Then he recommends a consumer level Dell... The X1 Carbon would actually be my main recommendation but you decided to fixate on the Air. The X1 Carbon is nearly flawless. I own two of them. One is 7 years old. Still works perfectly. Even after getting bashed on by a toddler and dogs. Dell is trash other than their professional monitors. Their consumer level stuff belongs in a dumpster. Shitty parts and build quality, poor design, and nonexistent service and support. JFL at recommending a consumer level ultrabook from them with how hard ultrabooks are for the end user to repair. May as well just burn your $1000+. https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Problems-with-XPS-13-2020-9300/td-p/7512905 Page after page of people going through replacement after replacement of the XPS13. And those are the ones who could even get Dell to help them at all.
I had a Dell about 15 years ago and it was crap. So I'm not going there again. Hell, I won't touch Alienware because of their ties with Dell. The laptop that I've been looking at is the HP Spectre x360. My brother-in-law works at the school and their HP's have the best survival record. And I love having the "360" in the name - it's just cool. I currently have a 2013 Macbook Pro 13". But Apple has screwed that product line so much, that I don't want another one. I thought about building, but I really want it mobile.
Just get a Thinkpad X1 Carbon if you want a good notebook that will last. They are legit Macbook killers. There's an extreme version that has discrete graphics if you insist on a notebook that can play games. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/ThinkPad-X1-Extreme-Gen-3/p/22TP2X1X1E3 Some of the business/enterprise level HP stuff is okay (probably what the school you mentioned is using) but their consumer level stuff tends to be junk just like Dell.
I think you’re both right in a way. The MacBook Air was much more capable before the refresh. I think they purposely crippled it with the thermal throttling so you’d have to upgrade to a Pro. But it’s still the best ultra book in my opinion. The XPS 13 is a pretty good notebook. Probably the best value if you don’t want a Mac Air. The Dell consumer stuff has come a long way. No worse than Razer who gets a free pass from the tech media. But the whole soldered in ram and ssd is a scam. I don’t mind if my laptop is a few millimeters thicker to upgrade things. I’m still looking for that elusive 64GB 13” ultraportable.
What about the X1 Carbon? I think it’s quite a bit better than either one of them. And Thinkpad keyboards are amazing. Like they rival some of the best desktop keyboards.
Interestingly Lenovo must not dump a lot of money into marketing that to the mainstream. I’ve never seen it come up in the ultraportable wars. It’s a bit pricey. If you equalized it at 16GB of ram you’re in the price range of a Razer Blade Stealth with a dedicated “gaming” GPU. Honestly if you held a brand new Razer and a Lenovo like these reviewers do. You’re gonna think Razer has amazing build quality and getting more bang for your buck. But Razer’s poor quality begins to show within 90 days whereas a Thinkpad can last a decade. In conclusion the X1 might be a good fit for people willing to spend a little more money for an almost ultraportable. But they don’t seem to have the marketing hype of their competitors. This is the first I’ve looked at it lol.
Thinkpads are practically indestructible. I have one that's 16 years old that still works fine. My X1 Carbon Gen 2 has been thrown by dogs, stomped on, smashed on with toy trains, beaten on, had stuff spilled on it, and my son ate the trackpoint. It still works. I can see why astronauts use these things in space. They are hard to break. When I have upgraded them it has been because the specs were out of date. Not because they broke. So that might be worth the extra money for some over a cheaper consumer ultrabook. Edit: I love how this was supposed to be some console fanboi hype thread and we derailed it and turned it into a discussion about thin and light laptops.
Well I'm a huge hypocrite. Just picked up an X1 Extreme while they were on sale. It's the gaming X1 Carbon.
lol I saw that deal... but you should check out the $900 Zephyrus G14 deal in case it's a better fit. It was being called the "laptop of the year" by the tech YT'ers.
it's always good to have a laptop around even if you don't end up gaming on it. in the last 12 months, I just used it as a mobile troubleshooter for my problems with my router and desktop.
I temporarily got issued a Macbook for work. Nothing I have was compatible with it directly so they had to get me a thunderbolt 3 dock. I gotta tell you. After a few months of one cable docking... I am hooked. It's not a convenience I ever thought I needed but now I don't want to give it up. I'm now waiting for a Windows laptop with USB4/Thunderbolt 4. The new Razer Blade Stealth is the first I've seen with them but my last RBS didn't even make it 3 months before it had problems. I am hoping someone will put a 8 core AMD CPU, 32GB of ram, and Thunderbolt 4 into a ultra-book. But it'd settle for a 15" that lets me upgrade ram and HDD in that config. This whole soldering to motherboard scam is fucking bullshit.
The X1 Extreme has upgradable ram (two slots that can take up to 64GB total) and two slots for m.2 NVME SSDs that can be run in RAID 0 or 1. It's rare to see ultrabooks where the ram isn't soldered or that allow you to have multiple upgradeable storage drives. It was part of what sold me on it. The soldered ram on so many laptops now is super annoying. The ram market goes through a lot of fluctuations where sometimes ram is dirt cheap and you can just max it out for a cheap price. Not possible with a lot of laptops now. You're stuck paying a high price up front so you don't end up with a laptop with a gimped amount of ram.
You guys and your fancy laptops. I don't think I've paid more than $450 for a laptop. Of course I rarely use them for home. Last time I did, it was to test my router ethernet connection.
I've never had good long term experiences with cheap laptops so I stopped buying them a long time ago.
I agree. Computer tech has advanced way beyond the software. A quality laptop might set you back $1500-2000 but it'll probably be a (non-gaming) desktop replacement and serve you an easy 5+ years. Sinking $500 into a trashbook is a waste of money, imo.
The first gen Surfacebook i bought in 2015 is still running perfectly fine. I handed it to one of my friends and she'll probably be using it for at least another 5 years just fine. On the flip side, I bought a $500 Acer laptop back in 2009 and my mom is still using it. It has no issues either.
I haven't seen much of a correlation between the price of a laptop and it's lifespan. I suppose my $500 Dixie cup home laptops tend to get light use and $1500 work laptops get heavy use but I've had failures with both. Personal laptops tend to get broken keyboards and screens, work laptops have been, batteries, power ports, and hard drives. My work laptops get replaced for free and I don't mind buying a new $500 personal laptop every 3 years. My current work laptop is a Dell Precision 3510. The first 3510 failed after 3 years and I've had my second one for about 1 year now.
There is no correlation between price and reliability. Razer is at the highest end of the cost spectrum and extremely unreliable. Everyone has different use cases, but I believe in buying reasonable specs/price upfront to prolong the usefulness of the device for as long as possible. I think 5 years ago $500 got you an Atom or Celeron or those weirdly named AMD. Maybe an i3 if you found a deal. I can't be using that junk now. But if I had paid up for an i7 with decent ram/hdd I probably wouldn't even consider upgrading in 2020.
Staying away from consumer level stuff helps a lot. I've never used a consumer level laptop that wasn't a piece of junk. Business/enterprise laptops are built to a different standard. Big businesses and government agencies aren't going to tolerate junk the way a consumer might, and PC manufacturers can't afford to lose their business with many millions of dollars at stake. Business laptops tend to be expensive. Business laptops also have a spare parts supply chain that doesn't exist for consumer laptops and have a different level of service/support when under warranty. It doesn't surprise me that Razer laptops kind of suck. Their peripherals are also expensive but failure prone. TLDR: Buy a Thinkpad