20 ms·

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a

by ruuda 2y ago

My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued XPS, and their new Pro/Premium models have worse specs in almost all ways. The only non-Apple thing that I can find that even comes close, is a bulky 16" ThinkPad. And then there is Apple who pack everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device, plus a very fast CPU and battery life that is years ahead of anything else ... Why is there no competition here? I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. Why is the gap so large?

roncesvalles 2y ago
I think it's always been that way. The choices for a "flagship" laptop were always MacBook, ThinkPad, or XPS for at least the last 15 years.
elif 2y ago
I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen to use commandline tools and a browser. My hunch is that relaxing this seemingly arbitrary requirement will result in many suitable notebooks
- RetpolineDrama 2y ago
  >I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen You do realize we had 1440p phones in 2015-2016 right? HiDPI is not new, and it's clarity amazing. Stop buying huge low res screens for ripoff prices in 2025
  - elif 2y ago
    You do realize your battery is dying faster right? Laptops have had 120hz screens since 2011. Stop limiting yourself to 60hz in 2025 (See how that sounds?)
- alpaca128 2y ago
  Pixel density is important for crisp small text, so cli on a 14 inch screen and maybe web browsing would be good reasons for a 4k display - it would be the only reasons for me at least.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    why do you need crisp text for cli? cli works just fine in 180p still
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Because I like my text to look good
      - HDThoreaun 2y ago
        you can tell the difference between 4k text and 1080 text? I cant.
        IH0kN3m 2y ago
        There hasn’t been an instance where I couldn’t tell the difference
    - alpaca128 2y ago
      For the same reason your PC screen likely has more than 480p resolution even though you technically don’t need more than that, why you have stereo instead of mono sound, and more than one CPU core.
- ruuda 2y ago
  Especially for the command line and a browser which are primarily rendering text, pixel density matters so much! Why look at pixelated text when you can have print-quality crisp text? I never want to go back to low pixel density displays! I had an XPS 15 with 4k display in 2016, yet in 2025 it’s somehow difficult to find a laptop with that pixel density? I wonder the same with phones actually, my Nexus 6P from 2015 (10 years ago!) had an amazing 518 ppi display. When the modem died I got a Pixel 2 which had only 441 ppi, and the display was a really noticeable downgrade, text looked significantly uglier, I could see the pixels and hinting artifacts again. I expected high pixel densities to become mainstream to the point where every screen has a density at the limit of what the human eye can perceive, yet here we are 10 years later, and Google’s flagship phones have only 495/486 ppi, worse than the Nexus 6P!
  - elif 2y ago
    The reason is because 99% of people care more about battery life and performance than sub-retina-scale imagined problems. I'm holding my phone as close as I can to my face and I can't see a pixel if I want to
- antifa 2y ago
  I wouldn't say 4k is a hard requirement for me but before I bought an M1 I remember "not 720p" was a lot to ask for in the x86 world.
RohMin 2y ago
First time I've heard someone say a thinkpad is bulky
- trinix912 2y ago
  Maybe they've only seen the older ones (like the ubiquitous T420) which were admittedly pretty bulky.
- ruuda 2y ago
  I should have said "large" then, I could only find a 16" model with the specs I want. It's not bulky in the sense that a gaming laptop is.
fluidcruft 2y ago
I also have a 4-year old XPS15. The SSDs and RAM are super easy to upgrade. There are two internal SSD slots (one shipped empty). Dell charges not-quite Apple-scale arms and a legs for RAM/SSD upgrades, so I bought mine Dell-minimal and immediately upgraded them both and have bumped them up as prices come down for new parts. The upgradability was a major reason I went for the XPS15 instead of the XPS13 (my previous machine)
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  I thought the XPS 17 was the only one with the extra SSD slot?
  - nihilist_t21 2y ago
    Naw I have a 15" one (9510) and it has two M.2 slots.
    - colechristensen 2y ago
      Well you just made my day, I do have that second M.2 slot (XPS 9500) and am very much running out of space.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
m01 2y ago
Can you upgrade the storage of your XPS laptop? Maybe check out the Framework laptops? For example the Framework 13's new screen is 2.8k @ 256PPI apparently [1], which has slightly more pixels than the Macbook Air M4[2] (obviously pixels isn't everything), but you can get up to 8TB NVMe storage + an extra storage expansion cards if you're happy to sacrifice ports and up to 96GB RAM. [3] [1] https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-dive-creating-a-custom-high-resolution-display/52395 https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-dive... [2] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ [3] https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configuration/new https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/conf... EDIT: typo + formatting
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  The main problem with the Framework 13 at this point is underwhelming battery life. I have one of the newly announced models reserved in hopes that the new CPU improves that to a reasonable degree, but if reviews come out and that turns out to not be the case there’s a substantial chance I’ll cancel.
  - intrasight 2y ago
    I honestly don't understand battery complaints. Cafes have plugs. Airplanes have plugs. Were are people working for hours without power?
    - ninetyninenine 2y ago
      its a huge convenience to never need one.
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        Has anyone ever been disappointed to have long battery life?
    - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
pachico 2y ago
Can't be any happier with my Framework laptop. Give it a read and do a simulation of how much it would cost you to replace the part that forced you to buy a new laptop.
tredre3 2y ago
Seems like you haven't actually looked into it if that's the impression you got, because both Thinkpad (X1) and Framework (13) make a laptop that fit your requirements. The X1 carbon even offers a 4k OLED option if you want it.
- Kon-Peki 2y ago
  The original post: > everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device The X1 carbon we have in our house has a 13” 16:9 screen, which I hate.
  - pja 2y ago
    Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-13-aura-edition-14-inch-intel/len101t0108 https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... Or pick up a Framework 13 which has a 13.5" 2880x1800 16:10 screen: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configuration/new https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configurat...
    - Kon-Peki 2y ago
      > Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens‘ Ah, that is an excellent improvement!
      - necovek 2y ago
        Latest as in the last ~10 years worth of releases. They are on gen 12 or 13 (I had or still have gen 5, 6, 8, 11). The worst problem is they are Intel-only so I moved to T14s which is not as polished (their premium AMD option is too MacBook-like with sharp edges and worse keyboard in Z13 or something), yet AMD is much closer to Macs on thermals, battery life and performance.
    - theodric 2y ago
      Just bought a P14s gen5 AMD with a 16:10 OLED, reconditioned, for about a grand. Two SoDIMM slots and one m.2 NVMe slot. Now rocking 96GB RAM, for which I paid the princely sum of 200 pieces of silver. Loaded openSUSE on it - everything works. It feels plasticky (magnesium chassis T/P-series belong to the ages) but it's a damn sight more computer than I could get from Apple for that money. Well, apart from the battery life, RAM bandwidth, OS-hardware integration, and build quality. It's more RAM than I could get from Apple for that money, for sure.
gavinray 2y ago
Gen question: why do people care how bulky a laptop is? I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops and their size has never bothered me when traveling
- somanyphotons 2y ago
  The thickness can change wrist ergonomics of typing
- JOnAgain 2y ago
  I returned my MacBook pro due to weight. After years with an air, I can’t go back. I’ll get the new air.
- gloxkiqcza 2y ago
  Do you only ever travel by car? Serious question.
  - gavinray 2y ago
    Mostly, but also take it when I fly, along with a mouse + mouse pad. The weight has never bothered me, usually the backpack with the laptop in it is the lightest bag and then I have a much heavier carry on as well.
    - timeon 2y ago
      So that makes sense it is not issue for you if you mostly travel by car. But it can be for those that use bike or public transport or just walk. (As example last time I used car about two months ago).
  - lurking_swe 2y ago
    americans lol. and i say this as an american. :) Most of my friends assume the default mode of transport globally is a car. Even to get to a cafe or library. Pretty funny when you think about it.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
sandGorgon 2y ago
you have the choice to go with the AMD Ryzen AI Max processor which rivals the M4. And gives similar battery life and performance. Or the Intel Lunar Lake processor. Both have extremely good laptop options - the Lenovo Yoga Aura edition is pretty much macbook quality. And runs LLMs (https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Overview/install_gpu.md#install-ipex-llm-from-wheel https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Over...)
- ako 2y ago
  Hope lenovo ships the amd max in a P1 type laptop. I have an almost 5 year old thinkpad P1gen2 with Core i9, 64GB, 2.5Tb disk, T2000 discrete GPU, 4K oled touch display running Linux. Something similar that runs LLMs faster would be nice. The GPU is limited by only 4GB. Also, something that does not run out of battery power in less than 2 hours.
- paulgerhardt 2y ago
  The Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 128gb unified memory and the AMD Ryzen AI Max amu would be my first non-M4 laptop pick. Surprised how under-reported this device is.
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    Dave2D did a glowing review of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbm2a6lVBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbm2a6lVBo
- mort96 2y ago
  "Ryzen AI" has to be the worst name for a line of general purpose CPUs ever conceived.
  - ako 2y ago
    Everybody keeps talking about it, must do wonders for marketing. By now everyone must know that AMD has a wonderful chip with a horrible name.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
> Why is there no competition here? Mobile. A lot of games I played as a kid have mobile apps, and in some cases, I don't know if its the case for all of them, the userbase is mostly on their phones. I can only imagine this is the case for a lot of things.
tw04 2y ago
Why not a surface laptop 7? https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surface-laptop-7-review https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surfac... Wtf is with the downvotes? It literally hits every requirement he had, and the surface laptops are some of the best windows/nix laptops on the market.
- ruuda 2y ago
  It seems I can configure it with at most 1TB of storage, and the display is lower resolution, but aside from that it does look like a nice device.
  - meowkit 2y ago
    I have an M1 for personal use, and recently got a Surface L7 for work. Build quality wise, its the closet thing you're gonna find to a macbook that runs windows. I also run a custom Windows desktop and a synology NAS, so I like to consider myself mostly agnostic.
  - hollandheese 2y ago
    Just buy a 256 GB model and upgrade the drive yourself to 2TB for $150ish. And yes, the screen is slightly lower DPI (201 VS 226) but you do get a better aspect ratio in return.
- rv3392 2y ago
  I don't think the SL7 is a like-for-like comparison even if it seems like it on paper. The SL7 is great if you want/need to run Windows - I convinced my sister to get one and she loves the battery life and low heat (less fain noise) compared to her previous devices. If you want a nix experience, Linux support is still a WIP and progress is quite slow because of a lack of help from Snapdragon and OEMs. I expect that it might take a generation or two to get it to the point where it was with the x86 SLs. However, at this stage, I'm tired of the quirks of Windows so the lack of nix support pushed me to get the Macbook Air for myself.
  - trizic 2y ago
enragedcacti 2y ago
> Why is the gap so large? I think it appears large for a couple of reasons. First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. Second is that many companies try to limit SKUs for their off-the-shelf products and 2TB or 4TB apparently aren't moving units. People who really want that model can just go buy a bigger drive to drop into it. That said, one last thing to consider is that while 14" Macbooks are very capable for their footprint, they are heavier and thicker than some other options. If weight is the concern there are 16" laptops that are thinner and lighter than the 14" macbook. The LG Gram Pro 16 2-in-1 weighs 0.5lbs less and is 0.10" thinner than an MBP14 and has two ssd slots.
- tristor 2y ago
  > First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. You are discounting the quality of a Macbook screen without understanding how it differs from competitors. A Macbook is the only laptop on the market that accurately reproduces colors out of the box to an extent that is sufficient for color grading photographs or video. I'm a hobbyist photographer and primarily do editing on a desktop where I have LG and Ezio displays that are color accurate, but when I'm out and about there is no alternative on the market I can buy other than a Macbook, because while on paper the "resolution" of other laptops may be similar or even superior, in actuality they are somewhat between shit-tier and D tier in actual color reproduction and quality. Macbook displays are MASSIVELY better than anything any other laptop offers at any price point non-Apple. I previously used a mixture of different laptops and have over the course of time shifted to using Macbooks for everything because the performance, battery life, power efficiency, display quality, software availability, and annoyance minimization advantages are so large for Apple that it makes no sense to use anything else, except perhaps Linux just to use Linux (which I do on a Framework 13 for personal tinkering projects). I don't see how anyone can honestly recommend that anybody purchase a non-Apple laptop in 2025 for any purpose other than tinkering with Linux, in which case the Frameworks are great. There's obviously a cost to that superiority and not everyone can afford it, but that doesn't mean alternatives are /preferable/. They clearly are not, they are a trade-off in every single aspect. Even in the case of weight that you mentioned, that trade-off is in durability, the Macbook weighs more because it has an entirely metal chassis and most non-Apple laptops are cheap plastic monstrosities.
indymike 2y ago
I've been using LG Gram laptops running linux. They are fantastic. My current daily drive is 3lbs, 17" display, 32GB RAM i7 CPU, and I bumped the SSD to 2TB. It is lighter than my 13" Macbook air and cost $1200 at Costco. Oh, and battery life is 14-16 hours of use.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 2y ago
  Yes, LG Gram laptops are amazing. Surprised they're not more popular.
- hu3 2y ago
  These are great. They run stock linux too and it just works. My coworker has one. It will probably be my next portable workstation.
- turtlebits 2y ago
  Had to use one for a few weeks. Low DPI screen and horrendous touchpad.
  - sneak 2y ago
    I haven’t used or seen one, but based on this I have a very strong impression about what the built-in speakers sound like. Plastic case?
    - knifie_spoonie 2y ago
      No way you're getting that light weight with metal
- fransje26 2y ago
  > LG Gram laptops running Linux You've got my curiosity.. > Oh, and battery life is 14-16 hours of use. Oh. Now you've got my attention!
- spaceman_2020 2y ago
  I got one for my wife - it’s ridiculously lightweight
huang_chung 2y ago
> My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? Panasonic Let's Note. Your welcome. It's repairable, upgradable, and has a *removable battery* (unheard of in 2025).
- ruuda 2y ago
  From the pictures, it looks like this device does not have the kind of build quality that XPS and MacBook have.
  - scrlk 2y ago
    They use a magnesium alloy chassis, which IMO, is superior to aluminium. Lighter and more dent resistant. Frankly, I'm not sure why people think that laptops with CNCed aluminium chassis are the pinnacle of build quality.
- rafram 2y ago
  Wow, that is an extraordinarily ugly laptop. Reminds me of a classic Onion bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
homefree 2y ago
There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  No vertical integration is what did intel in because they both do fab and design. TSMC won because they aren't vertically integrated into anything. Apple is better because of actual superior technology. The chips are custom made and no one can match the technology yet.
  - homefree 2y ago
    They have superior technology because they control the full stack and have taken more and more ownership of it over the years (most recently building their own modem in the iPhone 16e). They could design chips for an exact set of constraints (originally iPhones) and then expand that to the mac. Intel with x86 had to support legacy and tons of different devices (and bad leadership caused them to ignore efficiency and later ignore gpus). Other laptop manufacturers have to run other people's software and few really make their own underlying hardware to the extent apple does.
    - ninetyninenine 2y ago
      No they don't all their technology is equivalent to what's in the industry save their chips. Which btw is manufactured by TSMC so the chip itself is not vertically integrated.
      - homefree 2y ago
        My argument is they were able to develop the chip because of their control. The constraints allowed them that freedom and the constraints come from the top down integration and control. I'll bow out here because I can just tell this won't be a worthwhile thread.
kllrnohj 2y ago
> But now Dell discontinued XPS https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-product-line https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-p... ? Sure doesn't seem to be discontinued at all? And just checking the XPS 14 it has both 2tb and 4tb storage options, and the 3.2k OLED screen is higher resolution than what Apple's 14" offering contains and it's 120hz.
- otterley 2y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-dell-will-no-longer-make-xps-computers/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-de... Current models at the time of the announcement may still be produced and then inventories depleted, but those will be the last of them.
- teo_zero 2y ago
  IIUC Dell will have a line called Dell Premium that will cover the same market segment. It's just the XPS name that will disappear.
znpy 2y ago
> bulky 16" ThinkPad. I'm surprised nobody mentioned the thinkpad x1 extreme laptop. It was basically the lenovo/thinkpad response to the xps 15. It's way thinner than the ThinkPad T16/P15 lines. they claim it's a 16" laptop but only because they made the bezel smaller enough to fit a larger display in the same space. it's usually mostly on par with the dell xps but i'm not sure about the specs though... my personal laptop is a rusty thinkpad x270 (i'm torn between the newly announced m4 macbook air or the upcoming framework 12) and i've been issued a m3 macbook pro for work.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  I have an X1 extreme gen 2 - great expandability (two SSD slots), good port selection, not too heavy but runs hot, the GPU is crap and the battery life isn't great. Running pop os with KDE on it; normal usage.
- ako 2y ago
  Has 32gb of memory max. My current 5 year old thinkpad P1 has 64GB, not going back to 32.
  - znpy 2y ago
    False. I just checked https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-extreme-gen-5-(16-inch-intel)/len101t0018#tech_specs https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... and it says the laptop has two ddr5 slots, i guess you could load up to 128gb in there using the newest 64gb sticks.
    - ako 2y ago
      False, you’re linking to the X1 gen5, newest is gen12, which has a maximum of 32gb soldered, no slots: https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-12-14-inch-intel/len101t0083 https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
      - 2y ago
thewebguyd 2y ago
Yep, there's no one else. It's a sad state of affairs in the laptop world outside of Apple. Used to be primarily a Linux on the desktop user, but have been on macOS since the M1 air, and now typing this from a 14" M4 Pro MBP that will probably last me the next 5+ years easily. I don't love macOS but it's usable, I pretty much live in the terminal anyway, and the ecosystem features are nice - I make heavy use of clipboard sharing between my laptop and phone, iMessage, and universal control with my iPad that's on my desk. There's just no other laptop on the market that has this combination of aesthetics, performance, thermals (this thing is cool and silent), screen quality, top notch speakers and microphone for a laptop, and unmatched trackpad. Let alone anything that'll run Linux without some headaches. I had hopes for the Snapdragon X elite laptops, but no Linux still, and they still don't hold a candle to the Macbooks.
- cogman10 2y ago
  I put a LOT of the blame on ARM chipset manufacturers. The reason you can't get a good ARM laptop that isn't a Mac is because the chipset manufacturers treat them like they treat everything else. They want to have a custom patched kernel that's already 2 decades old and they drop support for it next month. It says a lot that probably the best in the space is the humble Raspberry Pi.
  - Applejinx 2y ago
    I'd probably make a point of buying a half-decent Pi laptop. I bought a 400, compile the Pi versions of my audio plugins on it. Pi laptop with the most cursory audio I/O? I'm there. Not to live, but to support as a first class production option. There's something very 'sailboat with solar panel' about 'em.
  - easygenes 2y ago
    It's beyond that. The CPU designers aren't designing for ACPI or to target the ARM PC-BSA (Base System Architecture for PCs).
mFixman 2y ago
I bought a Thinkpad P16s because I wanted to use Linux but got used to the beautiful Macbook screen. So far I'm very happy with it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
panick21_ 2y ago
You can decently build a 14'' ThinkPad that meets these requirements. Here is what I am using right now from my fastfetch: Display (SDC4193): 2880x1800 @ 90Hz [Built-in] CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (16) @ 5.13 GHz' GPU: AMD Device 15BF (VGA compatible) @ 0.80 GHz [Integrated] Memory: ---- GiB / 58.51 GiB Disk (/): ---- TiB / 1.82 TiB You can even go cheaper and get a slower CPU as far as I know. And for that price apple doesn't give out that much RAM. What requirement you have is not meet here?
goosedragons 2y ago
Surface Laptop 7? While they don't technically sell a 2TB config, they do use a 2230 M.2 SSD and there are 2TB versions of those. As a bonus it's WAY cheaper to do it that way than from the factory. The Surface Pro tablets are another option if you can live with the form factor. Even easier to swap the SSD in those too.
- aquark 2y ago
  I'm very disappointed with my Surface Pro tablet ... battery life sucks, resuming from sleep is really slow and the keycover needs to be disconnected and reconnected for it to 'remember' it is there. I've owned 4 Surfaces over the years and won't buy again. I'm not a fan of OS X but seriously considering one of these just for the battery life and it-just-works portable computing.
  - goosedragons 2y ago
    Which Surface Pro? I haven't had those issues on my 11th gen.
TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
My HP Elitebook is six years old and has a 4K display. Happy with the build quality.
matt-p 2y ago
The framework series are about as good as you get in non apple land in my experience. Still MacBook is a better product for most use cases.
natnatenathan 2y ago
You can replace that with a 2TB SSD yourself.
desireco42 2y ago
Akhm... Framework... Or Lenovo/Thinkpad.
kristianp 2y ago
I'd get a 14 inch Thinkpad with an upgrade to an Oled screen. A 14 inch X1 Carbon is lighter than a Macbook Air by a large margin.
duchenne 2y ago
The asus zenbook pro is great. The 16inch version is not really bulky. It is 2.4kg, 2TB, 3.2k resolution, great design and build quality. $2200 The 14.5 inch version is 1.6kg, 2TB, 2.9k resolution, also great design and build quality. $1700 https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pro-16x-oled-ux7602/ https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr... https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pro-14-oled-ux6404/ https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr...
- woodson 2y ago
  From what I’ve seen, they overheat a lot just from having a browser and VSCode running.
  - duchenne 2y ago
    I had one for years. Never had overheating issues, except if I put it on my blanket for long.
kerkeslager 2y ago
> I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. I know this isn't your point but this is exactly why I don't use docker--but I'm a bit surprised to hear you mention `cargo build` as something that might fill up the disk. I've been a vocal critic of Rust on Hacker News in the past, but the one thing I always thought they did very, very well, was Cargo and the tight executables it produced for me.
- thombles 2y ago
  The optimised release binary isn't the issue - it's the many GB of build artifacts produced along the way if you have a lot of dependencies. You can accumulate hundreds of GB in target/ over time working on large projects.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    So basically user error.
overgard 2y ago
Gaming laptops aren't neccessarily bulky, my Razer Blade 14 is about the same dimensions as my macbook pro 14. They're about the same age and price (2022), the main difference is that the Razer is much faster (plugged in) but the MacBook is vastly more efficient. I do respect how fast MacBooks feel subjectively, but in terms of number crunching and graphics processing the Razer is a lot better. I guess my overall point being youre not going to beat a macbook on efficiency, but there are options out there that aren't bulky or tacky.
- accurrent 2y ago
  I use a razer blade 14 personally... My mileage varies. I love that I can run a lot of stuff on it, but I hate the fact the ram was soldered and the GPU definitely throttles. I recently ran a benchmark for some GPU code I wrote and found that my steamdeck outperforms the Laptop 3060. Its also got terrible battery life and doesnt help that my work laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 beast (FWIW the razer 14 has better battery life with linux than the lenovo) which is great for building code, terrible as a portable. For me the biggest complaint I have about Macs, is well the OS. With the razer at least I can replace windows with ubuntu and most things work. Im really hoping the AMD stuff catches up soon, otherwise I may have to upgrade to a new desktop + macbook air for personal work.
  - overgard 2y ago
    If you ran the benchmark on battery, I'd definitely run it plugged in. It's not a power drain thing, if it's not plugged in (with the dedicated plug) the GPU can't run full throttle (it can't pull enough current from the battery I think). I had the thing for like a year before I found that out.
    - accurrent 2y ago
      This was plugged in so I suspect thermals especially given the temperature the computer was rising to.
- lifeformed 2y ago
fhe 2y ago
I have the same question. My only answer is that making a sleek product such as the Mac Air really is a lot harder than it seems, even in 2025.
ChuckMcM 2y ago
> Why is the gap so large? Good question and probably worth an article or two. My thinking is that Apple is designing silicon that makes for great laptops (M4 in this case) and then building around that. You will be hard pressed to find an x86-64 chipset that does what the Apple chipset does, and without that no matter what laptop you build around it is not going to be competitive. Nimbler companies like Framework are working with more speculative silicon (like the AMD Ryzen AI Max) which people like Dell and Lenovo won't do (yet?) But even there you get closer but not really close to something like the compute complex in the Macbook Air.
- justincormack 2y ago
  Dell is shipping an AI max mini pc https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/z2-mini-a.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/z2-mini-a.html at some point. Presumably laptops too.
ayushnix 2y ago
I always feel that the kind of laptop I want is a unicorn if I exclude Apple M-series laptops. Is there a laptop out there which is fanless (passively cooled), supports Linux reliably, has great performance per watt, has decent raw performance (anything better than a recent lower end AMD/Intel laptop processor), and has great build quality?
- acomjean 2y ago
  I don’t think there are any fanless x86 but I had a system76 pangolin for work. It was quite well built (I bought the next gen one for myself). They OEM the notebooks though, so the quality is decent (I’m coming from a 2015 Mac book, pretty much the gold standard of Macs) https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
gargan 2y ago
There's a lot of misinformation in your post! Dell XPS 13 isn't discontinued, its rebranding will be fully rolled out later this year In the meantime Dell XPS 13s are currently available with 2TB and 64GB RAM (with a better screen than this Air I might add) and with a Snapdragon X Elite chip (which there are very few compatibility issues with in March 2025 even with gaming) If its a 14 inch laptop you want XPS 14s are currently available with upto 4TB. They will also be rebranded later this year. They're on Intel chips and I'm hoping they will switch to Snapdragon on the rebrand to get the Apple like battery life
pjmlp 2y ago
I am quite happy with Asus and Thinkpad pro graphics laptops, wihout being bulky gaming laptops, and I get more tech per buck with the nice Win32/DirectX and CUDA ecosystems that everyone is "emulating" nowadays. Why get the lesser copy, when I can get the original at better price?
emrah 2y ago
The specs on paper do not do Apple justice. The screen alone is worth it. Your eyes are worth it
- eastbound 2y ago
  I can’t find any good 32” screen for my employees, they’re all below 350cd/m2. I’ve bought one at 450cd, it’s dark as Mordor. Apple Retina screens are all 1000cd/m2.
ildon 2y ago
The way I see it is that Apple competitors have given up on premium portable devices. Apple tech is so far ahead that consumers looking for the best non gaming hardware will most likely choose Apple devices. For competitors, spending a huge amount of money in R&D to try to compete with Apple, will be most likely at a loss. At least until some chip manufacturer (read: Intel) doesn't step up their game. As a consequence, competition has moved to the middle-low quality segment, one in which they can still compete because of 2 main factors: Apple is not interested in that segment and most companies won't move away from Windows (even if they probably should).
- Arn_Thor 2y ago
  Does it really require that much R&D? Slap one of the excellent AMD mobile processors with built-in GPU in there, standard cooling (they don't use much more power than they did 5 years ago. They surely have the blueprints for the last XPS machines), and a bigger NVME. It's all more or less commodity hardware in a name-your-preference shell.
  - camillomiller 2y ago
    It’s easy until you can’t really fine tune the software because you use windows and it’ll eat the battery alive for reasons you can’t control as a manufacturer (but customers will still think it’s your fault)
    - eastbound 2y ago
      It’s the year of Linux on the laptop! That would be a serious opportunity.
      - gaazoh 2y ago
        OEMs have been doing basically this for years with their phones for decades at this point, pushing customized builds of Android with every phone they make, this has been successful to close the gap Apple created when they released the iPhone. I guess a hurdle smartphones didn't have as they were breaking into a new market is compatibility; outside of the tech world, virtually all of corporate and personal environment is dependent on Windows and Windows-only software. Steam has shown it can work with SteamOS and Proton, making gaming on Linux a reality for a wide audience. What's missing is a major OEM to build a high-spec laptop with a custom Linux build to optimize performance and battery life, with a decent Windows compatibility layer and that would provide software companies an incentive to sell native Linux versions and support. Is Samsung really going to keep their laptop line depend on Windows, and leave it on the side-line as they will never be able to really optimize battery life and performance and compare to the MacBooks?
MatthewWilkes 2y ago
I bought an XPS 16 recently. 4K screen, 64 GB RAM (+8 GB VRAM), 2 TB storage (4 TB was an option). It cost about 3/4 as much as a similarly specced MBP. I know many people still love MacOS, but it lost me a few years ago. I've also, frankly, had much better milage out of Dell machines than Apple ones over the last ten years.
leeman2016 2y ago
I think there are good ThinkPads out there. P1, P16s, T16, P14s Most of which support: - Up to 96 GB RAM - 8 TB SSD (Dual slots) - Upgradable memory and storage - 4K OLED displays - Excellent build quality What more is needed?
- dagw 2y ago
  My laptop before getting my M2 MPB was a top of line ThinkPad P series with all the best on paper specs. As long as I was running benchmarks on it while it was plugged in and I didn't care about fan noise, performance was fine. Once you tried to use it like an actual laptop it was terrible in just about every way. Performance when on battery was either so throttled as to be barely usable, or would kill the battery in 45 minutes. The noise and heat it spit out when doing anything even moderately taxing was extreme. Despite having the most expensive graphics card they offered at the time, interactive 3D and games was still always stuttering and rarely ran smooth. Sleep was hit and miss, so if I just closed the lid and chucked in my bag, there was good chance it would be both hot and dead when I pulled it out an hour later. There is a lot more to a good laptop than specs, and so far only Apple seems to really get that.
  - atwrk 2y ago
    I bet you had an Intel CPU. Intel is almost always the worse option since the first Ryzens were released in 2017 or so. (Intel has to have some sketchy deals with manufacturers, otherwise why design a product like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon line only to put these Intel energy hogs in there?)
  - leeman2016 2y ago
    I own couple of ThinkPads myself: an old L-series one, a T490 and lately a P16s. They all are fine. 45 mins on battery on best performance mode is very bad. I am currently using a P16s with an Intel's meteor lake CPU and an RTX 500 Ada dGPU. I would say it is not that bad. Linux Mint worked OOB perfectly. I get 5-6 hrs of battery life which is fine for me (considering it has a 4K OLED display). The dGPU is mostly idle and the machine is mostly silent unless I am gaming. The only times I hear the fans going are when using it on my lap or playing games. I do run Windows VM for a big .NET Framework project (coding on JetBrains Rider) and at the same time some coding on Linux. The CPU handles those fine. These are my personal experiences though. The only issue I can pick is sometimes Chrome shows some artifacts (I think, related the iGPU driver)
dsego 2y ago
Have you looked at the new crop of arm-based windows laptops?
metta2uall 2y ago
In my experience Clevo (sold by e.g. Metabox) are really good
porphyra 2y ago
Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition is in fact lighter than the Macbook Air, has Lunar Lake, up to 2 TB storage, great battery life, and a 2880 x 1800 OLED display. It's pricy, though.
- leeman2016 2y ago
  Around the holiday season they usually drop to around $1k - Time your purchase - get coupons - get a corporate discount if you can to get them at a sane price
  - porphyra 2y ago
    Hmm the Thinkpad T14 might drop to $1000 but I've literally never seen a current generation X1 Carbon go that low.
- hajile 2y ago
  An M4 air will run circles around Lunar Lake being over 30% faster at geekbench (both single and multe-core) and over 40% faster at Cinebench 24. The GPU is 25-35% faster too. Air is also 60-80% faster at Geekbench AI. People spent a decade upgrading laptops for a mere 5-10% increase in performance (sometimes less). I can't see someone giving up that much of a performance jump unless Windows is absolutely the only option.
  - porphyra 2y ago
    Very true, but the person I replied to specifically only cares about: > I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs
fleshmonad 2y ago
Well, my ThinkPad P14 Gen5 is pretty much this. Small, lightweight, 64gig RAM, 2TB SSD, and a pretty darn good screen. But yeah it's black and has a coating and you won't feel like a genius machinist when you touch it, plus no apple logo, so I guess Apple wins again. How do they keep doing it?
prmoustache 2y ago
You can put whatever nvme drive is available today on any thinkpad or professionnal laptop from Dell or HP. I believe all brands offer some laptops with hidpi screens. The only part where Apple is unmatched is in battery life but you mention it is not a strong requirement.
secondcoming 2y ago
Are the Precision Workstation laptops not made any longer? They're beasts.
sellmesoap 2y ago
The thing that irks me, is the premium price for storage. Everyone has a cloud storage package to sell, so the air model that has amazing features but small storage will cost you in the long run. Storage should be easy to replace and plentiful!
dietr1ch 2y ago
I wanted an XPS15 for a while, but they kept getting relatively worse than my 2017 one. I ended up just replacing the battery on it and kept the 1080p screen that wasn't great anymore, but I was not going to buy a laptop with a worse battery for a higher price than what I got the old laptop for. Later I bought a new Malibal laptop, but mostly for the screen, usb-c ports and lower weight,but had to compromise on getting an unnecessary nVidia GPU that I just blacklist right away because the right laptop just didn't exist. I like the laptop, but I can't recommend Malibal laptops though, they are a weird company and getting things to work alright took way more effort than on my old XPS.
foderking 2y ago
- Lenovo Yoga 9 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-Pro-9-16IMH9-laptop-review-75-W-GeForce-RTX-4050-overperforms.842762.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-Pro-9-16IMH9-lapto...). 3200x2000 display. Thickness 18.2 (M3 Pro 16.9). - Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G16-2024-review-The-gaming-laptop-now-with-G-Sync-OLED-and-Intel-Meteor-Lake.800175.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G16-2024-rev...). display 2560x1600. thickness 16.4 (thinner than M3) - Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-2024-review-The-gaming-multimedia-laptop-with-Ryzen-8000-and-G-Sync-OLED.800772.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-2024-rev...). 2880x1800. thickness 16.4 (again thinner) all these are likely cheaper per GB RAM and per TB SSD
- foderking 2y ago
  way too many macbook fanboys in the comments that don't know much about modern laptops
  - Copernicron 2y ago
    Conversely, there are way too many Apple haters who don't know or care why someone might make the choice to use a Macbook.
maztaim 2y ago
Does a framework laptop not meet some of these asks?

by ruuda 2y ago

roncesvalles 2y ago

I think it's always been that way. The choices for a "flagship" laptop were always MacBook, ThinkPad, or XPS for at least the last 15 years.

elif 2y ago

I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen to use commandline tools and a browser. My hunch is that relaxing this seemingly arbitrary requirement will result in many suitable notebooks

RetpolineDrama 2y ago
>I'm not sure why you want 4k resolution with a 14 inch screen You do realize we had 1440p phones in 2015-2016 right? HiDPI is not new, and it's clarity amazing. Stop buying huge low res screens for ripoff prices in 2025
- elif 2y ago
  You do realize your battery is dying faster right? Laptops have had 120hz screens since 2011. Stop limiting yourself to 60hz in 2025 (See how that sounds?)
alpaca128 2y ago
Pixel density is important for crisp small text, so cli on a 14 inch screen and maybe web browsing would be good reasons for a 4k display - it would be the only reasons for me at least.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  why do you need crisp text for cli? cli works just fine in 180p still
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Because I like my text to look good
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      you can tell the difference between 4k text and 1080 text? I cant.
      - IH0kN3m 2y ago
        There hasn’t been an instance where I couldn’t tell the difference
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    For the same reason your PC screen likely has more than 480p resolution even though you technically don’t need more than that, why you have stereo instead of mono sound, and more than one CPU core.
ruuda 2y ago
Especially for the command line and a browser which are primarily rendering text, pixel density matters so much! Why look at pixelated text when you can have print-quality crisp text? I never want to go back to low pixel density displays! I had an XPS 15 with 4k display in 2016, yet in 2025 it’s somehow difficult to find a laptop with that pixel density? I wonder the same with phones actually, my Nexus 6P from 2015 (10 years ago!) had an amazing 518 ppi display. When the modem died I got a Pixel 2 which had only 441 ppi, and the display was a really noticeable downgrade, text looked significantly uglier, I could see the pixels and hinting artifacts again. I expected high pixel densities to become mainstream to the point where every screen has a density at the limit of what the human eye can perceive, yet here we are 10 years later, and Google’s flagship phones have only 495/486 ppi, worse than the Nexus 6P!
- elif 2y ago
  The reason is because 99% of people care more about battery life and performance than sub-retina-scale imagined problems. I'm holding my phone as close as I can to my face and I can't see a pixel if I want to
antifa 2y ago
I wouldn't say 4k is a hard requirement for me but before I bought an M1 I remember "not 720p" was a lot to ask for in the x86 world.

RohMin 2y ago

First time I've heard someone say a thinkpad is bulky

trinix912 2y ago
Maybe they've only seen the older ones (like the ubiquitous T420) which were admittedly pretty bulky.
ruuda 2y ago
I should have said "large" then, I could only find a 16" model with the specs I want. It's not bulky in the sense that a gaming laptop is.

fluidcruft 2y ago

I also have a 4-year old XPS15. The SSDs and RAM are super easy to upgrade. There are two internal SSD slots (one shipped empty). Dell charges not-quite Apple-scale arms and a legs for RAM/SSD upgrades, so I bought mine Dell-minimal and immediately upgraded them both and have bumped them up as prices come down for new parts. The upgradability was a major reason I went for the XPS15 instead of the XPS13 (my previous machine)

RandomBacon 2y ago
I thought the XPS 17 was the only one with the extra SSD slot?
- nihilist_t21 2y ago
  Naw I have a 15" one (9510) and it has two M.2 slots.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    Well you just made my day, I do have that second M.2 slot (XPS 9500) and am very much running out of space.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

m01 2y ago

Can you upgrade the storage of your XPS laptop? Maybe check out the Framework laptops? For example the Framework 13's new screen is 2.8k @ 256PPI apparently [1], which has slightly more pixels than the Macbook Air M4[2] (obviously pixels isn't everything), but you can get up to 8TB NVMe storage + an extra storage expansion cards if you're happy to sacrifice ports and up to 96GB RAM. [3] [1] https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-dive-creating-a-custom-high-resolution-display/52395 https://community.frame.work/t/framework-laptop-13-deep-dive... [2] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ [3] https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configuration/new https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/conf... EDIT: typo + formatting

cosmic_cheese 2y ago
The main problem with the Framework 13 at this point is underwhelming battery life. I have one of the newly announced models reserved in hopes that the new CPU improves that to a reasonable degree, but if reviews come out and that turns out to not be the case there’s a substantial chance I’ll cancel.
- intrasight 2y ago
  I honestly don't understand battery complaints. Cafes have plugs. Airplanes have plugs. Were are people working for hours without power?
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    its a huge convenience to never need one.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      Has anyone ever been disappointed to have long battery life?
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago

pachico 2y ago

Can't be any happier with my Framework laptop. Give it a read and do a simulation of how much it would cost you to replace the part that forced you to buy a new laptop.

tredre3 2y ago

Seems like you haven't actually looked into it if that's the impression you got, because both Thinkpad (X1) and Framework (13) make a laptop that fit your requirements. The X1 carbon even offers a 4k OLED option if you want it.

Kon-Peki 2y ago
The original post: > everything I want in a sleek 14" or 15" device The X1 carbon we have in our house has a 13” 16:9 screen, which I hate.
- pja 2y ago
  Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-13-aura-edition-14-inch-intel/len101t0108 https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... Or pick up a Framework 13 which has a 13.5" 2880x1800 16:10 screen: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configuration/new https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd/configurat...
  - Kon-Peki 2y ago
    > Latest X1 Carbons have 14" 16:10 OLED screens‘ Ah, that is an excellent improvement!
    - necovek 2y ago
      Latest as in the last ~10 years worth of releases. They are on gen 12 or 13 (I had or still have gen 5, 6, 8, 11). The worst problem is they are Intel-only so I moved to T14s which is not as polished (their premium AMD option is too MacBook-like with sharp edges and worse keyboard in Z13 or something), yet AMD is much closer to Macs on thermals, battery life and performance.
  - theodric 2y ago
    Just bought a P14s gen5 AMD with a 16:10 OLED, reconditioned, for about a grand. Two SoDIMM slots and one m.2 NVMe slot. Now rocking 96GB RAM, for which I paid the princely sum of 200 pieces of silver. Loaded openSUSE on it - everything works. It feels plasticky (magnesium chassis T/P-series belong to the ages) but it's a damn sight more computer than I could get from Apple for that money. Well, apart from the battery life, RAM bandwidth, OS-hardware integration, and build quality. It's more RAM than I could get from Apple for that money, for sure.

gavinray 2y ago

Gen question: why do people care how bulky a laptop is? I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops and their size has never bothered me when traveling

somanyphotons 2y ago
The thickness can change wrist ergonomics of typing
JOnAgain 2y ago
I returned my MacBook pro due to weight. After years with an air, I can’t go back. I’ll get the new air.
gloxkiqcza 2y ago
Do you only ever travel by car? Serious question.
- gavinray 2y ago
  Mostly, but also take it when I fly, along with a mouse + mouse pad. The weight has never bothered me, usually the backpack with the laptop in it is the lightest bag and then I have a much heavier carry on as well.
  - timeon 2y ago
    So that makes sense it is not issue for you if you mostly travel by car. But it can be for those that use bike or public transport or just walk. (As example last time I used car about two months ago).
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  americans lol. and i say this as an american. :) Most of my friends assume the default mode of transport globally is a car. Even to get to a cafe or library. Pretty funny when you think about it.
giancarlostoro 2y ago

sandGorgon 2y ago

you have the choice to go with the AMD Ryzen AI Max processor which rivals the M4. And gives similar battery life and performance. Or the Intel Lunar Lake processor. Both have extremely good laptop options - the Lenovo Yoga Aura edition is pretty much macbook quality. And runs LLMs (https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Overview/install_gpu.md#install-ipex-llm-from-wheel https://github.com/intel/ipex-llm/blob/main/docs/mddocs/Over...)

ako 2y ago
Hope lenovo ships the amd max in a P1 type laptop. I have an almost 5 year old thinkpad P1gen2 with Core i9, 64GB, 2.5Tb disk, T2000 discrete GPU, 4K oled touch display running Linux. Something similar that runs LLMs faster would be nice. The GPU is limited by only 4GB. Also, something that does not run out of battery power in less than 2 hours.
paulgerhardt 2y ago
The Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 128gb unified memory and the AMD Ryzen AI Max amu would be my first non-M4 laptop pick. Surprised how under-reported this device is.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  Dave2D did a glowing review of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbm2a6lVBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVbm2a6lVBo
mort96 2y ago
"Ryzen AI" has to be the worst name for a line of general purpose CPUs ever conceived.
- ako 2y ago
  Everybody keeps talking about it, must do wonders for marketing. By now everyone must know that AMD has a wonderful chip with a horrible name.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

> Why is there no competition here? Mobile. A lot of games I played as a kid have mobile apps, and in some cases, I don't know if its the case for all of them, the userbase is mostly on their phones. I can only imagine this is the case for a lot of things.

tw04 2y ago

Why not a surface laptop 7? https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surface-laptop-7-review https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/microsoft-surfac... Wtf is with the downvotes? It literally hits every requirement he had, and the surface laptops are some of the best windows/nix laptops on the market.

ruuda 2y ago
It seems I can configure it with at most 1TB of storage, and the display is lower resolution, but aside from that it does look like a nice device.
- meowkit 2y ago
  I have an M1 for personal use, and recently got a Surface L7 for work. Build quality wise, its the closet thing you're gonna find to a macbook that runs windows. I also run a custom Windows desktop and a synology NAS, so I like to consider myself mostly agnostic.
- hollandheese 2y ago
  Just buy a 256 GB model and upgrade the drive yourself to 2TB for $150ish. And yes, the screen is slightly lower DPI (201 VS 226) but you do get a better aspect ratio in return.
rv3392 2y ago
I don't think the SL7 is a like-for-like comparison even if it seems like it on paper. The SL7 is great if you want/need to run Windows - I convinced my sister to get one and she loves the battery life and low heat (less fain noise) compared to her previous devices. If you want a nix experience, Linux support is still a WIP and progress is quite slow because of a lack of help from Snapdragon and OEMs. I expect that it might take a generation or two to get it to the point where it was with the x86 SLs. However, at this stage, I'm tired of the quirks of Windows so the lack of nix support pushed me to get the Macbook Air for myself.
- trizic 2y ago

enragedcacti 2y ago

> Why is the gap so large? I think it appears large for a couple of reasons. First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. Second is that many companies try to limit SKUs for their off-the-shelf products and 2TB or 4TB apparently aren't moving units. People who really want that model can just go buy a bigger drive to drop into it. That said, one last thing to consider is that while 14" Macbooks are very capable for their footprint, they are heavier and thicker than some other options. If weight is the concern there are 16" laptops that are thinner and lighter than the 14" macbook. The LG Gram Pro 16 2-in-1 weighs 0.5lbs less and is 0.10" thinner than an MBP14 and has two ssd slots.

tristor 2y ago
> First is that Mac screens are much closer to 3K than 4K. You can find tons of really nice 14" 3K laptops so the gap is pretty much negligible there, especially if you consider how cheap you can get 3K OLEDs on Windows PCs nowadays. You are discounting the quality of a Macbook screen without understanding how it differs from competitors. A Macbook is the only laptop on the market that accurately reproduces colors out of the box to an extent that is sufficient for color grading photographs or video. I'm a hobbyist photographer and primarily do editing on a desktop where I have LG and Ezio displays that are color accurate, but when I'm out and about there is no alternative on the market I can buy other than a Macbook, because while on paper the "resolution" of other laptops may be similar or even superior, in actuality they are somewhat between shit-tier and D tier in actual color reproduction and quality. Macbook displays are MASSIVELY better than anything any other laptop offers at any price point non-Apple. I previously used a mixture of different laptops and have over the course of time shifted to using Macbooks for everything because the performance, battery life, power efficiency, display quality, software availability, and annoyance minimization advantages are so large for Apple that it makes no sense to use anything else, except perhaps Linux just to use Linux (which I do on a Framework 13 for personal tinkering projects). I don't see how anyone can honestly recommend that anybody purchase a non-Apple laptop in 2025 for any purpose other than tinkering with Linux, in which case the Frameworks are great. There's obviously a cost to that superiority and not everyone can afford it, but that doesn't mean alternatives are /preferable/. They clearly are not, they are a trade-off in every single aspect. Even in the case of weight that you mentioned, that trade-off is in durability, the Macbook weighs more because it has an entirely metal chassis and most non-Apple laptops are cheap plastic monstrosities.

indymike 2y ago

I've been using LG Gram laptops running linux. They are fantastic. My current daily drive is 3lbs, 17" display, 32GB RAM i7 CPU, and I bumped the SSD to 2TB. It is lighter than my 13" Macbook air and cost $1200 at Costco. Oh, and battery life is 14-16 hours of use.

DwnVoteHoneyPot 2y ago
Yes, LG Gram laptops are amazing. Surprised they're not more popular.
hu3 2y ago
These are great. They run stock linux too and it just works. My coworker has one. It will probably be my next portable workstation.
turtlebits 2y ago
Had to use one for a few weeks. Low DPI screen and horrendous touchpad.
- sneak 2y ago
  I haven’t used or seen one, but based on this I have a very strong impression about what the built-in speakers sound like. Plastic case?
  - knifie_spoonie 2y ago
    No way you're getting that light weight with metal
fransje26 2y ago
> LG Gram laptops running Linux You've got my curiosity.. > Oh, and battery life is 14-16 hours of use. Oh. Now you've got my attention!
spaceman_2020 2y ago
I got one for my wife - it’s ridiculously lightweight

huang_chung 2y ago

> My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? Panasonic Let's Note. Your welcome. It's repairable, upgradable, and has a *removable battery* (unheard of in 2025).

ruuda 2y ago
From the pictures, it looks like this device does not have the kind of build quality that XPS and MacBook have.
- scrlk 2y ago
  They use a magnesium alloy chassis, which IMO, is superior to aluminium. Lighter and more dent resistant. Frankly, I'm not sure why people think that laptops with CNCed aluminium chassis are the pinnacle of build quality.
rafram 2y ago
Wow, that is an extraordinarily ugly laptop. Reminds me of a classic Onion bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

homefree 2y ago

There's nothing close, Apple has better talent and the vertical integration gives them an edge (especially on performance per watt on their chip designs). Since the M series chips, there's been no other option if you care about quality. There are crappy alternatives with serious tradeoffs if for some reason you are forced to not use Apple or choose for non-quality reasons.

ninetyninenine 2y ago
No vertical integration is what did intel in because they both do fab and design. TSMC won because they aren't vertically integrated into anything. Apple is better because of actual superior technology. The chips are custom made and no one can match the technology yet.
- homefree 2y ago
  They have superior technology because they control the full stack and have taken more and more ownership of it over the years (most recently building their own modem in the iPhone 16e). They could design chips for an exact set of constraints (originally iPhones) and then expand that to the mac. Intel with x86 had to support legacy and tons of different devices (and bad leadership caused them to ignore efficiency and later ignore gpus). Other laptop manufacturers have to run other people's software and few really make their own underlying hardware to the extent apple does.
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    No they don't all their technology is equivalent to what's in the industry save their chips. Which btw is manufactured by TSMC so the chip itself is not vertically integrated.
    - homefree 2y ago
      My argument is they were able to develop the chip because of their control. The constraints allowed them that freedom and the constraints come from the top down integration and control. I'll bow out here because I can just tell this won't be a worthwhile thread.

kllrnohj 2y ago

> But now Dell discontinued XPS https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-product-line https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/scr/laptops/appref=xps-p... ? Sure doesn't seem to be discontinued at all? And just checking the XPS 14 it has both 2tb and 4tb storage options, and the 3.2k OLED screen is higher resolution than what Apple's 14" offering contains and it's 120hz.

otterley 2y ago
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-dell-will-no-longer-make-xps-computers/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-an-era-de... Current models at the time of the announcement may still be produced and then inventories depleted, but those will be the last of them.
teo_zero 2y ago
IIUC Dell will have a line called Dell Premium that will cover the same market segment. It's just the XPS name that will disappear.

znpy 2y ago

> bulky 16" ThinkPad. I'm surprised nobody mentioned the thinkpad x1 extreme laptop. It was basically the lenovo/thinkpad response to the xps 15. It's way thinner than the ThinkPad T16/P15 lines. they claim it's a 16" laptop but only because they made the bezel smaller enough to fit a larger display in the same space. it's usually mostly on par with the dell xps but i'm not sure about the specs though... my personal laptop is a rusty thinkpad x270 (i'm torn between the newly announced m4 macbook air or the upcoming framework 12) and i've been issued a m3 macbook pro for work.

noisy_boy 2y ago
I have an X1 extreme gen 2 - great expandability (two SSD slots), good port selection, not too heavy but runs hot, the GPU is crap and the battery life isn't great. Running pop os with KDE on it; normal usage.
ako 2y ago
Has 32gb of memory max. My current 5 year old thinkpad P1 has 64GB, not going back to 32.
- znpy 2y ago
  False. I just checked https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-extreme-gen-5-(16-inch-intel)/len101t0018#tech_specs https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t... and it says the laptop has two ddr5 slots, i guess you could load up to 128gb in there using the newest 64gb sticks.
  - ako 2y ago
    False, you’re linking to the X1 gen5, newest is gen12, which has a maximum of 32gb soldered, no slots: https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-12-14-inch-intel/len101t0083 https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
    - 2y ago

thewebguyd 2y ago

Yep, there's no one else. It's a sad state of affairs in the laptop world outside of Apple. Used to be primarily a Linux on the desktop user, but have been on macOS since the M1 air, and now typing this from a 14" M4 Pro MBP that will probably last me the next 5+ years easily. I don't love macOS but it's usable, I pretty much live in the terminal anyway, and the ecosystem features are nice - I make heavy use of clipboard sharing between my laptop and phone, iMessage, and universal control with my iPad that's on my desk. There's just no other laptop on the market that has this combination of aesthetics, performance, thermals (this thing is cool and silent), screen quality, top notch speakers and microphone for a laptop, and unmatched trackpad. Let alone anything that'll run Linux without some headaches. I had hopes for the Snapdragon X elite laptops, but no Linux still, and they still don't hold a candle to the Macbooks.

cogman10 2y ago
I put a LOT of the blame on ARM chipset manufacturers. The reason you can't get a good ARM laptop that isn't a Mac is because the chipset manufacturers treat them like they treat everything else. They want to have a custom patched kernel that's already 2 decades old and they drop support for it next month. It says a lot that probably the best in the space is the humble Raspberry Pi.
- Applejinx 2y ago
  I'd probably make a point of buying a half-decent Pi laptop. I bought a 400, compile the Pi versions of my audio plugins on it. Pi laptop with the most cursory audio I/O? I'm there. Not to live, but to support as a first class production option. There's something very 'sailboat with solar panel' about 'em.
- easygenes 2y ago
  It's beyond that. The CPU designers aren't designing for ACPI or to target the ARM PC-BSA (Base System Architecture for PCs).

mFixman 2y ago

I bought a Thinkpad P16s because I wanted to use Linux but got used to the beautiful Macbook screen. So far I'm very happy with it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

panick21_ 2y ago

You can decently build a 14'' ThinkPad that meets these requirements. Here is what I am using right now from my fastfetch: Display (SDC4193): 2880x1800 @ 90Hz [Built-in] CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (16) @ 5.13 GHz' GPU: AMD Device 15BF (VGA compatible) @ 0.80 GHz [Integrated] Memory: ---- GiB / 58.51 GiB Disk (/): ---- TiB / 1.82 TiB You can even go cheaper and get a slower CPU as far as I know. And for that price apple doesn't give out that much RAM. What requirement you have is not meet here?

goosedragons 2y ago

Surface Laptop 7? While they don't technically sell a 2TB config, they do use a 2230 M.2 SSD and there are 2TB versions of those. As a bonus it's WAY cheaper to do it that way than from the factory. The Surface Pro tablets are another option if you can live with the form factor. Even easier to swap the SSD in those too.

aquark 2y ago
I'm very disappointed with my Surface Pro tablet ... battery life sucks, resuming from sleep is really slow and the keycover needs to be disconnected and reconnected for it to 'remember' it is there. I've owned 4 Surfaces over the years and won't buy again. I'm not a fan of OS X but seriously considering one of these just for the battery life and it-just-works portable computing.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  Which Surface Pro? I haven't had those issues on my 11th gen.

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

My HP Elitebook is six years old and has a 4K display. Happy with the build quality.

matt-p 2y ago

The framework series are about as good as you get in non apple land in my experience. Still MacBook is a better product for most use cases.

natnatenathan 2y ago

You can replace that with a 2TB SSD yourself.

desireco42 2y ago

Akhm... Framework... Or Lenovo/Thinkpad.

kristianp 2y ago

I'd get a 14 inch Thinkpad with an upgrade to an Oled screen. A 14 inch X1 Carbon is lighter than a Macbook Air by a large margin.

duchenne 2y ago

The asus zenbook pro is great. The 16inch version is not really bulky. It is 2.4kg, 2TB, 3.2k resolution, great design and build quality. $2200 The 14.5 inch version is 1.6kg, 2TB, 2.9k resolution, also great design and build quality. $1700 https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pro-16x-oled-ux7602/ https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr... https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pro-14-oled-ux6404/ https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-creators/zenbook/zenbook-pr...

woodson 2y ago
From what I’ve seen, they overheat a lot just from having a browser and VSCode running.
- duchenne 2y ago
  I had one for years. Never had overheating issues, except if I put it on my blanket for long.

kerkeslager 2y ago

> I'm willing to compromise on battery life, and I don't need the fastest CPU, just a good quality work laptop where I can run `cargo build` / `docker pull` without worrying about filling up the disk, and mostly just a browser aside from that. I know this isn't your point but this is exactly why I don't use docker--but I'm a bit surprised to hear you mention `cargo build` as something that might fill up the disk. I've been a vocal critic of Rust on Hacker News in the past, but the one thing I always thought they did very, very well, was Cargo and the tight executables it produced for me.

thombles 2y ago
The optimised release binary isn't the issue - it's the many GB of build artifacts produced along the way if you have a lot of dependencies. You can accumulate hundreds of GB in target/ over time working on large projects.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  So basically user error.

overgard 2y ago

Gaming laptops aren't neccessarily bulky, my Razer Blade 14 is about the same dimensions as my macbook pro 14. They're about the same age and price (2022), the main difference is that the Razer is much faster (plugged in) but the MacBook is vastly more efficient. I do respect how fast MacBooks feel subjectively, but in terms of number crunching and graphics processing the Razer is a lot better. I guess my overall point being youre not going to beat a macbook on efficiency, but there are options out there that aren't bulky or tacky.

accurrent 2y ago
I use a razer blade 14 personally... My mileage varies. I love that I can run a lot of stuff on it, but I hate the fact the ram was soldered and the GPU definitely throttles. I recently ran a benchmark for some GPU code I wrote and found that my steamdeck outperforms the Laptop 3060. Its also got terrible battery life and doesnt help that my work laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 beast (FWIW the razer 14 has better battery life with linux than the lenovo) which is great for building code, terrible as a portable. For me the biggest complaint I have about Macs, is well the OS. With the razer at least I can replace windows with ubuntu and most things work. Im really hoping the AMD stuff catches up soon, otherwise I may have to upgrade to a new desktop + macbook air for personal work.
- overgard 2y ago
  If you ran the benchmark on battery, I'd definitely run it plugged in. It's not a power drain thing, if it's not plugged in (with the dedicated plug) the GPU can't run full throttle (it can't pull enough current from the battery I think). I had the thing for like a year before I found that out.
  - accurrent 2y ago
    This was plugged in so I suspect thermals especially given the temperature the computer was rising to.
lifeformed 2y ago

fhe 2y ago

I have the same question. My only answer is that making a sleek product such as the Mac Air really is a lot harder than it seems, even in 2025.

ChuckMcM 2y ago

> Why is the gap so large? Good question and probably worth an article or two. My thinking is that Apple is designing silicon that makes for great laptops (M4 in this case) and then building around that. You will be hard pressed to find an x86-64 chipset that does what the Apple chipset does, and without that no matter what laptop you build around it is not going to be competitive. Nimbler companies like Framework are working with more speculative silicon (like the AMD Ryzen AI Max) which people like Dell and Lenovo won't do (yet?) But even there you get closer but not really close to something like the compute complex in the Macbook Air.

justincormack 2y ago
Dell is shipping an AI max mini pc https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/z2-mini-a.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/z2-mini-a.html at some point. Presumably laptops too.

ayushnix 2y ago

I always feel that the kind of laptop I want is a unicorn if I exclude Apple M-series laptops. Is there a laptop out there which is fanless (passively cooled), supports Linux reliably, has great performance per watt, has decent raw performance (anything better than a recent lower end AMD/Intel laptop processor), and has great build quality?

acomjean 2y ago
I don’t think there are any fanless x86 but I had a system76 pangolin for work. It was quite well built (I bought the next gen one for myself). They OEM the notebooks though, so the quality is decent (I’m coming from a 2015 Mac book, pretty much the gold standard of Macs) https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops

gargan 2y ago

There's a lot of misinformation in your post! Dell XPS 13 isn't discontinued, its rebranding will be fully rolled out later this year In the meantime Dell XPS 13s are currently available with 2TB and 64GB RAM (with a better screen than this Air I might add) and with a Snapdragon X Elite chip (which there are very few compatibility issues with in March 2025 even with gaming) If its a 14 inch laptop you want XPS 14s are currently available with upto 4TB. They will also be rebranded later this year. They're on Intel chips and I'm hoping they will switch to Snapdragon on the rebrand to get the Apple like battery life

pjmlp 2y ago

I am quite happy with Asus and Thinkpad pro graphics laptops, wihout being bulky gaming laptops, and I get more tech per buck with the nice Win32/DirectX and CUDA ecosystems that everyone is "emulating" nowadays. Why get the lesser copy, when I can get the original at better price?

emrah 2y ago

The specs on paper do not do Apple justice. The screen alone is worth it. Your eyes are worth it

eastbound 2y ago
I can’t find any good 32” screen for my employees, they’re all below 350cd/m2. I’ve bought one at 450cd, it’s dark as Mordor. Apple Retina screens are all 1000cd/m2.

ildon 2y ago

The way I see it is that Apple competitors have given up on premium portable devices. Apple tech is so far ahead that consumers looking for the best non gaming hardware will most likely choose Apple devices. For competitors, spending a huge amount of money in R&D to try to compete with Apple, will be most likely at a loss. At least until some chip manufacturer (read: Intel) doesn't step up their game. As a consequence, competition has moved to the middle-low quality segment, one in which they can still compete because of 2 main factors: Apple is not interested in that segment and most companies won't move away from Windows (even if they probably should).

Arn_Thor 2y ago
Does it really require that much R&D? Slap one of the excellent AMD mobile processors with built-in GPU in there, standard cooling (they don't use much more power than they did 5 years ago. They surely have the blueprints for the last XPS machines), and a bigger NVME. It's all more or less commodity hardware in a name-your-preference shell.
- camillomiller 2y ago
  It’s easy until you can’t really fine tune the software because you use windows and it’ll eat the battery alive for reasons you can’t control as a manufacturer (but customers will still think it’s your fault)
  - eastbound 2y ago
    It’s the year of Linux on the laptop! That would be a serious opportunity.
    - gaazoh 2y ago
      OEMs have been doing basically this for years with their phones for decades at this point, pushing customized builds of Android with every phone they make, this has been successful to close the gap Apple created when they released the iPhone. I guess a hurdle smartphones didn't have as they were breaking into a new market is compatibility; outside of the tech world, virtually all of corporate and personal environment is dependent on Windows and Windows-only software. Steam has shown it can work with SteamOS and Proton, making gaming on Linux a reality for a wide audience. What's missing is a major OEM to build a high-spec laptop with a custom Linux build to optimize performance and battery life, with a decent Windows compatibility layer and that would provide software companies an incentive to sell native Linux versions and support. Is Samsung really going to keep their laptop line depend on Windows, and leave it on the side-line as they will never be able to really optimize battery life and performance and compare to the MacBooks?

MatthewWilkes 2y ago

I bought an XPS 16 recently. 4K screen, 64 GB RAM (+8 GB VRAM), 2 TB storage (4 TB was an option). It cost about 3/4 as much as a similarly specced MBP. I know many people still love MacOS, but it lost me a few years ago. I've also, frankly, had much better milage out of Dell machines than Apple ones over the last ten years.

leeman2016 2y ago

I think there are good ThinkPads out there. P1, P16s, T16, P14s Most of which support: - Up to 96 GB RAM - 8 TB SSD (Dual slots) - Upgradable memory and storage - 4K OLED displays - Excellent build quality What more is needed?

dagw 2y ago
My laptop before getting my M2 MPB was a top of line ThinkPad P series with all the best on paper specs. As long as I was running benchmarks on it while it was plugged in and I didn't care about fan noise, performance was fine. Once you tried to use it like an actual laptop it was terrible in just about every way. Performance when on battery was either so throttled as to be barely usable, or would kill the battery in 45 minutes. The noise and heat it spit out when doing anything even moderately taxing was extreme. Despite having the most expensive graphics card they offered at the time, interactive 3D and games was still always stuttering and rarely ran smooth. Sleep was hit and miss, so if I just closed the lid and chucked in my bag, there was good chance it would be both hot and dead when I pulled it out an hour later. There is a lot more to a good laptop than specs, and so far only Apple seems to really get that.
- atwrk 2y ago
  I bet you had an Intel CPU. Intel is almost always the worse option since the first Ryzens were released in 2017 or so. (Intel has to have some sketchy deals with manufacturers, otherwise why design a product like the Thinkpad X1 Carbon line only to put these Intel energy hogs in there?)
- leeman2016 2y ago
  I own couple of ThinkPads myself: an old L-series one, a T490 and lately a P16s. They all are fine. 45 mins on battery on best performance mode is very bad. I am currently using a P16s with an Intel's meteor lake CPU and an RTX 500 Ada dGPU. I would say it is not that bad. Linux Mint worked OOB perfectly. I get 5-6 hrs of battery life which is fine for me (considering it has a 4K OLED display). The dGPU is mostly idle and the machine is mostly silent unless I am gaming. The only times I hear the fans going are when using it on my lap or playing games. I do run Windows VM for a big .NET Framework project (coding on JetBrains Rider) and at the same time some coding on Linux. The CPU handles those fine. These are my personal experiences though. The only issue I can pick is sometimes Chrome shows some artifacts (I think, related the iGPU driver)

dsego 2y ago

Have you looked at the new crop of arm-based windows laptops?

metta2uall 2y ago

In my experience Clevo (sold by e.g. Metabox) are really good

porphyra 2y ago

Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition is in fact lighter than the Macbook Air, has Lunar Lake, up to 2 TB storage, great battery life, and a 2880 x 1800 OLED display. It's pricy, though.

leeman2016 2y ago
Around the holiday season they usually drop to around $1k - Time your purchase - get coupons - get a corporate discount if you can to get them at a sane price
- porphyra 2y ago
  Hmm the Thinkpad T14 might drop to $1000 but I've literally never seen a current generation X1 Carbon go that low.
hajile 2y ago
An M4 air will run circles around Lunar Lake being over 30% faster at geekbench (both single and multe-core) and over 40% faster at Cinebench 24. The GPU is 25-35% faster too. Air is also 60-80% faster at Geekbench AI. People spent a decade upgrading laptops for a mere 5-10% increase in performance (sometimes less). I can't see someone giving up that much of a performance jump unless Windows is absolutely the only option.
- porphyra 2y ago
  Very true, but the person I replied to specifically only cares about: > I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs

fleshmonad 2y ago

Well, my ThinkPad P14 Gen5 is pretty much this. Small, lightweight, 64gig RAM, 2TB SSD, and a pretty darn good screen. But yeah it's black and has a coating and you won't feel like a genius machinist when you touch it, plus no apple logo, so I guess Apple wins again. How do they keep doing it?

prmoustache 2y ago

You can put whatever nvme drive is available today on any thinkpad or professionnal laptop from Dell or HP. I believe all brands offer some laptops with hidpi screens. The only part where Apple is unmatched is in battery life but you mention it is not a strong requirement.

secondcoming 2y ago

Are the Precision Workstation laptops not made any longer? They're beasts.

sellmesoap 2y ago

The thing that irks me, is the premium price for storage. Everyone has a cloud storage package to sell, so the air model that has amazing features but small storage will cost you in the long run. Storage should be easy to replace and plentiful!

dietr1ch 2y ago

I wanted an XPS15 for a while, but they kept getting relatively worse than my 2017 one. I ended up just replacing the battery on it and kept the 1080p screen that wasn't great anymore, but I was not going to buy a laptop with a worse battery for a higher price than what I got the old laptop for. Later I bought a new Malibal laptop, but mostly for the screen, usb-c ports and lower weight,but had to compromise on getting an unnecessary nVidia GPU that I just blacklist right away because the right laptop just didn't exist. I like the laptop, but I can't recommend Malibal laptops though, they are a weird company and getting things to work alright took way more effort than on my old XPS.

foderking 2y ago

- Lenovo Yoga 9 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-Pro-9-16IMH9-laptop-review-75-W-GeForce-RTX-4050-overperforms.842762.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Yoga-Pro-9-16IMH9-lapto...). 3200x2000 display. Thickness 18.2 (M3 Pro 16.9). - Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G16-2024-review-The-gaming-laptop-now-with-G-Sync-OLED-and-Intel-Meteor-Lake.800175.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G16-2024-rev...). display 2560x1600. thickness 16.4 (thinner than M3) - Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-2024-review-The-gaming-multimedia-laptop-with-Ryzen-8000-and-G-Sync-OLED.800772.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-2024-rev...). 2880x1800. thickness 16.4 (again thinner) all these are likely cheaper per GB RAM and per TB SSD

foderking 2y ago
way too many macbook fanboys in the comments that don't know much about modern laptops
- Copernicron 2y ago
  Conversely, there are way too many Apple haters who don't know or care why someone might make the choice to use a Macbook.

maztaim 2y ago

Does a framework laptop not meet some of these asks?