The current status of the laptop market

[DarkDragon2K04]

          So today I was looking at laptops on several websites and noticed how unnecessarily expensive laptops have gotten.   If you are in the market  for a $1000 laptop most of what you would find for that price seems worth about $750 and thereabout (laptops with 256 GB ssd, 8 GB ram, Intel UHD 620, Intel core i5 8250u and not well built laptops the list goes on) and this bothers me why you might ask.   This is because first of all not everyone even has up to $1000 at their disposal for a laptop and now manufacturers decide to keep increasing the prices of these laptops.   It gets worse when looking for a laptop with a dedicated GPU, most nvidia gtx 1060 or 1060 with max q can start at $1500 on discount and if you were to find some cheaper ones they would most likely be ugly, game screaming,  bulky laptops with terrible design.   And it is because of this nvidia brought along their mx150 but even those laptops equipped with mx150 are still very expensive example the latest razer blade stealth which goes all the way to $1900 for only an nvidia mx150, 16 GB of ram, 512 NVME storage and an unnecessary 4k screen.   This is just one example another one the LG gram 17" costs $1700 but only has 16 GB of ram, Intel core i7-8565u, no dedicated gpu, 512 GB of SATA M.2 storage, a 2560X1600 IPS panel and yes I understand LG can charge a premium for how light this thing is but come on that is just too much another laptop is the Microsoft surface laptop 2 for $1900 you get an Intel core i7-8565u, 16 GB ram, 512 GB NVME SSD and a 2256 x 1504 screen these are all terrible specs for the price and these aren't the only laptops the list goes on so many laptop manufacturers if not all are part of this and this makes thing harder for the common man.   I honestly feel $1000-$1200 should get u a 1080p panel, Intel core i7-8565u, about 512 GB NVME storage, 12-16 GB of ram because right now if u were to get a laptop today for that price with these spec the laptop will be bulky, ugly, and have terrible build and finish.

 

 

        Even with the release of Intel's coffe lake mobile quad core G processors with AMD's VEGA M GPU laptop prices just keep on going up, example the Dell xps 2-in-1 with the G processor is more expensive then the dell xps 15 with the hexa-core cpu which is also by the way very expensive. With all these laptops with no gpus been so expensive it makes things worse for the prices of gaming or creator focused laptops which need gpus for examples when the razer blade 15 came out last year it started at $1900 with an nvidia 1060 with max q design not even the full 1060 and now with the rtx line the base which is the rtx 2060 laptop starts at $2300 which is much worse very similar pricing goes for rtx laptop from most other gaming laptops with rtx gpus and even those with rtx gpus that are below $2000 of course wouldn't aesthetically please someone with all the angular design, large bezels, unflattering keyboards and honestly this is just terrible.

 

 

        Even the prices of older gen laptops don't seem to be going down anymore, if you go on amazon and search for a dell xps 9550 you will have to spend in the range of $1278 and note this comes with an Intel core i7-6300HQ which is several generations old, an nvidia 940M, 16 GB ram and 512 GB SSD and this is a refurbished version. Even the prices of the last gen gaming laptops that came out towards the ending of last year with the i7-8750H and 10 series gpus have hardly reduces in price and some from certain manufacturers have not even reduces in price. Now I understand some companies deserve to ask for a premium like LG with their super light laptops or Microsoft with their unique designs or razer and other gaming laptop manufacturers with their super slim and expensive cooling system which still throttle and other things ranging from stronger builds with almost no flex and very good finishes and keyboards but these laptops still have their flaws some more than others and even with that these companies give the price is still too much, right now if you have around $650 dollars to spend mos will advise to save and double if not triple that amount and then buy a laptop because getting a laptop for $650 will only get you a large heavy piece of plastic that still over heats all the time and the fans get extremely loud and does not even have the latest whiskey lake i3 most like it has a Pentium and you wonder what caused it to over heat and it still comes with terrible battery life, about 4 GB of ram and a 512 GB HARD DRIVE and most likely a screen below 1080p with terrible brightness and these inflated prices will only get worse with time. There are something that just make less sense than me eating my fellow human being when on a farm with all the food I could eat like dell selling their xps 13 9380 for a starting price of $900 and it has only 4 GB of ram, 128 GB of NVME SSD storage, Inel core i3-8145u or even worse the starting price for their 2 generation old dell xps 13 9360 starts at $1150 and the latest dell xps 9380 starts at $900 and this makes no sense I fell he starting price of the 9380 should be lower than it is but that of the 9360 should be around $350.

 

 

        For those who are reading it and feel I am only lashing out my anger at dell you are wrong so many other companies do this such as razer, gigabyte, acer with their overpriced one generation old y powered swift 7 laptop. This problem needs to be fixed there are some companies whose prices can be better justified like hp who although I think their laptops could be sold for a $100 or $200 less they do a better job at pricing than other companies mostly with their spectre x360. With OLED screens on  their way and 240hz screen also coming he prices of laptop will get unbearable to a point were even those who buy new laptops with every refresh will question themselves about he prices at which they buy them.

 

 

 

         Now I am very sure most readers by now will think I am been bias due to the point that I have not talked about apples terrible pricing and what I call scams, and well I have left this part of the article just to talk about that. Firstly only apple is to blame for this inflation of prices in laptops and no one else. Apple started this trend of prices of laptops not going down even with new refreshes big examples are their 2017 macbook and 2015 macbook air. The 2015 macbook air starts at a price of $1000 and has a dual core Intel core i5 5th gen which is seriously outdated, 128gb SSD, 8 GB low powered DDR3 memory and a 1440 x 900 panel and in 2019 all these specs are beyond obsolete, even with that peice of garbage apple thinks is a laptop worth more than $200 apple has their 12 inch macbook which till today I will never know why they make. Firstly 12 laptops honestly should not come in 12 inch sizes it will make more sense to created a detachable 2-in-1 like what Microsoft does with their surface pro lineup if you must have a 12 inch device running a desktop OS. Come on the macbook starts at $1300 with terrible hardware like the 7th gen intel core m3, 8 GB LPDDR3 memory and 256GB SSD storage and something that will truly get someone pissed of is the unbelievable, unbearable I/O with only a headphone jack and one just one USB c port that does not at least support thunderbolt 3 which mean you will almost surely have to get a dock and of course join the dongle life club like almost every one who uses apple devices do like why didn't apple at least provide two USB c ports, I feel apple should just advertise that device as a fancy unnecessarily expensive little imperfect rectangle box with an apple logo on it that you carry around to tell our friends you have so much money you waste it on this or that you love making bad life decisions mostly when it comes to spending money. Even the mac pro with an outdated Intel Xeon E5 processor,16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory ,two AMD FirePro D500 which were not even so powerful when this was a new computer and 256 GB of non NVME PCIe SSD.

 

 

 

        Even with all of these from apple they still do their best to make sure you get into the never ending loop of buying apple products that you don't even need like apple puts more effort into advertising their dongles than trying to sell you USB c flash drives and other things like that instead you are been advertised over priced dongles or even worse the thunderbolt 3 dock apple sells on their website for $350 does not have up to 75% of the ports on caldigits cheaper thunderbolt 3 docks. Another thing that is annoying is how there is no 15 apple laptop with an Intel u processor for someone who does need the power of 6 cores but the 15 inch size or how even their top end laptops their 15 inch macbook come with such low class gpus for the prices, even more is how it is nearly impossible to use nvidia graphics cards with an egpu on macbooks because of their no support for nvidia drivers. I hope you don't forget apples blackmagic egpus which start at $700 and go all the way to $1200 for the blackmagic egpu 'pro' which only come with and AMD radeon pro 580 and radeon RX vega 56 respectively which are nothing compared to what you will get if you bought an egpu from aorus or razer or ROG and put an RTX 2070 or even 2080 or 2080ti (probably on discount) . And even their blackmagic egpus are extremely large and bulky and so heavy and don't have that little gamer bit of design other egpus have. To those people who kept on saying apples SSD are super fast which is one reason they are expensive to you I say you are arguing blindly, you seem to have forgotten that once you buy a macbook, macbook air or macbook pro you can't upgrade any of the internals and if your motherboard or logic board spoil(which is likely to happen with the macbook pro 15 inch by the way because of the processors they pack into it and how thin thy force it to be) all your data is gone The prices for upgrades that apple charge before you buy their products are outrageous. Even when you go to their only desktop that has been refreshed within the last 4 years, the ma mini its pricing is still to be questioned. Firstly, it starts at $800 for a quad core i3, 128 GB SSD and 8 GB LPDDR3 RAM, I am very sure some people reading this will say apple deserves to scoop your pockets for how small this thing is but oif you were to build this sort of specked system your self you could spend about $400 or less even with a mini ITX  version you will get better cooling or something smaller than most mini ITXs and this will be fully up gradable unlike the mac mini which only allows you to upgrade their RAM. All I have to say is the list of ways apple keeps digging into pockets of their customers pockets just keep going on and now windows companies have decided to slowly follow apple on this train since they see apple are doing this and getting away with it.

[GoldenLag]

tl;dr: stuff is a tad too expencive

 

laptop on a 700$ budget: HP Envy x360 with a 2500u

 

laptop on about 1k budget: Huawei Matebook 13

 

edit: can you edit in some spacing and paragraphs, otherwise its a drag to read and is perceived like a wall of text (which it is)

[TempestCatto]

3 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

edit: can you edit in some spacing and paragraphs, otherwise its a drag to read and is perceived like a wall of text (which it is)

My dyslexia won't even let me get past the first two sentences. I'd actually like to read the whole thing too.

 

Also I'm inclined to not trust Huawei right now based on what's in the news.

[r2724r16]

8 minutes ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

<snip>

Skipped the wall of text and just read the title.

 

If you want a good laptop for an affordable price, go for something used. Otherwise, overpay for the hardware you get. It's that simple.

[minibois]

I appreciate what you are saying, I don't appreciate  the way you try to convey the information to us with a wall of text. Consider introducing some formatting in your post to increase its readability. Think a couple blank lines and a clear structure...

 

Now on topic though, I both love and hate the trend of lighter and thinner laptops that we have seen in the last couple of years; it has lead us to thin and light devices with some really good performance. We still have the option of buying bulkier laptops with some good internal specifications, it's not even that much more bulky.

The price of laptops in my opinion is only a little too high if you want a laptop with a larger than 250GB SSD or if you want a laptop with a videocard above the GTX 1050; it's kind of ridiculous that 1500 USD laptops have the audacity of having a 256GB SSD in them (paired with a 1000GB HDD).

 

The fact that companies still sell 'new' laptops with 5th gen i3's or even 7th gen i5's seems kind of insulting as well considering the 8th gen alternatives are typically not much more expensive, but perform a lot better.

What is the worst though, is laptops still having 802.11n and not having AC at the minimum.

Laptops with type C that is basically just a USB 2.0 port is super dumb too.. That is something to be happy about with thin and lights; if they have type C they are basically guaranteed to at least have displayport built in.

3 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

laptop on a 700$ budget: HP Envy x360 with a 2500u

A colleague of mine has that one; really good value for the money!

[NunoLava1998]

Move over Wall of China, this is larger

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, TempestCatto said:

Also I'm inclined to not trust Huawei right now based on what's in the news.

i can see that. though they honestly make amazing laptops atm with minimum bloat. its hard not to recommend them.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

My dyslexia won't even let me get past the first two sentences. I'd actually like to read the whole thing too.

 

2 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

Move over Wall of China, this is larger

might aswell use light mode instead. the text is too bright

[TempestCatto]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

might aswell use light mode

I don't want to go blind though.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, TempestCatto said:

I don't want to go blind though.

the wall be black enough. the dark side will win. 

[DarkDragon2K04]

Thanks for the tips on editting will do that right away

[yian88]

Sorry couldnt read more than 20 lines . ... but yeah i agree im in the same boat, im selling my gaming PC and looking for a decent laptop <600$ and its crazy out there, the only thing i found at real price point is an Acer Aspire 3 with Ryzen 7 2700u Vega10 at 400$, but its shit quality display with bad view angles, when i search for anything else with a decent IPS panel there no such thing, i mean you can find 24" monitors for 100$ with IPS and for some reason i cant find a single laptop 5-600$ with IPS? SSD i dont even want to mention it, i wish they had options to configure a laptop without those trash 1TB 5400RPM drives, give me a discount and i will buy my own SSD, with 500GB SSDs dropping under 70$ who the hecks puts an HDD in midrange laptops its ridiculous.

[DarkDragon2K04]

i have added some spaces like suggested

if any one thinks this is not enough please tell me so can go back and do some more editing.

[DarkDragon2K04]

sorry for the trouble my terrible editting skills have caused everyone here

[GoldenLag]

26 minutes ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

sorry for the trouble my terrible editting skills have caused everyone here

Its okay. We know what you meant anyway. But at least the laptop market isnt anywhere near how the phone market is like

[DarkDragon2K04]

12 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Its okay. We know what you meant anyway. But at least the laptop market isnt anywhere near how the phone market is like

This is honestly true and its apple that took the phone market there and soon apple might just take the laptop market there, what kind of company sells a laptop that can be fully specked to $6,649 but would not give you half the performance you will get from a custom build of about $2800

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

what kind of company sells a laptop that can be fully specked to $6,649

Market it towards profesionals and they will buy it. 

2 minutes ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

This is honestly true and its apple that took the phone market there and soon apple might just take the laptop market there

Actually, that wont happen. Laptop market is too diluted for it to happen. Its reached a point that you need to make the best device or its not worth a premium. And if you arent creating the best price its about the best at pricepoints. 

 

Then there is Apple. Who is the only one with access to first party MacOS. 

[DarkDragon2K04]

10 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Market it towards profesionals and they will buy it. 

Actually, that wont happen. Laptop market is too diluted for it to happen. Its reached a point that you need to make the best device or its not worth a premium. And if you arent creating the best price its about the best at pricepoints. 

 

Then there is Apple. Who is the only one with access to first party MacOS. 

I understand they market it towards professionals but honestly for the specs they give you should be paying less than half of that price but apple will still keep on increasing prices on everything because people keep buying the professionals who spend so much on these devices should try to migrate to windows in masses when the next macbook refreshes come and apple will see a significant hit and hopefully just hopefully reduce their prices

[GoldenLag]

9 hours ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

I understand they market it towards professionals but honestly for the specs they give you should be paying less than half of that price but apple will still keep on increasing prices on everything because people keep buying the professionals who spend so much on these devices should try to migrate to windows in masses when the next macbook refreshes come and apple will see a significant hit and hopefully just hopefully reduce their prices

I mean, windows laptops now are generally better, especially the Huawei linup of Matebook 13, 14 and X Pro. Which are essentially cheaper a better laptops. 

 

They fall behind in 2 aspects. They dont run macOS and the trackpad is slightky worse. 

[DarkDragon2K04]

I feel windows is still a good candidate in the OS competition

[markr54632]

So I heartily disagree. Laptops have never been cheaper and more available. Markup on laptops is surprisingly low. Desktop component prices and laptop prices have never and will never be comparable.

 

If you want to complain about a trend in laptops look at the poor thermal performance or the decreasing build quality or the removal of user serviceable batteries.

[DarkDragon2K04]

 

2 hours ago, markr54632 said:

So I heartily disagree. Laptops have never been cheaper and more available. Markup on laptops is surprisingly low. Desktop component prices and laptop prices have never and will never be comparable.

 

If you want to complain about a trend in laptops look at the poor thermal performance or the decreasing build quality or the removal of user serviceable batteries.

I feel the fact that laptop batteries are no longer user servicable by manufcturers make them removable is better for the battery

and laptop are loosing value

[Zando_]

On 3/19/2019 at 3:19 PM, Geography said:

Skipped the wall of text and just read the title.

 

If you want a good laptop for an affordable price, go for something used. Otherwise, overpay for the hardware you get. It's that simple.

^^^ Laptops and mITX SFF systems are always more expensive, it's harder and harder to stuff performance in the smaller you go, so they increase in price. That said, I've seen laptops with similar or better specs than the one I paid $700 for on sale last year (i5 8250U, 1050 2GB, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) go on sale for near $500 so they're not that overpriced. Expensive laptops are usually ultralights (again, packing more in a smaller space is harder, thus more expensive), really well built, high performance laptops, or a combo of all three. Like the laptop I got through a trade + cash (new would have been $2,300) packed an 8700K (sadly that died for unknown reasons, was fine for the previous owner for over a year and a half, tried to undervolt to the same settings and it killed itself) and full GTX 1070, 2 M.2 NVMe SSD slots, 2 2.5" SATA drive slots, a wifi card, spot for 4G LTE, 4 RAM slots, a massive IO, good cooling for it's size, etc all inside a 15.6" laptop that's not overly bulky (he chonk, but not that giant). Plan to pick up an i5 8400 for that eventually. Is that much, much more than a desktop with a similar spec? Yeah. Can a desktop ever be as small and convenient? No. So really with laptops I guess you could say you're paying for the convenience of all that hardware in a really usable and portable package. 

[DarkDragon2K04]

1 hour ago, Zando Bob said:

^^^ Laptops and mITX SFF systems are always more expensive, it's harder and harder to stuff performance in the smaller you go, so they increase in price. That said, I've seen laptops with similar or better specs than the one I paid $700 for on sale last year (i5 8250U, 1050 2GB, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) go on sale for near $500 so they're not that overpriced. Expensive laptops are usually ultralights (again, packing more in a smaller space is harder, thus more expensive), really well built, high performance laptops, or a combo of all three. Like the laptop I got through a trade + cash (new would have been $2,300) packed an 8700K (sadly that died for unknown reasons, was fine for the previous owner for over a year and a half, tried to undervolt to the same settings and it killed itself) and full GTX 1070, 2 M.2 NVMe SSD slots, 2 2.5" SATA drive slots, a wifi card, spot for 4G LTE, 4 RAM slots, a massive IO, good cooling for it's size, etc all inside a 15.6" laptop that's not overly bulky (he chonk, but not that giant). Plan to pick up an i5 8400 for that eventually. Is that much, much more than a desktop with a similar spec? Yeah. Can a desktop ever be as small and convenient? No. So really with laptops I guess you could say you're paying for the convenience of all that hardware in a really usable and portable package. 

I understand how cooling and other things are expensive for the manufacturer and many other things are but what I am saying is firstly older gen laptop prices are not going down, previous gen gaming laptops with the gtx gpus are about the same price as they were when they came out. Again is not like all these laptops completely stay cool , its no secret what happens with the razer blade, the only thing unknown about cooling is what dell and apple where thinking when they suck an Intel core i9-8950hk in such a thin chassis even when the Intel core i7 8750h didn't stay cool through out the time and most manufacturers don't usually change much in their cooling system per refresh, and even with all this cooling I hope you are aware that laptops with Intel y processors cost over a $1000 from almost every company that have use them in one of their devices and this is a fanless processor or the always connected pc that can go over $2000 just for a snapdragon 845 and such little storage space

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, DarkDragon2K04 said:

I understand how cooling and other things are expensive for the manufacturer and many other things are but what I am saying is firstly older gen laptop prices are not going down, previous gen gaming laptops with the gtx gpus are about the same price as they were when they came out. Again is not like all these laptops completely stay cool , its no secret what happens with the razer blade, the only thing unknown about cooling is what dell and apple where thinking when they suck an Intel core i9-8950hk in such a thin chassis even when the Intel core i7 8750h didn't stay cool through out the time and most manufacturers don't usually change much in their cooling system per refresh, and even with all this cooling I hope you are aware that laptops with Intel y processors cost over a $1000 from almost every company that have use them in one of their devices and this is a fanless processor or the always connected pc that can go over $2000 just for a snapdragon 845 and such little storage space

A what with a snapdragon? Try and avoid run-on sentences, use commas and periods to make it easier to read.

 

Yeah, laptops do get hot, and some have poorly engineered cooling designs. They're still stuffing a lot of hardware in something ranging from smaller than a magazine to the size of a thick book. How about you go take a 4c/8t or higher CPU, 8-16GB RAM, a mobo, wifi, full I/O, screen, speakers, mic, battery, cooling setup, storage, GPU, fingerprint reader, keyboard, trackpad, stuff that all in a book, and tell me how much it cost you to do that? That's R&D, they spend a lot figuring out how to fit stuff in there and designing systems to let it perform -if not well, at least perform- decently. That's a big upfront cost, not to mention they're gonna be harder to put together than tower PCs. They cost more to design and more to make, of course they cost more to buy too.