors.
Battery life is one of the best features of this Acer laptop. With light usage, you’ll get around 9.5 hours which is perfect for those who go out a lot. You can even carry your laptop for the whole day without having to charge it in the middle and that’s something. However, if you going to do something taxing on the laptop, then expect the battery life to go down.
- Brilliant display
- Super portable under 4lbs
- Discrete GPU allows gaming
- Nothing at this price point
Asus VivoBook Pro 17
The Asus VivoBook Pro 17 is the next model we’re going to see in this list of best laptops for financial modeling.
This is a 17.3″ laptop that comes with all the stuff you’d expect in a proper business laptop. We chose this laptop as it gives you a bit more screen real estate when compared to the other models. Not only that, but you also get some nice goodies in other ways as well.
This is also the most premium looking laptop in our list which says something about its design. It comes in a nice shade of gray that looks just fantastic. The laptop has a nice weight to it and you can clearly say that this one here is a premium device.
The Asus VivoBook Pro 17 model weighs around 4.7 pounds which is crazy light for a 17.3″ laptop. ASUS has done some impressive engineering to make the laptop this light and that’s brilliant. In spite of its size, you can quickly slide this laptop into your backpack and go out without feeling anything extra. If you’re someone who wants a portable laptop, then this one should be given more priority.
The Asus VivoBook Pro 17 model also has a more secure element when compared to other models. We have a fingerprint sensor that allows you to log in to your user account with a simple touch. Not only is this easier than typing a secure password, but it is also much more secure to do it this way.
The keyboard and the touchpad are standard stuff and can get the job done without any problem. The keys have nice tactile feedback making them super comfy to type on. The number pad on the right is surely something you want when you crunch number day and night. The touchpad supports all the Windows gestures with good responsiveness.
The screen here is a 17.3″ full HD display and supports 72% of the NTSC color gamut. Sadly, this is not a touchscreen display but that’s okay considering we’re getting a much bigger screen compared to most models out there. The pictures on the screen are nice and you get good, vibrant images. You’ll love watching movies and TV shows on this display for sure.
The display, being a widescreen, is perfect for running two windows side by side. If you’re a spreadsheets guy, you’ll love how big the screen is, as it gives you more real estate to play with.
The laptop is no slouch when it comes to processing power. We have an Intel Core i7 processor that has 4 cores and a max clock speed of 4.6GHz. This is an eighth generation processor from Intel and is a workhorse that can do pretty much anything you ask of it. The 16GB DDR4 RAM in the memory department is a nice way to complement this processor and they both work extremely well in tandem.
Unlike other laptops, the Asus VivoBook Pro 17 comes with a discrete graphics card in the name of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with a dedicated memory of 4GB. If you have a knack for gaming, then this GPU will allow you to do some decent gaming without any problem. You can also use this GPU power to make some high-end financial graphics as well.
With a 256GB SSD in addition to the 1TB HDD, the laptop does not take rest when it comes to performance. All the operations are snappy and you know that as your apps launch super-quick without making your wait.
In terms of connectivity, the Asus VivoBook Pro 17 model gives you more options than you’d ever need. You get USB 3.0 ports, a USB type C port, an SD card reader, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, and also a headphone jack. You’ll also see that this model has support for wireless standards like 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.
The battery life is one of the less appealing features of this laptop. With a bigger screen, it is only normal for the laptop to give a poorer battery life. But here the Asus VivoBook Pro 17 model fails when it comes to providing a solid battery life. With normal usage, you should get around 4 to 5 hours which is not a lot when you compare with our first and second choices.
But having a bigger screen and a dedicated GPU might interest a section of people which is why the Asus VivoBook Pro 17 made it to our list of best laptops for financial modeling.
- Bigger screen gives you more real estate
- Fingerprint scanner provide more security
- Discrete GPU can come in handy
- Battery life is not that great
Asus Pro P2540UB-XB51
The Asus Pro P2540UB-XB51 is a laptop that is made with business users in mind. It comes with features that are perfect for people running businesses and won’t matter much for home users and students.
With an affordable price tag, it is hard to oversee the likes of such a notebook when it comes to financial modeling. Let’s go ahead and see what makes this a good fit to enter the race for the best laptops for financial modeling.
One of the striking features of this model is the full HD display. With this resolution, you get really good pictures and you can create slideshows and other presentations in all their full HD glory. The display is also good enough media consumption, thanks to the decent viewing angles. The widescreen also gives you the real estate to stack two windows side by side.
With an Intel i5 processor and 8 gigs of DDR4 RAM in the memory department, this laptop can handle all the apps you would need for your financial modeling needs. With a max clock speed of 3.4GHz, you can rely on this laptop to run even some heavy apps without any performance issues. The apps open and close quickly saving you time over a multitude of tasks.
The Asus Pro P2540UB-XB51 model also hosts a fingerprint reader to the right of the touchpad. You can use this to log in to Windows and other secure applications. The HD webcam also comes in handy to make video calls for both business and personal reasons.
Another reason for the laptop’s snappy performance is the solid-state drive. We have a 256GB solid-state drive that comes with excellent reading and writing speeds. The operating system boots up in a few seconds and you get a similar launching time for most applications. The time taken for copying even big files is also pretty fast.
If you’re someone who types a lot, then you’ll love the keyboard on this laptop. The keys are tactile and you can have a good time typing your stuff. A nice addition to the keyboard is the dedicated number pad which will be super useful if you’re going to crunch numbers for a living. The touchpad is a smooth one and catches your taps and slides with good accuracy.
The notebook comes with an Nvidia GeForce MX110 GPU which is a dedicated graphics card with a video memory of 2GB. This is much better than the integrated GPU and enables you to play some mid-range games without any issues. The GPU also plays a good role if you want to run something graphically intensive on this laptop.
There are several connectivity options here. You can see three USB 3.0 ports, a single USB 2.0 port, an HDMI port, and a VGA port. There is an Ethernet port for high-speed internet access but you can also use the inbuilt WiFi to connect to the internet. There is also Bluetooth connectivity which can be really useful if you have Bluetooth enabled printers and other devices.
The Asus Pro P2540UB-XB51 comes with an excellent battery life which is one of the main reasons why this laptop is on this list. With normal usage, you should get around 9 hours of battery life and that’s just brilliant. With heavy use, this number does come down but you’ll still be able to get a solid battery life out of this notebook. You can replace the battery easily which gives you some hard to find flexibility.
The laptop weighs around 5.2 pounds which makes this a good one for portability. You can easily carry this laptop around without feeling anything too heavy in your hands. Yes, it may not be the slimmest or the lightest laptop out there but it does work when you need to work on the go.
- Fingerprint scanner for added security
- Excellent battery life
- Neat overall performance
- No USB type C port
What To Look For In The Best Laptop For Financial Modeling?
Financial modeling is huge and though it might require the resources other disciplines need, it still is not something you can manage with an entry-level machine.
Processor
The processor is the core component in any machine. When you’re looking for the best laptop for financial modeling, you should make sure that you’re not skimping on this one.
Go for a minimum of a dual-core processor and make sure that it is a recent gen processor from Intel or AMD. If you’re planning to go the Intel route, don’t settle for anything less than an i5 chip. Clock speeds are not that important but a processor with turbo boost functionality might be a better choice.
Memory
RAM is another important hardware you don’t want to oversee.
While you can do a lot of business stuff with just 4 gigs of RAM, it is advisable to look for a minimum of 8GB when it comes to memory. Our top picks have a memory of 16GB which is in the optimum stage. Make sure the RAM is of DDR4 type as it is much more efficient and faster than the previous generation ones.
Storage
Storage is one of the things you don’t have to worry about much. If you have enough storage that is also fast, then that’s all that matters.
The key is to go for minimum storage of at least 256GB. If you can afford solid-state drives, then that should be the direction you take. SSDs are much faster than HDDs and also impact the performance of the device in a big way. If you want to go for hard drives, then be sure to go for 7200RPM drives and not 5400RPM ones as the latter is super slow in operating.
Battery Life
Since we’re looking for a business laptop here, you should go for the ones with the best battery life. When you’re on the search for a business notebook, then you might be someone who travels a lot. So having a good battery life would allow you to work on the go.
Aim for a battery life of 7 hours or more. If you’re getting around 8 to 10 hours, then consider yourself lucky. In some cases, battery life is more important than the other three criteria mentioned above. Be smart and don’t skimp on battery life.
Form Factor
Having a slim laptop will come in handy a lot of times. With a slim laptop, you can travel around without feeling extra on your hands. You can just slide your laptop into your briefcase and carry on with your work.
If you show a lot of presentations to colleagues and clients, then you should go for a laptop that also converts into a tablet. This will give you the right form factor to make the best out of your presentations. Having a convertible might also allow you to work in places that are tight as well.
Graphics Card
GPU is probably the last on our list because it is not that important in this use case.
If you’re someone who likes to game, then having a GPU would definitely come in handy. But if you don’t care about gaming, then you need not worry about your laptop having a discrete graphics card.
That brings us to the end of this post. We hope you liked our list and got some value from this post.
Do leave your feedback and opinions using the comment section below. Got some better alternatives? Let us know that as well.
Do refer to Consumer Tech Central for more Buying Guides.