I’m moving soon and will not be able to bring my desktop PC with me, so I’m shopping around for a new (to me) laptop.
I need something that is going to be tolerable to write and work on for more than 30 minutes at a time, and something that can work well enough as a media machine, with the capacity for some emulation/light steam gaming.
My “workload” primarily consists of writing plaintext and very light web design work, internet browsing, media management and consumption, seeding all those lovely linux ISOs, and other general purpose light computing.
At the minute I have a T490, which I hate, it’s hot, loud, it’s screen and speakers are terrible and both of it’s charging ports are slowly dying. It technically does everything I need a machine to do, but interacting with it is just unpleasant and I don’t want to use it full time, also it isn’t capable of driving a high resolution monitor properly.
I’ve always bought thinkpads but I don’t think I’ll buy another after using this machine.
I use linux on desktop full time and would like to stay there but I’m not completely wed to it, and would be willing to consider going back to windows or even shifting to Mac if necessary.
The things I really care about:
Quiet and cool in operation with good battery life
Good, non hideous screen with at least 100% SRGB coverage and otherwise not horrible specifications, ideally in a ratio better than 16:9
Decent selection of I/O
Ideally good speakers though this isn’t essential
No headaches with software/hardware compatibility, no hunting for third rate replacement software
At least 16GB of memory, and 512GB of Disk, ideally both upgradeable, though I care more about storage than RAM
Decent keyboard and trackpad
Available used and widely available, no boutique hardware
Full fat desktop environment, no clunky tablet OS’s (an android tablet would almost meet my needs but trying to use android as a desktop replacement is just painful)
I do NOT need any of the following:
Enough CPU power to fight God
Latest specs for anything, don’t need latest WIFI standard etc.
Discrete graphics (would be maybe nice if AMD, but I don’t really care)
I’ve laid out the models I’m looking at so far below, are there any other obvious options I’m missing?
The contenders for me at the moment are:
Asus UX3402 Zenbook OLED:
Available cheap (£400) used
Nice high resolution 16:10 OLED screen
Enough power
Don’t seem to be many horror stories about them online
Meh keyboard and touchpad
Decent port selection by modern standards
Soldered RAM, replaceable storage
OLED on linux is a bit iffy?
Runs a little hot
Asus are a terrible company to deal with buy I’m buying used and expect no aftercare so w/e
FrameWork 13:
Expensive
Limited port selection, (I think the slotting card gimmick is dumb, sorry)
Nice 3:2 screen, but the one that’s ideal for linux is more expensive again
A niche product, but a nice one with some real community buy in, though company has weird vibes imo
A number of negative stories on this forum and elsewhere about receiving broken/damaged units or units failing unexpectedly, but also a fair few stories about good customer service
Runs hot
Very repairable and parts are available
Good linux support and lively linux community
Macbook Air M1/2/3:
Dark Horse option
Excellent screen, speakers, keyboard, trackpad etc.
Best in class battery and completely silent at all times
Earlier M series are available online for pretty cheap
Locked down compared to anything else
Completely unrepairable
Only at its best if you buy into the apple ecosystem
I’ve never used Mac before and don’t know if I want to try it out
Thinkpad T14:
The safe choice, but the boring one
Thinkpad keyboard and trackpoint that I know and love
Thinkpad keyboard and trackpoint have been getting worse for years
Thinkpad Tax (far more expensive than similar spec machines)
Soldered RAM, replaceable storage
Usual lenovo parts lottery song and dance to find one with the right screen and hardware.
I can not recommend ASUS mobile devices. If the price is right and it’s used then I don’t see any major issues with buying it, but I would have low expectations for longevity. I’ve not had many issues with my OLED on Linux unless I attempt to consume HDR content.
I really like Framework. So far I’ve had a good experience with them. I do believe you’ll see good long term experience and even some saving with them as they allow motherboard upgrades. The port interchangeability has been very useful for me, but mileage varies depending on usecase.
Honestly both of these are perfectly fine. I don’t care for either of them, but you shouldn’t have any major issues with either unless Apple has a design defect. If so then have fun with them gas lighting customers for months if not years that their engineering/manf defect is user induced.
The lenovo is should be okay. Really depends on what CPU it has in it. Most of their AMD models have been really good at my work with us tending to have more issues with Intel ones as of late.
I can also recommend looking into a used HP or Dell laptop. Gaming or business class should be good, but obviously do some research on them before pulling the trigger.
I want to like the Framework, I like the concept and I like what they’re doing with upgrades, but I’m not sure I would realistically upgrade the internals before the rest of the chassis becomes obsolete, and don’t you find having only 4 ports a bit limiting?
For what you get it’s expensive, to get the R5 model with the good screen and 4 ports is almost 1k, before you add storage and RAM. I do think it’s a cool machine though, and knowing that it would definitely work with my preferred software is a bonus.
Yeah they’re a crappy company with poorly built products but this particular model seems to be well put together.
Oh right yeah that’s probably important isn’t it?
GBP (£) and a max budget of £1k, but I’d be much happier spending half that, if I’m laying down big money it would have to be for something really worth the investment, not a marginal perf bump or a couple more cores I’ll never use.
For ASUS I’d rather go to John Lewis or a local retailer to sort out any issues that may arise from the laptops. I’ve had a mix experience with them, some were great, some were awful. Here’s a list of laptops that you may want to look at:
Having being around laptops for a long time - I did decide to invest a little bit more on quietness: I have a Dell XPS 15 9530 with a i7-13700H and an RTX 4070 for a bit of a balance, and also for being super quiet: It will be whisper quiet UNTIL I run something heavy, which I’m ok with.
Also, don’t try buying latest gen, look for something from the previous gen. I know that John Lewis sells their returned items at a cheaper price too.
I know everyone has their own experiences, however I have only had good experiences with ASUS mobile devices, im on my 2nd laptop 3rd mobile device(tablet → laptop → laptop). I have had no issues with any of them over the last decade. Just got the ASUS Zenbook S16 with the Ryzen 9 AI HX 370, and have no regrets. I came from a from a ASUS Zenbook model Q408UG which had the 5500U in it, also great low-mid range laptop. The tablet i had from ASUS was some intel i7 dual core(my main complaint with it were with windows 10 sucking for a tablet os, not the build quality or anything in ASUS’ control). Honestly I had not run AMD till the laptops, and i have had a way better mobile experience on AMD than Intel. Have used a number of intel based laptops and mobile devices, and none of them perform as well when in power-saving mode, off the charger.
Thanks for the rec’s but I’d really prefer to stay away from Nvidia, I have an Nvidia GPU on desktop and it gives me endless issues.
I didn’t know John Lewis had decentish prices, I’d rather buy used but I’ll take a look through their site.
There is no local retailer unfortunately, only Argos, who will never accept returns if they can possibly avoid it. It’s ebay or some other online retailer for me.
I hadn’t thought about HP or Dell, I got my Dad an old elite book to do his stuff on and they’re nice machines, the victus gaming laptops look reasonably specced for the money, might also give them a look
For me not really. I find that I don’t always need more than 4 ports when I’m traveling with the ports being easy to change out I can easily pop in an ethernet port or HDMI as needed, and I use it with a docking station when I’m not traveling. I definitely would recommend BYOD for you RAM and storage.
I can agree that the price is high for what you get though you are getting a device that can be easily repaired and with future upgrades being possible. I’m fairly conscious when it comes to the amount of e-waste that I make and I upgrade often enough to make the price worthwhile. I would honestly look at a used or renewed option from them. They do directly sell them on their store so you can get a warranty with it from them.
Decent performance, and quiet/loud profiles when YOU want them too upgradeable as well!
The one I have has a i7-13700H instead of this i7-1360H, and looking at its comparison on Intel Ark it seems that so close that it could be negligible, and some Intel vPro features - which I don’t think you really need for your use case.
I guess on a practical level not having tons of ports wouldn’t really be a regular problem, I guess it feels worse because you perceive them as an additional purchase and expense instead of buying the parts as one small part of a comprehensive purchase, like buying a cheap airline ticket then having to pay to add on extras that are included in an “expensive” ticket.
And it just irks me in a boomer “laptops were better when they were thick and had VGA” way.
How have temps been in practical use? Is the fan bursty? That’s my main complaint with my 490, I have to either run the fans all the time or deal with loud and aggresive bursting everytime the CPU thinks about doing something
I can definitely understand. I do like the feeling of extra ports, but compared to what my work usually supplies(Dell XPS or Apple) it’s much better.
Temps on the AMD have been good. Can’t really speak for the Intel model. Mine hovers around ~35-80C on the CPU depending on the workload and ambient temperature. Though it will get hotter when gaming/sustained workload. Fans can get somewhat noisy, but doesn’t randomly burst for me. I’d definitely watch a review on this as everyone has different tolerance/definitions for this.
No, I find that it ramps up very nicely - I have no complaints about Fan noise!
And about ports, yeah it’s a shame… but nowadays I only find myself needing Ethernet or HDMI rarely, and not needing them both at once. This model has a dongle included for both of those purposes and it has served me well!
I might have a more serious look into framework then, I’ve watched a bunch of reviews but most reviewers are absolutely useless and don’t provide any kind of explained numbers or easily referenced baseline. I wish the guy from gamer’s nexus had reviewed the FW at some point. I did see in their latest communique that they’ve started working directly with the Linux Mint devs, which would be great as Mint is my favourite distro of all time, though Cinnamon doesn’t work well with fractional scaling or VRR at the minute, and it’s hard to tell how serious the cooperation is…
Maybe I should just make peace with this jank ass T490 and continue to wait for something I have no misgivings about to appear.
Is this about the Framework or the XPS that you bought? I had a look at the machine you linked and it does look the business but it also has a ton of negative reviews about poor build quality and odd issues.
I was talking about the XPS. The first gen refresh did have trackpad issues, but from that it’s been fine, have two with no problems whatsoever. However, I can only speak from experience - maybe I got very lucky with these systems, I would look into the specific manufacturing year to be on the safe side. It’s good to do your research!
I think I’ve narrowed my options down to either the Framework, a thinkpad T14 G4, or not buying anything. I’m quite tempted by some of Slimbook’s machines, but it’s very hard to find good reviews for them so they’re probably not a serious contender.
If you appreciate the repairability aspect on laptops, I would go for a Framework with an AMD APU - especially if you want some form of discrete graphics. I had the T14 G2 with an Nvidia dGPU for work and it was very competent, and the G3 seems to retain this configuration; but I think the G4 doesn’t seem to have a dGPU available anymore.
Yeah - have not heard of Slimbook at all, other than they exist. Can’t vouch for them.
The G4 comes with the same apu as the framework 13, so its more about whether I want to deal with Lenovo’s crap for another 5 years but get a good machine for cheap or the Framework’s high price and odd quirks (and much worse keyboard)
A dGPU wpuld be nice tbh, hard to find a model with one I actually like
Oh I just realized that there are subpages for Intel AND AMD separately. Yeah - shame they removed the dGPU on the latest gen… you could always get a G3 though?
Minutes away from pulling the trigger on a T14 Gen 5 AMD, OLED screen, all the trimmings. Just trying to find out if BT and Wifi work concurrently on linux as the wifi card is soldered (NFA725A)