Looking for a new laptop

drives_a_ford · August 12, 2020

Hello!

I've been watching Linus drop things for a couple of years now.

And finally I've (selfishly) created an account on them here forums in order to ask for the help of the community.

I'm looking for a laptop that has these characteristics:

Decently priced (I'd say up to $1300)
15" screen (give or take)
1080p panel (don't need more)
Minimum 16GB of RAM
Reasonable (not necessarily high end) CPU
No dedicated GPU (I don't plan to use it)
No Windows install (I don't use Windows)
Decent build quality

The main reason I'm looking for a new laptop is because my old one (Dell Latitude E6540 from 2014) is heavy, heats up horribly (causing it to be loud) and has terrible battery life.

I've already blown through the fan with compressed air and it did help a little. And I know I could probably get some battery life back by buying a new after market battery, but I feel like it would still not amount to much given the 45W TDP of the i7-4800MQ in it.

Price isn't set in stone, but I wouldn't like to spend too much on it.

I usually use my laptop without an extra monitor, which is why I'd like to to be 15" rather than 13".

I don't feel like there's any benefit to laptop screens above 1080p resolutions which is why that's what I'd prefer. And I don't really care for touch screens, personally.

I tend to leave a lot of tabs open, plus I do some minor coding. My current laptop has 16GB of RAM and it sometimes dips into swap as well, so it feels like it would be hard for me to get used to less RAM.

CPU wise I'd like to get something "mid" tier. I.e something that gives decent performance but also allows the battery to feed it for a few hours.

I don't play games nowadays, so I don't want a dedicated GPU that would a) cost more b) make the laptop heavier and c) drain the battery quicker.

I'm used to getting my things done on Ubuntu so I don't need a Windows install. Granted, it's often difficult to find a laptop that doesn't come with Windows pre-installed, but I just thought I'd put it out there.

I've used my fair share of cheap fully-plastic laptops. They break fast and don't give a good user experience overall. So I'd like to avoid the cheapest of the cheap in this regard.

As for the use cases, I tend to watch YouTube, browse the web and do some Java development. Perhaps every now and then I fire up an old game through wine, but that's become less and less frequent.

One of the problems I've been having while looking for a laptop is that the 15" ones seem to often come with a dedicated graphics card. Which, like I said above, I would like to avoid if possible.

It looks like the HP Envy x360 15" should be able to be configured in the way that I'd like, but I've not yet found anywhere that sells it at 16GB RAM without a dedicated GPU.

The Dell XPS 15 also seems cool, although it is quite a bit more expensive.

From this video on LTT, it would seem that Ryzen 5 might be a good thing to wait for when it comes to laptop CPUs. I don't see many laptops with them yet, but I'm also not sure if waiting makes sense.

Any recommendations you guys can give me?

I'm not in any rush right now, so is there something out there that's worth waiting for?

If there's anything I forgot to mention, don't hesitate to ask!

Thanks for reading,

Ford

Kanna · August 12, 2020

3 minutes ago, drives_a_ford said:

No Windows install (I don't use Windows)

Fun thing it's impossible almost to find that you will have to wipe it yourselves

drives_a_ford · August 12, 2020

18 minutes ago, Kanna said:

Fun thing it's impossible almost to find that you will have to wipe it yourselves

I actually already mentioned that:

22 minutes ago, drives_a_ford said:

I'm used to getting my things done on Ubuntu so I don't need a Windows install. Granted, it's often difficult to find a laptop that doesn't come with Windows pre-installed, but I just thought I'd put it out there.

But you're right, wiping it myself is not an issue. It's just that if possible, I'd get a laptop without a Windows installed on it.

drives_a_ford · August 12, 2020

I guess it might also be notable that I'm in Europe, so many US/Canada based websites/offerings will not really be available for me.

With that said, if I could narrow down the model, I could see if it's available here in Estonia or in the UK (I travel there quite often).

drives_a_ford · August 13, 2020

I looked around some more today and saw that the Asus VivoBook S15 M533IA might be another decent option. It's available for a pretty good price locally.

Any further input/opinion would be welcome!