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[Solved] Laptop recommendation for aerospace engineer based in Japan

Hello!

I know that there are many many threads covering this topic but I believe that my situation is peculiar enough to "entitle" me to open a new thread.

 

I am about to start a job as a control engineer in a Japanese startup company in the aerospace sector.

They said that I could choose my own laptop with a budget around 1800 US dollars.

I was an intern in the company for six months, so I have a little insight on the kind of software that I am going to run:

  • Altium designer
  • SolidWorks
  • Clion and PyCharm (my personal preference)
  • COMSOL multiphysics (my personal preference)

Here are some additional constraints:

  • I really like the laptops from Framework but they are not available in Japan, yet. The machine must be available from reputable sellers in Japan.
  • I own a Thinkpad Carbon X1 6th gen running Ubuntu as a personal laptop and I really like it, but I have a feeling that I am loosing a lot of performance because of the integrated GPU.
  • I personally like the Mac hardware but I really dislike the software and policy. Moreover all people in the company use Windows.
  • Raw performance is to be preferred over looks, battery and display since most of the time I am going to dock it to a monitor/mouse/keyboard.
  • RAM upgradability is welcome

I am open to any suggestion that stays in budget +/- 20%.

This is my first job in the industry and I have not an engineering background (I am a Physicist) so please forgive my naiveness.

Thank you

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I don't know how pricing will be in Japan, outside the US it seems availability and price can vary by a lot.

As far as your use-case though, it sounds like you might want to look at mostly workstation machines, running some form of Quadro or Pro series GPU. Solidworks at least the newer versions should be able to make use of that.

 

If you like the thinkpad x1, you could try looking at the P series workstations. Dell and HP also have their own workstation lines, but I think these would be a good start. The normal P15 is the chunkier one with more upgradability, the P15s is the more mobile version. How much power and weight you need will really be up to you though.

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You made a good point. I agree that a workstation laptop is the right choice.

 

Given my price range I narrowed down my choice to CPU : Intel i7-11800H and GPU : NVIDIA Quadro T1200. Any higher than that and I go way over budget. These are the prices of the major workstation laptops with those specs including 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

I took the prices from the official web pages other than MSI where it is not possible to buy it directly.

It seems that the MSI one is the best value for the buck with the ThinkPad as runner up. HP and Dell for some reason are way more expensive. So the choice is between ThinkPad vs MSI.

 

I would like to use my workstation with a dock so that I can connect to double screen + mouse + keyboard with a single cable. Do you know if that is possible with the MSI WF66?

 

Do you have any suggestions when comparing the ThinkPad P15 vs MSI WF66?

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As a ThinkPad fanboy I would say go with ThinkPad. But this is just my personal preference. Both machines look respectable.

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The P15 is the chunkier machine, it has 4 ram slots and is more solidly built. The MSI is an adopted GS66 chassis, so it's much more portable, thinner but MSI's aren't known for solid chassis design.

 

Performance wise, it looks like they're actually pretty similar given closely matching spec models:

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 laptop review: Traditional workstation with new GPUs - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

MSI WS66 10TMT Workstation Laptop Review: Faster Than The Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Both have thunderbolt ports so thunderbolt (USB C) docks should work. It seems like both have USB-C PD too, so they should be able to charge over that dock too.

 

If you need the extra ram slots and features of the P15, the extra cost and build quality is worth it. The MSI is more an all-rounder and will be better as an actual laptop probably.

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Thank you very much for the feedback. I am a Thinkpad fanboy myself but because I am just a new hire and the Thinkpad is quite over budget and their performance is on par, I might go with the MSI one.

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