Gaming or business laptop?

gazz

gazz

gazz

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Currently got a lenovo yoga 2 pro laptop, it's now 8 years old.
Specs are:
i7-4500U Processor
8GB DDR3L 1600 MHz Ram
13.3" QHD+ (3200 x 1800) touch screen
1/2 Tb SSD

It's struggling with running Fusion 360 now, and that's what i seem to be using the most, just designing things to 3D print.

so i need a new laptop with a decent amount of power,
as much memory as i can get,
~1Tb SSD, separate graphics card/processor,
~15 inch screen... don't need a QHD+ screen like i have now, but i think dropping to a Full HD screen will be a step to far from what i'm used to??... so a QHD / 2K screen then?
And i don't need a touch screen again as i never really use it.. like the tablet mode, used that maybe 20 times if that.

Budget, ~£1700


i'm kinda leaning towards a gaming laptop, just because it should have more power than i will ever need, so should hopefully still be useful in 7+ years time... but i don't actually play games on the laptop (got the PS5 for that, or the simulator rig with it's dedicated PC)


This laptop will spend 90% of it's life plugged in and sat on my hospital style bed table (i'm stuck in bed a lot with disability issues... hence a desktop is not practical)


I've read that gaming laptops tend to run very hot, even when just running a web browser?

Plus loud fans etc (but hopefully better cooling than the yoga 2 has, this does struggle to keep cool at times with only vents on the back.. which get blocked if used as a 'lap'top say in a hotel sat on the bed.

But the business laptops seem to be more aimed at mobile use on the go, and lots of security like finger print locks, encrypted data etc, incase it gets stolen and the data on it is valuable to the company.

It will be purely for home use.

Any advice on what i should be looking at to replace this yoga 2 pro?
 
Thankyou, that seems to tick all the boxes... except one i didnt mention...

keyboard, whilst i don't need a numberpad, i would like separate home, end, and page up & down keys, just because they are keys a use a lot.

and dang it, that laptop needs the 'FN' key pressing and the arrow keys to do those commands :(
 
powerful laptops run hot and quite loud yes, i would not dare put one on a bed but any hard surface is fine as long as nothing is blocked.

business laptops are crazy expensive for what you get, i buy old ones for a few hundred that were £2+ when new and i scratch my head trying to work out why they were so expensive when new.

maybe get a dell xps with a moderate graphics chip

and remember high end laptops devalue like nothing you ever seen in your life, it will make your eyes water
 
Sounds like another job for the forum favourite of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro or Legion 7 16". There's a very long thread on the 5 Pro and several recent threads recommending it so it seems superfluous to go through the details again...
 
Snapshot said:
Sounds like another job for the forum favourite of the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro or Legion 7 16". There's a very long thread on the 5 Pro and several recent threads recommending it so it seems superfluous to go through the details again...
Click to expand...

Agree, 5 Pro would fit the bill nicely. It's a heavy beast but cooling is good and it's only noisey under heavy load. It has space for 2 NVME drives and a fantastic screen.

They also do an Ideapad 5 Pro with a less powerful GPU.
 
nice, i'll check out the legion 5 pro,

i'm thinking a gaming laptop is just too much for what i will use it for, and having it run red hot fans on full just browsing farcebook would drive me mad.

i did get distracted into the asus zenbook duo's, with the 'screenpad 2.0' thinking the trackpad as a 2nd screen would he cool, i could have shortcuts for most used tasks on fusion 360 on it etc,
But reading about it, it seems you can only put 4 user made shortcut icons on the pad, and the apps that come with it are for the office family of programs... i dont even have office installed... i use notepad++ for everything i need.

so i think this screenpad thing would be like the tablet and tent modes with my current laptop, something to show off with but i'd never use it in real life.
 
It's looking like a lenovo leigion 5 will be my next laptop then.

i kept looking at the options at lenovo for the legion laptops, and end up with the top spec legion 7 for over 2 grand (which is £300+ over budget)

then i think... do i really need the RTX 3070 GFX card, for what i will use it for the 3050 will be fine... if i was to play the simulator games on the laptop... they need ' Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 480' which i think are way below the PC equivelent of the mobile rtx 3050.... but i'd settle for the 3060 gfx card i think.

Same with going for the ryzen 9 processor, the 7 will be more than i need. could likely get away with the 5 even.

Then i think 'thunderbolt' might be nice to have... but thats intel processors and another price hike, and i'd likely never plug an external monitor in (but maybe... thinking of a small touchscreen monitor plugged in with shortcuts for things i do in F360... but can't that be done over the USB C with display port on the AMD laptop?

I read the thread about the legion laptops, and now wondering if to get the laptop with minimum memory and a small ssd, and fit bigger ones after i get it.
 
You want the 5 Pro, not the 5. The Pro has the higher res screen.

RAM and storage are an easy upgrade so you're right to DIY it.

I believe the Pro has HDMI and USBC display out. I've never checked mine and am at work but a quick Google shows it's got HDMI.

The 3060 should be absolutely fine and is a significant saving. I got mine for £900 IIRC.
 
It's a little above your budgldget although there are frequent sales. But maybe take a look at the Thinkpad X1 Extreme. It's capable of light gaming but is thin and light with different options options a 15" screen.
 
ahh, cheers for that,

i'm kinda 'obsessed' with the legion 5 pro atm, but waiting for the 2022 versions to be released.

But the thinkpads do look good too... so hard to decide :D
 
I'm not sure you really need a gaming laptop for doing CAD, because you don't need the ultra high framerate. I'm not a CAD expert, but I expect the requirements can be better matched by another type of machine, and I do know that some of the laptop brands have workstation and creator laptops, that are machines with decent graphic cards, e.g. MSI. Brand wise I would also look at Dell, which is what I usually buy for value and spec, and Microsoft, which are high quality machines although slightly pricey. The Tech Chap and Dave Lee YouTube channels are good for laptop reviews.
 
Business-style laptops are more compact but that means less room for cooling and consequently, lower clocked/less performant hardware.

Gaming laptops are much bulkier as they have beefier hardware, drawing more power, and you get more performance. On some models they can run loud and hot at idle but more modern ones, like the Legion series, have great cooling solutions.

Studio laptops are a bit of a middle ground in terms of form factor; something like the Dell Inspiron 15 Plus, with a 3050, could be enough.
 
yeah,,, this is where i got all confoozled,

A business laptop should do all i want... but it often has things built in i really do not need... like finger print locks, facial recognition on the web came, encrypted data systems and that, all to ensure valuable business data doesn't fall into the wrong hands, and this seems to make business laptop expensive.

almost everything i design in fusion 360 is 3D printed objects, and i post them all on thingiverse for others to print out if they want, there's nothing on my current laptop that i wouldnt care less if someone got hold of (barring the usual internet banking login details etc) as i've shared most of it anyway.

then i just design 2D items for laser cutting, so running lightburn and inkscape is all i use there,


I was drawn to gaming laptops for their high spec components, high raw horsepower etc, i.e. more power than i'll ever need... but hopefully that will mean that in 5 or more years time, it's still capable of running everything i need to,

but yes, things like the high refresh rate screens and that would deffo be wasted on me,

i'm perfectly happy with the 4K, 60 fps and 15Ms response time i get on the PS5 and my TV, as i don't play multiplayer shooter style games (or any online games) ... it's more bus and train driving simulators, and single player games like hitman, far cry, deus ex, GTA etc.
 
ya know, the more i think about this, the more i'm realising a gaming laptop would just be way too over spec'd for me,

i've got the desktop and the PS5 to play games on.

i really do just use my current laptop to do designs in fusion 360, inkscape, lightburn etc. a bit of arduino 'programming... tho i suck at this programming lark).. so text editor style stuff.

if anything most of the time it's just used to access the internet, so a slightly higher spec than a chrome book should do me.


Another lenovo yoga would probably do me... but even then, i don't use the tablet function or touch screen on my yoga 2, so that's wasted here too.

but i do like the 4k screen, and would like a keyboard with a number pad... and it must have it's own home, end, page up and down keys.. none of this press 'FN' plus the arrows as a lot of laptops do nowadays it seems.

So maybe one of these 'studio' laptops would be better for me?
 
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