New student laptop

[zosek08]

Hey all,

 

first of all, i am new here, hope this is the right subforum for these kind of questions.

 

I am a mechanical engineering student, starting with my phd. Until now, my daily driver was a lenovo x220 laptop (2011). I added 500gb SSD and 16gb RAM in. It has been my driver for quite some time now, because in my study i didnt need to do a lot of 3D modelling, i did most of my work in matlab. When i needed something more powerful, i had/have a workstation that can do some simulations. 

 

I'd like to change my x220 to something that would be able to do some light 3d modelling and of course run all my matlab scripts (so i guess the discrete graphics card is not needed?). I do need a laptop that is 13,3", at the most 14", because i am constantly moving. The current 16gb of ram is doing wanders for me, so i would like to keep it that way. My budget is 1000€. Is there anywhere i can look for these kind of specs?

 

I was doing some searching and i do like most of the 13" laptops (spectre, xps, blade, surface) but everything is waaaay out of my budget. And everything has ram soldered onto the motherboard, so if i buy the 8gb version (the cheaper one), i cant add ram that is in my current laptop in.

 

Best regards, Z

 

 

[zosek08]

Ok, so my old RAM is better to stay in that x220. Maybe i can find a buyer.

 

The problem with the small laptops is, i just can not find any that has option to upgrade RAM. Everyone has them soldered onto the motherboard. I checked the hp line, asus and dell. Didn't find anything. I would really like to get the hp envy, seems like a nice machine with great (good enough for me) specs, but the option to upgrade ram is missing (also no thuderbolt 3).

[ShredBird]

What is your budget? Yeah, that's going to be the problem with most 13" laptops is that they're going so much for portability that they're soldering on the chips for the lowest profile possible.

[Roswell]

I feel like any visual design work would be super cramped on a 13 inch screen unless you're comfortable with a lot of zooming in and out.

 

A decent 15 inch laptop with your budget is going to have a very similar footprint to a 13 inch model from 2011 anyway.

[zosek08]

11 hours ago, ShredBird said:

What is your budget? Yeah, that's going to be the problem with most 13" laptops is that they're going so much for portability that they're soldering on the chips for the lowest profile possible.

Around 1000€.

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

I feel like any visual design work would be super cramped on a 13 inch screen unless you're comfortable with a lot of zooming in and out.

 

A decent 15 inch laptop with your budget is going to have a very similar footprint to a 13 inch model from 2011 anyway.

It just occurred to me, that i have never weighted my x220. This thing is like a brick. I'll have to do that and than maybe check something in the 14"-15" size. You most likely are right and the laptops that size weigh/have footprint of the 13" laptops from back in the day.

[Quadriplegic]

Lenovo T495? There's a variant with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD

Ouch, it seems like its price in Europe is twice as high than price in US. EDIT: seems like you can buy from Lenovo directly

There's 13.3" Zenbook for 1000€ with i7 and 16GB RAM. Or this.