12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
Business grade Thinkpads (usually the more expensive ones, not the “Thinkpads”) are usually a solid choice. Mine came with a USB-C-TO-RJ45 adapter, which I now find nicer than having built-in networking as it gives me more extensibility options without reducing speed. I could even switch it out for a 2.5Gbps or higher dongle in the future should I get the opportunity to upgrade my network.
If you can tolerate macOS and are willing to spend extra money on better speakers, Macbooks are also pretty good. Their WiFi cards are good enough that they can keep up with or even outperform ethernet in most scenarios if you have a good access point/router.
If you want your laptop to last, Framework may be a good option. Easy to repair, I/O swappable in the fly (want four ethernet jacks? Why not! Two 3.5mm plugs and four USB A’s? You can! Serial adapters? There’s probably someone selling a compatible dongle!), but pricey.
All the good laptops are moving towards dongles and soldered-on RAM, unfortunately. I’m hoping the upcoming RAM standard will bring back RAM modules in laptops and that not too many manufacturers follow Apple’s example of soldering on the SSD.
The Lenovo E series ticks all those boxes. I use one for work and it’s good for an x64 laptop. Just hate how long it takes to come out of sleep. Nothing really beats a Mac there.
A secondhand Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude, 2013-2018 models. Get one with a quad-core i7, it will run you €150-€400 depending on the amount of RAM, SSD, screen resolution, condition and possibly an onboard GPU.
Thinkpad T, W, X series.
Also the P series (succesor of W). X series, just avoid the X1 Carbon.
We found the carbon to be okay, but the fan ramped up to TOGA mode super fast.
Why?
Glued or soldered components, lots of issues as far as I’ve heard. You don’t find them refurbished (or rarely) which is a bad sign.
uhh… what kind of work?
the panasonic toughbook and apple macbook air are two wildly different laptops i have seen extensively in the field but not at the same workplaces.
Lenovo X1 carbon is what you are looking for. I got one (10th Gen) and slapped fedora on it and it’s been absolutely awesome.
Battery life could be better, but I haven’t tweaked it.
Good luck finding a quality new laptop with Linux support that also has a rj45 port. Framework might be an option though. But I just use a gigabit Ethernet usb3 adapter and it works fine
I’ve got a cheaper 6th gen, and it’s absolutely wonderful. It was ~$100 in EBay, because I’m broke
You’d get more battery & performance out of AMD, but the X1 is Intel. Looks like they don’t even offer OLED on that line either.
Basically any Lenovo Thinkpad. They’re cheap, strong and easy to repair/upgrade
System76.
My experience with clevo Models is that they aren’t really well built.
Lenovo Thinkpad t14’s. The x-series are ok, but definitely not anything outside of the thinkpad sub-brand.
Dell latitude used to be the work sub-brand and probably still is.
Hp has a work sub-brand but I don’t know what it is.
Also ran contenders include MS Surface and MacBook.
Anyone else recommending anything else are out of the loop.
I love my t14s, but it doesn’t have a rj45.
E14 would tick that box. Not as fancy as t series when it comes to materials and whatnot, but pretty damn solid machine still
You’re expected to use a dock or usb nic with a laptop. Usb is a better design for regularly unplugged.
I have been a loyal Lenovo customer for years. Their laptops are not cool or sexy, but they are reliable.
I’ve had 2 touch screens completely become unresponsive in the last year or 2. Both Lenovo, so I’ll never buy from them again
For what it’s worth, I’ve bought two laptops from them in the last four years and had tons of problems initially (there were both essentially pre orders, first run laptops). A few minutes on the phone, some trouble shooting,and I had replacements for both overnighted for free. Zero issues with the replacements in both cases.
So yes, don’t order the brand newest Lenovo. Get the one a generation old at deeep discount.
Not DELL.
Dell’s Precision series is really good these days. Their Latitudes are all over the place quality-wise, especially their 2-in-1s. XPS’s have been alright.
Which did you hate? I deploy a ton of these and there are definitely ones that were awful.
Latitude 5540. Someone designed this thing as a prank.
The power button is a keyboard key. It has a key just for calc.exe. It’s a comedy show all over.
Yeah their Latitude line is basically the boring no frills business tier that veers between ‘okay’ and ‘bad’. I talked my company into dropping that junk and instead we now lease their more premium Precision series. Build quality is higher and they have a discreet GPU. People have been way happier and I get a lot fewer complaints. I’m hoping to buy mine once the lease is up.
Lenovo seems to be pretty solid but fuck… I still have a grudge over how much shittier they are than the old IBM ThinkPads.
We have nothing but problems with the ThinkPads issued by my IT department. Multiple models. They’re not what they used to be.
Same here, both E Series and L Series.
Those are the shit ones. Only T, X, W are the proper ones.
The problematic models we have are all T series.
Newer ones flex a lot more.
My last and current laptops were and are Lenovo. I definitely recommend
Lenovo onboard power issues very common at my job. Toshiba was great way back when. Surface pro nifty but battery is crap. I hate to say it but dell makes ok laptops
I’ve used Macbooks in networking / programming and construction environments for over fifteen years. They’ve been incredibly solid in my experience. In fact, the first week I was given a Thinkpad, I broke it because it was so much more fragile than a Mac. I always used USB adapters for Ethernet and serial connections without issue. They also run Windows and Linux.
Their Linux support is so bad it might as well be unsupported.
I run Asahi on my 2023 m2pro mbp; performance-wise it’s closer to a contemporary i7 than the actual performance of the M chip on macos, but a lot of what I need is there, a surprising amount of stuff is compiled for Arm64 actually. Feels like normal Fedora in most every aspects. Coming from thinkpads / latitudes, keyboard is shit tho, really. Screen is great, sound is quite good, device feels sturdy but sleep eats 50% battery a day. Air vents are placed just right to gulp any spilled drink, like, vacuuming it off the table, a puzzling design choice. Prices took a dive with the advent of the m3 so I’m not really angry, a 2023 i7 thinkpad would have cost me the same.
They also run Windows
They no longer do (since the switch to ARM) - unless you count running under a VM.
Windows supports ARM https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/overview
But nothing supports windows arm
I know, but you can’t install it directly on a MacBook - you have to use a VM like Parallels or UTM.
Honestly, unless you need Solidworks or something else highly resource heavy and windows only, VMs work well with M chips. They’re surprisingly fast.
Right. I use Parallels.
Premium product experience at a premium price. Whether the cost premium is worth it is a judgment call for the user.
Premium product experience
The hardware is pretty premium, but the software is such a pain. As a result the overall experience is just “okay”.
I see you’ve never seen a Dell BPA
Dell is giving the Feds a premium experience?
In fact, the first week I was given a Thinkpad, I broke it because it was so much more fragile than a Mac
Genuine question, but what the actual fuck are you doing with your laptops? I used a ThinkPad through high school and college, and school aged me certainly didn’t treat it very kindly.
I picked it up by the screen and the LCD cracked. I realize this is stupid but it’s something I’ve always done and continue to do with Macs.
Why? That’s not a good way to pick up laptop, the base is heavier than screen
stupid
Indeed
Look into the Framework 13. There are no touchpad buttons but otherwise it has everything you need and is fully upgradable and customizable. The laptop has four expansion ports that can hold a variety of hotpluggable expansion cards. The manufacturer offers USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, 2.5G ethernet, microSD, audio and SSDs. There are also some community-made ones like LTE and dual USB-C.
When I eventually need to upgrade I won’t even consider anything that isn’t repairable on a similar level. Hopefully they will be sticking around until then, but it’s looking good on that front right now
Novacustom, System76. Doesnt tick everything but has Coreboot support.
Tuxedo, if in EU
They use proprietary firmware, dont they?
They use coreboot, at least mine has it.
