Whats the best laptop that I can actually use on MY LAP?

[Immakillaboi]

Hey so I currently have a MSI GS72 which for people who don't know is a massive laptop in pure length. It's really thin, but in length it is just massive and gets really hot. I am looking to get a new laptop which I can actually carry around and use on my bed/chairs/ lap. I need an i7, 15 inches,  and my budget is around 1700 dollars. I don't really need a computer with a gpu because because I already have a computer with that at home and I don't really play games on the go. My biggest uses for it are data analysis(R,Python, VM, Excel) , presentations, word, and like 30 tabs of chrome for research. My biggest priorities are: 1) Being able to use it on my lap! Most of the laptops I find have fans and such that have cut outs on the bottom that get too hot, 2) I need a touchpad that I can use with out hooking up a mouse, 3) Battery life - I need something that will last me 8 hours ish. I am looking towards getting one of those Dells or Hps that have those i7-8550U Processors but I am not sure if those are going to do the trick for me ? I also am curious what the track pad is like on them? Those are the two things that are really important to me! I live in the US.

 

Thanks!

[schwellmo92]

Basically the only thing that meets all your requirements is an XPS 15.

[Rehmat]

The trackpad on dell is pretty good in my opinion. Not as good as apple but still very good. Also gestures and palm rejection is fantastic with correct dell drivers. An XPS15 would be ideal.

[zhubaohi]

XPS15 is a very good machine that will met your requirement with flat bottom and powerful 6 core processor, but there are more options.

Thinkpad X1 extreme is also a good choice, and you may want to act fast if you want to buy this before black friday deal is off.( Use THINKBLCKFRI coupon for 35% off, the deal ends today)

Macbook pro is good, but it is kinda hard to recommend if you cannot do your work on macOS.

 

[Immakillaboi]

11 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

Basically the only thing that meets all your requirements is an XPS 15.

It looks like the XPS 15 has the heat vents on the bottom ? Do those not heat up alot ? 

[schwellmo92]

5 hours ago, Immakillaboi said:

It looks like the XPS 15 has the heat vents on the bottom ? Do those not heat up alot ? 

It has some small vents on the bottom yeah but that doesn't matter to much, every laptop will have vents on the bottom. If you're doing something that requires proper processing power you shouldn't be doing that with the laptop on your lap, for other use cases (documents/youtube/etc) it'll be fine in your lap.

[genexis_x]

XPS 15 iGPU model (97Wh) would be good, for your workload I'll go for H CPU