It really depends. Should it play games? If so, the MB Air is out of the windows. Then I’d try to look at something with a dedicated GPU or something Ryzen. If it should not, I‘d look at used Thinkpads for Windows/Linux or at the M1 for macOS. I think it also depends strongly on what should be developed on the device.
What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#22Windows? Ew.
I'm a professional dev and I learned on a Chromebook that I installed Linux on. You can get away with much less computing power if you use Linux.
I don't know any devs who use windows except those specifically developing for the windows ecosystem.
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#23I doubt anything in that range can even come close to Macbook Air M1 base model.
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#24Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#25Best depends on your criteria, which you haven't listed other than app creation, but people have been making apps for a long time on computers of various capability, so that doesn't narrow us down very much.
Lowest cost option is find something used that works, or from CDW outlet or the occassional crazy deal. Many chromebooks can run windows if you use a 3rd party bios. The keyboard layout is a bit sparse, which means no windows key. Check Mr.Chromebox for models his script supports and you'll get a minimal machine that boots UEFI capable OSes, you might need a keyboard driver depending on specifics.
If you want the most processing power for the $, get a basic desktop with integrated graphics. Ryzen 5600G or something Alder Lake with DDR4-3600 or so (DDR5 might be faster, but right now it's pretty close and DDR4 is much less expensive). Alder Lake boards are either DDR4 or DDR5 but not both, shop carefully. Desktop chips are going to be significatly faster than laptop chips, because they can use way more power.
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#26Do yourself a favour and use this: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/laptop/
You can filter using many axes, like screen size, price, battery life, RAM, and so on... It'll give you a much better idea of what's available, rather than what's trendy.
Once you've selected a few promising ones you can check the reviews online.
On a side note, make sure you're not upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, most dev work has very low computing requirements. You could also buy second-hand and get something great for hundreds of dollar less than new. You can also buy new for considerably less than 1000$, especially in the U.S where prices are cheap. The laptop I bought back in college was 300$ and good enough to do any dev work I wanted (that's about the lower bound of what you can find brand new though).
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#27Thinkpad L14 (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-business-lap...).
Re: What’s the best sub 1k laptop?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asahi Linux is relatively easy to install and is pretty usable, even at this early stage. The key to Asahi's creation is the open nature of Apple's boot loader. No, Apple isn't supporting Asahi as such, but neither is it actively or passively standing in the way.
One could place a bet Asahi will get to such as stage at some point but at this stage you have to be a pretty die-hard tech nerd with a corner case usage scenario to claim it's "pretty usable" though. The speakers don't work, the USB ports won't work with 3.0 devices, the webcam doesn't work, the display brightness isn't adjustable, the touchbar doesn't work, and everything renders on the CPU since the GPU is unsuppo…
The only response I can offer to this is that I can browse the web, read email, and edit text with it. That's probably 85% of my computer usage right there. My MacBook Air doesn't have a touchbar, I can generally get by without video or games so CPU vs. GPU rendering and sound aren't critical, and I haven't needed to use a webcam (on that machine, that is) for months. Yes, USB is slow and battery life is shorter. But I use the Mac side most of the time anyway. Asahi is a fun experiment for me.