The current laptop market emphasizes flair over functionality

[minervx]

i think this is a topic worth talking about, because while a lot of the online tech community has sound recommendations for desktop builds, the laptop recommendations are kind of questionable. 

 

There are a lot of factors which have nothing to do with the quality of the laptop itself. 

•  First, the marketing: whichever company sends its products to a higher quantity of famous Youtubers is going to get more press and sales.  
•  Second, laptops put a big emphasis on aesthetics.  They often want to look like Macbooks, RGB lighting, edgy gamer battlestation chassis.  Often absent, in many articles and Youtube videos which recommend laptops are the less glamorous but still great quality laptops (such as the ones designed for business).
•  Third, many of the heavily marketed laptops have barely any ventilation, which results in high temps and throttling; a reduction in performance.  While an aluminum chassis can act as some sort of heatsink, it's often not enough to forgo vents entirely.  Some of the laptops may not be able to fully attain what one would expect them to.  This also risks long-term functionality.
•  Fourth, there are quality control issues, especially in the low to mid range laptops.  Even though, on paper, the better specs for the price is a big factor, failure rate also comes into question.  

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

Sex sells, just ask Apple this.

Take away the Apple logos on their products, and no one would pay that kind of price for such a system.

[minervx]

I agree, but it's not even just Apple.  There are lot of the windows Ultrabooks trying to compete with the Macbook (like the surface laptops, Acer Swift, Asus Zenbook/Vivobook, even Dell XPS that are using a tiny chassis with very little ventilation.  Some of these laptops advertise the good specs for their price whereas others focus their budget on aesthetics and get Youtubers to market them.  But nonetheless, the build quality is sacrificed.

 

Also, the gaming laptops.  RGB lighting, aesthetics and marketing drive up the price, but again there's a question of thermals.  When I see recommendations for Razer's laptops, I honestly think that people really only expose themselves to the most marketed laptops and don't really don't know much about mobile hardware.

[Guest]

I find it annoying that laptops these days are all built from aluminum. I used to have a Mac Book air a couple of years ago, and after a drop from half a meter it got dented in a way that the hinge bulged out of the thin aluminum chassis in the back and I was unable to close the lid properly. Of course, due to the "awesome" uni body chassis I was stuck with it.

 

Is this premium? 

I don't think so. Purely form over function and the true "build quality" is hurt by that.

 

Totally agree with you

 

34 minutes ago, minervx said:

I agree, but it's not even just Apple.  There are lot of the windows Ultrabooks trying to compete with the Macbook (like the surface laptops, Acer Swift, Asus Zenbook/Vivobook, even Dell XPS that are using a tiny chassis with very little ventilation.  Some of these laptops advertise the good specs for their price whereas others focus their budget on aesthetics and get Youtubers to market them.  But nonetheless, the build quality is sacrificed.

 

Also, the gaming laptops.  RGB lighting, aesthetics and marketing drive up the price, but again there's a question of thermals.  When I see recommendations for Razer's laptops, I honestly think that people really only expose themselves to the most marketed laptops and don't really don't know much about mobile hardware.

 

[NeuesTestament]

I mean there is a pretty simple reason for this: Flair sells.

 

Functionality is way more difficult to market.

[minervx]

3 hours ago, Konrad_K said:

I find it annoying that laptops these days are all built from aluminum. 

Aluminum disperses heat, so an aluminum chassis can sort of act like a heatsink and help cooling.  However, it is not an alternative to actually having good thermal design and ventilation. 

[minervx]

3 hours ago, NeuesTestament said:

I mean there is a pretty simple reason for this: Flair sells.

 

Functionality is way more difficult to market.

Yeah.  I'm just sort of surprised that people in the PC community (and even reviewers like Linus and others) know a lot about desktops.  Nobody would suggest putting a GTX 2080 Ti in a HTPC build for example.  But they don't seem to realize that putting an entire compuer into a tiny bubble mailer envelope sized chassis with no vents isn't a good idea.

 

[NeuesTestament]

On 7/1/2019 at 11:04 PM, minervx said:

Yeah.  I'm just sort of surprised that people in the PC community (and even reviewers like Linus and others) know a lot about desktops.  Nobody would suggest putting a GTX 2080 Ti in a HTPC build for example.  But they don't seem to realize that putting an entire compuer into a tiny bubble mailer envelope sized chassis with no vents isn't a good idea.

 

Well the often times lacking thermal performance was mentioned by reviewers from time to time. It is not just MacBooks struggling from this. Still, it is possible to fit good cooling in a rather slim chassis. It just requires very smart and often costly engineering.

Another issue is that a lot of manfucatures not only try to let their noteboob be very slim, they also try to keep the fans quite. Which makes the situations even worse.