Looking for a laptop

[KirraZaRock]

So I'm looking for a laptop which I'm planing on buying in a month or so as I'm going to need it for my Software engineering degree (I mostly use Visual Studio, Git and Unreal engine), and gaming (Mostly games like HOI4, HD2, Rust, Squad, Minecraft and some older games) Currently the one I'm looking at is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra with the I9 Ultra and RTX 4070, 32gb of ram and a 1tb ssd. Its around 3000 USD which would be my budget. (Not including shipping and customs.)


https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/galaxy-books/galaxy-book4-series/buy/galaxy-book4-ultra-16-intel-core-ultra-9-1tb-moonstone-gray-np960xgl-xg1us/

 

[ki8aras]

18 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

So I'm looking for a laptop which I'm planing on buying in a month or so as I'm going to need it for my Software engineering degree (I mostly use Visual Studio, Git and Unreal engine), and gaming (Mostly games like HOI4, HD2, Rust, Squad, Minecraft and some older games) Currently the one I'm looking at is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra with the I9 Ultra and RTX 4070, 32gb of ram and a 1tb ssd. Its around 3000 USD which would be my budget. (Not including shipping and customs.)


https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/galaxy-books/galaxy-book4-series/buy/galaxy-book4-ultra-16-intel-core-ultra-9-1tb-moonstone-gray-np960xgl-xg1us/

 

if your budget is that high then why not get something like a razer blade 16

[adm0n]

Why are you looking at the galaxy book? Which features of it appeal to you specifically? It is really expensive for the performance it delivers, with the only realy great thing being its battery life.

[DreamCat04]

20 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

So I'm looking for a laptop which I'm planing on buying in a month or so as I'm going to need it for my Software engineering degree (I mostly use Visual Studio, Git and Unreal engine), and gaming (Mostly games like HOI4, HD2, Rust, Squad, Minecraft and some older games) Currently the one I'm looking at is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra with the I9 Ultra and RTX 4070, 32gb of ram and a 1tb ssd. Its around 3000 USD which would be my budget. (Not including shipping and customs.)


https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/galaxy-books/galaxy-book4-series/buy/galaxy-book4-ultra-16-intel-core-ultra-9-1tb-moonstone-gray-np960xgl-xg1us/

 

You can get much better laptops for that budget. You could get a Lenovo Legion Pro 5, which has a really good CPU (Ryzen 9 7945HX, 16c/32t), 32GB of upgradeable RAM, a 1TB SSD, a 4070 and a 1440p 16:10 165 Hz display for under 2000$. It's not excessively gamer-y though it's a bit thicker than the Galaxy book you were looking at. You do give up the AMOLED touch display for a non-glossy non-touch IPS screen

Edited May 16, 2024 by DreamCat04

[KirraZaRock]

28 minutes ago, DreamCat04 said:

You can get much better laptops for that budget. You could get a Lenovo Legion Pro 5, which has a really good CPU (Ryzen 9 7945HX, 16c/32t), 32GB of upgradeable RAM, a 1TB SSD, a 4070 and a 1440p 16:10 165 Hz display for under 2000$. It's not excessively gamer-y though it's a bit thicker than the Galaxy book you were looking at. You do give up the AMOLED touch display for a non-glossy non-touch IPS screen

 

28 minutes ago, adm0n said:

Why are you looking at the galaxy book? Which features of it appeal to you specifically? It is really expensive for the performance it delivers, with the only realy great thing being its battery life.

 

29 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

if your budget is that high then why not get something like a razer blade 16

I don't know laptops, that's why I haven't bought anything yet and is why I'm here asking for help. So would love some recommendations!

[OddOod]

43 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

Software engineering degree

44 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

games like HOI4, HD2

Okay, my assumption here is that you're off to uni and will likely be living in tight confines which entirely rules out the possibility of a nice desktop paired with a lightweight laptop.
Because if you have the space for a desktop, you should ABSOLUTELY go for that. Lugging around the cooling solution for an i9 and a 4070 from class to class is gonna get real old REAL fast.

[DreamCat04]

5 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

I don't know laptops, that's why I haven't bought anything yet and is why I'm here asking for help. So would love some recommendations!

You could look at the one I recommended, it's pretty cheap at digitec (swiss shop), just 1990$ converted from CHF. The laptop is 2.5kg without the charging brick but you get a lot for that weight and the price of it

Edited May 16, 2024 by DreamCat04

[KirraZaRock]

1 minute ago, OddOod said:

Okay, my assumption here is that you're off to uni and will likely be living in tight confines which entirely rules out the possibility of a nice desktop paired with a lightweight laptop.
Because if you have the space for a desktop, you should ABSOLUTELY go for that. Lugging around the cooling solution for an i9 and a 4070 from class to class is gonna get real old REAL fast.

Yeah that is somewhat the case but it's mainly going to be used when im at work since work and classes will be around the same time.

[OddOod]

1 minute ago, KirraZaRock said:

going to be used when im at work

You're gonna be gaming at work? Like, squad tactical shooter between meetings? That's uh.... risky 
 

[KirraZaRock]

Just now, OddOod said:

You're gonna be gaming at work? Like, squad tactical shooter between meetings? That's uh.... risky 
 

No no no doing uni work at work. (It is allowed)

[ki8aras]

6 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Okay, my assumption here is that you're off to uni and will likely be living in tight confines which entirely rules out the possibility of a nice desktop paired with a lightweight laptop.
Because if you have the space for a desktop, you should ABSOLUTELY go for that. Lugging around the cooling solution for an i9 and a 4070 from class to class is gonna get real old REAL fast.

i second that, i regret getting a powerful laptop for uni

[adm0n]

5 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

I don't know laptops, that's why I haven't bought anything yet and is why I'm here asking for help. So would love some recommendations!

What are the things you are looking for in a laptop then, ideally ordered by importance. So things like

1. Performance
2. High quality (HDR capable?) screen with high refreshrate?, >1600p resolution?
3. lightweight <1.8kg <2kg < 2.2 kg < 2.5kg?
4. Battery life >6h >8h >10h (for web browsing, editing documents, while doing anything intensive, battery life on any device will decrease drasticly)
5. ... etc

[venomtail]

Lenovo Yoga Pro line seems to have good options for the money paid. 3K screen, OLEDs, RTX cards, good speaker, I loved the build quality and good battery. Something of a equivalent model.

[OddOod]

16 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

No no no doing uni work at work. (It is allowed)

Okay, you DO NOT need mega specs for software dev, especially not in uni. You will either be able to comfortably run your code on a 5 year old i5 based system, or you'll be SSHing into an HPC because your code is going to suck back half a TB of memory. 
You will regret buying a giant laptop just for a couple classes. You have the budget for a solid used light laptop and a pretty nice desktop which can be upgraded over time. Any heavy lifting can be done on the desktop via a remote desktop app (chrome remote desktop is free and effective for anything except gaming) 

[KirraZaRock]

29 minutes ago, adm0n said:

What are the things you are looking for in a laptop then, ideally ordered by importance. So things like

1. Performance
2. High quality (HDR capable?) screen with high refreshrate?, >1600p resolution?
3. lightweight <1.8kg <2kg < 2.2 kg < 2.5kg?
4. Battery life >6h >8h >10h (for web browsing, editing documents, while doing anything intensive, battery life on any device will decrease drasticly)
5. ... etc

Weight doesn't really matter to me but i would like a atleast 1440p 144hz OLED with a 12h+ battery, atleast 16gb of ram and 1tb of storage would be nice if it can run MW3 at like 100 frames apex at 144 to cap it to the screen

[venomtail]

36 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

No no no doing uni work at work. (It is allowed)

I did uni stuff with like a $1k laptop and was plenty, just struggled a bit with GPU intensive loads like 3D UE5 development.

[adm0n]

4 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

Weight doesn't really matter to me but i would like a atleast 1440p 144hz OLED with a 12h+ battery, atleast 16gb of ram and 1tb of storage would be nice if it can run MW3 at like 100 frames apex at 144 to cap it to the screen

Well if you really want 12h of battery life and a dGPU, you do have the only laptop that almost gets there with ~11h of purely webbrowsing.

 

But as soon as you start running something decently intensive (like compling bigger projects), that 12h of battery life turns probably more into 4h. And specifically the Samsung laptop gets that long battery life by tuning their device very well for low power (idle). It has a slightly smaller battery (75W compared to 85W+ on other models) for a 16 inch laptop. So it will deplete pretty fast. You could always just take an external battery bank with you, but that will add to the weight.

 

But if this is really what you want, and you are willing to spend like $3k on that as a student go for it. Just keep in mind, that in university breaking things or getting things stolen is a bit more likely.

[KirraZaRock]

Quote

Just keep in mind, that in university breaking things or getting things stolen is a bit more likely.

Would say that's true but I'm in Europe so it doesn't happen as much and often as in the states.

[KirraZaRock]

But i dont know i will explore more options for laptops and see what exactly i want.

 

[adm0n]

2 minutes ago, KirraZaRock said:

Would say that's true but I'm in Europe so it doesn't happen as much and often as in the states.

I'm also in Europe. Just saying, that it's likely there will be some stressful times, especially during exam time. When it's possible pretty easy to do things wrong and accidentally break things, or forget something.

 

Notebookcheck is a great resource. Ultrabookreviews is also pretty good, but they don't review as many devices.