Best laptop under $1500?

[Galm]

1 hour ago, D2ultima said:

AUO 4K 17" is rated for 100% Adobe RGB and can get there with some calibration, though.

 

Unless you meant 15"?

Yeah 15".  The 17" ones are even better.

[kaiju_wars]

On 1/13/2017 at 2:47 AM, Dackzy said:

NEVER EVER go Acer, most of their laptops are pure shit, they have some very very few ones that are just eh and those are their high end predator laptops.

 

For the MSI and AW, I would just choose the one that checks most of your points

They've gone up in quality.  
Hell, my coworker has one of those Acer gaming laptops.. the Nitros.  Bought it when it first comes out, he treats it like shit and it's still running great.

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, kaiju_wars said:

They've gone up in quality.  
Hell, my coworker has one of those Acer gaming laptops.. the Nitros.  Bought it when it first comes out, he treats it like shit and it's still running great.

I know they have gotten better, they are still shit....

The only thing they have going for them is the specs you get, but what does that help if they thermal throttle and use the cheapest parts Acer could find.

[kaiju_wars]

1 minute ago, Dackzy said:

I know they have gotten better, they are still shit....

The only thing they have going for them is the specs you get, but what does that help if they thermal throttle and use the cheapest parts Acer could find.

Not exactly true.  They've actually gotten better all around.  Doesn't mean I'd recommend a lower end Acer, but I wouldn't have an issue with recommending a Nitro, or that new Acer Aspire VX 15, if it's able to compete with the the Dell Inspiron. 

 

I

[Dackzy]

2 minutes ago, kaiju_wars said:

Not exactly true.  They've actually gotten better all around.  Doesn't mean I'd recommend a lower end Acer, but I wouldn't have an issue with recommending a Nitro, or that new Acer Aspire VX 15, if it's able to compete with the the Dell Inspiron. 

 

I

you are totally wrong here. Acer still has zero idea of how to cool laptops properly, if you see your CPU go above 85c, then it will thermal throttle, that is simply something intel has said it should do.

 

I just had their lasted Acer Nitro VN7 in for a repaste, because it got 90+ on the CPU and you could clearly see that everything was just as cheap as it basically could get. You might feel it and think it has gotten better, but the feel of a laptop is basically worth jack shit when we talk actual build quality.

 

Just an exsample:

A T420 doesn't feel very good in the hand, because of the plastic shell, but it can take a lot more beatings than any macbook.

[Galm]

4 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

you are totally wrong here. Acer still has zero idea of how to cool laptops properly, if you see your CPU go above 85c, then it will thermal throttle, that is simply something intel has said it should do.

 

I just had their lasted Acer Nitro VN7 in for a repaste, because it got 90+ on the CPU and you could clearly see that everything was just as cheap as it basically could get. You might feel it and think it has gotten better, but the feel of a laptop is basically worth jack shit when we talk actual build quality.

 

Just an exsample:

A T420 doesn't feel very good in the hand, because of the plastic shell, but it can take a lot more beatings than any macbook.

Just to clarify, my defense of the Predator series does not extend at all to the Nitros.  I don't like those at all.  Build quality is pretty meh and like you've said cooling is not good compared to similar competitors from Dell or MSI.

[kaiju_wars]

1 minute ago, Dackzy said:

you are totally wrong here. Acer still has zero idea of how to cool laptops properly, if you see your CPU go above 85c, then it will thermal throttle, that is simply something intel has said it should do.

 

I just had their lasted Acer Nitro VN7 in for a repaste, because it got 90+ on the CPU and you could clearly see that everything was just as cheap as it basically could get. You might feel it and think it has gotten better, but the feel of a laptop is basically worth jack shit when we talk actual build quality.

 

Just an exsample:

A T420 doesn't feel very good in the hand, because of the plastic shell, but it can take a lot more beatings than any macbook.

I'm not totally wrong here though.  

Reviews across the board speak great of the Nitro models, in all terms.  Only complaint is the same a lot of other manufacturers have been doing.  Pairing a 4K display with a midrange GPU.  

 

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, Galm said:

Just to clarify, my defense of the Predator series does not extend at all to the Nitros.  I don't like those at all.  Build quality is pretty meh and like you've said cooling is not good.

I find it worse than meh, but I also have higher standards than most people. Yes I do know that you only defended the Predator  

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, kaiju_wars said:

I'm not totally wrong here though.  

Reviews across the board speak great of the Nitro models, in all terms.  Only complaint is the same a lot of other manufacturers have been doing.  Pairing a 4K display with a midrange GPU.  

 

dude look up a review from a website that takes CPU temps. NBR 91c on a ULV core GG. That is a 15w CPU, that they cannot cool in a 15" not that thin form factor

[Pendragon]

33 minutes ago, kaiju_wars said:

I'm not totally wrong here though.  

Reviews across the board speak great of the Nitro models, in all terms.  Only complaint is the same a lot of other manufacturers have been doing.  Pairing a 4K display with a midrange GPU.  

 

Reviews across the board also say good things about the Razer Blade. 

[Imglidinhere]

7 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

Reviews across the board also say good things about the cherry picked Razer Blades. 

Fixed that for you.

[Pendragon]

1 minute ago, Imglidinhere said:

Fixed that for you.

Not even LOL. Most reviewers DONT GAME. They use it as their office machines. I can see the appeal. I genuinely like Razer's touchpad. But when you're spending 2k on an office machine, you'll want to get a Thinkpad. 

[Galm]

1 hour ago, Dackzy said:

I find it worse than meh, but I also have higher standards than most people. Yes I do know that you only defended the Predator  

Meh in this case means pretty bad lol.  Feels cheap compared to say the Inspiron 7559 model.

[D2ultima]

1 hour ago, kaiju_wars said:

I'm not totally wrong here though.  

Reviews across the board speak great of the Nitro models, in all terms.  Only complaint is the same a lot of other manufacturers have been doing.  Pairing a 4K display with a midrange GPU.  

 

Your mistake is that you assume reviewers are to be trusted in general. If a reviewer is afraid to say a CPU is throttling (either thermally, power-wise, or current-wise) or that a GPU is throttling, or they cherry pick which tests are run on each notebook (for example, the Razer Blade 2016 Pascal models DO NOT HAVE STRESS TESTS AND THERMAL REPORTS on Notebookcheck, which does the most comprehensive tests online in general... even though netbooks and office-grade laptops get those tests run from them) then you should 100% ignore that reviewer. And yes, this also includes notebookcheck, who often rate equally the functionality of a notebook against how they find it looks and feels to the touch, which is insane to me. Throttling, underperforming ASUS models would get rated lower than Clevos because they like how ASUS looks, and it's quieter, and they never used max fans on the Clevo (FN + 1).

 

Your objective, from reviews in general, is to take raw facts. Do you see CPU temperature under X load in X environment ambients? Great, take it! Do you see someone saying the machine performs great, with no temps or clockspeeds under load? Ignore. 100%. I don't even care if *I* am the reviewer you have to ignore, that's my own damn fault if I don't provide some information. 

[Guest lilbman]

I recommend Alienware.

 

Sure, they're more expensive for what you pay, but it is worth it.  I have a problem with my wrist rest(doesn't sit flush with the bottom) and they overnighted a box to me to send it in.  I had no problems whatsoever and the experience is gr8.

 

The keyboard is great, I get 8 hours of battery(YMMV), cool lighting, great support and build quality, very easy to open up and work with, and it feels premium.  And it should feel premium because you pay a premium price.  Say you bought a Clevo that has, say, a 7700K and a 1070 or 1080.  Sure, it's powerful, but for the money you spent on it, it doesn't feel premium.  

 

Also, later on down the road, you can buy the Alienware Graphics Amp and extend the performance life of your machine.  You can't do that with an Asus.  You CAN do it with a Razer, but the Razer Core is way more expensive.

 

I do like Razer laptops-my son's friend has one-but I would take my Alienware over a Razer any day.

 

That's just my two cents  

[D2ultima]

4 hours ago, lilbman said:

I recommend Alienware.

 

Sure, they're more expensive for what you pay, but it is worth it.  I have a problem with my wrist rest(doesn't sit flush with the bottom) and they overnighted a box to me to send it in.  I had no problems whatsoever and the experience is gr8.

 

The keyboard is great, I get 8 hours of battery(YMMV), cool lighting, great support and build quality, very easy to open up and work with, and it feels premium.  And it should feel premium because you pay a premium price.  Say you bought a Clevo that has, say, a 7700K and a 1070 or 1080.  Sure, it's powerful, but for the money you spent on it, it doesn't feel premium. 

You're recommending shit. They have heatsink issues BY DESIGN and won't fix them or deal with any heating issues under warranty if it pertains to the heatsink. It requires a ridiculous amount of end-user modding to get an "acceptable" laptop out of them.

 

This doesn't mean anything... it's dell's basic warranty, but since it doesn't actually really cover performance issues, it's not nearly as impressive.

 

You have Optimus, and as far as I know, cannot change it. That's terrible. Cool lighting doesn't mean anything about performance. And the fact that you're emboldening and putting emphasis on the statement saying you rather take an inferior product because it feels premium means you pretty have invalidated your opinion to anyone that has sense. I'm not even saying to buy a Clevo... just PURELY for the fact that you're recommending a broken-design, inferior, MORE-EXPENSIVE product because it feels premium means nobody should ever listen to your recommendations for any laptop.

[Pendragon]

6 minutes ago, D2ultima said:

You have Optimus, and as far as I know, cannot change it.

Uhhh, its really really really dumb, but you can change it on certain models. It's actually counter intuitive. Basically none of the new kaby lake models have it, cause fuck you, but certain models with a 1080 ips screen without gsync have it. Like a real dedicated MUX switch that allows for display overclocking and things. Like mine. But then, Dell doesn't offer this model with ANY of it's high end configurations cause fuck you again, and you need to get it custom made (which they won't do cause fuck you). Which is really really really really really dumb. Everything else I agree on. I just spent 2 hours taking this mess apart wondering why THE FUCK do you put the fan cables on the BACKSIDE of the motherboard. You have to disassemble the main motherboard to access them because Dell somewhere along the way thought it was a great idea to GLUE THE FAN TO THE HEATSINK???????? So instead of just unscrewing the heatsink and taking it out, you have to take apart the whole thing, flip the motherboard, unclip the fan cables, and then that the heatsink apart. 

[Guest lilbman]

On 1/17/2017 at 10:09 PM, D2ultima said:

You're recommending shit. They have heatsink issues BY DESIGN and won't fix them or deal with any heating issues under warranty if it pertains to the heatsink. It requires a ridiculous amount of end-user modding to get an "acceptable" laptop out of them.

 

This doesn't mean anything... it's dell's basic warranty, but since it doesn't actually really cover performance issues, it's not nearly as impressive.

 

You have Optimus, and as far as I know, cannot change it. That's terrible. Cool lighting doesn't mean anything about performance. And the fact that you're emboldening and putting emphasis on the statement saying you rather take an inferior product because it feels premium means you pretty have invalidated your opinion to anyone that has sense. I'm not even saying to buy a Clevo... just PURELY for the fact that you're recommending a broken-design, inferior, MORE-EXPENSIVE product because it feels premium means nobody should ever listen to your recommendations for any laptop.

You're a broken, inferior design.

I would type something better, but my kid has a school play tonight, and I don't have time to argue with you.

[D2ultima]

7 minutes ago, lilbman said:

You're a broken, inferior design.

I would type something better, but my kid has a school play tonight, and I don't have time to argue with you.

And you're a fanboy with illogical recommendations. Everybody with a brain here feels the same way.

[Guest lilbman]

5 hours ago, D2ultima said:

And you're a fanboy with illogical recommendations. Everybody with a brain here feels the same way.

This is my first Alienware product..ever...

 

aren't fanboys people who like nothing but  one company?  Yet I bought my kid a Razer Blade Stealth for school..

 

besides, it's up to the asker what machine he likes.  This is a recommendation forum, not debate club.  

[KabuTheFox]

mostly struggling to decide between;
a sager, msi, or alienware

alienware is probably the better looking, but seems to have the worst default warranty out of the bunch (though dell customer service is excellent from my experience)
sorting through the msi's on there website though is probably the worst ;-;

[Pendragon]

Dell Support. I'm a highly valued business customer to them and when I get redirected to their customer line I want to kill myself. 

@D2ultima @Dackzy @Galm look at AW techs wanting to make stoves instead of laptops. They moved up from 100c to 110c. I swear Intel has built in redundancies when it hits 100C. 

[Dackzy]

54 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

Dell Support. I'm a highly valued business customer to them and when I get redirected to their customer line I want to kill myself. 

@D2ultima @Dackzy @Galm look at AW techs wanting to make stoves instead of laptops. They moved up from 100c to 110c. I swear Intel has built in redundancies when it hits 100C. 

are you kidding me? You know what, fuck Dell, they will never get my money, my next laptop is a ThinkPad or a 14" clevo.

[Dackzy]

2 hours ago, Aleksiandrovich said:

Serious question, why so defendant of lenovo like they must have flaws, i feel like you only ever support them, i assume that they are no saints in laptoping either.

huh? Defendant, in what way? I recommend Clevo much more, and Lenovo ThinkPads are basically the best business laptops on the marked right now. 

 

The only other laptop I have recommended a lot would be the Y700, because it was better than Dell 7559, in basically every way, execpt battery life.

 

When a XPS 15 has a flaw, then the precision 5k will also have that flaw (the business version), Dell has also known about their faulty heat sink design for a long time now, and the 110c is just the final nail in the coffin. A laptop should run at 80c under max load, maybe 84c for the CPU and 82-83c for the GPU, but not any higher, because then you get above the thermal throttling limet, it is very important that temps are under control in a laptop, because everything around the chips, will get hot, so if your chips hit 90-95c, then all the parts around them will also be really hot, which is a very bad thing, if you plan on keeping your machine for a longer period and in terms of performance you don't get what you pay for, if the laptop thermal throttles.

 

I basically recommend every laptop, that is build well and have okay cooling (unless they are overpriced). I only have this profile pic because I like the slogan, I could not care less if Lenovo died and somebody took over ThinkPad and kept the high quality level or if stepped up their game to be on par with ThinkPads.

 

The brand on a laptop does not matter for me, as long as it is high quality.

[D2ultima]

8 hours ago, Pendragon said:

Dell Support. I'm a highly valued business customer to them and when I get redirected to their customer line I want to kill myself. 

@D2ultima @Dackzy @Galm look at AW techs wanting to make stoves instead of laptops. They moved up from 100c to 110c. I swear Intel has built in redundancies when it hits 100C. 

Thermal shutdown is at 105c so..................

 

How do they get a machine to hit 110c?

5 hours ago, Aleksiandrovich said:

Serious question, why so defendant of lenovo like they must have flaws, i feel like you only ever support them, i assume that they are no saints in laptoping either.

There are no saints. Lenovo's business line is great, and their support for it is pretty damn good. The only other time you'll see one of us recommend a Lenovo is say... if it's under $1000 or something, in the entry-level midranged laptop range or lower. When you hit midranged, you hit Clevo's gaming line, and they have the best hardware and Prema Mod fixes almost all their software issues. At this point, unless you have EXTREMELY specific needs, we won't recommend something else.

 

Dell seems to be dead-set on destroying all customer relations. I say let them. Nobody should buy Alienware this gen. Probably next gen too (Kaby Lake; I don't think they've been refreshed yet). No idea about Coffee Lake models, but those are FAR away.

 

If someone has a healthy budget and doesn't care about gaming, they get recommended business-class models like Thinkpads. If they care about gaming, then Clevo P6 line gets recommended. If they care about system power and productivity, then the P7xx or P870 lines get recommended, for the desktop CPU usage (MUCH faster clockspeeds and better cooling). MSI makes whitebooks that have desktop CPUs in them but won't sell them to consumers, so they clearly are stupid as fuck and don't want money from Prosumers. It's not a matter of "we like company X". It's a matter of "is company X worth a buy?" and then we choose. Most laptop OEMs aren't worth a buy, unlike what most reviews online will say. I have never seen reason for an ASUS gaming laptop to be purchased in the last 6 years. I've never seen reason for any non-heavily-discounted MSI to be purchased for the last six years... their GT72 was impeccable, but since it cost the same as the desktop-CPU-using models from Clevo, there was no reason to buy a soldered-CPU (weak) laptop. Their current GT73VR is cream of the crop for BGA CPU laptops, but it costs as much as a P870DMx so why bother? The latter (prema modded) is a better machine. Some elbow grease may be required, but for the most part, it's the best value and performance for money.

 

MSI could take the crown whenever they want. They choose to fuck up their systems. Clevo's only saving grace is Prema and its community working with a lot of OEMs like HIDevolution and Obsidian-PC, and Eurocom which insists on keeping laptops upgrade-able. They screw up their systems on a software level FAR more than MSI do, but these screwups are more fixable than shit hardware design as a base. So it's a "least of evils" situation.