Ultrabooks/portable high end laptops (2nd hand possible)

[snowdog]

Hi,

For work I have a 13'' Surface book 4 ryzen 7.
I also have an old Surface Book (skylake i7/16gb/gtx965m). An old msi gaming laptop (haswell i7)...

I have grown fond of higher end smaller form factor laptops, mainly because of the nice screens, better battery life, and portability. I love working outside... I hate my bulky game laptop now.

I am looking to buy a new or 2nd hand ultrabook:
- as light as possible, prefferably under 1.4kg but if possible just 1 kg.
- Long battery life (at leats surface book 4), but prefer 1,5-2x battery life. I wish to be able to use it for 6 hrs under load or 10+ hrs low load but screen at brightest.
- Good screen, I don't mean rubbish like refresh rate, but colors (IPS or OLED) resolution, brightness ( at least 400 nits, 500+ nits SDR if possible), strong preferance to matte screens due to outside use (**** glossy/reflective, grrr)
- decent cpu (at least comparable to my surface laptop 4, since websites are javascript and framework on framework bloat these days, I am annoyed by older cpu's: at least 16 gb prefer 32gb ram.
- x86 (I wish to play old games and that is 100% must) igpu at least as powerful as Steam Deck gpu so i can play modern games on low as well.
- Touchscreen is a plus imho

I actually quite like the Surface laptops, only the battery life is a bit disappointing, value for money is a bit **** as they hold their value too well, and the reflective screen.
The market is very dispersed and there appears no clear winner, the Asus Zenbook 13 oled lacks touch but has great brightness and is nice and thin and light. Lenovo Yoga's are much heavier/bulkier, HP appears expensive as hell. And the Snapdragon spam is getting worse, but for me not an option as I love to play the likes of Civ3 op laptop (they dont run well in wine/proton, intel/AMD only for games compatibility is a must).

Why is there no jack of all trades that is affordable, is it so hard to make a decent small laptop?
Is there something on 2nd hand market worth a look? A similiar surface laptop? Or a surface pro? I don't care specifically about MS products but they do offer a good all-round package.

EDIT:

I realize now that what I truly want is a modern x86 ultrabook that matches or beats the Surface Laptop 4 Ryzen 7, but with:

• Matte screen (I hate reflections — OLEDs and glossy panels are not really viable outdoors for me unless really bright)
• Great battery (I can accept 4–6h under pressure/cpu load, but it must be real — not manufacturer lies)
• GPU that runs modern games (albeit on low or FSR)
• RAM: 32GB preferred, but 16gb if price gets out of hand
• <1.3kg if possible, bonus point for much lighter devices
• Touchscreen is a plus, but I’ll sacrifice that for matte + battery

I don’t care about branding — I just want the actual best value-for-money ultraportable that doesn’t suck outside and isn’t held back by bloatware, soldered RAM, or trash thermals.

 

[Snapshot]

The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 (AMD) fits most of what you want but I can't see what the battery life is.
I'd normally go for Yoga or Ideapad 5 but they've all got glossy screens in the current generations.

 

[snowdog]

Poor screen resolution.
I am not sure I am willing to forego that, low res screens are poor for watching pictures imho, I noticed a huge difference when watching photo's on a decent screen (e.g. 250+ PPI) compared to sub 150 PPI.

EDIT: oh there is a decent version: 14" 2880x1800 instead of poor 1080p...
EDIT2: only teh snapdragon appears to have a decent screen, the AMD/Intels are 1080p.
Also on the low side of brightness: 400 nits.


Why are the laptops always some form of consession?

 

[mid_gen]

I've just been through this process.

I ended up with a Mac Air. The only laptop that isn't some kind of concession. Build, screen, performance, battery life, just better in every single way than any Windows options.

Much better value than Lenovo. I got an M4 15" 24Gb, 512GB for £1439. You'd have to spend well over 2 grand for a Lenovo and it still wouldn't be nearly as good. The battery life is ridiculous.

I've been a Windows man my entire life so not coming at it as some kind of fanboy. All the software I use works fine, but obviously YMMV.

 

[snowdog]

I regularly use some obsure old program/application/game, I have tried Arch linux before and now have had a Deck for a year, so I am growing away from Windows. But fact is, Windows runs everything still, any 20-30 year old application still mostly runs well. While emulating does not always work . I hate windows 11 by the way, imo win XP and later 7 was the cherry of windows...

But yeah, I kind of feared this is the situation these days . My manager is also pushing me to a Macbook Pro.