laptop Looking for a laptop to take to university

[Zefster]

I am looking for a laptop to take for university (UK)  that I will be able to take notes on and possible connect to an egpu to be able to occasionally play games. My current options are the razer blade stealth 13.3 or the new(ish) XPS 13. My worries are battery life(stealth), egpu compatibility (XPS) and customer support/reliability (both)

[Agonizel]

17 minutes ago, Zefster said:

I am looking for a laptop to take for university (UK)  that I will be able to take notes on and possible connect to an egpu to be able to occasionally play games. My current options are the razer blade stealth 13.3 or the new(ish) XPS 13. My worries are battery life(stealth), egpu compatibility (XPS) and customer support/reliability (both)

Depends on the budget.

 

I would recommend you to go for a 500-600$ light (0.9-1.3 kg) laptop on amazon for great support and build a separate tower for your dorm with ryzen 5, 8GB ddr4 and gtx 1060
The build I made serves only as demonstration.
 

[genexis_x]

8 minutes ago, Zefster said:

My worries are battery life(stealth), egpu compatibility (XPS) and customer support/reliability (both)

Avoid Razer laptops, poor internal design, poor QC, poor support. XPS 13 only has 2 PCIe lanes for Thunderbolt, Dell support and reliability is decent.

 

Also, the weight of laptop+eGPU is even heavier than a gaming laptop, IMO it's less portable and you have to pay a lot on a laptop with Thunderbolt and also an eGPU.

[Zefster]

5 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Avoid Razer laptops, poor internal design, poor QC, poor support. XPS 13 only has 2 PCIe lanes for Thunderbolt, Dell support and reliability is decent.

 

Also, the weight of laptop+eGPU is even heavier than a gaming laptop, IMO it's less portable and you have to pay a lot on a laptop with Thunderbolt and also an eGPU.

The idea with the egpu was to leave it in my dorm and just carry the laptop around for the day. But that doesn't really seem practical after reading some reviews and I don't want to get two pcs to go to uni. Would the xps 15 be a good work around? Dgpu and quite portable

[Zefster]

12 minutes ago, HappyDog_420 said:

Depends on the budget.

 

I would recommend you to go for a 500-600$ light (0.9-1.3 kg) laptop on amazon for great support and build a separate tower for your dorm with ryzen 5, 8GB ddr4 and gtx 1060

I don't really want a seperate pc in my dorm as then I need a new set of peripherals and I will need to take all of my stuff out of it at the end of each term and that will be really awkward.

[Wolf10K]

if your looking at the 1600$ xps with the i7 id recommend the MSI gs63 or 73 15.6in with a1060 6G and 6700 or 7700 respectively for around 1300$ (what i got on sale) i believe the the 73 has a 120hz panel too 

the thing is thin and weightless only draw back i have is the battery life is about 2-3 hours  4 hours if you manage it and 1-1.5 gaming and the power brick is pretty big imo for something this thin other than those to things its a good driver away from home 
my mistake was i wasnt away from home even in college so i hardly use it compared to my PC and would want something with a longer battery life 

[Agonizel]

9 minutes ago, Zefster said:

I don't really want a seperate pc in my dorm as then I need a new set of peripherals and I will need to take all of my stuff out of it at the end of each term and that will be really awkward.

It depends on how much of a gamer you are. I'm in university as well since 2 years, and I have two separate PC's: One for work, one for gaming and work. Considering you have to move the whole thing only twice in a year, it's quite worth it.

 

I prefer having a light, working-centered laptop with long battery-life to carry around and a good rig. Then one heavy Laptop with poor battery life that won't even make the most out of the GPU, on which storage might be an issue as well. 

 

Anyway, I just wanted to open you up to an other possibility which in my personal experience is more practical. Unfortunately, I don't know about such a Laptop you're looking for. Good luck!

[Zefster]

Just now, HappyDog_420 said:

It depends on how much of a gamer you are. I'm in university as well since 2 years, and I have two separate PC's: One for work, one for gaming and work. Considering you only have to move the whole thing twice in a year, it's quite worth it.

 

I prefer having a light, working-centered laptop with long battery-life to carry around and a good rig. Then one heavy Laptop with poor battery life that won't even make the most out of the GPU, on which storage might be an issue as well. 

 

Anyway, I just wanted to open you up to an other possibility which in my personal experience is more practical. Unfortunately, I don't know about such a Laptop you're looking for. Good luck!

Thank you! I will look into it a bit more

[genexis_x]

12 minutes ago, Zefster said:

The idea with the egpu was to leave it in my dorm and just carry the laptop around for the day. But that doesn't really seem practical after reading some reviews and I don't want to get two pcs to go to uni. Would the xps 15 be a good work around? Dgpu and quite portable

Oh I see. XPS 15 also has 2 PCIe lanes.

 

Get an ultrabook with 8250U/8550U CPU. How much would you like to spend on the laptop?

[Zefster]

13 minutes ago, Zefster said:

The idea with the egpu was to leave it in my dorm and just carry the laptop around for the day. But that doesn't really seem practical after reading some reviews and I don't want to get two pcs to go to uni. Would the xps 15 be a good work around? Dgpu and quite portable

 

Just now, ZM Fong said:

Oh I see. XPS 15 also has 2 PCIe lanes.

 

Get an ultrabook with 8250U/8550U CPU. How much would you like to spend on the laptop?

Around £1000-1200 is the budget at the moment

[Zefster]

4 minutes ago, Wolf10K said:

if your looking at the 1600$ xps with the i7 id recommend the MSI gs63 or 73 15.6in with a1060 6G and 6700 or 7700 respectively for around 1300$ (what i got on sale) i believe the the 73 has a 120hz panel too 

the thing is thin and weightless only draw back i have is the battery life is about 2-3 hours  4 hours if you manage it and 1-1.5 gaming and the power brick is pretty big imo for something this thin other than those to things its a good driver away from home 
my mistake was i wasnt away from home even in college so i hardly use it compared to my PC and would want something with a longer battery life 

Yeah the longer battery life is something I would want, 4 hours really isn't enough

[genexis_x]

10 minutes ago, Zefster said:

Around £1000-1200 is the budget at the moment

4 PCIe lanes - Lenovo Yoga 720 13, HP Spectre x360 13/15

2 PCIe lanes (also work, with slightly reduced GPU performance compared to 4 PCIe lanes) - Dell XPS 13/15, Lenovo 720S, Lenovo Yoga 720 15, HP Spectre 13 (other ppl feel free to correct me or add more options)

Edit: Some Asus Zenbooks come with Thunderbolt too, check them out

 

Make sure it has 8250U/8550U/HQ CPU. Also GPU performance with Thunderbolt depends on how powerful the GPU is.

 

Would you mind portable gaming laptops?

[Zefster]

1 minute ago, ZM Fong said:

4 PCIe lanes - Lenovo Yoga 720 13, HP Spectre x360 13/15

2 PCIe lanes (also work, with slightly reduced GPU performance compared to 4 PCIe lanes) - Dell XPS 13/15, Lenovo 720S, Lenovo Yoga 720 15, HP Spectre 13 (other ppl feel free to correct me or add more options)

 

Make sure it has 8250U/8550U/HQ CPU. Also GPU performance with Thunderbolt depends on how powerful the GPU is.

 

Would you mind portable gaming laptops?

Thank you! And that depends I would want one that has a decent battery life when not gaming and doesn't scream GAMER!!!!. So I don't think so but correct me if I am wrong

[genexis_x]

2 minutes ago, Zefster said:

decent battery life when not gaming and doesn't scream GAMER!!!!

All options above meet these requirements. Yes these are important factors for a school laptop.

[Zefster]

17 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

All options above meet these requirements. Yes these are important factors for a school laptop.

the hp spectre x360 looks good, with the i7 and 4k screen, thanks for your help

[Zefster]

1 hour ago, anthonyjc2010 said:

You're going to university? A Blade is simply unacceptable. You require a notebook that won't die in the middle of class or fail in the middle of that covfefe powered final that you so desperately needed to finish. Even on this forum I have read countless horror stories about Razer laptops crapping out after the manufacturer warranty expired or immediately after the return period. Hell, even LMG has had issues with the Blades that they purchased (a.k.a. these were retail units, not review ones) and deployed to their employees. These problems should immediately disqualify the Blade from any consideration on your part.

Now, the Dell. It's fine, not much more to say. It would be a good computer. The manufacturer actually cares about fixing their units and offers good post-purchase support.

About the eGPU. The Dell unit uses a 2-lane PCIe 3.0 implementation of Thunderbolt 3. This is half the amount of lanes necessary and causes a 50%* loss in total bandwidth, which will greatly impact your eGPU performance. Now, I'm not going to scream "eGPUs are infeasible!!!" like everyone else on this forum, they're not. You can get a great enclosure for two hundred USD, TWO HUNDRED. I would like to see someone build a PC with peripherals and a monitor for that much on top of the GPU price without it being a total garbage fire - I honestly think that most people only know about the Razer Core *sigh*. You can buy the Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 eGPU box for 699.99 USD (which is a 150 USD premium for the enclosure when you include the price of the video card) or the 1070 model for [since the demand for the 1070 version is so high the price has skyrocketed to ludicrous levels]. So eGPUs are feasible, LTT forum.

I'm not going to recommend any other notebooks, mainly because my next set of recommendations would come from the likes of Lenovo and HP which have some minor*** flaws with their notebooks, so I hope what I wrote helps!

***Major user privacy violations

Thank you, I am currently torn between the xps 13 and the spectre x360 so no razer blade for me.