HACKER Q&A
📣 Quanttek

What laptops can HN recommend in the ~1000€ price range?


My old Dell XPS 13 9360 is slowly falling apart. I had to replace the battery twice already and the touchpad hasn't been properly working for a while. Even replacing it has not fixed the issue of it stopping to work a few minutes after booting up. I also get regular Bluescreens and the microphone is not working anymore. Now, my keyboard is starting to act up.

Hence, I'm looking for a new daily driver. Ideally, it should be lightweight, since I'm a student, but powerful enough to run more complex statistical algorithms. It should also not exceed 1500€. Ideally, it will be a bit more durable than my current device. At least it's 13' form factor is quite nice.

  👤 simonblack Accepted Answer ✓
For what it's worth, I have bought many laptops over the years. Acer, Asus, Toshiba, HP, Lenovo.

Toshiba were my preference for a long time (mid-90s to about 2010), but lately (the last 12 years) I've been happiest with Lenovo.

Having said that, the quest for ever lighter and thinner laptops means that compromises are necessary. My last Lenovo laptop's keyboard is not as pleasant as my 12 year-old Lenovo laptop's, but the screen is phenomenal.

I had nothing but grief with several HP laptops. So much so that I put HP laptops on my 'never buy again' list.

Acer and Asus were laptops that I quite liked to use, but they weren't as long-lived as the Lenovo.

I've probably confused you further with the above comments. Good luck with your choice.

My latest Lenovo laptop is the P53 with 32 GB of RAM and a 4K screen. I bought it with a 1GB SSD and I have added a 4GB SSD. I run Linux Mint on it. This laptop is bigger (15-inch) than what I usually buy (14-inch), but it's smaller than one of my HP laptops (17-inch).

AFTERTHOUGHT: In many cases, Lenovo allow you to 'customise' your selection, with different screens, different disk sizes, different RAM sizes, etc. That can make a big difference to the amount you spend. I tend to get lots of RAM, and smallish disks which I can upgrade later. I also tend to get high-res screens. I believe there is a 14-inch version of the P53 (maybe a P43 ???).