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But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the

But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. It is probably the best laptop in the $1K price range for laptops that don't have a GPU, but that's basically it. The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality control that confuse consumers and leave them unhappy. This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing, say, gaming performance over battery life while optimizing price or vice-versa. Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer frustration comes from the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers expect to be able to close their laptop and for it to preserve battery instead of becoming hot or dying the bag. That really needs a solution.

caycep 3y ago
of note: MacBook Air actually has a decent GPU...
samatman 3y ago
> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. People love to say this without linking to a model. That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters will understand what I mean, but let's start there.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Personally, I'm ok with getting 2nd hand business grade models off Ebay. They're generally pretty good (and cheap). But a lot of people (especially the less technically inclined) will only buy brand new, which I think is for safety. Anyway, 2nd hand laptops on Ebay can be both really good and in that price range. :)
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    I'm not sure it makes sense to compare new laptops with used laptops, especially since the latter generally don't come with any sort of warranty. And when you're buying off ebay (and can't inspect beforehand, like with craigslist/nextdoor), you don't even know for sure if it will work on day 1.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm kind of 50/50 about comparing them for the purposes of this conversation too. In practical terms though, when I'm looking for a new laptop I do check both pricing of new and what's on Ebay. Sometimes I'll go with the new thing, and other times I'll get the Ebay thing, depending on the situation.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        I always keep an eye on those, but certified refurbished from manufacturers (whether Apple or Dell or HP, etc) are really good deals, quite often, and a known quantity. I've no problem buying certified refurbished for work, whereas for home eBay off-lease is more acceptable because I know it's me dealing with issues if they crop up.
        gnicholas 3y ago
        Yeah, I've bought refurb Apple devices from Apple, partly because they're always in pristine cosmetic condition, but mostly because you can buy AppleCare for them just as if they were new.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - jwagenet 3y ago
      I think for the general public this is a reasonable comparison, since the performance is good enough for most things on a 2 year old eng pc for less than half the msrp. I would expect most corporate refurbs on eBay to be moderately reputable, and eBay is know to be consumer friendly.
- rfoo 3y ago
  > same weight class as a MacBook Except that there are plenty? As long as you avoid Dell it's easy to find a good deal. Oh, and I prefer plastic. Aluminum adds weight for nothing.
  - konart 3y ago
    Why not just name a few with links to benchmarks, temperature and battery profile etc?
  - jiqiren 3y ago
    lol reply guy didn't leave a model name either...
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  > not in the same weight class as a MacBook Which might not be a consideration whatsoever. It isn't for me; I bring my laptop to the office, or from the office, and am never using it where weight makes one bit of difference.
  - theultdev 3y ago
    Speaking for myself, weight and battery life are the two most important factors for a portable. I mainly use a desktop if I'm at home or the office. I only use a laptop occasionally in bed or heavily when traveling.
  - n42 3y ago
    “Weight class” as in “League”, not weight
  - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    Commuting to/from an office is usually a prime example of when a laptop's weight would matter.
    - dividedbyzero 3y ago
      Commutes can be very different, too. Someone who walks and uses public transport will feel differently about the weight of their laptop than someone who just has to lug theirs to their car and across the parking lot. Same with travel: Flying with just a carry-on bag and crossing big airports on foot makes lightweight laptops a lot more attractive.
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      Again, not for me. I throw it in a backpack and because I'm in the US without good public transport, the distance I carry it is precisely from my house to my car (25'), then from the parking garage to the office. I "carry" it maybe a total of 3 minutes. The weight is literally not an issue for me. I get it can be for others, but not EVERYONE.
- silisili 3y ago
  Are we talking weight class as in weight or performance? I find the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 'in the weight class' with about the same weight, but with a less performant CPU and not as high res screen. It's also 8/256, has good battery life, and is fine for a lot of workloads. It can be had for $400ish factory recertified, or 100-200 more new brand new depending on sales. Keep in mind I'm not saying that the two go toe to toe here, I'm just listing a lightweight alternative.
  - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
    This is an excellent laptop, I've found it to be great. Plenty of people can't stand chromeos, but you can run linux in vm mode, I find the ability to have a safe env but run any x / linux apps natively makes for a very compelling combo. You can run emacs, any x-windows software like dev tools natively. I also like the ability to run android apps - with the limitation that some app disallow running them unless they are on a 'native' phone; over time it seems more and more mainstream apps allow this.
    - silisili 3y ago
      Yep same. I wanted a cheap decent laptop for when I'm traveling, which isn't often, so didn't want or need best of the best. It dawned on me I spend about all my time on the web, in vs code, or on the command line. With their Linux VM setup I can install about anything, and it both installs and runs as if it were a native app. Perfect for my use case, at least. I'm not a huge fan of the ChromeOS UI and whatnot, but spend very little time interacting with it or Gnome on my main machine, so it's fine enough.
- wfhBrian 3y ago
  The other issue with linking is that the "best" in the windows market is that it's heavily dependent on current promotions. It's easy to find windows laptops discounted >20% which really throws off the direct comparisons at retail prices.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well. Weight is very much light enough for me. Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs
  - moolcool 3y ago
    A big factor is how these machines age too, though. 4 years ago the 2020 M1 Macbook Air dropped, and it's still a fantastic computer today. On the other hand, I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today
    - HumblyTossed 3y ago
      Why not? It benchmarks really good: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600U&id=4284 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600U&i... Here's the M1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz&id=4104 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320...
      - moolcool 3y ago
        I'm just thinking more in terms of hardware. Trackpad, keyboard, display, hinges, ports, support, battery life-- all of those (in my experience) tend to either be poor out of the box or decay rapidly for many machines. I've used an "enterprise" HP laptop that's just a couple years old recently-- the battery is totally cooked and it feels like it's made out of takeout containers.
        HumblyTossed 3y ago
        I'm a year and a half in and everything is running smooth. I still get a full workday out of the battery - and that's using Linux. That's plenty for me. It opens smooth. The keyboard is good - no deck flex. The screen is fine - even at only 300nits I don't need it brighter as I don't work in bright areas. I really really don't see how this won't last another 2 and half years or even more.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Hard to be when other oems need to profit from hardware and pay windows/Intel/Nvidia/etc. For using their parts. But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Apple just metaphorically throws out a MacBook at the slightest inconvenience, they don't even bother trying to fix their own devices.
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    > But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Do they? At least for the slimmer models, I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess ultrabooks, yes. everything is so crammed and specs are relatively low, so you're mostly stuck with what comes in the machine. Most other laptops (the "pro" competitors) tend to not do that. There's no good reason for an OEM to do that if they aren't optimizing for some sub 4lb laptop.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        It's part of the reason Apple has so few SKUs compared to others, because everything is conjoined; Dell will have five SKUs that are identical except two removable pieces (RAM and SSD) are varying sizes.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  > I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" I think “class” is the term you’re looking for. Or ballpark.
- Our_Benefactors 3y ago
  The term you’re looking for is “caliber”, since many will interpret “weight class” to mean the actual weight of the laptop.
  - ecopoesis 3y ago
    > “caliber” What are you talking about? Laptops aren't even round.</literal>
    - paulmd 3y ago
      also, there isn’t even a barrel let alone any sort of rifling? So how could we conceivably measure laptops in terms of barrel length if there’s no diameter or length? I just don’t see the metaphor here /s
- bowsamic 3y ago
  > Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters will understand what I mean, but let's start there. Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will always misinterpret it
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    > Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will always misinterpret it I've always wondered why that is. No other community I'm active in insists so much on explicitly spelling out everything and very literal language – most will actually reward playing with language, if done well. Writing as if targeting Commander Data seems to work quite well though.
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      This might come off as projection, but in my experience, HN has a lot of people who pride themselves on their rationality, and part of this is giving off the image of never joking and always being serious. You can see this when people get mass downvoted for making jokes, which is also uncommon in other programming communities. Somehow this often spills over into metaphors as well as jokes. I think that jokes and metaphors are quite similar in that regard, both not to be taken totally seriously and/or literally. The HN insistence of being above jokes inevitably leads to being above metaphors.
    - e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
      Tech is known for being international, and even in the US is staffed with a lot of foreign-born labour. I don't find it surprising that a community with a high amount of non-native speakers sometimes misinterprets metaphors.
  - silisili 3y ago
    It's just not a good metaphor in this case, where weight is an actual determining factor. In boxing, weight class is literally your weight, saying nothing of your power. League or class would have probably been better here.
- switch007 3y ago
  > People love to say this without linking to a model Because they all have a crap screens (1920x1080) and bad battery life and we would point it out lol
moralestapia 3y ago
>But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives Can you show me just one of those, please? I would buy it today.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
I bought a laptop for about $600 with a GPU (RTX 3050). The display... is not comparable. Sure, it's 144hz compared to the Mac's 60hz... but it's only 74% NTSC at 250 nits with 1080p, so the color accuracy and dim picture is distractingly bad. And as for sleep, it's just useless. You close it with 70% at night and it's dead by morning. Supposedly the battery is the same size, but even when it's awake, the battery never makes it last more than ~2 hours. Also, that's two hours... when I'm not gaming, as I painfully learned when trying to download a Windows ISO. When I'm gaming, well, then it's shorter. I might as well mention the thick, heavy, completely plastic construction. Feels like it will shatter from one drop. On the upside I managed to upgrade it from 8GB to 16GB... but then I'm wondering why this laptop even shipped with 8GB in the first place. Ultimately though, it runs Windows with a basic GPU. Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  As a dissenting example, I got a 14" Lenovo Ideapad with a Ryzen 7 for $250 on Ebay. It's got a nice 1440p HDR display, a great iGPU for gaming at low-power, and an 8-core CPU. If you want an ultrabook experience, get ultrabook hardware.
- Teever 3y ago
  > Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon. I had no problems with Fusion360 running under Rosetta 2 and Autodesk recently released an Apple Silicon version of Fusion360.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of SolidWorks and Alibre which aren't so web-based.
    - Solvency 3y ago
      Switch to Fusion or Rhino/Grasshopper.
    - johnwalkr 3y ago
justin66 3y ago
> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives I would pay more for an acceptable alternative - no fan, Windows 11, good battery life, top quality screen, no gimmick features (touchscreen! detachable screen! whatever). No such thing exists, as far as I can tell.
- theultdev 3y ago
  Don't forget the touch pad / gesture recognition. You can tell Windows laptops are general computers, the hardware fires off the gesture recognition and gives the command to the OS, so you swipe, it's recognized, then you get the action. On Mac, the gesture is registered as it's happening, you can pull the screen, cancel, flick it, etc. Not to mention the convenience of taking it to any Apple store and the battery life. I game on Windows, host on Linux, and travel with Apple.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Can you explain technically the hardware difference here? Or is there none and Apple's track firmware/software is just better.
    - tnmom 3y ago
      Probably some vendor provides the trackpad, and provides a driver for that trackpad, and it recognizes the gesture and then sends Windows a `GestureHappened()` event. Versus macOS being fully integrated and effectively generating `GestureProgress(0.31)` events.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - vient 3y ago
    I don't notice anything unusual in that sense on MSI laptop with Linux. I start pinching, browser immediately performs gradual zoom. Swiping with 3 fingers immediately starts a "desktop switch" which is controlled by my movement - so I can pause, revert the gesture, and you will see on the screen exactly what you expect, second desktop partially showing, pausing, and then going back. Can't test on Windows right now but I would expect it to have even less problems than Linux.
szundi 3y ago
Sorry but 400 is peanuts to beat Apple’s simplest in build quality, touchpad and performance
DataDive 3y ago
Oh yeah? Please link to a model, just one in the 500-600 range that is comparable to a 1K Apple model. I have owned half a dozen Windows laptops in the past, in all kinds of price ranges, cheaper and far more expensive than a Macbook Air. None were even remotely comparable to the build quality and practicality of a Macbook Air. This was true even in the Intel CPU era. In the M processor era, the gap only increased. You cannot even do research on a good Windows laptop because the makers constantly change the model numbers to confuse the customer and hide the flaws of these systems. You buy a Windows laptop then either the screen, the battery life, the touchpad or the keyboard will suck ... maybe all four. The sole reason to buy a Windows laptop and put up with all these flaws is playing games. If you need that you will put up with all that crap.
- rkangel 3y ago
  The parent isn't saying that there are $500 laptops that are as good as $1k Air. They're saying that there are $500 laptops that are "good enough" for most people's use. Personally for home use I buy pre-owned Thinkpads and then put Linux on them. They're fine for normal use - Internet, Email and light to moderate SW Development. The screens are mediocre, but I pay £300-£400 (UK). Oh and I don't care about battery age because replacements are inexpensive and require sliding one catch to make the replacement. Yes, for work I want something more performant and I'm considering pushing work to get me a Macbook (instead of the high-spec Thinkpad I currently have), but that's a different use case.
  - havaloc 3y ago
    $500 laptops are good enough until they have to call over a tech consultant (me) to work through some issues once every 3 months. At trip charge of $65 each, they aren't saving money with a $500 laptop - and then the battery gives out 2.5 years later. This isn't theoretical, it happens all the time. I worked with a person who had a 10 year old MacBook Air - it still worked and held a charge! They got their money's worth.
  - DataDive 3y ago
    Good enough is not the correct term. The other day I bought a 30 dollar phone, https://www.walmart.com/ip/Walmart-Family-Mobile-BLU-View-4-32GB-Black-Prepaid-Smartphone-Locked-to-Walmart-Famiy-Mobile/1171053786 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Walmart-Family-Mobile-BLU-View-4-... it has all the functionality that you might need it has map, a browser, runs facebook and twitter apps, tiktok what else do you need can I use that as an argument that why buy an iPhone for 1K if you can get a great phone for $30 - no because when you talk about phones or laptop you are talking about comparable products what I was saying that you cannot buy the same value you get with a Macbook in any laptop product
xutopia 3y ago
I disagree with your assessment. Things that matter to me and that all Windows laptops in the same price range or lower as the MBA have shittier speakers, camera, monitor (both brightness and color accuracy). The trackpad feels entirely wrong on those plastic devices and often you have loud fans turning on at random times. Furthermore they're usually heavier despite being made out of plastic rather than metal.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Why has it been so utterly impossible for a single Windows laptop manufacturer to match the build quality? Just matching the body itself would at last be SOMETHING.
  - xutopia 3y ago
    I suspect it has to do with the effect of scale. Apple operates with limited number of models and that means they get volume for each mould and assembly lines. If you did 20000 laptops of one model versus 2 million you can definitely can put way more thought into every detail and that translates into higher quality.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Because you're not looking hard enough.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      So post some links.
      - akshayt 3y ago
        The zephyrus g14 2023 should be in the same ballpark https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-165hz-gaming-laptop-qhd-amd-ryzen-9-with-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060-512gb-ssd-moonlight-white/6535495.p?skuId=6535495 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-165hz-... The 2023 version is made from magnesium alloy with plastic at the back while the macbook is unibody aluminium. The 2024 version is aluminium unibody like the macbook and the new speakers are nearly as good as macbook ones from the reviews I have read. However I have only been able to find the 4070 model which is much more expensive than the macbook. There is also the XPS 14 but it is also more expensive than the macbook Edit :- Found a 4060 model of the g14 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-2024-14-oled-3k-120hz-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-9-8945hs-16gb-lpddr5x-geforce-rtx-4060-1tb-ssd-platinum-white/6570270.p?skuId=6570270 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-2024-14-o... If you get the m3 air with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd the g14 is 100 dollars more expensive but the price will probably drop to lower than the macbook in sales
Analemma_ 3y ago
> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, I don't think this true, unless you have extremely low standards for "acceptable". I've tried a number of $400 laptops and in every single case got fed up with the shittiness within minutes.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer frustration comes from the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers expect to be able to close their laptop and for it to preserve battery instead of becoming hot or dying the bag. That really needs a solution. Mind boggling that so many smart people at Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this out yet.
- acdha 3y ago
  Here’s a better way to think about it: whose boss thinks that _they_ need to fix something as opposed to all of those other people? If your MacBook had a problem everyone involved knows that Tim Cook is going to pull their bosses into his office and ask why he’s reading a news story about unhappy users. In the PC or Android world you have coordinate different parties who each have a financial stake in saying that their part is working but the other guys screwed up. This is an area where I think part of the solution should be regulatory: require manufacturers to take back defective devices within a much longer period of time after the initial sale, for example, or requiring them to cash out advertised features which don’t work reliably.
- NotSammyHagar 3y ago
  It's the heterogenous combination of multiple and constantly changing hardware requiring tweaks or adjustments to the sleep modes. It's not satisfactory to write that down but I think that's what's happening.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Mind boggling that so many smart people at Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this out yet. Follow the money. How much demand is there for it, Who's incentivized to fix it, how much does it cost to R&D, and will that feature increase profit margins? The sad workaround is simply SSD's having faster boot times and setting a computer to hibernate instead of sleep when closed (and not on battery). It gets "close enough" for many.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
pmontra 3y ago
> The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market Another way to look at that is "MacOS vs non-MacOS" laptop market. There is only one manufacturer of MacOS laptops. That helps keeping the number of models down. Same thing for the iOS vs non-iOS phone and tablets market. If you want MacOS or iOS you must buy Apple. Hackintoshes do exist but are a rounding error compared to the number of machines Apple sells. And if you want Apple, you must get MacOS and iOS. You can run something else on that hardware, but again we are writing about rounding errors. There are non-MacOS laptop manufacturers with even less models than Apple have. Maybe it's very niche but the Framework laptop has been popular on HN lately and it has only two models. On the other side if you want to buy non-MacOS, then HP, Lenovo or Dell have a zillion of laptops each, ranging from the very low end to the very high end. Some people pick features and look at which models are left with those features (that's me.) Some people pick a price tag instead. Probably the laptop is a commodity to the price tag people, much like gas. Who really cares about the gas company? If you need to fill the tank everything will do. And about > the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep this is something that Microsoft throw at us and we can't dodge it much. My laptop runs Linux and it's from the pre Hybrid Sleep era. I didn't investigate if Linux sleep works well with new laptops.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
About a year and a half ago, I was looking to get a new MBPro to replace my existing one. I loved the hardware, but having used Linux since the alphabet floppies, the software was always meh. So I was in Costco one day and they had cheap Lenovo ideapads (Ideapad 5 Pro 14") on sale for something like $700US. I bought one, put Pop_OS! on it and it's been running great since. Has and AMD processor, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. It's really snappy and best of all it's pretty solid with no deck flex.
- The5thElephant 3y ago
  I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? I have a few friends who are Linux devotees yet watching them do stuff seems so tedious and slow in comparison to my workflows. Like I get that you can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and stuff to do whatever you want, but that's also possible in MacOS, so what is it exactly that you can do better/faster in Pop_OS? For most of my Linux friends they claim it's because they prefer the customization, but in practice it really seems more like they just dislike the Apple ecosystem in principle. I have yet to find a workflow they have that I can't do more easily and faster in MacOS. Similar experience with working in git in the terminal vs GUI apps. So many devs swear the terminal is "faster and more powerful for git" but in practice I am doing basic git functions faster and with fewer errors than they are just using the GitHub desktop app. I would very much like to be proven wrong, I think OS competition is a good thing, I just want to see some practical examples.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    >I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? Having used Linux since forever ago, MacOs was "meh" to me because while it is a unix, it was just different enough for me to find it "meh". IOW, I found it to be "meh" for the fact that it just wasn't Linux. You sound offended, don't be.
    - The5thElephant 3y ago
      I am not offended at all, just curious and your reply confirmed my assumption? Genuinely, how did you get offended out of that?
briffle 3y ago
My Asus zenbook 14 is around that price, has a 1TB disk, and 16GB of ram. I'm sure the processor on the M3 is faster, and probably a fair amount more battery out of it, but now I'm comparing a $1000 zenbook to a $1700 13' macbook once I add disk and memory, without the upgraded cpu.
- Solvency 3y ago
  And it feels like a cheap piece of flexible creaky plastic.
  - Macha 3y ago
    But will probably outlive your MBP keyboard.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - akvadrako 3y ago
    They are all metal.
  - tryptophan 3y ago
    I bought one and it actually feels very well put together. Quiet, pretty 2.8k oled screen, and long battery which is all I really care about.
indymike 3y ago
At $700, you'll out-spec the mac on RAM and GPU but get a potato grade 1080p display.
jwells89 3y ago
As someone who likes to keep at least one machine dedicated to each major OS around at any given time, the thing that’s frustrating about non-Apple laptops is that just about all of them, including machines costing well in excess of base Macbook models, make big tradeoffs somewhere or another. Very few are good all-rounders, even if many are better than Macbooks in one or two aspects. I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1 Carbon for example that had the battery life, silence, and unplugged performance of a Macbook Air for example, but no such machine exists even if I were to spend twice as much as the cost of a MacBook Air.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  > I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1 Carbon for example that had the battery life, silence, and unplugged performance of a Macbook Air Ditto on the Nano. I wind up looking at it every few months and then begrudgingly walking away because it just doesn't make any sense to buy.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    I have the first gen and it’s about the perfect size for an ultraportable in my opinion, and its screen, build, and general feel are great but its battery and CPU are underwhelming at best. The newer gens are even more confusing because they don’t offer the cooler, more efficient U CPU variants, only the hotter more power hungry P variants, which exacerbates heat and battery life issues.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      U chips are just P chips with a tighter power limit, they’re not inherently “more efficient” (same architecture), just a lower cap. is there really anything stopping you from setting a lower cTDP if that’s really what you want?
      - jwells89 3y ago
        Where would you set that? The only PC I’ve seen that lets you explicitly set a target TDP is the Steam Deck, the most I’ve seen elsewhere is the ability to turn off turboboost and limit clock speed. Regardless, a default TDP above that of a U chip in a Nano is still an odd choice given that machine’s lack of cooling and battery capacity resulting from its size. It means that a lot of buyers who have no idea how to reduce it are going to have a subpar experience.
skygazer 3y ago
I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same once opened. I hate them so much. Although, I suspect if I spent as much on a PC that I do on a Mac, we wouldn't have those issues, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on a Windows laptop.
- Thrymr 3y ago
  The reliability issues are real. I have a MacBook Air that is 11 years old now, I haven't done anything but replace the battery, and it still works fine. The only real issue is that the memory is not upgradable, otherwise it would still be a generally useful machine (instead of just light web browsing and Zoom).
  - meatmanek 3y ago
    Certain vintages of Apple laptops have proven more durable than others in my experience. My 2007 MBP went through a battery every 11 months for about 3 cycles before I finally missed the boat on getting that 4th battery replaced under warranty. My 2013 MBA still has a perfectly healthy battery today, though it doesn't see much use and its disk just died yesterday. My 2017 MBP's battery degraded significantly after about 300 or 400 cycles (within spec, I think). A few keys on the keyboard partially failed due to dust or whatever (common in this vintage). The screen had some sort of damage that gave a subtle color cast to parts of the image. The USB-C ports wear out after like 20 insertions and won't hold a cable in place anymore. A year or two ago I replaced the screen and bottom case (keyboard, battery) and it's still doing fine.
Garcia98 3y ago
> The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality control that confuse consumers and leave them unhappy. This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing, say, gaming performance over battery life while optimizing price or vice-versa. This is 100% it, Lenovo has been killing it lately with their Yoga/Slim series, but for every laptop they have that competes with a MacBook, they also have a myriad of other options that are just e-waste. At the end of the day, the average consumer is not going to do the same kind of research that a tech enthusiast might do, and Apple has a somewhat simple catalog (although incredibly overpriced once you step out of the entry configs).
mikepurvis 3y ago
Hybrid sleep being broken is the #1 dealbreaker issue I have with my work-supplied XPS 9570. I know that machine is pretty long in the tooth at this point, but in some ways that actually makes it worse, that it's been all these years and Dell just shrugged and moved on. It really doesn't make me want to reward them with more money, only to find out what exciting new issues will be present and trivially reproducible for the entire next revision of the hardware.
turtlebits 3y ago
I have yet to see a under $1.5k non-Apple laptop with a comparable high res / high quality display.

caycep 3y ago

of note: MacBook Air actually has a decent GPU...

samatman 3y ago

> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, and about $600-$700 for a machine with a discrete GPU. People love to say this without linking to a model. That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters will understand what I mean, but let's start there.

justinclift 3y ago
Personally, I'm ok with getting 2nd hand business grade models off Ebay. They're generally pretty good (and cheap). But a lot of people (especially the less technically inclined) will only buy brand new, which I think is for safety. Anyway, 2nd hand laptops on Ebay can be both really good and in that price range. :)
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I'm not sure it makes sense to compare new laptops with used laptops, especially since the latter generally don't come with any sort of warranty. And when you're buying off ebay (and can't inspect beforehand, like with craigslist/nextdoor), you don't even know for sure if it will work on day 1.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm kind of 50/50 about comparing them for the purposes of this conversation too. In practical terms though, when I'm looking for a new laptop I do check both pricing of new and what's on Ebay. Sometimes I'll go with the new thing, and other times I'll get the Ebay thing, depending on the situation.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I always keep an eye on those, but certified refurbished from manufacturers (whether Apple or Dell or HP, etc) are really good deals, quite often, and a known quantity. I've no problem buying certified refurbished for work, whereas for home eBay off-lease is more acceptable because I know it's me dealing with issues if they crop up.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        Yeah, I've bought refurb Apple devices from Apple, partly because they're always in pristine cosmetic condition, but mostly because you can buy AppleCare for them just as if they were new.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - jwagenet 3y ago
    I think for the general public this is a reasonable comparison, since the performance is good enough for most things on a 2 year old eng pc for less than half the msrp. I would expect most corporate refurbs on eBay to be moderately reputable, and eBay is know to be consumer friendly.
rfoo 3y ago
> same weight class as a MacBook Except that there are plenty? As long as you avoid Dell it's easy to find a good deal. Oh, and I prefer plastic. Aluminum adds weight for nothing.
- konart 3y ago
  Why not just name a few with links to benchmarks, temperature and battery profile etc?
- jiqiren 3y ago
  lol reply guy didn't leave a model name either...
michaelcampbell 3y ago
> not in the same weight class as a MacBook Which might not be a consideration whatsoever. It isn't for me; I bring my laptop to the office, or from the office, and am never using it where weight makes one bit of difference.
- theultdev 3y ago
  Speaking for myself, weight and battery life are the two most important factors for a portable. I mainly use a desktop if I'm at home or the office. I only use a laptop occasionally in bed or heavily when traveling.
- n42 3y ago
  “Weight class” as in “League”, not weight
- BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
  Commuting to/from an office is usually a prime example of when a laptop's weight would matter.
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    Commutes can be very different, too. Someone who walks and uses public transport will feel differently about the weight of their laptop than someone who just has to lug theirs to their car and across the parking lot. Same with travel: Flying with just a carry-on bag and crossing big airports on foot makes lightweight laptops a lot more attractive.
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    Again, not for me. I throw it in a backpack and because I'm in the US without good public transport, the distance I carry it is precisely from my house to my car (25'), then from the parking garage to the office. I "carry" it maybe a total of 3 minutes. The weight is literally not an issue for me. I get it can be for others, but not EVERYONE.
silisili 3y ago
Are we talking weight class as in weight or performance? I find the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 'in the weight class' with about the same weight, but with a less performant CPU and not as high res screen. It's also 8/256, has good battery life, and is fine for a lot of workloads. It can be had for $400ish factory recertified, or 100-200 more new brand new depending on sales. Keep in mind I'm not saying that the two go toe to toe here, I'm just listing a lightweight alternative.
- NotSammyHagar 3y ago
  This is an excellent laptop, I've found it to be great. Plenty of people can't stand chromeos, but you can run linux in vm mode, I find the ability to have a safe env but run any x / linux apps natively makes for a very compelling combo. You can run emacs, any x-windows software like dev tools natively. I also like the ability to run android apps - with the limitation that some app disallow running them unless they are on a 'native' phone; over time it seems more and more mainstream apps allow this.
  - silisili 3y ago
    Yep same. I wanted a cheap decent laptop for when I'm traveling, which isn't often, so didn't want or need best of the best. It dawned on me I spend about all my time on the web, in vs code, or on the command line. With their Linux VM setup I can install about anything, and it both installs and runs as if it were a native app. Perfect for my use case, at least. I'm not a huge fan of the ChromeOS UI and whatnot, but spend very little time interacting with it or Gnome on my main machine, so it's fine enough.
wfhBrian 3y ago
The other issue with linking is that the "best" in the windows market is that it's heavily dependent on current promotions. It's easy to find windows laptops discounted >20% which really throws off the direct comparisons at retail prices.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well. Weight is very much light enough for me. Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs
- moolcool 3y ago
  A big factor is how these machines age too, though. 4 years ago the 2020 M1 Macbook Air dropped, and it's still a fantastic computer today. On the other hand, I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    Why not? It benchmarks really good: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600U&id=4284 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600U&i... Here's the M1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz&id=4104 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320...
    - moolcool 3y ago
      I'm just thinking more in terms of hardware. Trackpad, keyboard, display, hinges, ports, support, battery life-- all of those (in my experience) tend to either be poor out of the box or decay rapidly for many machines. I've used an "enterprise" HP laptop that's just a couple years old recently-- the battery is totally cooked and it feels like it's made out of takeout containers.
      - HumblyTossed 3y ago
        I'm a year and a half in and everything is running smooth. I still get a full workday out of the battery - and that's using Linux. That's plenty for me. It opens smooth. The keyboard is good - no deck flex. The screen is fine - even at only 300nits I don't need it brighter as I don't work in bright areas. I really really don't see how this won't last another 2 and half years or even more.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>That's because the models in this price range are obviously not in the same weight class as a MacBook. Hard to be when other oems need to profit from hardware and pay windows/Intel/Nvidia/etc. For using their parts. But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Apple just metaphorically throws out a MacBook at the slightest inconvenience, they don't even bother trying to fix their own devices.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  > But the upside is that those companies want to make repairs/upgrades easy for themselves, which in turn makes them easy for the saavy consumer to do. Do they? At least for the slimmer models, I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >I was under the impression most have copied Apple and transitioned to soldering and gluing everything into an unserviceable mess ultrabooks, yes. everything is so crammed and specs are relatively low, so you're mostly stuck with what comes in the machine. Most other laptops (the "pro" competitors) tend to not do that. There's no good reason for an OEM to do that if they aren't optimizing for some sub 4lb laptop.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It's part of the reason Apple has so few SKUs compared to others, because everything is conjoined; Dell will have five SKUs that are identical except two removable pieces (RAM and SSD) are varying sizes.
janalsncm 3y ago
> I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" I think “class” is the term you’re looking for. Or ballpark.
Our_Benefactors 3y ago
The term you’re looking for is “caliber”, since many will interpret “weight class” to mean the actual weight of the laptop.
- ecopoesis 3y ago
  > “caliber” What are you talking about? Laptops aren't even round.</literal>
  - paulmd 3y ago
    also, there isn’t even a barrel let alone any sort of rifling? So how could we conceivably measure laptops in terms of barrel length if there’s no diameter or length? I just don’t see the metaphor here /s
bowsamic 3y ago
> Edit: Weight class and weight-of-laptop are not the same thing. I don't know how to explain the idiom "weight class" so that the more... literal-minded Hacker News commenters will understand what I mean, but let's start there. Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will always misinterpret it
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  > Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will always misinterpret it I've always wondered why that is. No other community I'm active in insists so much on explicitly spelling out everything and very literal language – most will actually reward playing with language, if done well. Writing as if targeting Commander Data seems to work quite well though.
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    This might come off as projection, but in my experience, HN has a lot of people who pride themselves on their rationality, and part of this is giving off the image of never joking and always being serious. You can see this when people get mass downvoted for making jokes, which is also uncommon in other programming communities. Somehow this often spills over into metaphors as well as jokes. I think that jokes and metaphors are quite similar in that regard, both not to be taken totally seriously and/or literally. The HN insistence of being above jokes inevitably leads to being above metaphors.
  - e63f67dd-065b 3y ago
    Tech is known for being international, and even in the US is staffed with a lot of foreign-born labour. I don't find it surprising that a community with a high amount of non-native speakers sometimes misinterprets metaphors.
- silisili 3y ago
  It's just not a good metaphor in this case, where weight is an actual determining factor. In boxing, weight class is literally your weight, saying nothing of your power. League or class would have probably been better here.
switch007 3y ago
> People love to say this without linking to a model Because they all have a crap screens (1920x1080) and bad battery life and we would point it out lol

moralestapia 3y ago

>But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives Can you show me just one of those, please? I would buy it today.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

I bought a laptop for about $600 with a GPU (RTX 3050). The display... is not comparable. Sure, it's 144hz compared to the Mac's 60hz... but it's only 74% NTSC at 250 nits with 1080p, so the color accuracy and dim picture is distractingly bad. And as for sleep, it's just useless. You close it with 70% at night and it's dead by morning. Supposedly the battery is the same size, but even when it's awake, the battery never makes it last more than ~2 hours. Also, that's two hours... when I'm not gaming, as I painfully learned when trying to download a Windows ISO. When I'm gaming, well, then it's shorter. I might as well mention the thick, heavy, completely plastic construction. Feels like it will shatter from one drop. On the upside I managed to upgrade it from 8GB to 16GB... but then I'm wondering why this laptop even shipped with 8GB in the first place. Ultimately though, it runs Windows with a basic GPU. Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon.

smoldesu 3y ago
As a dissenting example, I got a 14" Lenovo Ideapad with a Ryzen 7 for $250 on Ebay. It's got a nice 1440p HDR display, a great iGPU for gaming at low-power, and an 8-core CPU. If you want an ultrabook experience, get ultrabook hardware.
Teever 3y ago
> Desktop Parametric CAD isn't coming to Mac anytime soon. I had no problems with Fusion360 running under Rosetta 2 and Autodesk recently released an Apple Silicon version of Fusion360.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of SolidWorks and Alibre which aren't so web-based.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Switch to Fusion or Rhino/Grasshopper.
  - johnwalkr 3y ago

justin66 3y ago

> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives I would pay more for an acceptable alternative - no fan, Windows 11, good battery life, top quality screen, no gimmick features (touchscreen! detachable screen! whatever). No such thing exists, as far as I can tell.

theultdev 3y ago
Don't forget the touch pad / gesture recognition. You can tell Windows laptops are general computers, the hardware fires off the gesture recognition and gives the command to the OS, so you swipe, it's recognized, then you get the action. On Mac, the gesture is registered as it's happening, you can pull the screen, cancel, flick it, etc. Not to mention the convenience of taking it to any Apple store and the battery life. I game on Windows, host on Linux, and travel with Apple.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Can you explain technically the hardware difference here? Or is there none and Apple's track firmware/software is just better.
  - tnmom 3y ago
    Probably some vendor provides the trackpad, and provides a driver for that trackpad, and it recognizes the gesture and then sends Windows a `GestureHappened()` event. Versus macOS being fully integrated and effectively generating `GestureProgress(0.31)` events.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- vient 3y ago
  I don't notice anything unusual in that sense on MSI laptop with Linux. I start pinching, browser immediately performs gradual zoom. Swiping with 3 fingers immediately starts a "desktop switch" which is controlled by my movement - so I can pause, revert the gesture, and you will see on the screen exactly what you expect, second desktop partially showing, pausing, and then going back. Can't test on Windows right now but I would expect it to have even less problems than Linux.

szundi 3y ago

Sorry but 400 is peanuts to beat Apple’s simplest in build quality, touchpad and performance

DataDive 3y ago

Oh yeah? Please link to a model, just one in the 500-600 range that is comparable to a 1K Apple model. I have owned half a dozen Windows laptops in the past, in all kinds of price ranges, cheaper and far more expensive than a Macbook Air. None were even remotely comparable to the build quality and practicality of a Macbook Air. This was true even in the Intel CPU era. In the M processor era, the gap only increased. You cannot even do research on a good Windows laptop because the makers constantly change the model numbers to confuse the customer and hide the flaws of these systems. You buy a Windows laptop then either the screen, the battery life, the touchpad or the keyboard will suck ... maybe all four. The sole reason to buy a Windows laptop and put up with all these flaws is playing games. If you need that you will put up with all that crap.

rkangel 3y ago
The parent isn't saying that there are $500 laptops that are as good as $1k Air. They're saying that there are $500 laptops that are "good enough" for most people's use. Personally for home use I buy pre-owned Thinkpads and then put Linux on them. They're fine for normal use - Internet, Email and light to moderate SW Development. The screens are mediocre, but I pay £300-£400 (UK). Oh and I don't care about battery age because replacements are inexpensive and require sliding one catch to make the replacement. Yes, for work I want something more performant and I'm considering pushing work to get me a Macbook (instead of the high-spec Thinkpad I currently have), but that's a different use case.
- havaloc 3y ago
  $500 laptops are good enough until they have to call over a tech consultant (me) to work through some issues once every 3 months. At trip charge of $65 each, they aren't saving money with a $500 laptop - and then the battery gives out 2.5 years later. This isn't theoretical, it happens all the time. I worked with a person who had a 10 year old MacBook Air - it still worked and held a charge! They got their money's worth.
- DataDive 3y ago
  Good enough is not the correct term. The other day I bought a 30 dollar phone, https://www.walmart.com/ip/Walmart-Family-Mobile-BLU-View-4-32GB-Black-Prepaid-Smartphone-Locked-to-Walmart-Famiy-Mobile/1171053786 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Walmart-Family-Mobile-BLU-View-4-... it has all the functionality that you might need it has map, a browser, runs facebook and twitter apps, tiktok what else do you need can I use that as an argument that why buy an iPhone for 1K if you can get a great phone for $30 - no because when you talk about phones or laptop you are talking about comparable products what I was saying that you cannot buy the same value you get with a Macbook in any laptop product

xutopia 3y ago

I disagree with your assessment. Things that matter to me and that all Windows laptops in the same price range or lower as the MBA have shittier speakers, camera, monitor (both brightness and color accuracy). The trackpad feels entirely wrong on those plastic devices and often you have loud fans turning on at random times. Furthermore they're usually heavier despite being made out of plastic rather than metal.

Solvency 3y ago
Why has it been so utterly impossible for a single Windows laptop manufacturer to match the build quality? Just matching the body itself would at last be SOMETHING.
- xutopia 3y ago
  I suspect it has to do with the effect of scale. Apple operates with limited number of models and that means they get volume for each mould and assembly lines. If you did 20000 laptops of one model versus 2 million you can definitely can put way more thought into every detail and that translates into higher quality.
- izacus 3y ago
  Because you're not looking hard enough.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    So post some links.
    - akshayt 3y ago
      The zephyrus g14 2023 should be in the same ballpark https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-165hz-gaming-laptop-qhd-amd-ryzen-9-with-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4060-512gb-ssd-moonlight-white/6535495.p?skuId=6535495 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-165hz-... The 2023 version is made from magnesium alloy with plastic at the back while the macbook is unibody aluminium. The 2024 version is aluminium unibody like the macbook and the new speakers are nearly as good as macbook ones from the reviews I have read. However I have only been able to find the 4070 model which is much more expensive than the macbook. There is also the XPS 14 but it is also more expensive than the macbook Edit :- Found a 4060 model of the g14 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-2024-14-oled-3k-120hz-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-9-8945hs-16gb-lpddr5x-geforce-rtx-4060-1tb-ssd-platinum-white/6570270.p?skuId=6570270 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-2024-14-o... If you get the m3 air with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd the g14 is 100 dollars more expensive but the price will probably drop to lower than the macbook in sales

Analemma_ 3y ago

> But you can also pay $400 for a number of acceptable alternatives, I don't think this true, unless you have extremely low standards for "acceptable". I've tried a number of $400 laptops and in every single case got fed up with the shittiness within minutes.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> Also my personal opinion is that 90% of consumer frustration comes from the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep between Windows, Intel/AMD, and OEMs. Consumers expect to be able to close their laptop and for it to preserve battery instead of becoming hot or dying the bag. That really needs a solution. Mind boggling that so many smart people at Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this out yet.

acdha 3y ago
Here’s a better way to think about it: whose boss thinks that _they_ need to fix something as opposed to all of those other people? If your MacBook had a problem everyone involved knows that Tim Cook is going to pull their bosses into his office and ask why he’s reading a news story about unhappy users. In the PC or Android world you have coordinate different parties who each have a financial stake in saying that their part is working but the other guys screwed up. This is an area where I think part of the solution should be regulatory: require manufacturers to take back defective devices within a much longer period of time after the initial sale, for example, or requiring them to cash out advertised features which don’t work reliably.
NotSammyHagar 3y ago
It's the heterogenous combination of multiple and constantly changing hardware requiring tweaks or adjustments to the sleep modes. It's not satisfactory to write that down but I think that's what's happening.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Mind boggling that so many smart people at Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this out yet. Follow the money. How much demand is there for it, Who's incentivized to fix it, how much does it cost to R&D, and will that feature increase profit margins? The sad workaround is simply SSD's having faster boot times and setting a computer to hibernate instead of sleep when closed (and not on battery). It gets "close enough" for many.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago

pmontra 3y ago

> The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market Another way to look at that is "MacOS vs non-MacOS" laptop market. There is only one manufacturer of MacOS laptops. That helps keeping the number of models down. Same thing for the iOS vs non-iOS phone and tablets market. If you want MacOS or iOS you must buy Apple. Hackintoshes do exist but are a rounding error compared to the number of machines Apple sells. And if you want Apple, you must get MacOS and iOS. You can run something else on that hardware, but again we are writing about rounding errors. There are non-MacOS laptop manufacturers with even less models than Apple have. Maybe it's very niche but the Framework laptop has been popular on HN lately and it has only two models. On the other side if you want to buy non-MacOS, then HP, Lenovo or Dell have a zillion of laptops each, ranging from the very low end to the very high end. Some people pick features and look at which models are left with those features (that's me.) Some people pick a price tag instead. Probably the laptop is a commodity to the price tag people, much like gas. Who really cares about the gas company? If you need to fill the tank everything will do. And about > the extremely subpar implementation of Hybrid Sleep this is something that Microsoft throw at us and we can't dodge it much. My laptop runs Linux and it's from the pre Hybrid Sleep era. I didn't investigate if Linux sleep works well with new laptops.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

About a year and a half ago, I was looking to get a new MBPro to replace my existing one. I loved the hardware, but having used Linux since the alphabet floppies, the software was always meh. So I was in Costco one day and they had cheap Lenovo ideapads (Ideapad 5 Pro 14") on sale for something like $700US. I bought one, put Pop_OS! on it and it's been running great since. Has and AMD processor, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. It's really snappy and best of all it's pretty solid with no deck flex.

The5thElephant 3y ago
I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? I have a few friends who are Linux devotees yet watching them do stuff seems so tedious and slow in comparison to my workflows. Like I get that you can setup all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and stuff to do whatever you want, but that's also possible in MacOS, so what is it exactly that you can do better/faster in Pop_OS? For most of my Linux friends they claim it's because they prefer the customization, but in practice it really seems more like they just dislike the Apple ecosystem in principle. I have yet to find a workflow they have that I can't do more easily and faster in MacOS. Similar experience with working in git in the terminal vs GUI apps. So many devs swear the terminal is "faster and more powerful for git" but in practice I am doing basic git functions faster and with fewer errors than they are just using the GitHub desktop app. I would very much like to be proven wrong, I think OS competition is a good thing, I just want to see some practical examples.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  >I'm curious what you can do in Pop_OS that makes MacOS software "meh" in comparison? Having used Linux since forever ago, MacOs was "meh" to me because while it is a unix, it was just different enough for me to find it "meh". IOW, I found it to be "meh" for the fact that it just wasn't Linux. You sound offended, don't be.
  - The5thElephant 3y ago
    I am not offended at all, just curious and your reply confirmed my assumption? Genuinely, how did you get offended out of that?

briffle 3y ago

My Asus zenbook 14 is around that price, has a 1TB disk, and 16GB of ram. I'm sure the processor on the M3 is faster, and probably a fair amount more battery out of it, but now I'm comparing a $1000 zenbook to a $1700 13' macbook once I add disk and memory, without the upgraded cpu.

Solvency 3y ago
And it feels like a cheap piece of flexible creaky plastic.
- Macha 3y ago
  But will probably outlive your MBP keyboard.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- akvadrako 3y ago
  They are all metal.
- tryptophan 3y ago
  I bought one and it actually feels very well put together. Quiet, pretty 2.8k oled screen, and long battery which is all I really care about.

indymike 3y ago

At $700, you'll out-spec the mac on RAM and GPU but get a potato grade 1080p display.

jwells89 3y ago

As someone who likes to keep at least one machine dedicated to each major OS around at any given time, the thing that’s frustrating about non-Apple laptops is that just about all of them, including machines costing well in excess of base Macbook models, make big tradeoffs somewhere or another. Very few are good all-rounders, even if many are better than Macbooks in one or two aspects. I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1 Carbon for example that had the battery life, silence, and unplugged performance of a Macbook Air for example, but no such machine exists even if I were to spend twice as much as the cost of a MacBook Air.

Klonoar 3y ago
> I would kill for a version of ThinkPad X1 Nano or X1 Carbon for example that had the battery life, silence, and unplugged performance of a Macbook Air Ditto on the Nano. I wind up looking at it every few months and then begrudgingly walking away because it just doesn't make any sense to buy.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I have the first gen and it’s about the perfect size for an ultraportable in my opinion, and its screen, build, and general feel are great but its battery and CPU are underwhelming at best. The newer gens are even more confusing because they don’t offer the cooler, more efficient U CPU variants, only the hotter more power hungry P variants, which exacerbates heat and battery life issues.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    U chips are just P chips with a tighter power limit, they’re not inherently “more efficient” (same architecture), just a lower cap. is there really anything stopping you from setting a lower cTDP if that’s really what you want?
    - jwells89 3y ago
      Where would you set that? The only PC I’ve seen that lets you explicitly set a target TDP is the Steam Deck, the most I’ve seen elsewhere is the ability to turn off turboboost and limit clock speed. Regardless, a default TDP above that of a U chip in a Nano is still an odd choice given that machine’s lack of cooling and battery capacity resulting from its size. It means that a lot of buyers who have no idea how to reduce it are going to have a subpar experience.

skygazer 3y ago

I buy myself supposedly overpriced Macs and never have hardware issues, but buy family, that prefer Windows, more affordable $400-800 HP/Toshiba laptops. Over the last decade and a half, the HPs/Toshibas invariably have keyboard failures within a year or two, with ignored keypresses and key labels rubbing off, and internal fans seized, overheating problems. And those cheap plastic cases are never the same once opened. I hate them so much. Although, I suspect if I spent as much on a PC that I do on a Mac, we wouldn't have those issues, but I can't bring myself to spend that much on a Windows laptop.

Thrymr 3y ago
The reliability issues are real. I have a MacBook Air that is 11 years old now, I haven't done anything but replace the battery, and it still works fine. The only real issue is that the memory is not upgradable, otherwise it would still be a generally useful machine (instead of just light web browsing and Zoom).
- meatmanek 3y ago
  Certain vintages of Apple laptops have proven more durable than others in my experience. My 2007 MBP went through a battery every 11 months for about 3 cycles before I finally missed the boat on getting that 4th battery replaced under warranty. My 2013 MBA still has a perfectly healthy battery today, though it doesn't see much use and its disk just died yesterday. My 2017 MBP's battery degraded significantly after about 300 or 400 cycles (within spec, I think). A few keys on the keyboard partially failed due to dust or whatever (common in this vintage). The screen had some sort of damage that gave a subtle color cast to parts of the image. The USB-C ports wear out after like 20 insertions and won't hold a cable in place anymore. A year or two ago I replaced the screen and bottom case (keyboard, battery) and it's still doing fine.

Garcia98 3y ago

> The main problem with the non-Apple laptop market is that there is a mind-boggling number of confusing models, SKUs, processor/gpu variants, etc., and wildly variable physical quality control that confuse consumers and leave them unhappy. This is the flip side of choice in prioritizing, say, gaming performance over battery life while optimizing price or vice-versa. This is 100% it, Lenovo has been killing it lately with their Yoga/Slim series, but for every laptop they have that competes with a MacBook, they also have a myriad of other options that are just e-waste. At the end of the day, the average consumer is not going to do the same kind of research that a tech enthusiast might do, and Apple has a somewhat simple catalog (although incredibly overpriced once you step out of the entry configs).

mikepurvis 3y ago

Hybrid sleep being broken is the #1 dealbreaker issue I have with my work-supplied XPS 9570. I know that machine is pretty long in the tooth at this point, but in some ways that actually makes it worse, that it's been all these years and Dell just shrugged and moved on. It really doesn't make me want to reward them with more money, only to find out what exciting new issues will be present and trivially reproducible for the entire next revision of the hardware.

turtlebits 3y ago

I have yet to see a under $1.5k non-Apple laptop with a comparable high res / high quality display.