7 ms·

Which Ryzen laptop currently competes with the latest macbooks in terms of form factor, performance, battery life and build quality? I'm honestly asking, I've

by skohan 6y ago

Which Ryzen laptop currently competes with the latest macbooks in terms of form factor, performance, battery life and build quality? I'm honestly asking, I've been thinking about getting a Linux laptop in a while and I would be curious to see what the playing field is like

BadOakOx 6y ago
Dave2D just reviewed the new surface laptop comparing it to the new MacBook Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKN9nvXTGHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKN9nvXTGHE ...and he got pretty good battery life (11 hours on his own benchmark). edit: form factor, performance, build quality.. is also up there, I just didn't mention it, because I think the battery life is the killer feature of the M1.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Microsoft is almost always a generation behind with tech in surface products it's ridiculous because they look so appealing otherwise. I just feel like I'm buying last years model on launch.
  - hhh 6y ago
    I haven’t really felt this way with the Surface Book. The first gen was rough, but I’ve been using an SB3 for several months now and have nothing but praise for it.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    That is really a problem only if you watch tech news. In reality people use computers for years, so having a 4 or 5 year old tech doesn't really matter that much.
    - zepto 6y ago
      It means the usable life is shorter, so even if it’s fine for a while, you need to think of it as a much more expensive device per useful year.
      - yoz-y 6y ago
        Sadly, with the current trends I think the device will be more likely rendered by an irreparable hardware failure before it reaches end of life due to speed.
        zepto 6y ago
        I mean that seems inevitable. I have a 2014 retina iMac. At some point in the next few years, I’ll probably replace it with an M series iMac, and then put Linux on it. It’s hard to imagine that it will ever really reach end of life due to speed at that point.
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      Developers should be upgrading on 2-3 year cycles max - the leap in performance of 2 generations noticeably impacts performance and unless you're doing some really trivial stuff - performance matters. Check out Chrome build time benchmarks between 3/4xxx and 5xxx series (or any dev tool related benchmarks). 10-20% off your iteration cycle is noticeable - and that's a single generation jump. Increasing iteration speed is a big productivity boosts, seeing professionals with 5+ year old devices is just ridiculous to me, you spend 8+ hours on that device - investing 2000$ for an upgrade every two years is not that much to ask.
      - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
        Personally I'd like if developers stayed a couple of generations behind on their computers, so the rest of us aren't forced to upgrade regularly to keep software running at a decent speed.
      - yoz-y 6y ago
        Developers may have a reason to upgrade (many don't as ssh isn't going to get any faster-er with a fancy new CPU), but they constitute the part of people that read tech news. This is a minuscule part of general population. Compiling Chrome is a nice benchmark but in reality dev cycles are quite smaller (or you might want to optimize your toolchain). Finally, it's quite common for developers to forget the kind of hardware their users are running on. Then they produce software that only runs well on the next gen hardware. If you develop on a beast, then at least test whatever you are producing on a 3-4 year old machine to see how it will work for the clients.
- ZuLuuuuuu 6y ago
  It is a good battery life for a PC laptop but it is still significantly behind of M1 based Macs while also having significantly lower single core benchmarks compared to M1. And the performance difference is even bigger when both laptops are on battery power.
eertami 6y ago
Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.
- boboche 6y ago
  AMEN to that. I still use my fully repairable MBP 2010 for web surfing and light tasks (with 8GB and a SSD its fine). On the Keyboard note, I've bought an expensive Eurocom (Clevo) Xeon laptop that had keyboard issues after a few years. Its not only apple that did bad with bad keyboard on expensive products (Fortunately I could repair it myself for 50$). Today apple product should ship with rossman videos and a SMD workstation if you plan to use them more than 3yrs ;)
- theshrike79 6y ago
  Are you aware that the latest generation has a new keyboard? It's not the fiasco that the previous super-slim one was.
  - eertami 6y ago
    Once bitten, twice shy. I considered that keyboard to be designed to fail. I'm not interested in gambling that another component won't fail the same way. It's easier to use products that have not demonstrated such designed failures. The good news however is that due to this garbage tier engineering I've discovered that desktop Linux is more stable for me than post-Catalina OSX - I'd have probably never found this out otherwise.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      Designed to fail is preposterous. Apple lost a ton of money due to that problem, both directly in paying for repairs, and indirectly in damage to their stock price. It's pretty clear what happened, and it's unfortunate but banal: someone went too far with making the key mechanism as thin as possible, and all plastic to make it easier to manufacture. Ends up the plastic wasn't strong enough for the little pins in the mechanism. That's it. Just an ordinary design mistake. Embarrassing but no conspiracy. FWIW they've resolved it. The keyboard on this M1 MBA is perfectly fine.
gambler 6y ago
Form factor and build quality are not something AMD can control by making a better CPU architecture.
- Macha 6y ago
  Not entirely for sure, but form factor is limited by thermal requirements (well, mostly, Apple and other OEMs have gotten into trouble by ignoring this in the past, like the first i9 macs), and that is influenced by cpu architecture.
- skohan 6y ago
  True, but if I am considering an alternative to an M1 mac, I have to look at more than processor specs to decide if it's worth it
echlipse 6y ago
Probably a Thinkpad. But depends on completely the type of work you wanna do. With anything you end up buying it's a long term investment. So whichever gets your job done and whichever has a good build quality (also something which you can easily upgrade yourself and repair easily) is the one you should buy.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  Thinkpads feel well made but the screens are mostly terrible and the trackpad design is very dated. I’m not sure why Lenovo doesn’t use better IPS panels, they can’t be saving that much margin from them.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    Not a huge sample size, but the screen on my X1 Nano looks excellent. Competitive with my 2018 11” iPad Pro’s screen visually, if a bit lower PPI. That’s one of the highest end ThinkPads though, so I guess that’s to be expected. Have heard that getting a good panel on more mainstream models like the T-series can be tough.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I love the dated trackpad design, specially when combined with the rubber mouse.
smoldesu 6y ago
I had an Ideapad 5 (4800u) for a few months, it was a great little Ryzen laptop. Battery life was 7-10 hours of "real" use, CPU performance is righteous, and build quality is pretty surprising for sub-$500. Great little Linux laptop!

by skohan 6y ago

BadOakOx 6y ago

Dave2D just reviewed the new surface laptop comparing it to the new MacBook Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKN9nvXTGHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKN9nvXTGHE ...and he got pretty good battery life (11 hours on his own benchmark). edit: form factor, performance, build quality.. is also up there, I just didn't mention it, because I think the battery life is the killer feature of the M1.

reader_mode 6y ago
Microsoft is almost always a generation behind with tech in surface products it's ridiculous because they look so appealing otherwise. I just feel like I'm buying last years model on launch.
- hhh 6y ago
  I haven’t really felt this way with the Surface Book. The first gen was rough, but I’ve been using an SB3 for several months now and have nothing but praise for it.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  That is really a problem only if you watch tech news. In reality people use computers for years, so having a 4 or 5 year old tech doesn't really matter that much.
  - zepto 6y ago
    It means the usable life is shorter, so even if it’s fine for a while, you need to think of it as a much more expensive device per useful year.
    - yoz-y 6y ago
      Sadly, with the current trends I think the device will be more likely rendered by an irreparable hardware failure before it reaches end of life due to speed.
      - zepto 6y ago
        I mean that seems inevitable. I have a 2014 retina iMac. At some point in the next few years, I’ll probably replace it with an M series iMac, and then put Linux on it. It’s hard to imagine that it will ever really reach end of life due to speed at that point.
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    Developers should be upgrading on 2-3 year cycles max - the leap in performance of 2 generations noticeably impacts performance and unless you're doing some really trivial stuff - performance matters. Check out Chrome build time benchmarks between 3/4xxx and 5xxx series (or any dev tool related benchmarks). 10-20% off your iteration cycle is noticeable - and that's a single generation jump. Increasing iteration speed is a big productivity boosts, seeing professionals with 5+ year old devices is just ridiculous to me, you spend 8+ hours on that device - investing 2000$ for an upgrade every two years is not that much to ask.
    - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
      Personally I'd like if developers stayed a couple of generations behind on their computers, so the rest of us aren't forced to upgrade regularly to keep software running at a decent speed.
    - yoz-y 6y ago
      Developers may have a reason to upgrade (many don't as ssh isn't going to get any faster-er with a fancy new CPU), but they constitute the part of people that read tech news. This is a minuscule part of general population. Compiling Chrome is a nice benchmark but in reality dev cycles are quite smaller (or you might want to optimize your toolchain). Finally, it's quite common for developers to forget the kind of hardware their users are running on. Then they produce software that only runs well on the next gen hardware. If you develop on a beast, then at least test whatever you are producing on a 3-4 year old machine to see how it will work for the clients.
ZuLuuuuuu 6y ago
It is a good battery life for a PC laptop but it is still significantly behind of M1 based Macs while also having significantly lower single core benchmarks compared to M1. And the performance difference is even bigger when both laptops are on battery power.

eertami 6y ago

Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.

boboche 6y ago
AMEN to that. I still use my fully repairable MBP 2010 for web surfing and light tasks (with 8GB and a SSD its fine). On the Keyboard note, I've bought an expensive Eurocom (Clevo) Xeon laptop that had keyboard issues after a few years. Its not only apple that did bad with bad keyboard on expensive products (Fortunately I could repair it myself for 50$). Today apple product should ship with rossman videos and a SMD workstation if you plan to use them more than 3yrs ;)
theshrike79 6y ago
Are you aware that the latest generation has a new keyboard? It's not the fiasco that the previous super-slim one was.
- eertami 6y ago
  Once bitten, twice shy. I considered that keyboard to be designed to fail. I'm not interested in gambling that another component won't fail the same way. It's easier to use products that have not demonstrated such designed failures. The good news however is that due to this garbage tier engineering I've discovered that desktop Linux is more stable for me than post-Catalina OSX - I'd have probably never found this out otherwise.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Designed to fail is preposterous. Apple lost a ton of money due to that problem, both directly in paying for repairs, and indirectly in damage to their stock price. It's pretty clear what happened, and it's unfortunate but banal: someone went too far with making the key mechanism as thin as possible, and all plastic to make it easier to manufacture. Ends up the plastic wasn't strong enough for the little pins in the mechanism. That's it. Just an ordinary design mistake. Embarrassing but no conspiracy. FWIW they've resolved it. The keyboard on this M1 MBA is perfectly fine.

gambler 6y ago

Form factor and build quality are not something AMD can control by making a better CPU architecture.

Macha 6y ago
Not entirely for sure, but form factor is limited by thermal requirements (well, mostly, Apple and other OEMs have gotten into trouble by ignoring this in the past, like the first i9 macs), and that is influenced by cpu architecture.
skohan 6y ago
True, but if I am considering an alternative to an M1 mac, I have to look at more than processor specs to decide if it's worth it

echlipse 6y ago

Probably a Thinkpad. But depends on completely the type of work you wanna do. With anything you end up buying it's a long term investment. So whichever gets your job done and whichever has a good build quality (also something which you can easily upgrade yourself and repair easily) is the one you should buy.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago
Thinkpads feel well made but the screens are mostly terrible and the trackpad design is very dated. I’m not sure why Lenovo doesn’t use better IPS panels, they can’t be saving that much margin from them.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Not a huge sample size, but the screen on my X1 Nano looks excellent. Competitive with my 2018 11” iPad Pro’s screen visually, if a bit lower PPI. That’s one of the highest end ThinkPads though, so I guess that’s to be expected. Have heard that getting a good panel on more mainstream models like the T-series can be tough.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I love the dated trackpad design, specially when combined with the rubber mouse.

smoldesu 6y ago

I had an Ideapad 5 (4800u) for a few months, it was a great little Ryzen laptop. Battery life was 7-10 hours of "real" use, CPU performance is righteous, and build quality is pretty surprising for sub-$500. Great little Linux laptop!