Daily Driver Laptop Recommendation

Cyrel · September 28, 2021

Heya,

I've been waiting for months eyeing the new Macbook Pro lineup that's ought to be coming out soon. But I was thinking about potential Windows needs for various things and as far as I know, ARM Macbooks still do not have support for virtualization. Honestly, even with that, a part of me is ready to purchase 14" / 16" Macbook Pro (depending on the price increase for 14") whenever they come out.

So, I've been thinking... What else is there that covers the following things that I'd like:

- >= 14" screen (QHD/UHD doesn't matter. I am fine with a high-quality IPS panel, I think 13" is too small and 17" is too big. 14" and 16" are nice sweetspots and price is the deciding factor for me there)

- Lightweight (I will be carrying this daily, so small charger and overall weight is important)

- Long battery life (While I can find outlets from time to time, not always. So the battery should last for ~8h for worst case scenario)

- Adequate performance for using lots of tabs and freely using VSC. (AMD CPU (if x86) and at least 16GB RAM preferred)

- Preferably => 256GB storage. (Work related files are on cloud, storage would be used for lightweight games, programs, dev environment etc.)

- Potential upgradeability, especially for storage later down the road. (This is really not that important and I am aware Macbooks don't have it, but would be nice to have on a non-Mac machine)

- GPU (Nothing too much, I have a beefy gaming desktop at home, so whenever I am out and about, the most I'd play would be easy-to-run games)

I'd be putting my budget at around... 2500 USD. Can be stretched if there is a golden goose.

Looking forward to your recommendations.

Let me know if you have further questions.

RONOTHAN## · September 28, 2021

The XPS 15 is a pretty good laptop. Good battery life, pretty lightweight, 8 cores, and a GTX 1650 (I forget if it's the Ti variant). The price is higher for a laptop, and while I might not personally be able to stomach the price, its well within your budget and at least worth a look.