Finding a workstation laptop

TheRadElk · November 27, 2019

Shopping for laptops that can serve as portable workstations is painful. Especially when you're not the one who's going to end up using them - and you have some specific requirements. So here's why I'm here!

A friend of mine, who's an interior designer, wants to get a portable (workstation) laptop (max. 2000 EUR) for the following:

Since I've never used them before, I had a look at the recommended specs, all hyperlinked. With the exception of Lumion, GPU doesn't seem super important.

Laptop GPU's at this price point are trash imho, except for the 2060. I haven't included Quadro's*

Laptops I've found that I deem worthy of a buy have the following specs (prices are in EUR):

1. i7-9750H & 2060 - 2K

2. i7-10710U & 1660 - 1.7K

3. i7-10510U & MX 250 - 1.5K (not so much, honestly)

I was thinking of looking at the Studio / Creator laptops, but those are over 2K EUR, same as older workstation laptops. I am still curious to see what recommendations you have, even at a 2.5K EUR budget, perhaps my friend can make the extra step, since the laptop will produce money (no shots fired, gamers).

Let me know what recommendations you have and drop some laptop models. Please use US (good for reference), NL or DE websites.

* The person wants the laptop to be light and portable and the laptops equipped with Quadro's weren't light, nor particularly cheap (in The Netherlands / Germany). I did find some Quadro P620 laptops, but those don't seem to be great performers.

** Revit (and Puget) both make the case for Quadro cards and Revit offers official support for Quadro P2000 cards, so it really drives me nuts I can't find something under 2K with those specs around here.