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Help me choose a laptop

merious
By merious
in Laptops and Pre-Built Systems
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Hi. I'm looking for a laptop, coming from a long-time desktop user with a very old (i5-2500k) CPU, GTX 570. I'm looking for a laptop to replace my desktop for a few purposes:

  1. I want to sit in my living room or on a deck and use my PC, so a laptop makes sense. A tiny bit of travel, but mostly around the house.
  2. I multi-task a lot with web research, watching videos, Youtube, or Twitch, and have a few other apps open. I have 2 monitors now since that's all my old old GPU supports. This makes me favor Intel for Thunderbolt, but I'm not tied to it.
  3. I program a little bit. I also am playing around with machine learning and blender.
  4. Indie games, emulators, Magic: The Gathering, older games. I don't need a strong GPU, especially with prices where they are now.
  5. I'd rather buy a laptop that'll last 5+ years, so

I'm looking to spend ~$1000 USD, give or take 100-200. I have it down to 2 - the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. I'm looking at those since they have i7-11800H (8c/16t), upgradable RAM, big screens, some GPU (mostly for the cuda cores for machine learning and blender, and better than Xe for older games, I'm not sure I really need one over Xe if other aspects + price are all great).

 

What do you think about those two laptops? Are they too much for what I need? Do you suggest anything else? Thanks in advance.

 

edit: part of my concern is if I'm over-buying looking at 5+ years in the future. Is this just a bad idea for laptops? Would I be OK with 4c/8t for my uses and letting a home server run blender renders and machine learning? I'm really tempted to get a Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 for ~$650 and deal with a low (I think, per specs) quality screen, expect it to live less long, and put some cash into a server upgrade or a tablet for a better quality but smaller screen. If that happens to be a good route, I'm not against a used Thinkpad if it's the best suggestion.

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16 minutes ago, merious said:

Hi. I'm looking for a laptop, coming from a long-time desktop user with a very old (i5-2500k) CPU, GTX 570. I'm looking for a laptop to replace my desktop for a few purposes:

  1. I want to sit in my living room or on a deck and use my PC, so a laptop makes sense. A tiny bit of travel, but mostly around the house.
  2. I multi-task a lot with web research, watching videos, Youtube, or Twitch, and have a few other apps open. I have 2 monitors now since that's all my old old GPU supports. This makes me favor Intel for Thunderbolt, but I'm not tied to it.
  3. I program a little bit. I also am playing around with machine learning and blender.
  4. Indie games, emulators, Magic: The Gathering, older games. I don't need a strong GPU, especially with prices where they are now.
  5. I'd rather buy a laptop that'll last 5+ years, so

I'm looking to spend ~$1000 USD, give or take 100-200. I have it down to 2 - the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. I'm looking at those since they have i7-11800H (8c/16t), upgradable RAM, big screens, some GPU (mostly for the cuda cores for machine learning and blender, and better than Xe for older games, I'm not sure I really need one over Xe if other aspects + price are all great).

 

What do you think about those two laptops? Are they too much for what I need? Do you suggest anything else? Thanks in advance.

 

edit: part of my concern is if I'm over-buying looking at 5+ years in the future. Is this just a bad idea for laptops? Would I be OK with 4c/8t for my uses and letting a headless server run blender renders and machine learning? I'm really tempted to get a Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 for ~$650 and deal with a low (I think, per specs) quality screen, expect it to live less long, and put some cash into a server upgrade or a tablet for a better quality but smaller screen. If that happens to be a good route, I'm not against a used Thinkpad if it's the best suggestion.

That legion is not a good deal, and that Dell is even worse

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Display-Processor-GeForce-82JW0012US/dp/B08YKG5K7F

This has a 3050 Ti, a better CPU (I think) and is 200 bucks cheaper.

😳
Not that active so I may not respond.

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there are a few asus G14/G15 that would be better than dell and probably the lenovo in build quality.
The 5800H/HS or the 5900H/HS are faster than the 11800h and have better battery life.
 

I don't know that I'd trust any non business class machine to last for 5+ years of heavily daily use

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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7 minutes ago, Cool_Evlo said:

That legion is not a good deal, and that Dell is even worse

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Display-Processor-GeForce-82JW0012US/dp/B08YKG5K7F

This has a 3050 Ti, a better CPU (I think) and is 200 bucks cheaper.

Thanks. Just to be clear with my exact costs factoring in Dell gift cards and promotions, the Legion 5i pro is: $1234 (yes), and the Inspiron 16 is $1099. That still puts your Legion 5 ~$200 cheaper.

 

I might be overly concerned with the difference between 16:9 1920x1080 vs 16:10 ~3.5K, that's the first thought I have with your suggestion.

 

6 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

there are a few asus G14/G15 that would be better than dell and probably the lenovo in build quality.
The 5800H/HS or the 5900H/HS are faster than the 11800h and have better battery life.

I'm also worried about a 14" vs 15"/16" screen for the G14. I didn't look at the G15 prices but if the build quality is there, I don't mind going a bit above my budget.

 

 

 

edit: Thank you both for your feedback.

edit: I have a 13.3" work laptop, but no other laptop experience aside from that. 13.3" is definitely too small. If I'm overly concerned with having a huge screen, fighting the value I get elsewhere for the money to get the bigger screen, please say so.

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2 hours ago, merious said:

edit: I have a 13.3" work laptop, but no other laptop experience aside from that. 13.3" is definitely too small. If I'm overly concerned with having a huge screen, fighting the value I get elsewhere for the money to get the bigger screen, please say so.

14-15in is the sweet spot in my opinion for a laptop. 13 is fine for lots of travel but 17in+ just end up huge

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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