Recommend me a laptop!

On Holiday

On Holiday

On Holiday

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2009
Posts
7,222
Any laptop enthusiasts fancy a challenge?

I need a laptop primarily for work purposes that meets the following:

Up to 15" maximum
Minimum 5 hour battery life, the more the better.
USB-C charging available.
400+ nits screen (or at least actually useable outdoors)
Decent-ish CPU and 16GB RAM
Storage irrelevant, 256GB would be fine.
Lightweight - 1.5kg or less ideally.
Windows based.
Extendable warranty - at least up to 3 year.

Budget is up to £1200 if it can do a bit of gaming too, but it must be able to switch between iGPU and discrete for good battery life.

The new XPS looked of interest but the keyboard is not receiving good reviews, though I could be tempted to carry an MX Keys Mini with me.


Edit: seems like a Zephyrus G14 might be within reach.
 
Last edited:
Dell Inspiron or XPS range - Good quality laptops, nice build quality, decent support, good value.

LG Gram range - If you really want light weight, but these are over budget for your spec.

Also worth noting that new Arm-based Co-pilot laptops are just being released by Microsoft and Dell. These are very fast and have very good battery life. Marques Brownlee takes a look at them here:


Asus Zenbooks are also nice, and there's a review of one here with the new AMD Ryzen AI chipset (new ASUS Zenbook S 16 with brand new Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor and AMD Radeon graphics), but this will be over budget, just worth bearing in mind:

 
Last edited:
On Holiday said:
Any laptop enthusiasts fancy a challenge?

I need a laptop primarily for work purposes that meets the following:

Up to 15" maximum
Minimum 5 hour battery life, the more the better.
USB-C charging available.
400+ nits screen (or at least actually useable outdoors)
Decent-ish CPU and 16GB RAM
Storage irrelevant, 256GB would be fine.
Lightweight - 1.5kg or less ideally.
Windows based.
Extendable warranty - at least up to 3 year.

Budget is up to £1200 if it can do a bit of gaming too, but it must be able to switch between iGPU and discrete for good battery life.

The new XPS looked of interest but the keyboard is not receiving good reviews, though I could be tempted to carry an MX Keys Mini with me.


Edit: seems like a Zephyrus G14 might be within reach.
Click to expand...

The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro 14 fits this. Currently on sale for £1199 plus quidco cashback. It's £600 off the 155H Ultra 7, 16Gb, 1TB version.

I use one for work and some gaming (GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud + onboard ARC is ok). Amazing 2.8k touchscreen, super light c1.2kg, nice keyboard and real world all day battery life (I've seen over 12 hours productivity and 8 hours in cloud gaming). Totally silent in quiet mode.

If work productivity portability focused at £1200 then I wouldn't worry about a discreet gaming GPU due to the compromises. Low watt GPUs in the cheaper (in budget) ultra portables are for Studio features really and properly gaming focused laptops in budget add notable weight.

Also the new ARM devices are ok but compatibility issues are real. The good YT reviews do touch on this and I know a few people using these now with mixed opinions but none trouble free.
 
Philtor said:
I would be going for a Dell XPS personally. Great machines.
Click to expand...

They are nice but the equivalent spec to the Samsung Book4 Pro (metal chassis btw) above is same price as the pre sale Samsung so £1800 at the moment.

I had an XPS previously and no issues with them just cost this year.

The standard XPS have 1920x1200 non touch screens. Once you have had the 2.8k+ touch screens then non touch HD screens just don't hit the mark if you are using on screen. If docked all the time then it's a moot point.

Carried over from last year to this year I have a Surface 9 Pro then this year a Samsung Book3 360 and Book4 Pro.

It was a tie between the XPS 14 and Book4 but the Book4 went on sale a few months ago too so was significantly cheaper than the XPS the week I was ordering which swung it.
 
Last edited:
The only thing with Samsung is that they have been in and out of the laptop market.

I just wonder how much support would be available later on down the line. With Dell this is never a concern.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom