Looking for recommendations on a portable, high performance laptop
I used to work in IT but left the field in 2018, so I'm not as up to date as I used to be on things. I'm looking for a new laptop to use for work (primarily word processing and web browsing), ideally something portable with a good sized screen (larger than 13"). I've had a Dell G5 for the last five years because I thought I'd do more gaming on it when I bought it, but it's largely just been a heavy brick in my backpack on travel.
Back in the mid 2010s, I recommended Lenovos to everyone who would listen, but I fell out of love with them toward the end of my IT career when the build quality seemed to be rapidly declining. I haven't really touched them recently, but my dad loves his Lenovo Ideapad Pro.
Honestly, something similar to a Dell Latitude might be what I'm looking for, but I'm open to any recommendations. I need a responsive keyboard and clickable trackpad. Bonus points if there's somehow a laptop out there that has a nub!
ETA: Not looking for a macbook -- will be running Windows!
Framework!
Are frameworks actually a competitive choice? I looked into them a year or so ago and it seemed like you where paying a pretty hefty early adopters fee considering the specs you where getting.
Looking at it right now its kind of tough to compare; their base Intel machine is using a 13th gen i5. There aren't many 13th gen i5 laptops out there and the few similar laptops I've found in my quick search are using the U processor while framework is using the P version. These roughly similar laptops are priced pretty close to the framework as well.
Based on all that... I think its a competitive value.
I would also be willing to pay a bit of a premium over similar spec laptops considering it's repairability, parts availability, upgradability (new gen mainboards fit in old machines), and to support a company that doesn't suck.
Oh ya, the mainboards will run outside of the laptop so you can use your old mainboard in... stuff...
Edit: I'm looking at the 13 inch. The other person commenting is pricing out the bigger one that isn't out yet.
They offer a motherboard enclosure so you can keep using the old motherboard as a more stationary computer or whatever. They also offer CAD files so you can 3D print it yourself instead of buying it.
As someone who turns their old devices int IoT devices, I definitely appreciate the sentiment behind that design decision.
For some reference, my current Asus gaming laptop is $2600. I specc'd out the kind of laptop I'd want on Framework and I think I came down to $2800 on a DIY build with almost every bell and whistle (I only didn't get the hard drive since I have plenty). I could make a more modest spec and not grab extra peripherals and bring it down to $2000
I think it really depends on the weight build quality, and especially screen quality, but the prices seem competitive for something so customizable. . Especially for a Laptop that you can "simply" swap the GPU out for if you ever want to upgrade ($400 vs. a brand new laptop).
That's roughly the price I was looking at as well, and granted, the swapable gpu and motherboard alone might be worth it, since the only reason I'm looking at upgrading right now is my 1060 is starting to get dated.
I love the concept of framework, my desktop is a Theseus's ship of parts from the past 15ish years, I'd love to be able to do that with a laptop. I'm just hesitant to drop 2k$ on a laptop that's only recently out of development (and who's biggest proponent is a major investor...)
I've also heard mixed things about their build quality. One thing I appreciate about my Acer Predator is that it doubles as a weapon if needed :p
I've been happy with my current beast, a T14s gen 3.
mine has 32gb RAM, a Ryzen 5 6650U with 6 cores / 12 threads, 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage, and a Radeon 680M GPU. I maxed out the specs (especially the RAM, because it's soldered) because I intend to keep it for several years and wanted it to be reasonably future-proofed.
however...
you don't need a "high-performance" laptop for this.
my standard recommendation for laptops (and how I've bought several spares, as well as laptops for friends) is to go on ebay and buy a used X1 Carbon. I've been happy with Lenovo's high-end business-focused laptops (X and T model numbers), from what I've heard the decline in build quality has been more on their consumer-focused models.
for example - 6th gen*, 4c/8t i7 CPU, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD, for $350. from a well-rated seller that's part of the "ebay refurbished" program.
I run exclusively Linux, so you may also want to double-check Windows compatibility with these, since I know Win11 increased the hardware requirements.
* you want 5th gen or later, because that gives you USB-C charging rather than the older Thinkpad charging port
You're right, I really don't, but I like to keep my options open, and I wanted to side step the budget laptop recommendations haha
Looking through Lenovo's options at the moment. I think it's likely going to come down to a Dell Latitude 5540 or something in the Lenovo ThinkPad T series
If high performance is not 100% necessary maybe you could focus on the portable aspect. The laptop that I have now is a little over 1kg and the 99wh battery lasts about 20 hours in low power mode. It's a Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen1.
I don't exactly recommend you buy it because it is already a few years old (although they are releasing an updated Pulse 15 Gen3 probably in 3~6 months) but mostly because the Tuxedo company is focused mostly on Linux support (and the keyboard is unfortunately very cheap feeling)--but I absolutely do highly recommend trying to find a laptop with a >70 watt-hour battery and include weight in your comparison. It really makes a difference in portability.
I've also never had many complaints with business-line HP (EliteBook) or Dell (Latitude/Precision) laptops. I would never buy consumer laptops from either company but it might be a good option to find something lightweight from those product lines.
Also, if you use the laptop at home I would highly recommend setting up an ergonomic workspace because laptops have extremely terrible ergonomics. This could be as simple as an ergonomic laptop stand (or a laptop dock using an external monitor and keyboard), or as complex as an adjustable bed frame, a Quantum 8" Edge Elite Pocketed Coil + dunlop latex mattress, a Logitech K400 Plus, and a MagicHold 3 in 1 360 Degree Rotating Height Adjustable Laptop Tablet Stand. Ergonomics FTW!!
That T14s is a lovely little beastie.
I'm on the hunt for something with the same design sensibilities in the refurb market. I'm also a longtime Linux nerd, but my work places me firmly in "road warrior" territory, so I end up being pretty rough on my hardware. If I had to give something up, it'd be a discrete GPU.
T14s has a bad issue with display hinges. Lenovo just sinks grommets into brittle-ass plastic that crumbles away, leaving the display hinges floating with no connection to the c-cover (aka palmrest assembly, aka the damned chassis). Dell does the same thing with the Inspiron, but that's neither here nor there.
I use it for field work. For OP who wants performance I'd go for the P series. The 14 only has one usb c which is annoying. And it overheated when I was resting outside in 80 degree sun.
Also secondhand Lenovo are reliable and easily available. I recommend Human IT on ebay as it's a tech recycling place and usually accepts lower than offered bids.
Don't get a Gigabyte gaming laptop. I got one 5 years ago and I've never had a worse experience. It came with so much crap installed. The fans started making noises about a year in. The SSD failed soon after. The Wi-Fi card drops connections constantly. The keyboard and mouse pad feel cheap. But the worst part was that the battery got extremely bloated after 2.5 years. I took it out intending to replace it. Turns out they stopped making that battery, so either I risk burning down my house with a knockoff battery or my laptop is now a desktop.
I had a similar experience with an Aorus x5v6 (Gigabyte gaming brand). The battery and SSD were overheating and I think it’s because of the proximity to the GPU heat sink piping… every SSD (I went through 3) in the second slot kept failing. The battery bloated and I had to replace it… and in the end something on the motherboard failed backlighting-related and there was no way to fix it. Not to mention the keyboard hosting issues… I had it for a little over two years, keyboard ghosting was fixed with an RMA, SSDs I just replaced myself and the backlighting died a few months after the warranty expired.
Thin and high performance require a really good design and I’m not convinced Gigabyte can deliver.
Whats your issue with Macbooks? They're probably the best price to performance laptop you can get these days and your use cases don't seem to need any Windows specific applications. I'm asking because Windows is usually the biggest performance drain on these laptops, I have a decently kitted out XPS 13 and Windows 11 brings it to its knees with the fans constantly running the moment I do anything with it.
If anything, avoid the XPS, it seems like Dell put all their money into making the laptop look beautiful rather than making something that runs well.
No real desire to buy into the Apple ecosystem.
I respect the decision, but I'll just say that I have a macbook (all my laptops for the last 15 years have been macbooks) and I haven't bought into any ecosystem until recently when I bought an iPad. I don't have any other apple paraphernalia. It's totally possible to have a macbook and not buy into any ecosystem at all.
Like @aphoenix said, thankfully the Macbook doesn't really lock you into the Apple ecosystem as hard as the iPhone/Apple Watch does. I've got a Macbook Pro 16" M1 and its been an amazing laptop. ~2 years on and the battery life is still insane, performance is more than enough for the Java and Swift projects I compile, and its decently capable at gaming too (though I've only used my mid-2010s library on it lol).
The Macbook Pro is definitely way overkill for me and 99% of people buying them but I'd definitely recommend taking a look at the Macbook Air. For the price, the performance, endurance, build quality, and customer support is basically unrivaled. I'm far from an Apple shill but I definitely recommend looking at their laptops. However, if repairability is important to you, I wouldn't recommend one lol. Apple go out of their way to make things repairable by the end user.
The really attractive thing about the Macbook Pro is honestly the ports! SD card reader, HDMI, all that good stuff is actually on the device so you don't need a USB-C hub. If there was a Macbook Air with the lower performance and lower price but with the ports, I'd recommend that to almost everyone.
Honestly agreed. Having the extra ports is really nice, in fact the MacBook Pro has just the right amount of ports for my use case haha, got lucky with that. Since I use my MacBook as a sort of desktop replacement (until I want/need my Linux PC), I’ve got the charger always connected along with my keyboard, monitor, and an external drive. I’m also someone that uses headphones a lot so I’ve got that wired in too.
An XPS might be a decent option but Dells QC is hit or miss and their customer service kinda sucks. Someone else mentioned Framework and I'd suggest that too. Being able to repair things yourself is great and they seem to have good build quality and customer support
Ime Dell's QC is miss after miss, haven't met a hit that was made after like 2005.
I got a brand new dell laptop from someone in 2016 and the hard drive shit itself within a week.
I replaced it and then I dropped the padded backpack it was in on the ground on accident and it the incredibly cheap plastic shell cracked and the drive was fucked again so honestly I just trashed it at that point.
I've had much better experiences with older HP laptops, since they're repairable and easy to take apart unlike dell (I had to disassemble the whole laptop in like 5 different stages and like 30 different screws just to replace the hard drive), and don't come with an insane premium I can't afford like Framework or System76.
I got my refurb HP ProBook 640 G2 for like a hundred something.
I've been very happy with my XPS 15 running on 4 years now. My wife's XPS 13 was DoA, but Dell overnighted a replacement and the replacement has been running great for 3 years now. Went with the XPS after it was recommended by a friend who has been doing DevOps for 15 years now, and wanted something that could dual boot *nix with decent driver support. I don't run Linux on my laptop, so can't speak to that, but I've been very happy with it.
I actually had an XPS 15 too (the 9560 model) and was very pleased with it. Battery unfortunately swelled on me and I had to find a third party replacement as Dell only offered replacement batteries for business customers when I needed it (back in 2020 lol) but it's still running great! I've switched to a Macbook Pro now as I've given my XPS to my parents its still an amazingly capable machine.
Dell & Lenovo Field tech here.
Don't get a T14s. The hinges are bunk. Don't get an X1 Carbon either, as there's a borderline recall-worthy defect with USB-C charge ports.
If I were you, I'd get a Latitude 5000 or 7000 series. Biggest downside is there's no discrete GPU, but the machines are durable and have few design flaws. They're the most popular business-class Dell models, yet I see them surprisingly rarely. They also have two SO-DIMM slots, so you can upgrade RAM if the original configuration isn't sufficient.
You won't be playing many new games with it, but it should do for what you really need it for, and then some.
The Latitude 5540 looks interesting -- leaning that way at the moment.
I prefer the 14" for portability and battery life reasons, but the 15" is pretty good too.
It's probably Dell's best selling business-class notebook, but I don't usually see them unless a customer has accidental damage coverage on their warranty. That's a good sign for reliability at least.
I quite liked the Dell Latitude 7490 I had, but I'd exercise caution on the weight of the power supply plus laptop. Hopefully they've now switched to USB-C for power and display output. Dell (and for a while, Lenovo) had a nasty habit of relying on proprietary connectors for laptop docking, and their docks were godawful.
I worked for a small MSP that serviced a wide range of clients throughout our country that would push Dell. Now I work for a $3B corporation that uses Dell as their standard. All things considered, my experience troubleshooting them has been fairly solid. Personally, I would stand by their Latitude line for sure.
Bonus points: you can get refurbs and EOL models for a discount direct from them as well if you wanna save even more. You may also have luck digging through eBay for recently EOL or lightly used ones. I bought a previous year model Latitude for my wife at a steal on eBay. Before buying I was able to check the service tag number and confirm it still had over a year of Pro Support warranty left on it, so even if it was a lemon I could still get it fully replaced under warranty. Never had a problem with it though.
I've had a few X1's and the usb-c port on the older gens always seemed brittle. I was hoping it had been addressed by gen 11?
Gen 9 was the worst, but they continue to have issues. It's not even that the ports themselves break necessarily, but after a while the machines start having problems keeping the battery charged, then eventually stop working altogether. This seems to be a problem across Lenovo's product range, in fact. The X1 is just the worst offender.
Can confirm. X1 Carbon Tablet just had shit keep breaking. ThinkPad is no longer what it once was.
If your primary use case is just word processing and web browsing, perhaps battery life should be the important choosing criteria instead of performance? CPU Performance is usually desired by those who are into specialized field such as graphics design, video editing, hardcore gaming, system programming, etc. Word processing and browsing don't usually require much CPU performance. An i3 is usually more than sufficient, I happen to do both extensively on my Intel Atom based laptop!
Are they even making i3 laptops anymore? If they are, it'll be some budget consumer-grade plastic junk like the Inspiron 3550. The proc may be sufficient and you may get great battery life, but I guarantee you the build quality will be hot dogshit.
Six months after you buy it the hinge will come away from the display cover and you won't be able to close the thing, and then I'll have to come out and build you a new display and I hate doing that.
Reporting in on the work-provided Lenovo P14s road-warrior laptop that I've used for the last year or so.
It's a bundle of compromises, some quite significant.
Good:
Meh:
Bad:
I fell out of love with Dell business laptops towards the end of 2018 - too many bad-out-of-box, BIOS and driver issues, random SSD faults, rapidly dying batteries, etc.
I've used a Microsoft Surface, but can't recommend it - the 12" screen is really too small to use independently. Proprietary connectors and drivers are evil.
Frankly, you're still going to have to be selective about your priorities. Performance, portability, ergonomics, durability, and cost - you're not going to be able to achieve perfection in all of them. I'm still waiting for the eyeglass-weight virtual heads-up display and keygloves...
Spot-on assessment.
That bezel bulge you're referring to has to do with the way Lenovo designs display assemblies. They use a two-part design that sucks pretty hard. There's a rigid structural bezel and a cosmetic "consumable" bezel that's really just a plastic sheet with adhesive that goes over the structural bezel. My guess is the consumable bezel has become misaligned, or else the adhesive has failed.
You could probably get someone like me out to replace it under warranty, but due to the way the adhesive works you run the risk of damaging the LCD panel by removing it. The bezels have a way of tearing the plastics that protect the power inverter and display circuitry. I wouldn't bother with it unless there's some other more critical failure that needs addressing.
Exactly right on the consumable bezel issue, thanks. However, the bump is less than 1 cm long, visible only from the screen side, and the opening isn't even wide enough to collect dirt - it's a cosmetic irritation only, and hasn't gotten worse over time.
Speaking from personal experience (felt that if i ever wasn't bringing my laptop with me, it was too big)-
First I got a 13" HP Specter ($1400 ish to start apparently, although I think it was cheaper when I got mine years ago). I was quite happy with it as the very small size meant it was trivial to carry and work with.
Eventually I sorta went all in on "want smaller laptop" and got an 8" Gpd Pocket 3 for about $1200ish (which is their top of the line model. I think it's $700 at the low end)
Personally, I love the damn thing. It's so trivial to carry it + it's charger that I keep it all in a sling designed for camera equipment, and it's actually got useful ports (HDMI and Ethernet).
That said, it might not be for everyone as the keyboard is a little nonstandard to help with the size (' is in a different spot than normal being the main one you'll notice). Personally i had no problem adapting to that, but I also have a few 40% keyboards so it's hard for me to judge how difficult it would be for someone else. Further you're not dealing with a major company like HP, and since I've never had any issues, I can't speak to things like customer support.
On the other hand, the specter served me well, but seemed to just stop charging one day. This was a few months after I'd gotten the Pocket 3 (so maybe 3 years after i got the specter), and I just haven't bothered to diagnose it as I wasn't using it any more.
Obviously these are kind of fringe options, but I hope it helps since a lot of talk here is either about gaming laptops for some reason? Oh and before I forget, the Pocket 3 came out quite some time ago, so i'm not sure if there's a pocket 4 on the horizon to look out for.
I'm so sorry man. My condolences.
Preach.
Windows laptops are soooooooooooo slow and unresponsive, even ignoring how shitty in general windows 10/11 is, which is the standard now.
Every since I put linux mint on my laptop, cinnamon even, not the lightweight versions, it's so much more performant and responsive, and I don't have to deal with unresolvable windows bullshit anymore either.
The battery life took a hit until I installed auto-cpufreq and then it was all good.
I've not used windows in my personal life since Ubuntu 5.04 (around 2006 I think) and I so wish more people knew the joys of Linux. I've managed to shock people with how well my 2013-era Thinkpad runs, but there's very little follow through. To be fair, I've no idea what the learning curve or unlearning one needs to do nowadays.
I actually just switched to Linux on my main gaming machine from Windows back in February so I can comment on this. I think if you stick with the most popular distros like Ubuntu and its derivatives, Fedora, Manjaro, etc, Linux isn't too hard to switch to from Windows. There's usually a ton of support articles and forums online to ask questions in and people are generally nice. For most day-to-day usage like web browsing and text processing, Linux requires basically 0 effort to switch. Even for most gaming, it's not that hard to switch now (if you're a big Steam gamer at least). Just need to enable Proton and then click play on your favorite games. For non-Steam games you need to jump through some hoops and some straight up won't run because of anti-cheat but its a pretty good experience still.
The biggest change coming from Windows is how the filesystem is structured/treated. Having used Windows for 20 years, I'm so used to seeing C:/Users/ArtVandelay/... as I look for files. Linux seems to only really care about a drive name when you're accessing other drives? So most files will just be under /home/ArtVandelay/... and things on my other disk are under /media/ArtVandelay/DriveName/... It's not really a big deal for most users though. Not having files be locked as a program accesses them is also another change. I only really notice it when I'm updating my computer. It's nice having updates just install in the background and I can restart my PC to apply it.
Overall, Linux is pretty straightforward to switch to if you use one that's known to be user-friendly. Switching from Windows to Arch and expecting people on Arch forums to just help you without putting in effort yourself can get dirty real quick lol. Nothing against Arch users, I completely understand the frustration since everything is written in the manuals, but man they can be hostile and rude. I remember trying to setup Arch in a VM a few months ago and ran into networking issues since I missed a step. Thought I'd check Reddit for some help and most of the posts I'd come across would just have the top reply basically say RTFM GTFO.
I use both interchangably, but most tech industries will be running Windows, especially in my domain that basically assumes Visual Studio is the only IDE you'll ever use. So I can never fully escape it even if I wanted to.
Is Linux good these days with touch screens and tablets? My laptop is a foldable and I use it as a digital notebook with the pen stylus but aren't sure if switching to Linux would be worth it given my use case.
Note: I haven't used Linux on a foldable so what I"m about to say is just from seeing others using it on their hardware
Basic touch stuff should work without too much fuss on the major distros as support for Linux phones become mainstream but like @Loire said, stylus stuff may not work as smoothly. I actually had 2 professors that used Linux (think it might've been Fedora?) on their HP foldables for my higher level math lectures last year and seeing them try to annotate PDFs with their pen looked really janky. It worked, but was pretty laggy and they'd often write something and then wait a few seconds for the computer to catch up. Granted, they were mirroring their display to a projector, not sure how that'd affect things, but it definitely wasn't as smooth as Windows.
Unfortunately, that's a dealbreaker. If the response isn't buttery smooth, I'd rather just use real pen and paper instead. Shame :(
Thanks for the response though.
No problem, glad to help out.
Op could technically run windows on a MacBook. You can virtualize the ARM version and emulate the x86 version, though they have their own drawbacks.
You can also still get a hold of their older intel ones, I think.
Windows the OS has gotten worse and worse
Aren't all laptops portable?
Not all laptops are light, though. Which is what people generally are referring to when they say they want something portable. My current laptop is far heavier than it needs to be.
Some are more portable than others!
I think use cases of laptops range from a home theatre PC, which isn't moved very often but has the advantage of being "hide-able" to a digital nomad setup where people can code or do light editing after climbing a mountain.
I know I wouldn't want to spend more to make the first easier to fold and carry across the room, but I'd probably pay more to have less to carry on my back.