My current laptop, the Lenovo ideapad S540 which I bought around 2019, is about five years old. It is broken - and I figured out that repairing is just not worth it:

  • The two speakers are blown up, thanks to the shoddy repair done two years ago, when I sent them to repair the melted BIOS/UEFI ROM
  • About two month ago, I had to replace the DC jack four times in a span of few weeks (the new one works fine, however, but I don’t trust it)
  • The battery is dead, I’ve tried searching for the same on the entire internet but to no success, and I’m at the mercy of a continuous power-supply, which is not a thing in my country
  • The top panel (which houses the keyboard) was swapped recently, and was also an expensive replacement, but the new one is of an inferior quality, so one of my keys has a key-cap with a permanent damage

I am looking for a new laptop now, but since I can’t afford to buy a good one, I am considering to buy something cheaper with a loan of some sort. Here’s a few constraints I had in my mind:

  • 16GB of RAM - no more, no less
  • 512GB of SSD - no more, no less
  • Don’t want the half-soldered + half-socketed configuration seen in most Intel-based laptops - it should be either completely soldered, or completely socketed - I would appreciate the latter, however
  • Don’t care about the thickness
  • Also, don’t care about the weight as long as it’s not heavy like some of those laptops that come with a metal panel (like my present laptop)
  • RJ-45 port not a must, but would love to have one for convenience
  • Will prefer a almost-no-bezel design
  • WiFi driver should come with 5GHz support
  • Comes with a web-cam shutter (physical or hardware-based, does not matter)
  • No CPU + dGPU - I’m looking for a CPU+iGPU/APU combo
  • AMD Ryzen processors preferably (I’m sick of Intel, and my experience with AMD Athlon, despite being a weaker CPU, was pretty good)
  • Specifically the Phoenix (7040 series) lineup, but also open to HawkPoint (8000) and Barcelo-R (7030 series)

For now, I think that the target laptop should come with either the 7440U or the 7540U. 8440U and 8540U would be nice too, but they’re probably going to be expensive, and won’t be available, since they were launched about a month ago. But since Phoenix-based laptops are still not available even in 2024, I am open to looking for a 7330U and 7530U-based laptop.

  • chris@l.roofo.cc
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    10 months ago

    If you have budget constraints why not go for a used computer. I recently picked up a really nice used Dell XPS 15 for under 400€. Going cutting edge with budget constraints is rarely a good idea. Good hardware from a few years ago might outperform current budget hardware. What you should look into though is of it has recent bios support (I know Dell XPS are very good in that regard).