roarkitect

What kind of rendering and cad will you be doing? I'm in architecture and render all the time, VR, etc. I have a custom built desktop and Blade 15 with the 2080 (just got it a few days ago). I think I can get behind an eGPU. CPU might hold you back depending on your software. I use Autodesk Revit a lot and CPU is pretty important. I use a Surface Book 2 at my office job and it has no problems however. But it all depends on what you're doing. FWIW I really like my Blade. Kinda wish I had the 4K screen but the refresh is also nice. So it's a toss up. Will probably get the next Razer Blade Pro whenever they update it.

Or do they do their best to not cover stuff? I don't want any run-around if something goes wrong.

Excellent to hear. I'm an architect and I also do freelance rendering. I recently moved to Lumion instead of Vray for most things, but I still have my Vray Next license. Vray is still CPU-dependent for the most part. I'd definitely go with the beefiest cooling you can as Vray is kinda slow and you will likely be rendering for long periods of time at hot temps. If you intend to render via GPU in Vray, you should make sure you get the most VRAM possible otherwise you risk your scenes not fitting. We have several Razer Blade Pros around my main office job and those have a full GTX1080 in them. We take them to client meetings for VR or let folks take them home to render after hours. They work pretty well, although old at this point. If you're a student, I also suggest you take advantage of the student versions of Twin Motion, Lumion, and Enscape for your projects. They all use real-time video game engines to render rather than the path tracing that Vray does. You can get pretty amazing results almost instantly. I can get 4k resolution images from Lumion in 3 minutes compared to literal hours in Vray. I think there's still a place for Vray in the profession, but I think it's shrinking. More limited to close up images of martini glasses at a boutique NY bar and not the best for 15 images taken around the site of a building. Just my thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm also in the market for a new laptop... but haven't found the right one yet.

What kind of rendering and modeling?

For me, it's for my freelance architecture work that I do on nights and weekends with the occasional Destiny 2. I don't like to let my extra work keep me from doing things during my free time, so the flexibility to take the machine to a different location is crucial. I've looked at ePGUs a lot, but haven't found any that aren't enormous. I owned a Core 2 briefly and just built a desktop instead. For my Lumion software (a real-time rendering engine), VRAM is pretty important. I think a max-q 2080 or 2070 is good enough for my mobile work. I'm using a 1060 laptop with a FHD screen right now and it's okay. It's very doable, but I wouldn't mind speeding things up and having a better screen to look at (so many menus makes the screen real estate very important...especially when I'm used to it on my desktop).

For me it's the lack of UHD. Plus I already have a desktop. But a machine that can do a project from start to finish is nice... even if it's not as good as my desktop.

What kind of rendering and 3D modeling? I'm looking at getting the M17 for Archicad / Revit + Lumion myself.

My girlfriend is a medical student in her final semester and she has loved her MacBook Pro. Most of her med school friends also have them. I think the ability to use iMessage in groups for study / scheduling purposes. Calendars. Photos. FaceTime. All that ecosystem stuff has proven very valuable because literally all of her friends that I can think of at the moment have Apple devices. Convenience of shared chargers is also something I’ve picked up on. Though they’re all on last gen notebooks with MagSafe. She also LOVES her iPad for what it’s worth. She uses it to study in situations where carrying a laptop is tough. Pretty much everything she does (read medical journals, notes, watch videos, powerpoints from her classes etc) is on a digital device and she almost always has one with her and it doesn’t hurt that they all play well together. So in my humble opinion, get something with the best battery, the best keyboard, and the best screen. And it won’t hurt if it makes your life easier via ecosystem. I think that’s a MacBook Pro. But you may have valid reasons otherwise.