Requesting laptop suggestions for programming under 1000$

[Krofter]

Hi
My friend wants to buy a laptop mainly for coding purposes (java, jvm, kotlin, Intellij, etc - mostly backend work).

13'' preferred as they don't want to carry huge weight. Our budget is roughly 850-1000 USD.

 In that price point, considering the battery life too, I could only recommend MacBook Air 8BG-512GB or 16GB-256GB.

I would like to ask if -

1. Anyone here is using any of those 2 laps for coding purposes and how's it?
2. Is there any other serious recommendations at that price point, we can consider? (we found an HP Pavilion x360)

Any inputs would be appreciated
Thanks in advance

[Fireord36]

I was gonna say Mac-Book because most decent powered laptops at that price point are garbage, msi should also have some good options  

[Anders Q Liden]

I usually don't use price a measure when I decide which laptop to get but Macbooks are great, no question. I would try to get higher internal memory since you're doing backend coding and running a bunch of tabs in a browser, one or two development environments with debuggers and a few other things stack up and consumes a lot of internal memory, so that's my general tip.

When it comes to diskspace I would comment like this: below 512 gb, not much space for private things and in absolute worst case you might need to offload old projects when you start up a new one, but that would most likely be a rare occurence.
512 gb = plenty of space.
More than that (1tb or above) is only when you really want a lot of private stuff on your laptop. Private documents, lots of old repos, etc.

I'm nuts so I can't survive with less than 2tb on a laptop, but even for me (a file hoarder of epic proportions) 2tb is well and truely enough.

When it comes to the hardware, I would seriously suggest you have a look at the Framework laptops.
They might not be for you and they might blow your budget, but they are absolutely awesome. I have one now and I really love it.

Best of luck to you and your friend!

[OhYou_]

thinkpad x220

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, Krofter said:

1. Anyone here is using any of those 2 laps for coding purposes and how's it?

I know it's not quite the model you're asking for, but using a work issued MBP (M1 Pro, 14", 2021) for basically the same purpose (Java/Kotlin + IntelliJ/Android Studio) and it's a very good experience. The more recent Airs should probably do a good job.

[OddOod]

If they're okay with MacOS, macbook, though def needs 16GB. 
Coding really doesn't take much effort from the hardware, they could probably happily use a 5 year old 13" ultrabook.

[Krofter]

Hi @OddOod
Thanks for the recommendation
But In the end, we decided to go with an Asus S14
ultra 5 225

16GB with one more slot expandable

500 gigs storage

[OddOod]

16 hours ago, Krofter said:

16GB with one more slot expandable

You should know that while DDR5 isn't utter trash with 1 stick of RAM, it still IS advisable to be in dual channel mode.
i.e. get another 16GB stick of RAM which matches the existing one as closely as possible. In descending order of importance: size, speed, latency, manufacturer

[Krofter]

On 6/24/2025 at 3:47 PM, OddOod said:

You should know that while DDR5 isn't utter trash with 1 stick of RAM, it still IS advisable to be in dual channel mode.
i.e. get another 16GB stick of RAM which matches the existing one as closely as possible. In descending order of importance: size, speed, latency, manufacturer

Thanks for that. Will keep that in mind and pass it along to my friend.