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Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

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Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#51

Post by yread »

I just bought a laptop for the first time in 10 years or so and I've spent quite some time and effort looking for it (bought 4 laptops, sent them all back and bought a 5th one).

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

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#52

Post by yread »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #13
chaz6 wrote: post #9

High up my list is repairability, which is why I am a big fan of the Framework laptop.

Number two in my list. Hard to open? Hard to reach some parts? memory/ssd soldered on the mainboard? Go away. Number one is immediate global availability so I won't have to deal with the customs or pre-order. Sadly the the Framework fails both. Excellent hardware compatibility (full Linux support) is "number zero". I can only possibly forgive the finerprint scanner for being unusable on Linux (because these are not r…

Good point the current Thinkpad T14 and P14s and super difficult to open without breaking the plastic tabs

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#53

Post by bestouff »

hiisukun wrote: post #27

1. S3 Standby/suspend support. 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 litt…

This ! Support forums from all brands (big ones like Dell or Lenovo, but also niche brands like Framework) are plagued with requests from unhappy users with their laptop dying in their bag. All because of the Modern Suspend feature. Let's hope AMD mobile processors will work better, and that we'll be able to find decent laptops using them.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#54

Post by yread »

hiisukun wrote: post #27

1. S3 Standby/suspend support. 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 litt…

You can mitigate it by configuring the power settings so that after 30 minutes the laptop hibernates. You lose your connected standby of course

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#56

Post by qwerty456127 »

yread wrote: post #52
qwerty456127 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number two in my list. Hard to open? Hard to reach some parts? memory/ssd soldered on the mainboard? Go away. Number one is immediate global availability so I won't have to deal with the customs or pre-order. Sadly the the Framework fails both. Excellent hardware compatibility (full Linux support) is "number zero". I can only possibly forgive the finerprint scanner for being unusable on Linux (because these are not r…

Good point the current Thinkpad T14 and P14s and super difficult to open without breaking the plastic tabs

What's the solution if you break them? I broke some (if we are speaking about the same thing - I mean those little things that click and keep the bottom cover in place after you remove the screws) on one HP ProBook, now the trackpad-push clicking works unreliably. I thought of buying a whole new bottom cover on eBay but the serial number and the Windows sticker is on it so replacing it would probably void the warranty and other legal things perhaps.

The plastic tabs are ridiculous. Why do they use them when there are screws? To save an extra screw and a fraction of a penny off the price?

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#57

Post by utucuro »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #18

> two fast external storage ports 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 ni…

Manufacturers probably prefer extra USB ports to a dedicated SD slot since it occupies less internal space than an SD slot and is not single purpose.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#59

Post by dna_polymerase »

schleck8 wrote: post #21
dna_polymerase wrote: post #14

AMD CPU & Repair-ability. Framework looks promising, but I'm not eager to buy an Intel processor.

> I'm not eager to buy an Intel processor May I ask why?

As good as they started over the past decades they made many shady business moves which eventually put them in the place of being the (de-facto) only CPU option around. Then they blew it all with Spectre.

It's not like I especially like AMD, but I'd love to support a little more competition in the x86 market. Eventually I'd love to see consumer grade ARM available for non-Apple devices. Their premiums and lockin just don't make it attractive to buy an M1 MBP to install Linux on it.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#60

Post by tendencydriven »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #37
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Number two in my list. Hard to open? Hard to reach some parts? memory/ssd soldered on the mainboard? Go away. Number one is immediate global availability so I won't have to deal with the customs or pre-order. Sadly the the Framework fails both. I fail to follow your logic. Do you mean that Framework has memory/ssd soldered on the mainboard?

No, it's awesome in this aspect. I want one. But it's both US-only (AFAIK, I may be wrong) and pre-order. So I would have to both deal with the customs (extra time, money and papers overhead) and wait long.

It's US only currently, but they are looking at a global rollout (I'm patiently waiting in the UK).
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