$2000 USD for Programming
- Total budget and country of purchase:
$2000 max - USA
- Do you prefer a 2 in 1 form factor, good battery life or best specifications for the money? Pick or include any that apply.
Prefer real world battery life of 6-8+ hours
- How important is weight and thinness to you?
Very important; Will be moving around a lot.
- Which OS do you require? Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, Linux.
Windows 10 Pro (for HyperV)
- Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.
15 inch
- Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.
Mainly programming in Jetbrains IDEs, HyperV for VMs, LOTS of browser tabs open, light graphics work in Photoshop/Illustrator. I'll need 16GB RAM Minimum.
- If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?
Gaming not important, have main PC. Maybe minecraft. Integrated intel/amd graphics are fine.
- Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?
Will be moving around a lot, so build quality and battery are important. Good input for coding. Accurate screen would be nice, 4k not necessary and will probably kill battery.
Prefer Camera on top of screen. So no Aero 15, older XPS 15, etc.
- Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.
Leaning towards (in order) XPS 15 7590 (yay camera on top! not yet released, waiting on reviews), Thinkpad X1 Extreme gen 2 (not yet released, waiting on reviews), Razer Blade 15 Advanced (questionable on build quality & support).
I have a 2 yr old XPS 15 (9560) that I am pretty happy with (except camera placement), but horror stories of build quality are making me hesitant of the newer XPS.
The stuff I do is not super taxing on CPU or GPU. So 8th gen i5+ Intel U models are fine and probably better on battery than H/HQ models (or AMD equivalent). RAM is probably more important.
I'm not afraid to open it up and do upgrades myself. Any upgrade costs should be included towards max $$.
My ideal laptop would probably be a 15" XPS 13 or 15" X1 Carbon (for the lower power CPU), with 32GB RAM, good build quality, and a large battery.
Thanks for looking!
4 comments · 81% upvoted · other discussions
Hey,
You limited your options very good, the only thing I can add is that if you're going for the Razer Blade 15 2019 I highly recommend purchasing it from the Microsoft store or another retailer with a good return policy because they have big quality control issues and you might get a faulty one.
In terms of thermals, the Razer advanced version is very good because it comes with the innovative vapor chamber cooling.
For similar laptops, you can check out this search engine.
You can see and change the search parameters using the "Refine results" button in the upper-left part of the search results page. You can also click on the laptops for more information.
Hope I helped somehow!
marktastic [OP] 1 points · Jun 2019
Thank you for validating my choices.
BTW The Microsoft store seems to mark up the prices quite a bit vs the Razer site. Probably because of the return policy as you say.
totallynotcompacted 1 points · Jun 2019
For the best 13” ultra book money can buy at the moment having everything you want I would definitely take a look at the Huawei mate book pro x
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834324031?item=9SIAFVF9BX5090&ignorebbr=true&source=googleshopping&nm_mc=knc-googlemkp-mobile&cm_mmc=knc-googlemkp-mobile-_-pla-deal+targets-_-notebooks-_-9SIAFVF9BX5090&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjMfoBRDDARIsAMUjNZpf_R8SchlrTGFxn8_rarg_3JeqjtZ14gyEizk-5RQMvZbSUh1MrF4aAuWLEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Though the Lenovo carbon will be a definite competitor especially with the new touches they’ve made to it!