Laptop recommendations for mechanical engineering student

[CountAM]

As the title states, I am going to study mechanical engineering and I have to buy a laptop to do schoolwork on. I have some laptops that I have been interested in such as: 

• HP ENVY 14" (i7, 16GB, 1TB, 1650Ti)
• Acer Swift X 14" (Ryzen 7 5800U, 16GB, 1TB, 3050Ti)
• Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (Ryzen 7 5800U, 16GB, 512GB, Radeon Graphics)
• Lenovo Ideapad 5 14" (Ryzen 7 5700U, 16GB, 512GB, Radeon Graphics)
• Razer Blade 15 Base 2020 (i7-10750H, 16GB, 256GB, 1660Ti)
• HP ENVY 15" (i7-10750H, 16GB, 512GB, 1660Ti)
• Lenovo Thinkpad X1 carbon g7 (i5-8365U, 16GB, 256GB, 620 UHD)
• Macbook air (M1, 16GB, 256GB)

^^I am open to suggestions on the list^^

 

My only requirements are that the laptop has good build quality, is light weight and has good battery life, I already have a kind of balls to the walls pc at home that I can use remote desktop to if I want to. The uni I am attending to is not that open with what exact programs I will use, but I guess that I will use VS studio code, MATLAB (maybe), some cad software like Solidworks or Autocad. As said they are not that open with what programs so I can't tell if the cad software is run locally or on servers. I have not yet decided on my budget and because I live in Sweden there is some exchange rates and extra tariffs and taxes on electronics compared to other regions. But if I had a budget, it would be around $1800 (~ 15000 SEK).

[Darkseth]

Those Laptops are kinda different.. Razer Blade 15 is a 15" Laptop, so i wouldn't take that one here. Also, the Base model has much worse cooling than the more expensive advanced model.

 

HP Envy 14" (1920x1200 screen?), according to "Just Josh", is one of the only Laptops with Intel's Tiger Lake-U series, that doesn't throttle. Like, that Chip sits on 3,8 Ghz, and even beats out some Intel 6-Cores.

 

Yoga Slim 7 --> Yoga Slim 7 Pro. That 2880x1800 Screen with 16:10 ratio, 400 nits brightness, 90 Hz is SO much better than that basic 1080p stuff.

Ideapad 5 is one step cheaper/worse than the Yoga SLim 7, but it's also cheaper. But here also: Take teh Ideapad 5 PRO instead, has the same 2880x1880 screen

 

Thinkpad X1 Carbon g7: Only, if you're a diehard Thinkpad fan. That 8th Gen is nothing special (every 500-600 Dollar laptop beats the performance). Only the choice here, if it HAS ti be a Thinkpad, it HAS to have that Red nipple, and it HAS to have that Business-level-Support from Lenovo.

 

Macbook Air M1: Excellent, and my #1 recommendation, as long your Applications run without Problems. Very high and snappy performance, best Battery life and battery efficiency (no Windows Laptop comes close, only beaten by the M1 Macbook Pro), and those combined with a Fanless Design.

And the rest is great too: Display, Buildquality, Trackpad, Speakers etc.

It's really great to not have to worry about battery life the whole day, and you can comfortably leave the charger at home.

Just some special Applications might be Windows only, then you'll have a more difficult time. If you could do Remote to your Windows PC at home, that might be an option, so you have "the best of both worlds"?

 

If it's not the Macbook AIr M1, because you need Windows for your usecase, i'd take a Look into the Ideapad 5 Pro 14" or Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14" because of that sexy Display.

HP Envy 14 (16:10, 1920x1200 display) is a solid choice too.

If Thinkpad, i'd try to take a more modern one with at least Intel 11th Gen, or AMD Ryzen 4000 series or 5000 series. Like the T14 g2~

 

Also worth a Mention, Dell XPS lineup.

 

I highly recommend watching some Videos from "Just Josh" on Youtube, he does really superb Laptop reviews.

 

 

 

One funny addition to the M1 Macbook Air vs. Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon i found here. This guy had the same Model i think (at least it was Intel 8th Gen i7.

 

With compiling OpenCV, the Thinkpad X1 Carbon lost 24% Battery, was loud, and took 18 minutes.

Macbook Air M1 took 5:43~ minutes, and lost 0%. Not even a single %.

[CountAM]

1 hour ago, Darkseth said:

Those Laptops are kinda different.. Razer Blade 15 is a 15" Laptop, so i wouldn't take that one here. Also, the Base model has much worse cooling than the more expensive advanced model.

 

HP Envy 14" (1920x1200 screen?), according to "Just Josh", is one of the only Laptops with Intel's Tiger Lake-U series, that doesn't throttle. Like, that Chip sits on 3,8 Ghz, and even beats out some Intel 6-Cores.

 

Yoga Slim 7 --> Yoga Slim 7 Pro. That 2880x1800 Screen with 16:10 ratio, 400 nits brightness, 90 Hz is SO much better than that basic 1080p stuff.

Ideapad 5 is one step cheaper/worse than the Yoga SLim 7, but it's also cheaper. But here also: Take teh Ideapad 5 PRO instead, has the same 2880x1880 screen

 

Thinkpad X1 Carbon g7: Only, if you're a diehard Thinkpad fan. That 8th Gen is nothing special (every 500-600 Dollar laptop beats the performance). Only the choice here, if it HAS ti be a Thinkpad, it HAS to have that Red nipple, and it HAS to have that Business-level-Support from Lenovo.

 

Macbook Air M1: Excellent, and my #1 recommendation, as long your Applications run without Problems. Very high and snappy performance, best Battery life and battery efficiency (no Windows Laptop comes close, only beaten by the M1 Macbook Pro), and those combined with a Fanless Design.

And the rest is great too: Display, Buildquality, Trackpad, Speakers etc.

It's really great to not have to worry about battery life the whole day, and you can comfortably leave the charger at home.

Just some special Applications might be Windows only, then you'll have a more difficult time. If you could do Remote to your Windows PC at home, that might be an option, so you have "the best of both worlds"?

 

If it's not the Macbook AIr M1, because you need Windows for your usecase, i'd take a Look into the Ideapad 5 Pro 14" or Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14" because of that sexy Display.

HP Envy 14 (16:10, 1920x1200 display) is a solid choice too.

If Thinkpad, i'd try to take a more modern one with at least Intel 11th Gen, or AMD Ryzen 4000 series or 5000 series. Like the T14 g2~

 

Also worth a Mention, Dell XPS lineup.

 

I highly recommend watching some Videos from "Just Josh" on Youtube, he does really superb Laptop reviews.

 

 

 

One funny addition to the M1 Macbook Air vs. Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon i found here. This guy had the same Model i think (at least it was Intel 8th Gen i7.

 

With compiling OpenCV, the Thinkpad X1 Carbon lost 24% Battery, was loud, and took 18 minutes.

Macbook Air M1 took 5:43~ minutes, and lost 0%. Not even a single %.

Thanks for the tips! After seeing the video and hearing from others on youtube, the mac becomes more appealing even though it is quite expensive it will hold its value both on the reused market and physically.

[mt123]

Hopefully this is insightful given that I, too am a Mechanical Engineering student, and that I've been in a summer semester that's about to end.

 

I myself own a Dell XPS 17 9700, equipped with an i9-10885H (8 cores, 5.3 GHz), 32 GB memory, 1 TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX 2060 Max-Q, and the base 1920*1200p display (1080p for 16:10 aspect ratio). This laptop cost me ~$2,100-$2,200 after taxes, discounts, and shipping, so I'd like to think I got a pretty good deal, especially because without this discount it would be somewhere around $2,400-$2,500 before taxes and shipping. To be honest, I'm a little salty I couldn't wait until the 9710 released given that it has a full fat RTX 3060, but then again, I wouldn't've had a laptop in the beginning of the semester if I waited, especially considering shipping, too.

 

I took an Engineering design class this semester where I utilized SolidWorks for about half of the total work in this class, and this laptop has been phenomenal. When I was making a grate for a laptop cooling stand for my final project, I had to input tons of smart dimensions, and the i9 and the 2060 tackled it pretty well, causing very little "slow downs," or something like that. Otherwise, I do like to enjoy a bit of gaming, and it's handled Resident Evil 8 on high-to-near-max settings with Ray Tracing off very well, imo, i.e. keeping around 60 FPS in my experience (or at least something very close to this). I'd also like to mention that while MATLAB and Autocad can be installed on MacOS, SolidWorks cannot. The only way it seems you can run SolidWorks on MacOS is to download some sort of software that runs windows, and then install SolidWorks onto that, which seems kind of junky, imo. So for this reason, I think you should go with Windows.

 

In my opinion, getting the latest hardware now will very likely help you later on, i.e. if you plan to keep this laptop throughout your 4 years of undergraduate. That being said, the Acer Swift x 14" seems like a solid option considering 3050Ti and the Ryzen 7 CPU. To put this in perspective, the 3050Ti technically performs better outright than the 2060 Max-Q in my XPS 17 (i.e., core speeds, and 12 nm (2060) vs 8 nm (3050Ti)), though it does have less video memory at 4 GB compared to 6 GB in the 2060 Max-Q. Plus, the fact that you're getting all this in a very small and light package is amazing because carrying this hefty-boi can be tough for long travels, given that my XPS 17 weighs in around 4.5-5 pounds. Though, I knew I was getting into that with a 17-inch laptop. 

 

Both the Razer Blade 15 and HP ENVY 15 also seem like good options given that they have 1660Ti's, which have 6 GB of memory. Compared to the 2060 Max-Q in my XPS, the 1660Ti has less CUDA cores, though it has higher core and boost speeds. I honestly don't know which will perform better, but I believe the 1660Ti might, given it's speeds. I could be wrong. Though, I think you'd be better off with the HP ENVY 15 compared to the Razer Blade 15 considering it has 512 GB of storage. 256 in the Razer Blade 15 seems like too little nowadays. 

 

All in all, my two suggestions are the Acer Swift X 14" and the HP ENVY 15

 

Also, I think it's important to mention that I'm writing this from the U.S., so I'm unable to see some of the other options 

 

Hope this helps!

[CountAM]

22 minutes ago, mt123 said:

Hopefully this is insightful given that I, too am a Mechanical Engineering student, and that I've been in a summer semester that's about to end.

 

I myself own a Dell XPS 17 9700, equipped with an i9-10885H (8 cores, 5.3 GHz), 32 GB memory, 1 TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX 2060 Max-Q, and the base 1920*1200p display (1080p for 16:10 aspect ratio). This laptop cost me ~$2,100-$2,200 after taxes, discounts, and shipping, so I'd like to think I got a pretty good deal, especially because without this discount it would be somewhere around $2,400-$2,500 before taxes and shipping. To be honest, I'm a little salty I couldn't wait until the 9710 released given that it has a full fat RTX 3060, but then again, I wouldn't've had a laptop in the beginning of the semester if I waited, especially considering shipping, too.

 

I took an Engineering design class this semester where I utilized SolidWorks for about half of the total work in this class, and this laptop has been phenomenal. When I was making a grate for a laptop cooling stand for my final project, I had to input tons of smart dimensions, and the i9 and the 2060 tackled it pretty well, causing very little "slow downs," or something like that. Otherwise, I do like to enjoy a bit of gaming, and it's handled Resident Evil 8 on high-to-near-max settings with Ray Tracing off very well, imo, i.e. keeping around 60 FPS in my experience (or at least something very close to this). I'd also like to mention that while MATLAB and Autocad can be installed on MacOS, SolidWorks cannot. The only way it seems you can run SolidWorks on MacOS is to download some sort of software that runs windows, and then install SolidWorks onto that, which seems kind of junky, imo. So for this reason, I think you should go with Windows.

 

In my opinion, getting the latest hardware now will very likely help you later on, i.e. if you plan to keep this laptop throughout your 4 years of undergraduate. That being said, the Acer Swift x 14" seems like a solid option considering 3050Ti and the Ryzen 7 CPU. To put this in perspective, the 3050Ti technically performs better outright than the 2060 Max-Q in my XPS 17 (i.e., core speeds, and 12 nm (2060) vs 8 nm (3050Ti)), though it does have less video memory at 4 GB compared to 6 GB in the 2060 Max-Q. Plus, the fact that you're getting all this in a very small and light package is amazing because carrying this hefty-boi can be tough for long travels, given that my XPS 17 weighs in around 4.5-5 pounds. Though, I knew I was getting into that with a 17-inch laptop. 

 

Both the Razer Blade 15 and HP ENVY 15 also seem like good options given that they have 1660Ti's, which have 6 GB of memory. Compared to the 2060 Max-Q in my XPS, the 1660Ti has less CUDA cores, though it has higher core and boost speeds. I honestly don't know which will perform better, but I believe the 1660Ti might, given it's speeds. I could be wrong. Though, I think you'd be better off with the HP ENVY 15 compared to the Razer Blade 15 considering it has 512 GB of storage. 256 in the Razer Blade 15 seems like too little nowadays. 

 

All in all, my two suggestions are the Acer Swift X 14" and the HP ENVY 15

 

Also, I think it's important to mention that I'm writing this from the U.S., so I'm unable to see some of the other options 

 

Hope this helps!

I will keep that in mind, but as I mentioned, I already have a good pc at home that I can use Remote Desktop to. And if I am able to use my pc instead of a laptop, I would do that too.

 

Btw you may be thinking about winebottler for mac or just using an virtual machine on the mac! But there I will take your argument in consideration when the time has come!

 

edit: when it comes to prices and such, when comparing Swedish retail prices and U.S prices, you can’t come far with the same money. If we take a look at the new Razer blade 14. Which is AWESOME!!! It costs about $2000, yes it is a lot. But when looking at retailers in Sweden, you are lucky if you can get it for less than $3000 or ~26,000 sek. Which is quite irritating when you want to save money.

[mt123]

45 minutes ago, CountAM said:

I will keep that in mind, but as I mentioned, I already have a good pc at home that I can use Remote Desktop to. And if I am able to use my pc instead of a laptop, I would do that too.

 

Btw you may be thinking about winebottler for mac or just using an virtual machine on the mac! But there I will take your argument in consideration when the time has come!

 

edit: when it comes to prices and such, when comparing Swedish retail prices and U.S prices, you can’t come far with the same money. If we take a look at the new Razer blade 14. Which is AWESOME!!! It costs about $2000, yes it is a lot. But when looking at retailers in Sweden, you are lucky if you can get it for less than $3000 or ~26,000 sek. Which is quite irritating when you want to save money.

Alright, then I think you should just at least stay away from the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 and anything else with internal graphics, because (a) like I said, modern CPU's are important and (b) having a good GPU really helps. I'd also stay away from the MacBook because of the previously mentioned reasons from my last post, but also because I think you may run into trouble working on your work on the go and then working on it with your tower setup in your dorm/ at home, mainly because the files will be going through MacOS and Windows.

 

That being said, if you're able to get the ENVY 14, 15, or Swift X 14" in your budget, then I think you're set. Though, I have heard Radeon Graphics are pretty good for internal graphics, though you'll want to do some research comparing Radeon Graphics with the GPU's in these laptops.

[mt123]

Just now, mt123 said:

Alright, then I think you should just at least stay away from the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 and anything else with internal graphics, because (a) like I said, modern CPU's are important and (b) having a good GPU really helps. I'd also stay away from the MacBook because of the previously mentioned reasons from my last post, but also because I think you may run into trouble working on your work on the go and then working on it with your tower setup in your dorm/ at home, mainly because the files will be going through MacOS and Windows.

 

That being said, if you're able to get the ENVY 14, 15, or Swift X 14" in your budget, then I think you're set. Though, I have heard Radeon Graphics are pretty good for internal graphics, though you'll want to do some research comparing Radeon Graphics with the GPU's in these laptops.

I know my second paragraph contradicts the first, but see this Dave2D video on why Radeon graphics are a legitimate consideration: 

And take note that this is with Ryzen 4000-series CPU's, so 5000 will likely be even better.

[mt123]

Just now, mt123 said:

I know my second paragraph contradicts the first, but see this Dave2D video on why Radeon graphics are a legitimate consideration: 

And take note that this is with Ryzen 4000-series CPU's, so 5000 will likely be even better.

OOOOUUUU I also forgot about this puppy: The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. I was seriously considering this because of how professional it looks for a gaming laptop. Plus, considering it's so small and light, and has amazing internals: i.e., 8 core Ryzen 4800HS, which kills an intel equivalent CPU, and either a 1660Ti or a 2060 Max-Q, just like in my XPS 17. Plus, considering its in such a small package, this thing actually gets better battery life than my XPS 17, likely because it only has to work with a 14 inch screen. On top of that, they also feature either 1080p, 120Hz or 1440p, 144Hz displays.

 

Here's another Dave2D review:

 

I really hope you're able to find this in your country because if I could've had the G14 in a 17-inch package, this would've been my choice, no questions asked. Though, then again, I do prefer the keyboard on this XPS, but that's only one point for the XPS 17 while the G14 has soooo many more points/ ups compared to the XPS 17.

[CountAM]

8 hours ago, mt123 said:

OOOOUUUU I also forgot about this puppy: The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. I was seriously considering this because of how professional it looks for a gaming laptop. Plus, considering it's so small and light, and has amazing internals: i.e., 8 core Ryzen 4800HS, which kills an intel equivalent CPU, and either a 1660Ti or a 2060 Max-Q, just like in my XPS 17. Plus, considering its in such a small package, this thing actually gets better battery life than my XPS 17, likely because it only has to work with a 14 inch screen. On top of that, they also feature either 1080p, 120Hz or 1440p, 144Hz displays.

 

Here's another Dave2D review:

 

I really hope you're able to find this in your country because if I could've had the G14 in a 17-inch package, this would've been my choice, no questions asked. Though, then again, I do prefer the keyboard on this XPS, but that's only one point for the XPS 17 while the G14 has soooo many more points/ ups compared to the XPS 17.

I have actually looked into the G14 with the rtx 3050, because it is the only one available at an reasonable price. But after watching reviews and hearing about qc and build quality. I might skip that one, yes it is the ideally perfect machine. But I once had a laptop with similar design and made of plastic and "magnesium" that got completely butchered, even though I am a careful person, the screen had permanent markings of the keyboard for some weird reason. Then to be ultra picky, unfortunately the laptop only comes in white here in Sweden.

[mt123]

1 hour ago, CountAM said:

I have actually looked into the G14 with the rtx 3050, because it is the only one available at an reasonable price. But after watching reviews and hearing about qc and build quality. I might skip that one, yes it is the ideally perfect machine. But I once had a laptop with similar design and made of plastic and "magnesium" that got completely butchered, even though I am a careful person, the screen had permanent markings of the keyboard for some weird reason. Then to be ultra picky, unfortunately the laptop only comes in white here in Sweden.

Oh dang, that sucks. And honestly from what I've heard, I thought their build quality was pretty good because with the other color options here in the states, I don't believe there's as much use of plastics, at least for the chassis.