Working as a digital nomad – Your digital nomad office setup

As a digital nomad, a key challenge is to stay productive while you are moving around on a regular basis. A key aspect of staying productive on the road is to use equipment that makes you efficient (and by equipment I mean the daily tools of your trade, i.e. your computer, headphones, mouse, and so on). This is what we are going to explore in details in this article.

So, what are the key elements of your digital nomad setup? Here they are:

• Your laptop
• A high quality and light mouse
• A laptop stand
• A digital nomad keyboard
• Noise cancelling headphones
• And a second monitor

The most important piece of your equipment is of course your laptop. Some people manage to travel and stay productive with tablets (sometime coupled to an external keyboard), but that is quite rare and I would not recommend starting with this without knowing that it works for you. A lot of people only travel with a laptop, but if you want to increase your productivity, I definitely recommend adding some accessories.

First, a good quality mouse will have a very positively impact on your productivity. Second, using a laptop stand paired with a high quality keyboard will greatly improve your posture as well as your typing speed: your back will thank you, and the straighter position you adopt also improves your productivity. Finally, if you are a designer or developer, you can add a second screen to your setup, while staying mobile and light (I still travel carry-on with my second screen). Adding more screen real estate has a huge impact on your efficiency for many tasks, so this can be a big positive change. However, the whole setup combined starts to be heavy, so it might not be for you if you are moving too often.

A mouse, a laptop stand, and a keyboard: the increased productivity will be significant. They add weight to your setup, but you will not look back!

Best Laptops for digital nomad 2018

Making a list of the best digital nomad laptops 2018 is tricky for sure. Essentially, there are only two brands of laptops that can be consistently considered of professional level, and they are the only once I would recommend without any second thought. Those are the Lenovo Thinkpad line and the Apple Macbook line.

It is true that you might find good hardware in other brands (Asus with its standard 2 years warranty deserves a special mention, for instance), but the models change so quickly, with a broad range of quality level within the brands, that it remains difficult to consistently make recommendations.

Pick a Thinkpad or a Macbook, and you are safe. How to choose? In a nutshell, if you are a Windows user, pick a Thinkpad. If you are an iOS user or Apple fan, pick a Macbook. Those devices will last for years. They will sustain the 100% humidity level of that co-working space near the beach in Bali, as well as the hundreds of take-in and take-out at airport security. They are pricey, but definitely worth it. Remember, this laptop is where 100% of your work is done, and even a slight increase in efficiency by using good hardware will have a significant impact on your productivity.

Below we go into more details into the best options in the Apple Macbook and Lenovo Thinkpad product lines. Overall, to make your choice, the following key criteria are to consider:

• The weight
• The autonomy
• The performance
• And the price

#1 Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 14”

Lenovo is now at the 6th generation of the X1 Carbon. They are built around strong components, high quality screens, and SSD hard drives. Their 14 inches screen is bigger than the 12 inch of most of the ultrabooks, without sacrificing the weight. The great feature that Lenovo keeps with the Thinkpad’s professional line of laptops is the use of mat screens. Believe me, mat screen are just incredibly confortable to work on in environments where you do not control the light (yes, like sitting this table at the beach :-)).

The X1 comes in different flavors. I recommend to not look too closely at the CPU (they will all be fine), but focus on the RAM, the hard drive size, and the screen resolution. Pick the ones you are comfortable with, and you’re done. Today, 8GB RAM and a full HD 1920x1080 screens are perfect for most needs. 256 GB is enough for most uses, but you might want to extend to 512 GB.

My recommend pick is this one: the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a Core i7, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and 14″ Full HD screen (1920x1080).

#2 Apple MacBook Air (13.3’’)

The Macbook Air is a wonderful product. It offers reasonable RAM, hard disks size and CPU power, and is a beautiful, very light, and robust machine. The current versions come with 8 GB RAM as a standard, a 128GB or 256 GB SSD hard drive, and a Core i5 CPU. The 13.3 inch screen has a native resolution of 1440x900, which is great for that size of screen.

The battery lasts for up to 12 hours under standards tasks (this is for real), which is very unique. Being able to work from anywhere during a full day without having to worry about finding a plug to charge your laptop is just great, and it’s one of the only computers on the market offering this. Overall, it’s the perfect digital nomad laptop if you are performing standard tasks (if you need to perform more demanding tasks like developing or video editing on a regular basis, look at the MacBook Pro below, which might be more suitable).

Like all Apple products, it goes at a premium versus similar specifications in other brands because of the design and the Apple. However, the robustness, reliability, and autonomy make up for the price. This is why they became quite popular: don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of these around you at that coffee shop in Chiang Mai 🙂

The only annoying thing with Apple is that they make everything specific and different, such as the chargers, the connectors, the plugs, and so on. In the end you often have to buy extra connectors and it can become a bit annoying.

My recommended pick is this one: the Apple 13.3″ MacBook Air, which 128GB SSD hard drive, 8GB RAM and a Intel Core i5 CPU, with up to 12 hours of battery.