Workstation laptop recommendations (UK, sub £2000)

OPSJono · June 7, 2021

Hi everyone.

I’ve been using my personal desktop while working from home for the past year.

With the view of going part-time back to the office, my company are going to be providing me with a laptop, and have asked what my preference would be for a specific model.

£2000 max budget for the laptop.

Use case is software development.

I dislike any of the U series CPU’s from Intel in all previous laptops I’ve tried in the past.
(Coming from a 6700k desktop with an NH-D15 on it!)

As I only have one desk at home, I will also be picking up a Level1Techs KVM when they get in stock to use with my two 27" 1440p monitors.

So really I’m looking for a powerful laptop that can output two Display Port signals.

My initial thoughts go towards a Lenovo P15. - But happy to look at any other suggestions.
I’ve always like Lenovo workstation laptops in terms of their performance.

My question with the P15, is that it provides Display Port over USB-C.

Would a simple converter from USB-C to Display Port (female)
Followed by a Display Port splitter like the “DeLOCK-Displayport-1-2-Splitter-DisplayPort-Out” on Amazon UK.

Into the KVM and then onto my monitors play well?
(I’m not fussed about refresh rate, 60 would be fine, even if one monitor is capable of 144, as long as it handles 1440p for non-gaming applications that would work for me)

If it makes a difference I use Fedora for my OS.

Thanks :)

8tg · June 7, 2021

The P15 or Dell Precision spec equivalent is honestly probably the best choice for a new mobile workstation in that price range, unless you can buy used.

If your company is footing the bill i imagine they don’t want to buy from eBay or Amazon but check like Lenovo’s refurbished stuff because you can probably find a decked out P53 for around that price. It’s worth jumping back a generation to spend the saved money on overall better performance.

For an example of how far that goes, my skylake/maxwell P50 cost me 540$ with the 1080p panel, 16gb of ram, 250gb nvme ssd, Quadro m2000m and Xeon e3 1505m v5.

Now that’s not godly compared to modern P series, but for 540$ it’s amazing. Rest of my budget went to 64gb of ram and dual 1tb nvme crucial p5’s.

Same deal applies to newer but still refurbished or used thinkpads, a refurb P53 is going to be a lot cheaper and you’d likely get a lot more with the 2000 britbux than you would with a 2000 pound P15, compare your options on that front.

But otherwise tldr still, yeah the P15 or equivalent 15” workstation is likely the best choice.

As for the monitor question I honestly couldn’t say for certain if a DisplayPort splitter will work over usb c, I know it gets 2 DisplayPort lanes, but it may only want a usb C dock in order to do that. I would personally just get a Lenovo usb C dock to be certain.

OPSJono · June 8, 2021

Thank you so much for the detailed reply @8tg!

Yeah, I'm not sure if the company would be willing to buy used - so I hadn't even considered it.

I can ask the question though.

USB C Dock sounds like a good shout, thanks again.