13" Laptop Recommendation Under $1000 USD.

[JimmyConrad]

I'm looking for a new laptop my HP Envy x360 M6 die on me, after two years!

Anyways what are some reliable 13in laptops out there?

Was looking at the Dell xps 13, or maybe a Lenovo since those have been good to me but I just dont know whats good anymore.

 

Thanks!

 

(new to this forums so I hope I'm in the right spot)

 

Edit: I mostly need this laptop for school, homework, I have to run research/analytics programs so I prefer i5 or above,  lightweight would be good, price range between $500, and $1000

Edited September 9, 2018 by JimmyConrad
Added info

[genexis_x]

There's no guarantee on reliability in laptops, even mobile workstations which are solidly built may fail quickly while a dirt cheap laptop may last longer

[Streetguru]

19 minutes ago, JimmyConrad said:

 

Used thinkpad with an i7 and new battery is likely to be under $500

[JimmyConrad]

8 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

There's no guarantee on reliability in laptops, even mobile workstations which are solidly built may fail quickly while a dirt cheap laptop may last longer

Guess you're right, I just don't really know what laptop I should get theres like a million models and stuff. 

[genexis_x]

You can consider Ideapad 720s 13 (Intel), UX330UA or Yoga 730 13 if you want something cheaper but still great in quality

[Emberstone]

I just bought an HP Envy X360 13 with a Ryzen 7 2700U in it. It kicks major ass, and I'd assume the cheaper Ryzen 5 2500U model would do just fine as well. Best Buy was selling the 2500U models on sale for like $650.

 

I've got a weird issue where the wifi card will be missing on a cold boot, so I have to fully shut down and then turn it back on (I just press the power button twice when booting instead of once, so I do that shutdown right off the bat, so its nbd), but I don't think that's a common issue. I tried getting HP to fix it, but when I sent it in they said there was no problem with the wifi. Typical.

 

But aside from that, it's a great machine. After my little workaround it works as normal. I'm just going to replace the wireless card myself when the warranty ends.

 

If you were curious about gaming performance, I run Guild Wars 2 at 1600x900 with medium-high settings with a locked 30 FPS, Diablo 3 at 720p with high textures with a locked 30 FPS (1600x900 or 1080p kill it for some reason), Heroes of the Storm at 1600x900 medium settings with 60-80 FPS. Considering it's a little 13 inch without discrete graphics, I'd say that's pretty damn good.

[Streetguru]

4 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

 

Matebook D with a Ryzen 5 2500U is likely the best Ryzen APU machine.

They really need to be $500 and under though

[Emberstone]

23 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Matebook D with a Ryzen 5 2500U is likely the best Ryzen APU machine.

They really need to be $500 and under though

I was okay paying ~$800 for the R7's performance coupled with the really tanky build quality I got, but yeah objectively worse laptops running the same chips aren't being sold for much cheaper. But yeah, if you can't find the Ryzen 5 model for the $650 price tag I mentioned, you might be better off getting an i5-8250U machine coupled with an MX150 for a similar price unless you need eight threads.

 

I wanted eight threads and the Vega 10 since I'm a CS major who often plays Guild Wars 2 or Heroes of the Storm at school between classes (I spend 30+ hrs a week there), so I went that route.

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

 

Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 have the same 4 core/8 thread counts with a tiny difference in clock speeds. GPU difference if any is also negligible.

[Emberstone]

5 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 have the same 4 core/8 thread counts with a tiny difference in clock speeds. GPU difference if any is also negligible.

I disagree about the GPU. I play Guild Wars 2 at 1600x900 so I can crank up antialiasing, spell effects, and textures and keep a locked 30 FPS doing most content, but this guy just at 1080p all low can barely keep 20 FPS unless he's in an empty zone killing random creeps. If I match his settings, I still run around 15-20% better.

 

And I'm on the 15 watt model, while he's on the 25 watt model. There's definitely a difference.

 

 

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

 

There's only a 2 CU difference, and the clock speed gap can probably be closed with Software.

 

It's likely the same iGPU difference in the R3 2200G and R5 2400G being 8 vs 11? CUs.

 

The biggest thing that would help Ryzen APUs is if GDDR5/6 were used for the system memory, as the APUs are almost entirely memory bottlenecked.
 

 

[Emberstone]

9 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

There's only a 2 CU difference

You are right implying that 25% more CU's didn't equate to 25% better performance in my case, but it's still notable.

 

I wouldn't recommend a 2700U either unless you have a specific reason for it like I did, but effectively reasoning that it's pointless is a little shortsighted IMO (and I wouldn't try to make up clockspeed in software on Ryzen mobile. Given TDP limitations, GPU clock and usage also affect CPU clock speeds, even at stock on both 15 and 25 watt models.).

 

Just think of your use case and buy the best you can afford. That's what I did.

[jonrosalia]

be picky about the stupid stuff you have to deal with like track pad performance and keyboard feel what ports it has and where are they.don't worry so much about cpu performance thats kinda stuck now with thermals being the biggest issues now just don't buy a base model cpu atom is trash i3 has always sucked and the ryzen 3 is just as useless so its 5 or 7 pick a platform and grab the best everything else you need from it ports battery size screen that stuff is what to think about with a laptop the biggest issue is sound in laptops not cpu choice i5 and i7 are good to go all the way back to gen 2 still for most people.

 

best for money right to me now is the old MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012 with the i5 or i7 and a new ssd and ram upgrade best keyboard outside of dell desktops for typing best trackpad along as you use Mac OS the low resolution of the screen is made up for by the colors it produces and its a all aluminum unibody you can take everything out of with 4 screw drivers to a bare aluminum frame the battery is a 5 minute swap the HHD is also 5 minutes along with a OSX reinstall that only took me 30 minutes when I gave up trying to run raid 0 on it since Mac osx high Sierra wont support it on a OS level because that makes a 2012 MacBook better than a new air mine was $700 all in with a new keyboard for it 2 new ssds a adapter for the optical drive to put the second in its place and 16gb of ddr3 ram and 2 power adapters for home and work I tried to beat it with a windows pc it wont happen at this price I don't like the Mac OS that much but I have a iPhone and it forwards my texts to my Mac for me and if I'm searching on my phone it has a pop up that I can just move it over to the Mac its stills supported for the new OS coming out this fall also. 

[ShadowChaser]

Personally, the XiaoMi Notebooks withan 8th gen i5/i7 and an MX 150 are really good for the price, especially since they come with an NVMe ssd AND you can add a sata ssd on top of that. It was a little underpowered for my style of work but it is a lot better than lugging around a quad core workstation from a few generations back. Windows 10 Pro, glass trackpad, surprisingly good display if you can find someone to calibrate it, and powerful for its size/price. Only downside is the battery size at just under 50wHr. I got 6 hours of note taking and writing/web browsing, or about 2 hours of CAD work on a single charge. It does support USB-PD power banks and with one of those I'm getting true full day battery (12+hr). Total: notebook ~$750, 500gb sata ssd ~$100, battery ~$50, $900 all in for a super portable laptop on the go, while having it charge in your bag.

[ShadowChaser]

3 hours ago, jonrosalia said:

-snip-

still rocking a 2007 macbook. C2Ds are still great when you're on a budget.

 

I would personally ditch the optical drive and install a secondary storage drive on top of the stock one to get SSD+HDD. If only Apple products nowadays were still so ez to upgrade.

[jonrosalia]

Just now, ShadowChaser said:

still rocking a 2007 macbook. C2Ds are still great when you're on a budget.

 

I would personally ditch the optical drive and install a secondary storage drive on top of the stock one to get SSD+HDD. If only Apple products nowadays were still so ez to upgrade.

 the white MacBook is not terrible agreed but make sure you put the OS on the ssd because the old spinning drives are terrible I went strait to dual ssd with the adapter for my 2012 13" pro. 

 

I say not worth it in 2018 because of lack of forward support more than the limited specs because some people just check email and browse youtube and 4gb of ram is enough for that and Mac can run on almost nothing for a cpu.

the problems are that its not getting the next OSX and it only came in core duo with max 4GB of  ddr2 ram at 667mhz so its going to eventually be just as broken as a mountain lion OSX computer in a few years where they aren't going to support the new protocols for the web browsers and also Mac support for them will start to error out on their site when you are to out of date I had this problem when I had to load mountain lion on my 13" 2012 after the SSD swap it was a trip trying to update it to High Sierra from the internet boot option and then try to get the apple web site to stop acting like I'm a threat because of security issues with the outdated OS and me trying to log into my account.