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My experience with laptops is that the most usable ones have a low TDP CPU with integrated graphics. This avoids overheating as much as possible, which means yo

My experience with laptops is that the most usable ones have a low TDP CPU with integrated graphics. This avoids overheating as much as possible, which means you get full CPU power for much longer, as well as having a longer battery life. To make sure it doesn't feel sluggish, get one with a lot of RAM and (NVMe) SSDs. I dislike the lack of ports nowadays, but USB-C makes up for it. You can get USB-C dongles that provide Ethernet, HDMI/DisplayPort, some more USB ports and USB-PD passthrough all at the same time, so they replace a complete docking station, but they still fit in your hand. That and the fact that I can use the same charger or powerbank for the laptop, phone and the latest Raspberry Pies is great.

nilpunning 5y ago
Good points. Recent high end laptops suffer from terrible heat throttling. Recently I've resorted to buying a cheap old server to do most my work on. The old machine is significantly faster than my company issued 2019 Macbook Pro due to having great big fans and heat sinks, despite being 1/6 the price. Next laptop I purchase will have a lower TDP CPU like you mention and basically just be a terminal to the server.
tryptophan 5y ago
About the heat-> I agree so much. I found that disabling turbo boost caused an imperceptible drop in performance, but a very noticeable decrease in heat and fan usage. I also used to undervolt the CPU after doing this. Shame that intel blocked this ability on 11th gen+ chips.