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Good chance my laptop has died, so I'm pretty urgently looking for a new one. Option 1 is a new XPS 15, and I'm curious about Ryzen alternatives.
In your opinion, which is the best new 13-15" Ryzen laptop right now? Will most often be docked. Reliability and warranty at a premium. Pref. matte screen and dedicated home/end keys.
What did you end up with? :P I would say the new MacBook Air (and Pro, although it's not much different), are quite spectacular. 13 inches though. XPS 15 is a good option for Windows and 15 inches.
My laptop works again so I've been able to take my time with this decision :o Unless the price of a good XPS 15 drops sharply in the next few weeks, I think I'll end up buying a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 :) unfortunately no dedicated home/end keys. I really wanted the Asus Zephyrus G14 but it has no built-in webcam, and I'm gonna need that. There are some others that are gaming oriented, but none that really feel right. The Zenbook 14 might also fit, but I think it might have worse thermals than I'd like.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kazuha Vinland
So I discovered that I apparently count as a student for discount purposes, on lenovo's website, and this discount stacks with their black friday sale. After an absolutely ridiculous amount of time spent on thinking and reading and watching far too many reviews, I decided to go with a P14s, which is basically their T14 chassi with Ryzen. It's thicker than I'd like, heavier than my spectre x360, and I suspect I'll be a little disappointed with the display... but I was able to spec it with a better display, w10 pro, 32 GB ram, and some other goodies, all for 1180 EUR/1412 USD, so I'm satisfied. The 8th gen X1 carbon was incredibly tempting, but I really wanted to go with the Ryzen platform. The T14s would've been fantastic, but I didn't get the option to change the display to a better version, and I know from seeing other thinkpads that Lenovo's display lottery is not for me. The Slim 7 was also not possible to configure, and I read a little too many worrying stories about hardware issues. HP's Ryzen 7 Elitebook couldn't be configured, and offered considerably less value in every respect. After my experiences with this Spectre, I wasn't keen on going down that route again, even though they are wonderful laptops when they work. Dell's XPS laptops cost much more than they're worth, to me. Similar issue with Surface Laptop 3 (but god damn are they gorgeous).
One major downside is that, because the whole thing is being handled by their Irish reseller, it might take forever for the laptop to arrive. Another downside is the 16:9 ratio on the display. Anyway, that's enough tech talk for now, I don't wanna have to think about tech ever again.
Haha, funny that you reach that conclusion. I'm the complete opposite. The more I dive into it, the more absorbed I get. Hopefully you'll get satisfied. ;)
Due to an unexpected development, I had to buy a new laptop now instead of waiting for the ThinkPad.
So, of course, because tech is a farce, I went with the G14 I'd considered and then dismissed right at the beginning :) not the highest specced version - Ryzen 5, 1650ti, 120hz 1080p display, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD.
Looks great, feels great (solid, not too heavy, really nice coating that feels soft and warm), the display is lovely (matte, bright, good colors; it's said to be a little slow wrt response time, but I'm not a gamer), and the keyboard is surprisingly good - among the best I've used (although tbf I have a preference for this type of laptop-style keyboards). Speakers are perfectly all right, but I'll have to listen to more music to see how they compare to the ones on my Spectre x360. Obv. no real bass.
I hate that there are no dedicated home/end/PgUp/PgDn keys keys. I also think it's very unfortunate that they chose not to include a camera - probably a total dealbreaker for many people.
Important known issues with this line:
- some units might have a wonky fingerprint reader (mine works great).
- there may be some major issues involving USB-C charging while using a powered USB-C dock
- backlight on the white version is difficult to see
- some early units in particular have had issues with temp & fan noise
- fans never go below 2000 RPM - even while idling with cool temps. This is by design, and there's a third-party app that can keep the fans turned off and then turn them on again when the CPU reaches a predefined temperature (configurable). There's been some talk of Asus planning to change this with a BIOS update but who knows. If you're sensitive to light fan noise, eg. if you work without headphones and without music or in an otherwise quiet environment, and you don't want to use a third party app to turn off the fans, this might be a dealbreaker.
I was sorely tempted to go with a new Tiger Lake XPS 13 with Iris Xe graphics, because I had a good discount on a decently specced one, but decided against it; though it's a beautiful laptop, there appear to be major quality control issues and a lot of frustration from users, and it wouldn't have arrived fast enough anyway.
Gonna work on this G14 for a few days before making a decision on whether or not to cancel the ThinkPad order.
Anyway, I can recommend the Asus Zephyrus G14 to anyone who can live without a built-in webcam and dedicated home/end/PgUp/PgDn keys, and accept some light but constant fan-noise (or using a third-party app to turn off the fans at low temps).