*. Goes: preference and alternative, deal-breakers:
1. SIM preferable, WiFi acceptible, but Bluetooth has to be good
2. Spill and dust resistant keyboard that doesn't feel like typing on nothing
3. Trackpoint or trackpad, that works
4. Stylus or touch-screen that doesn't glare
5. Good power management, lasts through the day, done charging in 2.5 hours
6. Runs the hacky-mac or Slax, has a head-set jack
7. Good GPU, fast storage, two fast external storage ports
From my understanding I fit a kind of profile, and am very much not alone. But I'd like to know what the HN crowd take on this is.
If your laptop supports that, you can close the lid and it will power ~everything except the RAM down (sometimes a USB port still charges). In 'new' laptops, including almost everything Tiger lake and Intel, S3 is being phased out for Microsoft's "Modern Standby", known as S0ix (or sometimes InstantGo). This is much more like a mobile phone, where it stays on but attempts to use as little battery as possible.
So, peripherals might shut down, but you might still be able to get critical Windows Updates or receive an important notification -- all while your laptop is unplugged, lid closed, in your bag overnight. This is pretty bad for heat, battery, and often not what you might expect. My new laptop uses about 15% battery overnight, just doing nothing.
In the future, perhaps this mode will work as well as S3 used to for battery life, but finding your laptop fans on while it's closed inside your bag and getting really hot is not fun. This applies to lots of laptops currently.
2. A good screen. Brightness that goes high enough to be seen outside (400, or more) - and it'll usually auto turn down the rest of the time to save battery. Hard to go wrong on a Mac, but really variable screen quality across other brands and models. You'll spend a lot of time looking at the screen.
Yes, you missed something huge.
Apple Silicon M1 or nothing. It's just too good. Low power consumption allows the laptop to actually be used as a laptop. The power use-to-performance ratio is unmatched by anything on the market. Apple is breaking us free from decades of stagnation on the hardware front.
Nothing else on the market comes close. I expect this to change in the future. Will happily switch to a linux laptop once an energy efficient alternative to x86 becomes mainstream for linux. There's just no way I can go back to x86 after tasting the sweet nectar of M1.
1. IPS screen (mostly a given nowadays, but this wasn't always so)
2. Trackpoint, I hate trackpads. Pretty rare option so I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good.
3. Decent keyboard, any laptop will always be primarily a text processing machine for me. (tablet version) 4. User serviceability, with battery and RAM being highest priority but expandable storage is nice too, and all other replaceable parts are a nice bonus.
5. General ruggedness, the whole point of a laptop is being able to travel with it and it's the kind of tech I expect to last me for years.
6. Battery life, though I am not super picky about this.
7. Everything else including performance, higher resolutions than 768p, thinness, appearance, touchscreen (roughly listed in order of preference).
Posted from my trusty Thinkpad X230t which is the only laptop I'm aware of that ticks nearly all my boxes. It's bulky and makes a vacuum cleaner noise when compiling and the battery only lasts 4-5 hours of normal use, though. Still, good enough for web browsing, various forms of text processing, watching videos, listening to music and the vast majority of what you might use a computer for.
I did look into the Framework laptop recently but while it's probably the closet things in a long time the keyboard doesn't look good and there's no trackpoint (nor even physical mouse buttons)
2. Webcam and microphone with kill switches.
3. Battery life.
4. (added) Portable: about 13-14" screen, not too heavy.
5. Longevity, durability (sustainability).
6. Other factors: keyboard, touchpad, screen, wifi, quiet.
I'm fortunate that I don't need a GPU or extreme power for my daily laptop driver (and if I do, I have a desktop).
I'm also fortunate financially to be able to own both a Purism Librem 14 and a Framework DIY edition. It feels good to have my money support those causes, and the laptops are both perfect (except the Framework's battery life, so far).
In the Windows world, sadly, things are a mess. Most new laptops including Microsoft's newest Surface Studio have fractional scaling, i.e., scaling set to a number other than 100% or 200%. As Steve Jobs said when he originally introduced retina screens on the iPhone, the only scale that looks good after 100% is 200%. Any other scale will have display artifacts. If the scale is 150% or 175% then horizontal lines on a web page will appear to have different thicknesses even when they are all actually the same thickness. This is a deal breaker for web developers and graphic artists, and for folks who just want the best looking screens.
I tried the screens of the newest laptops on display at BestBuy. Even 4k screens have this rendering artifact. Surprisingly, even when scaling is set to 300%.
Microsoft's now-obsolete Surface 2 and Surface 3 screens are one of the best. They have 3000x2000 screens and the dpi is 267. Most importantly, the display scale is set to 200%. Everything looks perfect. Sadly, Surface Laptop 4 and Surface Studios no longer use this screen. Their scales are set to between 100% and 200%, which means they have the aforementioned display artifacts. That's sad because the Surface Laptop 4 is one of the best Windows laptops in terms of industrial design.
Samsung Ativ Book 9 first released more than 6 years ago has 3200x1800 13 inch screens... one of the best in the industry. Sadly Samsung is no longer making Windows laptops with that DPI anymore.
Super quiet, exceptional battery performance, lightweight, sturdy, excellent design, super fast, doesn't crash, doesn't reboot when it wants, does what it should do when i close the lid and never lets me down. Basically the M1, the first laptop that does fit my requirements.
I like Linux, but i have to be honest: Windows/Linux laptops can't compete in 2021 with the Apple M1. Maybe some day they will catch up.
- decent performance; I'm an engineer. I actually lose time when things run slowly. Lots of time. Kills my flow and I bill a premium rate.
- decent screen. I look at this thing for the better part of a day. Also, I dabble with photography once in a while and occasionally some frontend stuff. So, HDPI/250 dpi or better.
- Decent ssd storage. I'm done with spinning disks. Not a thing in my life in the last decade.
- A keyboard and trackpad that are genuinely good. I use laptops as laptops and I hate having to plug in external peripherals for input.
- Linux compatible & hassle free.
1. IPS, 1080p at least (and I think I prefer 1080p or may be the 4:3/3:2 variants)
2. Good keyboard with trackpoint. If the keys must have low key travel, no mushy keys at all. Prefer the security of knowing liquids can drain out if something were to happen.
3. Touchpad just needs to work without odd skips or pauses, which I have seen on a couple.
3. Linux supported hardware.
4. Good case, not fond of aluminum, particularly after seeing the shape of one really good macbook pro from a former colleague.
5. Good hinges with good support. No screws in plastic at all.
6. Matte screen. No touchscreen. My laptop is not a phone.
7. Good range of ports to not have to worry about ports. 2 USB, 2 HDMI, at least one USB-C to get new things and dedicated power.
8. Just enough power to take it from my desks for a few hours. I am always near a plug though.
9. I can use it for the next 10 years or more after getting it (writing this on my x220, and despite the screen, everything else is OK to me for a 10 year old computer). That means it must be repairable and have part supply for a long time.
10. SSD (250 GB is more than enough), 16 GB RAM
These things pretty much describe my t430s now (except a small points). I hope that framework can be that replacement.
I want to buy a linux-first laptop, and I like the fact that they have configurable keyboards (i.e. those in layouts other than en-us, unlike System76!) a lot of configuration options, and linux-first support.
The "default" slimbook is aluminium, €899, comes with a Ryzen 4800 H, a 92 WH battery, actual physical ports, and relatively modest other specs. They offer much more "beefy" machines with linux as an OS option.
I've never used them. It's getting to the point where I want to replace my rMBP-2018 "Heatmonster" laptop and after Apple's latest directions, it'll be KDE as a daily driver for me.
[1] https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-kde/kde-slimbook-15-co...
2) Low-TDP modern CPU, ideally Ryzen
3) Bright, hi-res screen
There is nothing on the market that offers this. M1 mac is the closest option, but Apple shouldn't be given money.
I'm currently on a Thinkpad T480.
2. IPS matte good quality display with similar resolution to 2560x1440p, Superb colors and peak brightness.
3. At-least 32GB RAM but pref up-gradable RAM to 64GB
4. Linux full support, preferable AMD
5. Keyboard similar to old thinkpad 7 row style. General going back to retro style with proper keys, Topre switches or why not a mechanical keyboard if possible.
6. Trackpad of high quality. Atleast similar to Apple. Not seen any that have it yet on pc. If not possible, add a trackpoint and remove the trackpad.
7. Ports! Please have many ports. As many as possible.
8. Hardware quality. hinges, case and overall. Make it durable.
9. Battery time, make it last.
10. No spyware or bloatware. Published schematics of the laptop and help the open source community.
11. Good quality parts in chipset for wifi, bluetooth, sound. Latest AMD. Should not be a issue.
12. No intel inside stickers or other stickers on my laptop. If have to put a logo on it, make the logo very small and not in your face.
Okey, so what can i be without to make the above possible and
- No frills or extras. - No touch display. - Medium powered CPU. ( think road warrior not full fledged desktop replacement ) - No discrete GPU needed if it makes my laptop warmer, or make battery go down faster. Integrated GPU is "good enough" - No need for fingerprint sensor, even if convenient. - No magic bars or other innovation someone thought would be good. - Weight and thickness is less important then manufactures seem to think. To a degree. Slim laptops get warmer, rather have it a bit ticket with more room for battery etc.
Do the basics correct. A modern take on the Thinkpad x220. Remove things that don't matter and make a classic awesome laptop for the ages.
--
* Don't make the keyboard key placement stupid. Make the arrow-keys and pgup / pgdn a six-key rectangle that all feel the same and you're dead to me.
* Backlit keyboard is a significant plus - yeah yeah you touch type but uncommonly-used shortcut keys in the dark sucks.
* NVMe storage is table stakes at this point, much like wifi and bluetooth. Give me at least 250G, preferably 1T on that NVMe.
* High DPI display, and ideally a 3:2 screen aspect ratio. I didn't know how much I hated 16:9 until I tried 3:2, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
* Easy to open / replace components / etc. Glue anything and you're dead to me. I also hate clips with a passion. If I need to ship my laptop in because RAM is defective, no thanks.
* It's gotta charge via USB-C. Battery life must be at least 5 hours, but more importantly, make it easily replaceable. A 10 hour batter is only a 10 hour battery for like 6 months.
* Ports should include HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack. Ethernet is a plus.
* Please put the webcam at the top (lookin at you, Dell XPS...) so people don't have to look at my dirty fingernails and up my nose. Built-in hardware disconnect / cover for the webcam a plus.
--
Don't really care about a GPU, I have a desktop for that. Also don't care about fingerprint readers. Touchscreen is actually a minus for me.
1. No touchscreen (I'd rather have a higher quality, low glare non-touch display).
That's about it, actually. Practically all modern laptops seem to meet my expectations on battery life and performance in a way which corresponds well with their cost. Weight is mostly a non-issue since I'd only consider a 13" chassis anyway. Screen resolution can be traded for battery life without concerning me.
An M1 Mac with a non-apple keyboard and full Linux support would probably be great, but I don't hold out any hope for another manufacturer matching the M1 without ruining it somehow (looking at you, Chromebooks).
2. 1080p internal display. I won't buy it if the internal screen resolution isn't at least 1080p.
3. Works with Linux. That's a dealbreaker if I can't put Linux on it.
4. Discrete GPU that can be enabled/disabled without rebooting. Not for games, though that's a bonus. I write software that uses GPU acceleration and I need to test it in the field.
5. External display including connecting to a TV -- HDMI/HDCP, displayport, or USB-C passthrough. It doesn't need to use the GPU but that would be preferred.
6. Power management: when active, the battery should last a full work day unless I have the GPU/peripherals on; when I close my lid everything should suspend to NVMe and practically zero power use from then on.
7. User-upgradeable components: at a minimum, disks and RAM should be interchangeable.
8. Kill-switch for camera/mic which physically disconnects them.
9. Discrete audio / microphone 3.5mm jacks. The audio out jack may be a combined audio+mic jack, but I often have a headset which doesn't have an a combined audio+mic.
10. Discrete ethernet port. 1Gbit is outdated; give me 10Gbit! We've got 10Gbit USB and thunderbolt, there's no reason to not have 10Gbit ethernet.
2. Linux and Qubes OS support.
3. 64+ GB RAM.
4. Coreboot and focused on verifiable security, neutralized Intel ME.
5. Hardware kill switch for camera, microphone.
Actually, there is only one such laptop: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.
- track record of linux compatibility. If it's Windows or out, I'm out.
- good keyboard.
- good screen, > 1920x1080 although 4K is overkill, preferably 16:10.
Macbooks look tempting, but I just don't trust Apple to not break any workflow that isn't editing videos about how great Apple products are. The current keys are good but - sorry, the (pre-butterfly!) keyboard on my OH's MBP is awful, easily the worst keyboard I've ever used on a >$1000 laptop.
2. Linux support
3. keyboard needs to be usable. ThinkPad is good, Dell is meh, HP is horrible
4. Noise. And no coil whine. I never even thought about this before my Dell.
5. No headphone jack would be an instant no. I guess I could live with a dongle for USB.
6. battery should not be completely bad. But unless it would be something for travel, not so important
7. I hate all trackpads (incl. Mac), so I prefer ThinkPads anyway
If the rumours are true, the new M1X MacBook Pros being announced this Monday look perfect:
- high performance + battery life
- exceptional build quality
- great screen, sound, and webcam
- decent port selection
1. Keyboard - I love the old Thinkpad keyboard and hate the new chick-lets which seem to have become the norm.
2. Display - 13-15" , 4k and matte. I am currently using a surface book 2 and the screen while lovely is reflective enough to do my hair in between meetings.
3. Discrete GPU - I generally use a single laptop for both work and play and would prefer the laptop to have a good discrete GPU for casual games.
4. Linux as OS - I have recently become rather soured with windows and have switched over to linux.
Things like weight, battery life, looks etc don't matter much to me
Personally I previously searched for:
1. Super fast CPU (got the Ryzen) 2. With enough RAM (32GB, unofficially) 3. At a cheap non-Apple price ("gaming" laptop) 4. That looks somewhat professional (Lenovo won against the ASUS which screamed teenager) 5. That runs Linux well enough.
I have a Dell Latitude 7300 and it gets incredibly hot. They tried to optimize for size, so it has tiny fans that are incredibly loud when it spins up and they designed the aluminum body to act as a heat sink.
The problem is that when I close the laptop when it's docked, the screen traps the heat and the fans start to whine like a jet engine. Even when it's idling it's loud, so I have to leave the laptop open and on its side when docked to allow for proper heat dissipation.
I have a Dell Inspiron with some pretty decent specs but a lot of weird issues. The Wi-Fi card behaves strangely, the audio driver causes hard-to-debug unpaged memory leaks when used in certain ways, the emulated home/end keys (with fn+arrows) cause key down events but not key up events, and so on. I spend hours trying to make that Laptop do what I wanted it to, and I never managed to get Linux working right.
I bought an M1 MacBook Air in may and I couldn't be any happier. It's not that it doesn't have issues, but if I ever encounter one, I know a few people in pretty much the same situation as me, so figuring out a fix / workaround is usually trivial.
The same holds for the phone, iPhone-related bugs are usually well-understood and described somewhere. If one particular Android phone sounds terribly on Zoom, but correctly everywhere else, you don't even have an idea where to look.
No discrete GPU, I don't want to pay neither money, electricity or weight for a thing I don't need.
Reparability. Removeable SSD is absolute requirement. With a soldered SSD, broken laptop = lost data. Upgradeable RAM is less important but still very welcome.
If I needed a new one I'd look at HP Probook, check their support channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMMjSF4QFw
Truth be had, I'm still loving my 2013 MacBook pro. It's bulky and the battery's not what it used to be, but it's fast and the keyboard is great but after 8 years of hard use, a couple keys are wonky. I'll probably pick up whatever Apple announces on Monday.
I've really want to like the XPS series, but I've bought and returned 3 of them in the past several years due to bad quality control - two would crash when the lid closed, one had a really wobbly trackpad. The XPS 15 or 17 is ideal in terms of form factor though.
A few others that I've had my eyes on:
- The surface pro 8 seems really versatile and powerful. High refresh screen, good battery, nice keyboard.
- I like some of the stuff Asus is doing with dual screens and propped up keyboards, so I'm definitely curious about those for a dev.
1. WiFi+Bluetooth and graphic cards which don't suck on Linux. No Broadcom or Nvidea.
2. Good body without any deck flex, and no flex in the trackpad either. Love the taptic keypads on macbooks.
3. Good power management. Since I expect to lose some battery performance running Linux, I'd prefer to have the laptop be slightly thicker rather than have a tiny battery backup. Also, S3 suspend.
3. Both USB-C and USB-A ports. Preferabel HDMI, full-size SD card reader too.
4. Upgradable RAM and SSD. This is a major one, as I've often doubled the life of my devices by increasing the memory a couple of years into the machine.
5. No 16:9 displays. Nope. Too tiny. At least 16:10. Never used 3:2 but shouldn't be too bad. And they should be able to get bright enough.
Does this even exist? Never met a reliable (even in context of using within a single meter of range) BlueTooth in my life. Only Apple seems to offer reasonably good.
For this very reason (although my experience comes solely from earphones) I hesitate to buy a BlueTooth keyboard which I would normally prefer over occupying a USB port with a separate wireless KB dongle.
Good screen. Bright and High DPI, and an OS that takes good advantage of that.
Good keyboard. I'm gonna type a lot at least sometimes and use Vim, I don't want some mushy accessory keyboard.
Good trackpad. Reasonably big, but not so big your palms constantly make it do things despite software that tries to prevent that. Highly responsive and supports scrolling and dragging without trying to hold down a physical click mechanism.
Can run both a real modern web browser, as in with rapid automatic updates, and as good of a Unix-y command line as possible.
A good selection of ports is a nice plus. As is touchscreen and flexible orientation.
Having regular security updates is good, though it should also not be too pushy about forcing restarts for them. Ideally, it would never lose state, short of me rebooting it by direct command or being unplugged and letting the battery run flat.
It's also nice if I can leave it in "sleep" unattended and off the charger for a week+, open it up, and it's ready to use with the battery still pretty full.
I like a Unix-y command line, but I'm pretty meh about trying to keep a bare-metal Linux install running and updated.
What I actually got recently is a mid-high end Chromebook. I'm pretty happy with it - the current Linux it now supports turns it from a basically browser-centered thing to a very practical developer workstation, assuming you live in the terminal like I do.
- Need a bigger battery? Here's some OEM batteries for you.
- Your chipset is getting old, here's motherboards you can buy
- Need an OLED screen? Here's a couple
- More memory? Sure, there's 4 easy to access slots in there
Ideally in a format that fits in a backpack
Been dreaming about something like this for SO long
2. Upgradeable RAM/storage
3. Preferably AMD GPU and CPU
In roughly that order. Sadly I couldn't really find that recently ): Searching for upgradeable RAM is a pain, and current GPU shortage prevents me from being picky about GPUs as well ):
2. Close to 100% sRGB color gamut, min 1920x1080 14"-15"
3. Reasonably priced!
4. Bonus: good enough CPU
That's it.
I spent almost 9 months looking for a starter to mid range recent laptop (10th intel or 4000 amd) meeting at least 1. and 2. .. and I couldn't find anything in the 300-600 GBP which I thought would be reasonable for something like that.
I went to a large showroom to compare different screens, modern laptops with IPS panels, claiming to be 45% NTSC, IPS 72% NTSC.. and even OLED screens on higher-end laptops (1200-2500GBP)...
I opened the same picture of a girl on my phone which is supposed to be 400 nits 98% sRGB and on every target laptop.. Cheapest TN panels would show white or gray on the girls cheeks where it was supposed to be a light pink... The 45% NTSC IPS panels would show almost accurate colors, but never as clear/bright as on my phone, the 72% NTSC panels were pretty accurate as well, except for the sensible colors like said pink, it would display it a little darker.
To my utmost surprise, the high end OLED screens, would show that problematic pink correctly, except it ended up pixelated!! The entire picture was as clear as it could be, except for the girls cheeks: pixelated...
My 12 year old inspiron with a TN panel (if you decrease blue by 20% from the intel graphics driver) will display colors a little more accurately than most IPS panels they put in low-mid range laptops today.
So I ended up buying a Latitude E5470 for 170GBP, best ever display panel for this price range. Thinking of buying a second one, to make sure I have enough spares if something happens to this one.. Or maybe a Precision from the same era.. but they seem to go ~500GBP, not comfortable spending that much on a refurbished laptop.
1. Modular build. E.g. with new thinkpads you can’t even remove the battery. That sucks.
2. Good keyboard.
3. Linux support
Even in an office setting, I find matte displays way more comfortable.
You say:
Stylus or touch-screen that doesn't glare
1) Weight about 1 kg. I do carry another e-ink reader in my bag thus a lighter laptop is a big plus.
2) Minimum 2K resolution. Once you have used 2K screen the Full HD just don't cut it anymore.
3) Military grade certification for drop. I once dropped my laptop bag from shoulder height containing less than a month laptop but because it has military grade for drop it did survived (albeit some scratches) until more than 2 years later, today.
4) At least 128 GB RAM (preferably ECC) if I am buying a new laptop because you can never has enough RAM :-)
* At least 16GB of RAM
* 1kg auw
* 16:10 screen, that’s not 4k
* 14”
* Metal body
* Repairable
* NVMe ssd (not soldered)
* USB-C charging (and video etc)
* No gamer LEDs
If someone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them!
Repairability and customisability are also usually on my mind so anything Apple is completely out of the question despite their machines ticking most of my boxes.
Maybe that will change if right to repair laws in the EU improve but that's not a something I'm expecting to happen anytime soon.
2. Modular design & replaceable parts (à la https://frame.work)
3. Physical kill switches for camera, audio, Wi-Fi (à la Purism/Librem)
2. Keyboard - it must be good quality with fine font (again, aescetics :)), must have highlight, chiclet type, would be great if had extra right key column with PGup/PGdown/home/end buttons (I'm really sad that so few models has it - I've found it really handy for heavy programming)
2.1. Touchpad - must be good quality, support gestures and have nice surface to interact with (preferably glass)
3. Battery life - no need for whole day, but at least for ~4 hours on normal performance is totally fine.
4. Since I use Surface Book 2, I'm really into 3:2 screen aspect ratio - it's really great for work.
At least 4 USB ports (2-3 USB-B, 1-2 USB-C).
At least one of them full USB-4 Thunderbolt unless the computer is very cheap.
100% USB-C with no USB-B is a serious annoyance. Lack of a head-set jack is an extreme annoyance I would only excuse if the computer is really great otherwise.
Built-in Ethernet port is very nice to have but not necessary.
Built-in SD card reader is also very nice to have. I actually dream about every computer to have such so people would just use SD cards instead of USB-attached thumb-drives.
My mother, never drops her laptop, works in dusty environments, uses the same computer for years. No ADP, no extended warranty, I just replaced her Asus laptop she has been using since 2013 without any hardware issues. Remarkable.
My friend, who is careless, has endless problems with his HP, and requires ADP. His last machine lasted barely 3 years and has been into the depot at least twice. He wants on-site this time as he was without a machine for a week at a time.
I had a Lenovo with full extended on-site warranty. Machine was a damned nightmare for problems, but I was never without a working machine. I am careful with it, it hasn’t been abused, and I believe it was a product design problem. Lenovo sent out many parts and technicians and finally contacted me to apologize and address the obvious satisfaction issue. They replaced it with a completely different model that I am happy with.
My Gigabyte gaming laptop is an older beast. 4 years old, no extended warranty. From a computing perspective and hack ability, I generally love it, but there have been problems and not one of them is resolved. Their support is through a terrible web portal that takes days to respond, and after weeks of back and forth, they will offer to let you ship the device to them for a repair estimate.
2. Accessibility of hardware. Is it easy to open and swap parts? Or do you need to dismantle the whole thing?
3. Availability of replacement parts, and history of availability. Ram/HDDs/NICs are universal. Screens, keyboards trackpads are not.
4. Runs off battery? Or adapter when plugged in. In a few years when the battery is toast, will this be a brick?
5. Everything else.
- Hardware kill switches for both the bluetooth radio and the built-in wifi adapter.
- Needs to look good at 1024x768 resolution (I only code at that resolution, because although large resolutions are great, I have to put in extra effort to see code at higher resolutions)
- Built in camera cover that slides closed, which, alongside a kill switch gives me extra peace of mind (incase my OS gets compromised through silly mistakes like running malware laced office documents). Yes, some would call this paranoia, but paranoia does not work retroactively; you have to be proactive.
- Don't care about the keyboard, since I have only ever used external USB office keyboards.
- If the processor is an Intel, I want the Management Engine removed, preferably by someone else as I am at a loss as to how to disable that thing
- I only ever use the mains power supply to power my laptop. Why let a battery degrade over time from being constantly at 100% charge? It would be cool if I could just take out the battery and have the laptop still work with a mains supply.
Apparently this is a big ask though :(
Today I run an older xps13 which is quite close. My next will probably be a framework (immediately) when they get a matte screen option.
!: matte screen, >350nit, >150dpi, >12", <1.66 aspect (want vertical space).
!: good keyboard. subjectively of course.
!: >10h, full day's work on battery.
!: good linux compatibility. I'll run my own and don't need the headache.
!: dead silent and cool. I run underclocked mostly, with fans off.
!: <1.4kg
Things I don't need:
-: very fast cpu. I mostly run seriously underclocked, have a small cluster to offload compiling and heavy work onto.
-: design. Just plain, simple, no flashy-flashy nor logos nor stickers.
-: touch screen.
What I would like:
:) >16h battery.
:) <1kg, ca A4 format, great if I can detach the screen to put it in portrait in front of me.
:) oled or similar, 300dpi. Best would of course be primarily reflective instead of transmittive. If we're already dreaming.
:) mouse nubbin thingy, or eye tracking (!)
:) good on board sound and a 3.5mm jack.
And Don’t even get me started on how the Bluetooth audio stack constantly messes up and has problems, Slack will randomly tell me it can’t find my audio device. My Mac just never had these issues, aside from a few problems initially on running a dock that supported 3 4K monitors.
I really dislike using Laptops since they tend to be slower, have worse ergonomics, and are more expensive than a 'equivalent' desktop. I just don't 'like' working if I don't have at least 1 large 4K screen and I prefer 2 (and more probably wouldn't hurt).
Since a laptop is necessary sometimes I just want to have a 13" standard Dell XPS that's small enough I'll actually take it places. If I start traveling more (I am already WFH) then I might start wanting something with a larger screen + a decent portable second screen option. Although at that point I'd probably just put the effort into using a VR type screen system.
I bought the Asus G14 over a year ago and this model fits my needs most - at least back then, things have probably changed until now...
Also mattering was lightweight and easy to travel with (including power supply), respectable battery life, >=16GB RAM, processor preferring performance over price, Thunderbolt or USB4
In a different world, I would want something from an OEM with Linux focus, Coreboot, and repairable, but the screens on all of those machines are trash. Last year I picked up a ASUS Zenbook Flip and slapped NixOS on it. My only complaint is that the body isn’t very rigid and got crack in the glass (not over the display) when my bag fell from a shitty bathroom stall hook.
2. Light. Thin and light.
3. Curved edges. Also curved edges. How could a laptop today not have curved edges? Yes, we said the same thing about the sharp edges of yesterday’s generation. But this time we really mean it.
4. Short battery life. Who wants to carry a huge battery with them? Easier to plug in everywhere you go anyways. Also goes directly against number 1 which is obviously more important.
5. Colors. Almost forgot it. Could you believe it? Specially crafted colors. Colors you’ve never seen before! I can not understand how some say it’s just rolling dice on the color spectrum. It’s totally new colors!
Convergence. This extends modularity, increasing flexibility at the cost of size/weight. Enough USB-A/USB-C ports (Don't need a SIM, these work with MiFi or USB.)
Magnetic charger. Though USB-C can be made like that the magnets are relatively weak.
Trackpad (Apple Magic Trackpad 2 quality, good luck with that) or trackpoint.
Ryzen with Radeon GPU, alternatively Intel GPU or something like M1.
120 Hz OLED, at least 1440p.
That implies some decent specs, I need at least 16 GB RAM, and a SSD (both user replaceable).
Maybe in 2027... I got my hope on next gen Framework.
2. Linux compatibility
3. Easy to remove/replace battery from the outside (like it was in the past)
4. A battery that lasts for a day with a quick recharge
5. Physical knobs to turn on/off the mic and camera
Good cooling. I don't want to use 60% of a throttling CPU when I paid 100% of the price.
Ethernet, HDMI or Displayport, and a headphone jack without dongles. Also USB-C charging just in case the manufacturer decides to use the flimsiest cable for the proprietary charger and stops selling it after a few years (hi, Microsoft).
Would be cool to have hardware switches for camera and microphone.
So in short, I hope the Framework laptop makes it to the european market at some point. I don't really need a new laptop, but this would be a reason for one.
1. Good keyboard with real F-keys and fn-arrows that do home/end/pgup/dn or real keys that do those near the arrows. No numpad so it is centered. (Never again for apple, been burned too much by their crappy keyboards.)
2. OLED screen
3. Thunderbolt or USB4
4. At least 3 or more USB/TB ports
5. 32G+ RAM
6. 2T SSD, preferably socketed, or two sockets
7. A disable-able discrete GPU is nice; but quiet in normal operation is good
8. Slim - do not care about battery, but my back is not what it used to be, including the power brick
9. Nice but secondary: HDMI/DP, Ethernet, SD, fingerprint or other biometric, good mic, good webcam, good speakers, WLAN, WiFi beyond ac
- at least opens 180 degrees: I often find myself having to do the odd bit of work in the car - which is a nightmare generally, but having a laptop that can open flat is essential.
- Fingerprint reader (that works well under Linux): this is one of the saddest things about my current computer. It's a nice to have, but a very nice to have - especially if I end up doing work in a coffee shop with a thousand CCTV cameras.
Price doesn't say much about build quality and I would search for a high quality laptop.
2. Backlit keyboard with more than a bare minimum of key travel
3. IPS display with at least 300 nits of brightness and 100% (or close to it) sRGB coverage
4. Six core or better CPU
5. Dedicated GPU with at least 8GB of RAM
6. NVMe M.2 SSD (at least 512GB)
7. 32GB of 3200 MHz or faster RAM
8. From a major brand with decent reported reliability (e.g. Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo)
Willing to spend ~$2k, but I am very patient and good at deal hunting so I expect to get it for a little less.
1. Unfortunately due to eye strain, my bare minimum requirement these days is high DPI displays (around or better than 200 pixels per inch) combined with pixel-perfect integer (2.0x) scaling with no blurring at the OS level.
That means if I want a 13" laptop with a working resolution of 1440x900, the native display resolution needs to be 2880x1800.
2. Good build quality - excellent trackpad, decent keyboard.
3. Battery life - more than 12 hours would be swell!
4. Weight - a light laptop makes life so much better.
5. Performance
2. S3 suspend or at least a good S0ix implementation.
3. Good support for replacing UEFI Secure Boot keys.
4. No numpad so that the keyboard is centered.
5. Absolutely no coil whine. My Dell XPS 9560 had this since day 1, while my work MacBook Pro and Lenovo P1 developed it over time.
6. Biggest battery possible. I don't care about charging time or weight.
7. Good Linux support (including firmware updates via LVFS).
If you’re not, a framework laptop.
The #2 requirement is a decent keyboard with full-sized arrow keys and dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del and arrow keys. (Why $5000 laptops skimp on $0.01 keys just boggles the mind.)
Everything else is a nicety, or can be compromised on. But I look at the screen and I touch the keyboard for 8 hours a day. If they're not good enough, I'm not buying, end of story.
2 user-friendly ram slots
minimum 4 usb ports, 6 would be better
Sd card slot
2 hdmi ports or 2 mini display ports
gigabit lan port
minimum 1080p@120fps or 2k@60fps or 720p@240fps camera
oled panel
white keyboard backlight (like macbook airs)
headphone jack
100% linux compatibility for all components out of the box.
It sounds obtuse, but, I enjoy selling my macbooks at 60-75% of purchase price 3-4 years later, and if needbe, applecare - which itself, is outrageous but it's nice.
Alternative would be Surface, but for the money, eh.
XPS 13 too, they're great but there have been some defects but for me they're perfect.
I type endlessly and I type fast -- without mechanical keys, I'm replacing the keyboard (or even the whole laptop) every 18 months.
This irritatingly leaves me stuck with gigantic gaming rigs; the first company to build a relatively lightweight laptop with mechanical keys has my business for life.
Next comes battery life.
Next the time it takes to be usable after opening the lid.
Trackpad quality next.
After the other regulars like screen, keyboard, etc.
The other vital thing is a non-touch matte/anti-glare screen. I want to look at my code, not myself.
Of course there's heaps more I'll be comparing when choosing a machine, but if the above aren't met I won't be looking at that machine.
I wonder if one for an internal NIC would be overkill.
You interact with the screen, the keyboard and the pointing device all the time and they cannot be changed, so all these have to be good. Things like good wifi or bluetooth are nice, but there are dongles.
2. Power connector in a sane place. Power connectors are the other Achilles heels of laptops, just like phones, and everything you can do to prevent mechanical failure of either the cable or the on-board socket is good.
Thanks everyone for participating in this discussion, I appreciate you all.
That realistically only leaves me with MacBook Pros.
Linux support required.
Less important, but I wish they still had some ports on the back. Don't want the more permanent cables all over the desk.
Several companies make Zen 3 APU (Ryzen 5000 series models)-based laptops that have good keyboards, good screens, and the usual other features.
The only thing you'll have to give up is "head-set jack", which you really mean to be a 3.5mm TRRS jack. Just use a USB-C dongle here; the rest is fine: laptops have entirely USB-C ports nowadays, with USB-C used for Power Delivery to charge.
Also, I'm not sure how you'll achieve a touchscreen that doesn't glare: due to the use case, they have to be Gorilla Glass to survive being touched by human hands. If you want a matte screen, you give up touching, and there are no good coatings to actually reduce glare on a shiny glass screen.
As for Wifi and Bluetooth, no laptop really performs badly anymore, everybody buys the same 2 solutions, Broadcom or Qualcomm's. Intel still makes a Wifi chipset, and it used to be good, but it kind of sucks in the 802.11AC and AX eras, and you only see it used in Intel AMT corporate laptops (or a shared platform being sold also for consumers) that necessitate the use.
The only laptop I'd absolutely say don't buy is anything with Apple's name on it. Basically, fails almost all of your requirements, while being one of the most expensive examples. Truly sad as well, I like the M1 CPU, and I wish Apple would antitrust'ed to spit PA Semi back, but the entire build around that M1 is pretty trash.
Something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YD1JLJF/ is probably the least expensive option that doesn't footgun you. $6xx, good 14" 1080p screen, 8GB of ram (16GB variants exist), enough SSD on a decent M.2 NVME, an 802.11AX+BT5 chip, good enough keyboard and trackpad, works in Linux, is only stingy on the ports by having 3 (so get a cheap hub if you want to plug in something more than USB PD brick to charge + 3.5mm TRRS dongle + external storage at the same time), supports Modern Standby (deep clock-halt S1, instead of needing to transit in and out of S3; works best on Zen 2/3, iffy on Intel series 9/10/11; Intel is planning on fixing for 12; but also can use S3 just in case you need a laptop to sleep for 24hr+ and retain significant charge), and doesn't have a dedicated GPU (which is a win, the APU's GPU is strong as hell, even can do mid-tier gaming without cooking the laptop).
- fingerprint sign in
- at least 16 gb ram, up to at least 32
- VG+ screen. It's the only thing you use 100% of the time. Even the KB and touchpad isn't as often. Don't skimp on the screen.
- low maintenance so I have more time and energy
- popular so app ecosystem works
- unbreakable
For work I haven't seen a competitor to macbook pro's in a decade.
+ 3.5GHz WiFi.
+ Backlit keyboard.
+ Nvidia graphics card for ML.
Couldn't find anything that matches
Otherwise I develop on a 64GB 16/32 core workstation.
Plus if there’s dual video output.
Yes I would use it as a workstation always plugged in sitting on my desk.
2. Multiple USB on BOTH sides plus headset jack;
3. 16GB+ RAM plus 512GB+ SSD;
4. Solid frame for frequent travelling;
5. No touchscreen;
6. Keyboard that feels like one;
7. 15'+ screen;
8. Touchpad that can be disabled easily
2. Battery replaceable
3. Screen replaceable
4. No soldered on RAM
5. Full shutdown, always on is a bug not a feature
6. Durability
7. Ports a plenty
8. I should be able to drop it from any angle from my couch and it should not break
I've never anticipated a product announcement more than the new Macbooks.
I use a desktop for most things, so the tablet is for drawing, etc.
2. Bulky, heavy with 17" screen and good cooling.
3. CPU has to be XEON with ECC support.
4. Lots of USB-A ports and other ports (HDMI, etc).
I don't care about portability since I lift.
2. display >= 13.5"
3. 3 USB ports (nowadays they come as 2 + 1 USB-C, but that's ok)
4. HDMI port for projectors (2013 Toshiba z930 ultrabook used to have both HDMI and D-Sub ports!)
5. Keyboard with cursor keys not squeezed as on most modern laptops
6. Home/End/PgUp/PgDown proper keys, not through Fn combo (because then you can't do things like Shift+PgUp to select a lot of text)
7. If possible, without Windows
Other parameters are negotiable and upgradable.
Keyboard + USB requirements eliminate most laptops, including Frame, Mac and Think/IdeaPads (plus 13" ThinkPads weigh like a brick).
My choice is formed by the way I use them: I plug it to a monitor and keyboard, but often carry it to a cafe, so I want to be able to type on the keyboard, navigate texts (with a full-size cursor keys) and edit a lot of texts without pain that many laptops create (Lenovo Idea pad has very inconvenient delete/home/end keys). I have a USB wireless mouse (touchpads are inconvenient), and often plug extra devices (external drive, SD adapter, etc.). With just 2 USB ports I would often run out of ports having to unplug.
Weight is very important, since I walk and take transit with the laptop. Anything heavier than 1.3 Kg becomes noteable. 3 Kg is painful to carry even for 20 minutes, especially when you're tired after a working day.
The best I've known are:
* 2013 Toshiba z930. 1.05 kg, 3 ports, HDMI+VGA, SD card, 3G card!
* 2005 Panasonic Toughbook, consumer edition. 1.3 kg, passive cooling! 2x USB, Floppy drive xD, CD-ROM.
* 2019 MSI Modern 14. 1.3 kg, 2xUSB-A, 1xUSB-C, bright screen
2. Thunderbolt on both sides
3. touchpad as good as Apple's
4. Built in cellular
MacBook Air M1, MacBook Pro, Microsoft Surface Go (if you want touchscreen) fit the bill. I'm optimistic about Framework laptop as well.
1. Display
2. Price
3. Ports
4. Repair-ability / expand-ability
5. Thermals (especially if high-end GPU)
6. Keyboard + build quality
2. The things I touch don't suck. decent construction, rubberized plastic or aluminimum, decent keyboard, decent trackpad.
3. Reliable components. No killer wifi. I will check the arch wiki to make sure linux won't be death by a thousand papercuts. I don't mind if there is some setup as long as I can put that entire setup into a single shell script. I don't need a discrete gpu.
4. memory and ssd cannot be soldered.
5. anything else.
My main requirements were similar to yours:
- SIM card: Supports 4G but you have to disassemble the laptop to insert the SIM. A dongle may have been a better option, as I doubt the SIM module can be upgraded to a 5G one when they come available.
- I quite like the keyboard
- Screen is great
- Fast charging with the Dell adapter only
- Loads of GPU options
- Standard components are user upgradable. I installed 128GB RAM (max) and another SSD myself. It supports a total of 4 SSDs
- There was no AMD CPU option at the time I bought it, but those seemed rare/unavailable from other vendors too.
2. No touchbar
3. HDMI ports
4. 32GB ram, 512GB SSD
Hopefully we'll get one of these in a few days.
I’ve tried going back to Windows and it’s just a terrible OS. macOS has its faults but nothing in that scale.
2. [must] HDMI, RJ45, >=2x USB-A, >=1x USB-C (2x if it's also used for charging), headphone jack, card reader (preferably one where the sdcard clicks into, so I can leave the microsd adapter inside and always handy; currently my laptop has it half sticking out so it would break off). I can understand that a serial cable requires a dongle, but network cables I still use daily. Install one of those openable ports if you must, but I won't buy your laptop if it doesn't have a network interface built in.
3. [must] Changeable RAM so I don't have to buy an overpriced 32GB laptop, but can just buy a regular laptop costing half as much and spend 70 bucks on an upgrade.
4. [must] Changeable SSD. Same story: large SSD with no HDD (because with an additional HDD you again have all its downsides like noise and power draw) is overpriced, and I don't feel like reinstalling everything anyway, so I prefer to just transfer the SSD from my previous laptop and toss whatever they stuck in the new one.
5. [must] 1080p screen so no scaling bugs or larger-than-necessary power draw. I don't see more pixels anyway and 95% of the time I'll be looking at an external screen; if you work 8h/day on a laptop you should probably be looking to change that.
6. [should] Fast CPU cores. When I selected my most recent laptop in 2018, CPUs had actually nearly gotten slower than the previous one in 2012. But they draw less power! Whoop tee doo... good job intel on power saving by just doing less. I'm buying a daily computing driver, not a phone, and I am very rarely more than 1.5 hours removed from a power socket. Also, I still can rarely use more than one core per task (and am doing just one thing in the foreground; dual core would be fine), but I suppose it's the only way these days to get any sort of performance. Still, I'd rather have 4 cores with 100 benchmark points each than 32 cores with 75 benchmark points each. (And hyperthreading counting towards the number of cores is misleading, as it adds only a few percent performance.)
7. [wish] WiFi 6
8. [wish] Buttons above the touchpad are nice. Keyboard: the more buttons the better, basically. I actually use home/end/pgup/pgdn/scroll lock/printscreen/pause/menu/function keys/media keys/etc. unlike what laptop designers seem to think. There's so little choice in this that I guess I'll just live with whatever I can get at this point. Also, death to the combined up/down arrow key.
9. [mkay] GPU is cool but, often, time thermal restrictions make it only a little faster than the nowadays pretty performant and efficient integrated graphics. Useful for hashcat though.
A. [wish] My current laptop has taught me that not all LCD displays are made alike. The vertical viewing angle on this one is so terrible that the colors are always distorted on at least one part of the screen no matter your viewing angle. I have no idea how to objectively look for this, but a nice screen is a bonus. Then again, as before: I won't spend 95% of my time looking at this screen anyhow.
And that's it.
Numeric keyboard
ISP screen
As much CUDA cores as possible
>= 32MB RAM
My priorities were
- best keyboard possible - good layout you can get used to (ANSI vs ISO, dedicated pgup, pgdn, home end keys not too far from each other and arrow keys), good tactile feedback
- case stability
- good touchpad. I prefer physical buttons instead of or at least next to clickpads which is getting increasingly difficult to find
- decent cpu perf, measure what's important for you (turns out for my use case AMD 5800U's 8 cores didn't make a difference compared to Tiger lake for my work)
- upgradeable RAM or at least 32GB soldered
- OK screen (350+ nits, reasonably color accurate, preferably matte)
- battery life 6h+ on wifi
- thermals and noise - does the fan make high pitched noise, how often does it kick in, is the case/keyboard warm
- no nose webcam
- USB-A AND USB-C ports (+placement: both on both sides), ideally also HDMI, headphone jack, thunderbolt
- fingerprint reader/Hello, hardware TPM2.0
- 3 year warranty, on site service
- after all this also portability
I tried HP Zbook power, HP Firefly 14, HP Elitebook 840, Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Thinkpad P14s and Schenker Vision 14 and settled for the 840. The Carbon is also a nice machine, the P14s is massive while not bringing any major benefits, the Schenker had some built quality issues but otherwise looks great.
I've found HP's keyboard just so much nicer to write on - there is such a crystal clear pressure point: it's either pressed or not pressed, on a TP you can get into an in between state. Plus the layout on 840 and Firefly 14 (column on the right with home, pgup, pgdn and end) is the best IMHO.
In the end you will have to settle with what's in stock anyway as lots of configurations have insane delivery times 3+ months.
EDIT: here are my notes, perhaps someone will find them useful
zephyrus m16 - keyboard without pgup, creaking, hot air on display? battery life ~4h
ideapad 5 pro - overheating? keyboard without pgup, shitty touchpad
legion 5 - terrible design, bad touchpad, amd version has shitty realtek wifi
thinkbook p16- no hdmi, bad battery life?
inspiron 16 plus - crap touchpad, throttling
aero 17 - nose cam
zbook - touchpad? runs hot
thinkpad p1/extreme - weird cpu heatsink issue, creaking
dells - power button in corner, xps-no usba,
envy and spectre - fingerprint reader instead of ctrl, gloss
ThinkPad X1 Carbon G9 - ok, 16:10, throttling, typing/touchpad lag?, shitty support?, non-touch has 4-5 weeks lead time
Seriously though, the Intel 16 inch MBP or the M1X 16 inch due to be released in a few days are the best choice hands down, if you can afford it.
Sounds like you could also benefit from an iPad Pro M1 plus pencil and LTE, which I can't recommend enough.
I would say since 2015, the premium laptops have improved further still, the display and battery life specs are outstanding and unprecedented.
But the cheap ass laptops like what Lenovo make after buying the Thinkpad name from IBM, are even more flimsy and a really bad deal all round. You want an M1X device, get that and load Linux if you need it. You can use a VM or native for some distros