What is the best laptop to buy in January 2015 for mobility

[alme55]

So i just sold my Sony Vaio T15 laptop for $700, i have had since Feb 2013. It was a horrible laptop experience for me and sadly my first.  The problems i had with it was lackluster battery life of 2-3 hours, horrid TN panel, small touch pad and very loud fan.  The performance on it was good though, the i5-3337u never gave me any problems and the ssd i added in and 8gb ram made the computer smooth.  It did have a touch screen but i can honestly say i used it about 0.01% of the time i owned the laptop, only to shut it down with the charms menu lol.

 

The laptop i am looking to upgrade to is the new 2015 Dell XPS 13 laptop, the base model.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9343-laptop/pd?ref=PD_OC

 

from what i have seen it has a 15 hour battery life, very silent, 1080p IGZO-infinity display <-- no idea what an infinity display is, i tried looking it up, all i could find was it has "really good viewing angles", and is very light and small because of the really small bezels.  

 

What i want to know is, should i get the base model for $724.99 with an i3-broadwell and 4gb ram or is the i5 and 8gb ram worth the extra $200 for $924.99, it is non up-gradable after purchase, both prices are after a $75 of coupon till jan 30.  I am asking this only because i have never used an i3 laptop before so i don't know if it will perform like a turd, i tried them out at bestbuy but i can't really simulate real use there, i am a student and every dollar is a stretch for me,  I would honestly prefer to break even at $700 if i can, but i also don't want to buy another horrible experience for another 2+ years, anyone with an i3 laptop have an opinion? or anyone know of any other 12-13" laptops coming out to compete with 15hr battery that i should wait for?

 

Also i am using the laptop for typing papers, browsing the web and light Auto-CAD and Revit use. i already have a gaming computer, i am looking for mobility above all else out my laptop.

[Mew]

The i5 is worth it just for the turbo- you'll get a very sizeable performance increase. If you want to wait, Apple will refresh their Macbooks with Broadwell, which they can do 2 things with- make them thinner or keep them the same and up the specs and get better battery life than the Dell. You should wait for reviews on the Dell to see how the trackpad and keyboard performs, usually trackpads are pretty bad compared to the ones Apple uses.

[alme55]

The i5 is worth it just for the turbo- you'll get a very sizeable performance increase. If you want to wait, Apple will refresh their Macbooks with Broadwell, which they can do 2 things with- make them thinner or keep them the same and up the specs and get better battery life than the Dell. You should wait for reviews on the Dell to see how the trackpad and keyboard performs, usually trackpads are pretty bad compared to the ones Apple uses.

I can't use a Mac atm, the auto-cad interface is completely different in the Mac version and since they teach on windows, for now I need to be able to follow along in class etc. I get waiting as well especially until a review comes out, I will probably end up waiting until one or two comes out but I definetly need a laptop by the end of jan

[alme55]

i just saw linus's overview of the zenbook ux305,

 

there are so many nice laptops comming out, it is really hard to make a decision on what and when to buy

[D2ultima]

Whatever you get, make sure it's at least an i5-xxxxU chip. Don't get any xxxxH or xxxxHQ chips in anything that thin; it's GOING to die of overheat. 

[alme55]

i found the dell Inspiron 13 7000 series laptop on dells site for $849.99, 774.99 after the $75 of coupon.

It has a (5th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-5500U Processor - 4M Cache, up to 3.00 GHz) & (8GB Ram)

 

It is immensely more powerful than the XPS 13 base model for only $49.99 more, has an IPS touchscreen, stylus and is able to fold into a tablet.  It is thicker though, at .75" thickness all around while the xps 13 is .6" at the thickest and .3" at the smallest.  The body of the Inspiron is all plastic while the XPS 13 is aluminium.

 

On their site they don't list what GPU it will have or the battery life, when i emailed dell, the representative told me it would be using the older HD 4400 Graphics instead of the newer HD 5500 i don't think this is true as on the intel site it lists it as having the HD 5500, the battery would last about 4 hours depending on use.

 

So now i am torn between longer battery life or considerably more power.

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

I have a Sony T15 and it was the worst laptop I could have possible bought. I picked it up on sale, and bought it exclusively for the 1080p screen. Battery life sucks, fan is loud. Performance is mediocre. I am going to university starting next fall and will need a laptop that has both good battery life and decent performance... but I don't think I can hop on the Apple wagon... Sorry for hijack but I am in same position as OP and need some advice on a solid machine for on the go.

[D2ultima]

I have a Sony T15 and it was the worst laptop I could have possible bought. I picked it up on sale, and bought it exclusively for the 1080p screen. Battery life sucks, fan is loud. Performance is mediocre. I am going to university starting next fall and will need a laptop that has both good battery life and decent performance... but I don't think I can hop on the Apple wagon... Sorry for hijack but I am in same position as OP and need some advice on a solid machine for on the go.

If you want mobility and thinness without much power, grab a ULV laptop somewhere. If you want any sort of power (gaming of recent titles or video rendering etc), you're not getting it paper thin. You gotta decide which you need.

[davidvu396]

Wait for Apple to refresh their notebook lineup. You are going to see more insane battery life. And If you need Windows, just install it via Bootcamp.

I'm guessing: 14h Macbook Air, 10-11h MacBook Pro with Iris Graphics.

 

Oh yeah and, those are going to cost nearly just as much as your XPS 13.

[Mew]

Wait for Apple to refresh their notebook lineup. You are going to see more insane battery life. And If you need Windows, just install it via Bootcamp.

I'm guessing: 14h Macbook Air, 10-11h MacBook Pro with Iris Graphics.

 

Oh yeah and, those are going to cost nearly just as much as your XPS 13.

 

I would venture a guess that if the new Macbook Air had exactly the same hardware as the Dell, you'll get 20 hours of battery life(mainly light to medium web browsing based on how Anandtech tested the previous MBA)

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

If you want mobility and thinness without much power, grab a ULV laptop somewhere. If you want any sort of power (gaming of recent titles or video rendering etc), you're not getting it paper thin. You gotta decide which you need.

Ya I'm gonna need something that is light and has long battery life. I have a beast of a desktop so I'm all set for power on that machine. Basically what I need is something that can run Word and some browser tabs for hours on end.

[davidvu396]

I would venture a guess that if the new Macbook Air had exactly the same hardware as the Dell, you'll get 20 hours of battery life(mainly light to medium web browsing based on how Anandtech tested the previous MBA)

I know Anandtech measured 15h but I my assumption is based on Apple claimed figures (12h), so i think its 15h advertised with broad well. Ofc it will be more, maybe 18h which is sick

[alme55]

i wanted to update you guys, i ended up buying the Dell XPS 13 (2015), the i5 version with 4gb ram.  It is a really nice laptop, the performance seems to be the same as or better than the i5-3337u in the sony laptop i had, i get about 11 hours battery life compared to the 2-3 the sony gave and it is very quite, at times i don't hear the fan at all, and when it does turn up it is really quiet. preformance wise it does everything i need it to do without a hitch, Office, web browsing, light auto cad use etc.  I did try to play some games to test how it did, in Diable 3 i got about 15-30fps in 1080p, 40 in 720p, warcraft i got 30fps in 1080p, 60 if you go to 720p, Guild wars 2 i had to play with xboxone settings, 900p to get 30fps and skyrim was 1080p 15-30fps. not bad for such a small laptop, all these games were at low settings as well.  

 

I got the matte 1080p screen and it is beautiful, it compares with my 1440p ips desktop monitors in colors and sharpness, i don't know why anyone would buy this laptop with the 3200x1800 screen that seen so overkill to me, 1080p is already hard to see on it i had to use 125% scaling, if only they offered touch with the matte 1080p version.

It also charges from 2% - 100% in about 2 hours.

i do use the mini-dp port it has, i connected an EVGA multistream box to it and connected it to my 2 1440p monitors and it works marvelously.  the m.2 pcie ssd in it is also pretty fast, i don't notice a difference between it and the $50 sata 3 ssd in my desktop though, i don't plan on running hard drive benchmarks but i can say it does open all my programs and windows immediately.  The typing experience is actually really good, the keyboard travel is really nice and i don't get much missed letters, even after typing a 12 paper paper i only had to go back and correct about 4 mistypes, not bad considering on my previous laptop it was a frequent occurrence.

 

The laptop costed $899, with the coupon i got it for $824, i actually got cold feet and called Dell to try and upgrade to 8gb of ram but they said it was already being manufactured so i could make changes so when i told them to cancel it then and i would just reorder a different one they offered me a $150 discount to keep the current one, i did and ended up only paying $674 for it. It ended up being a real bargain and i can say i will probably keep this laptop for another 2-3 years, definitely worth buying if anyone else is interested.

[Mushious]

Macbook Air. Bought one last year transitioning from a PC because I needed the mobiliity. Easiest thing I ever did, never had an issue with the machine, loved it.

[PaulKolby]

if your not into gaming on it and have the money i think the dell xps 13 i a good choice but honestly apple has amazing battery life and can be decently powerful

[alme55]

i chose a windows laptop because i needed to use the windows version of AutoCAD, i know i could use Parallels to run it on a mac but i don't see the point in buying a base model macbook air with sub-par spec to begin with, which i couldn't afford anyway, i3, 4gb ram and sub 1080p screen in this day and age, just to use a virtual machine which would then use even less resources of the already low specs to run my primary software. not only that, i would have to spend $300 more for it, which sadly i can't afford .  i have 2 friend that use macbook air's though and they like them, no doubtes here that they are decent devices, apple doesn't market their products to paupers like me though, that $1000 entry price for the base model is a killer.