Laptop Recommendations

[TDCTomas]

Hello

I need to buy a laptop for University with a budget of around €900 (preferably less though :)). I have been looking for something with a 12th gen CPU (for the superior battery life) and thunderbolt (in case I ever want to connect an external gpu down the line). Other than that I'm not too particular about what I'm looking for. It will be used mostly for school work (Mathematical Sciences and Physics), some gaming (mostly indie games like FTL, but I play some AAA games too - which is why I'd like the eGPU option) and I'm hoping too learn some Python on the side in my free time.

I've been scouring Amazon and other places, but haven't really found anything that really stood out to me.

Anyways, Thanks for the help

[TylerD321]

I am a big fan of Lenovo for school/work laptops. Here is my recommendation:

 

ThinkBook 15 Gen 4 Intel (15”) | Lenovo US

 

Intel i5 1235u (2 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)

Intel Iris XE Graphics

16 GB 3200 MHz Ram

512 GB Gen 3 Nvme Storage

Charges via USB C 3.2

Has Thunderbolt 4 port

[venomtail]

Don't really know any budget laptops that have thunderbolt with external GPU's. They only start appearing on pricy laptops around 1300euro at the cheapest. Of the top of my head there was a Samsung and Dell XPS laptop that had thunderbolt 4 but they're above your budget.

For 900euro you'll only find bricks that you'll have to log around if you plan to go anywhere, wouldn't recommend.

 

Personally I bought an Acer Swift 3, Ryzen 3700U/4700U with Vega Graphics for about 770euro + 40 euro for 8GB of RAM that I installed separately cause 16GB model was out of stock, only the 8GB version was left. handled VS, Unity, UE, Blender and other software like a champ.

Can handle indie games easy and older AAA titles like GTA 5. new titles like NFS Heat it struggled, low/off 720p some 60fps. But with FSR might get a significant boost. If you were to buy that try and get one of the newer 16:10 versions. Screen real estate is extremely important.

[venomtail]

4 minutes ago, TylerD321 said:

I am a big fan of Lenovo for school/work laptops. Here is my recommendation:

 

ThinkBook 15 Gen 4 Intel (15”) | Lenovo US

 

Intel i5 1235u (2 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)

Intel Iris XE Graphics

16 GB 3200 MHz Ram

512 GB Gen 3 Nvme Storage

Charges via USB C 3.2

Has Thunderbolt 4 port

400 euro overbudget tho... 

OP also where do u live. Makes price vary drastically.

[TylerD321]

1 minute ago, venomtail said:

400 euro overbudget tho... 

OP also where do u live. Makes price vary drastically.

This shows as $843 USD for me which converts to roughly 830 euro.

[venomtail]

22 minutes ago, TylerD321 said:

This shows as $843 USD for me which converts to roughly 830 euro.

Ye but it's on sale in US only so I doubt the sale is still gonna exist half way across the world in some random EU nation. So base price converted is still some 1400euro not including extra tax that often is here in the EU.

[TDCTomas]

1 hour ago, venomtail said:

400 euro overbudget tho... 

OP also where do u live. Makes price vary drastically.

Sorry for the delay,

Live in Ireland, but I'm gonna Ng to study in the Netherlands, so I could send it to either realistically

[TDCTomas]

1 hour ago, venomtail said:

Don't really know any budget laptops that have thunderbolt with external GPU's. They only start appearing on pricy laptops around 1300euro at the cheapest. Of the top of my head there was a Samsung and Dell XPS laptop that had thunderbolt 4 but they're above your budget.

For 900euro you'll only find bricks that you'll have to log around if you plan to go anywhere, wouldn't recommend.

 

Personally I bought an Acer Swift 3, Ryzen 3700U/4700U with Vega Graphics for about 770euro + 40 euro for 8GB of RAM that I installed separately cause 16GB model was out of stock, only the 8GB version was left. handled VS, Unity, UE, Blender and other software like a champ.

Can handle indie games easy and older AAA titles like GTA 5. new titles like NFS Heat it struggled, low/off 720p some 60fps. But with FSR might get a significant boost. If you were to buy that try and get one of the newer 16:10 versions. Screen real estate is extremely important.

I don't know if I misunderstood your message, but when I said eGPU I mean one you connect externally via a thunderbolt port. Just a bit confused by "you'll only find bricks that you'll have to log around". I don't mind not having a dedicated gpu in the laptop itself (Edit: cause I have a GPU I can take out of my PC if I wanted to use an eGPU)

[TDCTomas]

1 hour ago, TylerD321 said:

I am a big fan of Lenovo for school/work laptops. Here is my recommendation:

 

ThinkBook 15 Gen 4 Intel (15”) | Lenovo US

 

Intel i5 1235u (2 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)

Intel Iris XE Graphics

16 GB 3200 MHz Ram

512 GB Gen 3 Nvme Storage

Charges via USB C 3.2

Has Thunderbolt 4 port

That would be a great option, but as the other guy said, that offer is unfortunately not available in my region

[rikitikitavi]

I highly suggest going w/ M1 Air due to its superb portability, if most of your apps will work on macOS of course (I’m not sure if you gonna use anything else but Matlab for Math, no idea about physics workload though). Programing is a no brainer.

 

Gaming has to be sacrificed (not all of course, mostly AAA).

 

TB eGPUs are not a good deal at all, and if you consider such, you a re better off just buying a separate desktop just to game on… or ordering a 64GB Steam Deck and a 256GB+ SD card. BTW, you can technically use Steam Deck as a tiny/weird laptop.

 

If you have to use Windows or can’t leave these awesome AAA games alone - go for a laptop with Ryzen 5600U - 5800U, afaik these have the best integrated graphics. Thats probably the next best choice for portability. Don’t expect great performance of course - they are no where close to even a 3060.