I'm in the market for a new laptop.
Aside from "normal" laptop stuff I'll be using it for moderately light gaming (e.g. Dota2 @ 60FPS) and also running Ableton with various VST synths etc. Occasionally I'll do a wee bit of Photoshop / Zbrush also.
Things I need:
Things I'd like:
Budget £1000-£2000.
Otherwise I'm not too fussy!
I started out looking at Surface Pro's (I was initially keen on getting a 2-in-1 with a good stylus) and eventually talked myself out of that.
That gave me a lot of other options to look at more sensible price points. To begin with I was only looking at Ice Lake & Comet Lake devices but aside from maybe the MSI Prestige (which doesn't seem to actually be available yet in the UK - arg!) the selection still seemed a bit limited so now I'm starting to think that very likely once you account for thermal throttling and all that the performance difference between a 9th or 8th gen i7 in a sensibly sized slim laptop is probably very similar to a 10th Gen i7 in one of the premium ultra compact models. Is that right?
If so that opens up even more options. Actually its a bewildering number of options - which is why I thought to come here and ask for advice!
Aside from "normal" laptop stuff I'll be using it for moderately light gaming (e.g. Dota2 @ 60FPS) and also running Ableton with various VST synths etc. Occasionally I'll do a wee bit of Photoshop / Zbrush also.
Things I need:
- A decent bit of horsepower so that I can comfortably run complex Ableton setups with a good bit of headroom.
- A decent selection of USB ports - some of the audio gear I have doesn't play nicely with hubs & dongles etc. Doesn't actually need to be anything fancy in most cases (e.g. thunderbolt isn't a must) but I do need access to 2/3 while charging.
Things I'd like:
- Modest discrete graphics card is a big plus - I have a good PC for gaming but I do find myself away from it multiple times a year with time to kill and being able to play a "real" game would be nice. Iris Plus looked promising but my impression of benchmarks I've seen thus far isn't encouraging so I'm wondering about something like a GTX 1650 or an MX250 even.
- Slim & light form-factor. Anywhere between 13-15" I'd consider & I'm happy to go chunkier especially if that improves cooling.
- I don't actually "need" it but I'm a sucker for a bright, high quality display with accurate colours. The thing I've disliked about previous laptops has often been dim, muddy displays. I don't think I need 4k on a laptop so 1440 or 1080 are absolutely fine. My eye-sight isn't great and DPI scaling is quite a silver bullet so running at very high resolutions on a small display is probably a non-starter.
- That said being able to drive a single 4k display at 60FPS via HDMI/DP is a small plus.
Budget £1000-£2000.
Otherwise I'm not too fussy!
I started out looking at Surface Pro's (I was initially keen on getting a 2-in-1 with a good stylus) and eventually talked myself out of that.
- I've had bad experiences with dealing directly with MS as a vendor in the past.
- Number of available ports isn't great
- As I said before I wasn't very impressed with Iris Plus graphics
That gave me a lot of other options to look at more sensible price points. To begin with I was only looking at Ice Lake & Comet Lake devices but aside from maybe the MSI Prestige (which doesn't seem to actually be available yet in the UK - arg!) the selection still seemed a bit limited so now I'm starting to think that very likely once you account for thermal throttling and all that the performance difference between a 9th or 8th gen i7 in a sensibly sized slim laptop is probably very similar to a 10th Gen i7 in one of the premium ultra compact models. Is that right?
If so that opens up even more options. Actually its a bewildering number of options - which is why I thought to come here and ask for advice!
