Business laptop $2500 budget - detailed requirements

Lnomisg on 01/06/2021 - 00:03
Last edited 01/06/2021 - 01:35

Looking for a new business laptop, desktop replacement worthy, but portable.

Needs

  • 15+ inch screen.
  • Screen needs to be good outdoors and in brightly lit rooms - 400 nits+, matte finish or gloss with anti reflective stuff, what ever that is
  • around 2kg
  • No overheating issues (XPS 15, I'm looking at you, just put a Ryzen in it!)
  • Ram slots or 32GB+ soldered, multi tasking god. 20 tabs in 3 different browsers, slack, teams, WA, outlook, chrome running multiple streams +.
  • SD or micro SD card slot
  • 4+ hours at peak brightness and load
  • Web cam with manual switch
  • No macs, its religious!

Nice to have

  • keyboard with number pad (I see you HP spectre)
  • Charging via USB-C for emergencies
  • 2 in 1

Don't care about

  • gaming on it
  • 4k/OLED
  • Up-gradable SSD
  • Speakers
  • Heaps of ports

What I have looked at

  • HP elite/pro book
    screens are bogus, at least the 400nits version on the probook x360 g7 that I did buy, screen unusable in my use case (too small and not bright enough). Everything else was spot on, ryzen with no dedicated GPU (that I don't need) great!, upgrade ram slots, great build quality/keyboard/trackpad etc. Bezels looked like 5 years ago, but I was ok with that, form factor was still small, but it was 13 inch.

  • XPS 15
    The screens are the bomb, upgrade slots, build quality, small form factor. But the over heating is a real issue, OH&S. The fact that Ryzen would make this the perfect laptop for me, makes me angry.

  • HP spectre 15
    OLED 4k screen looks to be good outside, but when I configure it with the RAM (soldered) it breaks the budget and not sure it deserves it. Gives you a SSD slot but no RAM slots? Outside of that, looks good.

  • Surface 3/4 laptop 15
    RAM issues again, a poor mans xps 15 with ryzen :-)

Computing

Comments

  • Hybroid on 01/06/2021 - 00:13
    -1

    Our company issues Dell Latitudes for work including all our competitors too. We get new ones every 2 years and they're pretty solid. Lasts all day at work on battery.

    https://www.dell.com/en-au/work/shop/2-in-1-laptops-tablet-p…

    30% off at the moment and can configure as you like including touchscreen. 7300 I have is easily RAM upgradeable, imagine 7400 series will be too.

  • Helmuth on 01/06/2021 - 06:55

    Lenovo Thinkpad P1 or X1 Extreme. It can be had for that price during their many sales.

    Edit, no, you need a SD card slot. These don’t have it.

    • scotty on 01/06/2021 - 07:34

      Hmm. My ThinkPad Extreme X1 first gen comes with SD card slot, and I am sure the current gen has it as well. Currently 2x DIMM slots loaded with 32GB RAM, and 2x NVMe with 1.5TB total storage. I don't think it would be able to get 4+ hours on battery though.

    • Halo375 on 01/06/2021 - 12:18

      SD card reader is a cheap attachment - shouldn’t stop the selection of an otherwise good laptop.

      • nomisg on 02/06/2021 - 03:52

        Good point, I already have a microSD to USB dongle which is super small

  • scotty on 01/06/2021 - 07:48
    +1

    You can also consider ThinkPad T15 with 11th gen Intel. You can get 16GB soldered + 16GB in DIMM. Standard 15.6" FHD is 300nit but you can also get 600nit UHD display. The dGPU (MX450) is probably not going to be useful for games but less draining on battery. Nice keyboard with 1.8mm travel & numpad. Under 1.9kg.

  • apple2016 on 01/06/2021 - 11:07

    Dell precision

  • deliriouss on 01/06/2021 - 22:01

    BTO T15 Gen 2
    Processor : 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 (4C / 8T, 2.8 / 4.7GHz, 12MB)
    Operating System : Windows 10 Home 64
    Total Memory : 16GB Soldered DDR4-3200 + 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4-3200
    Solid State Drive : 512GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Opal2
    Graphic Card : Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics
    Camera : 720p + IR with Privacy Shutter
    Color : Black
    Keyboard : Non-backlit, English
    Wireless : Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 2x2ax, Bluetooth Version 5.0 or above
    TPM Setting : Enabled Discrete TPM2.0
    Absolute BIOS Selection : BIOS Absolute Enabled
    Battery : Integrated 57Wh
    Power Cord : 65W USB-C
    Display Panel : 15.6" UHD(3840x2160), IPS, 600nits, Anti-glare, Non-Touch, IR and RGB 720p HD Camera with ThinkShutter, Mic, No WWAN, WLAN, HDR

    $2,697.05 (go for i5 to lower the cost if budget is fixed)

    Fit all the requirements except it isn't a 2-in-1. Does get hot but less so than the 14" model and relatively quiet.
    For a 4k display, I think you will struggle to get 4 hours of battery life on max load and brightness (600 nits), but you should be able to get 4 hours on max load if you turn the brightness down to 70% (should still be bright enough unless you work under direct sunlight all the time).

  • nomisg on 02/06/2021 - 03:51

    Thanks everyone

    Hadn't even thought of Lenovo, now in the process of trying to get my head around the dithering array of models and configs :-)

  • nomisg on 24/06/2021 - 23:12

    Ended up getting a XPS 17

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join