How to Buy a Laptop - YouTube

- I wanted to make it back-to-school laptop guide.

But if I say the HP ENVY 14 is sweet,

it'll go from sweet to sold out in about 30 minutes.

So instead, you guys are getting something even better,

a start-to-finish laptop buyer's guide

so you can make your own decision.

Also, it will include some honorable mentions,

like the aforementioned ENVY 14.

It really is pretty sweet.

So if you want one, (chuckles) move fast.

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Right out of the gate,

the Dell XPS 15 is the benchmark for Windows laptops.

It excels in performance, build quality, and battery life.

The only small problem is that it costs

over 2,000 U.S. dollars.

Now, I think Dell might have financing options available

if you need them,

but before you lock into an agreement like that,

I should tell you that it is possible

to find something with more power,

a longer-lasting battery

or something much lighter for less than half the price.

The first and most important thing you need to decide

is how much performance you actually need,

as well as your budget.

Because these two factors will determine

what type of laptop you're looking at.

Be honest with yourself.

If you don't really need that top-of-the-line RTX 3080 GPU,

sacrificing some FPS could either save you a ton of money

or get you a better built machine

that's more comfortable to daily drive.

With that said, if performance is your top priority,

you're probably going to want a gaming laptop.

Generally speaking, they have the best cooling,

they feature the fastest processors,

and they're cheaper than equally powerful laptops

that are marketed at professional creators.

If you primarily want a laptop for school or work

that has enough grunt to game on your brakes,

you'll be perfectly fine

with either a GTX 1650 or an RTX 3050.

Here are a couple of budget-friendly options.

Any of these should serve you very well.

So I would personally go with whatever's on sale

and then return it and try again if I end up hating it.

If you're looking for something powerful enough

to really crank the details in AAA games at 1080p,

or if you wanna drive a high refresh rate panel

for smoother animations,

the RTX 3060 Mobile delivers nearly a 40% bump in FPS

over the 3050 Ti and comes highly recommended,

especially an ASUS Zephyrus G14.

And we've also seen some really nice fire sales

on last-gen 2000 series RTX models.

Above that, however,

things start to get a little complicated,

a lot complicated.

In many cases,

the model of GPU that you choose,

and that you pay for,

can have less of an impact on real-world performance

than the cooling and the power delivery

of the overall laptop. (exhales strongly)

There is honestly way too much to cover here.

So instead we made a playlist

that you can watch called

"Buying a Gaming Laptop in 2021 is Way More Complicated

Than it Should Be."

Also get subscribed because I'm sure

that the shenanigans are far from over.

Moving on then,

if gaming for you

means playing TextTwist in your browser

or the occasional round of Rocket League, great news!

Integrated, or IGP use, have gotten shockingly good.

So you wanna avoid a laptop

that has low-end dedicated graphics,

like these ones.

In my opinion,

they just aren't enough of an upgrade

over modern integrated GPUs

to be worth the extra power draw and heat output.

Your emulated PlayStation 2 Classics

are gonna run fine without them.

As for CPUs, AMD keeps things pretty simple.

The bigger the number, the more faster it goes.

And I can easily recommend

both the Ryzen 4000 and 5000 series processors on mobile.

They have exceptional efficiency,

which means great performance in compact

or lower-priced machines that typically end up

with smaller batteries.

I would hesitate however to go for a Ryzen 3000.

The name seems to suggest

that these are based on AMD Zen 2 cores,

but they're actually based on an older design

that is significantly slower and less power efficient.

As for Intel, whoa,

if it's got five numbers followed by an H, like this,

that means it's a faster model with more cores.

And if it ends in HK, like this one,

it's a super fast boy

and is generally capable of overclocking.

If instead it's got four numbers followed by G4 or G7,

like this, that means it'll have at most four cores,

and is intended to be snappy and power efficient,

rather than capable of handling heavy workloads.

Now, for most people only four CPU cores

isn't gonna be a problem.

But if you plan on running fluid simulations

or editing 4K video, an H-series processor,

or ideally an 8 Core from AMD would be the better choice.

Something to note, though, is that for Intel,

their latest 11th Gen processors

were a significant upgrade.

They finally switched from 14 nanometer to 10 nanometer.

So if the latest and greatest isn't within your budget,

you can't assume that last year's model will be

same, same, but slightly worse.

The good news, however,

is that in the few years prior to that,

Intel was basically rehashing the same designs.

So you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference

between an 8th Gen processor and a 10th Gen one.

I'd only go 7th Gen and older though

if the price was very compelling on a used device.

Fortunately, RAM is simple. Get 16 gigs if you can.

Windows and Chrome are gonna make quick work of 8 gigs.

And if 8 gigs of RAM is all that meets your budget,

make sure you choose a machine

that can be upgraded down the line with slots

that look like these ones.

Even if you're not tech savvy,

iFixit has excellent teardowns

that can both help you choose an appropriate model

and perform the surgery.

Framework, by the way, gets an honorable mention here

for their outstanding attention

to the upgradability of their machines.

They even go as far

as making the integrated ports swappable.

Storage is a similar story to RAM.

You're probably gonna want at least 500 gigs for your SSD,

but if a 256 gig one is all that you can fit in your budget,

just make sure that the laptop you're considering

can be upgraded down the road.

Something you might have realized by now, though,

is that since Intel didn't do a whole lot

to improve their laptops between 8th and 10th generations,

it is entirely possible that someone might think

that their old laptop is slow,

but it actually just needs a little bit

more storage or RAM.

Neither of them is super expensive these days.

So chucking 16 gigs of Ram into a three-year-old laptop,

maybe with a battery refresh

that can usually be found

with a quick part number search on eBay,

could give it a whole new lease on life.

While you're in there, by the way,

make sure to blow out the cooling system

because overheating is the biggest cause

of premature laptop failure.

Now to address the elephant in the room.

AMD and Intel aren't the only options for CPUs anymore.

Bringing us to the Apple M1.

The MacBook Air and Pro M1s are in almost every way

the best thin-and-lights on the market.

They're extremely snappy,

feel great to use, have excellent screens,

and the battery life is unmatched

by anything that shows this logo on boot up.

But they aren't perfect.

The M1 chip has only been out for a year.

So there are some growing pains.

For instance, our Mac guy, Jonathan,

has to use Teams in a Chrome window

since there's no native app yet.

And there's no way to install full x86 Windows.

As for us, the inability to run professional programs

like SOLIDWORKS and Altium,

not to mention games,

makes the M1 Mac a complete no go.

So a beautiful machine,

much better keyboard than the old ones.

Just make sure that everything you're gonna need

will run on it.

And Chromebooks are a similar story.

If you're on a budget or you already have access

to a powerful desktop,

95% of the time a Chromebook is going to do

everything you need it to do.

But if a Chromebook is your only computer,

your professor or your boss could easily provide you

with some mandatory piece of software

that you either can't run or are going to have to install

in a hacky, time-consuming way.

And at that point,

you'll probably wish that you'd saved up

another 100 bucks and got a Windows device,

or spent the same amount

and gotten a used ThinkPad, like this one.

- Having the fastest laptop around though means nothing

if the screen sucks.

How will you appreciate all the new T-shirt designs

on theltgstore.com?

But seriously, the screen is the thing you will interact

with most on your laptop.

So it really makes sense to skimp on it.

There are three main panel types:

your TN, IPS type, and OLED,

and only one that you should choose.

TN looks terrible by today's standards

and should basically be avoided at all times.

OLED panels look amazing,

with crisp blacks and vibrant colors

and incredible saturation,

but they're normally not super bright,

which kind of matters if you're taking this thing

into bright areas like outside.

They struggle with reflections

and they're terrible for battery life,

which leaves us with IPS.

And IPS-type panels.

LG trademarked IPS.

So other brands have to use different names

for the same tech.

Once you know the panel type is okay,

the color space is the next key thing.

This describes how many different colors

your monitor can produce.

It can get a bit confusing

since there are a bunch of different standards.

But unless you know you need

something else,

aim for near 100% coverage of sRGB, pretty basic.

The vast majority of applications, webpages, and games

are tuned for sRGB.

So unless you're doing professional color work,

going beyond that to Adobe RGB or a DCI-P3

is not a requirement.

More expensive machines may come factory calibrated

to account for the slight differences

from one panel to the next.

But there are quick and dirty ways to calibrate it yourself

using test patterns that are good enough

if you're not doing color-critical work.

Something you cannot change after the fact

is your panel's brightness.

It's tough to recommend a single brightness number

since 250 nits might be fine

on a matte display

while 400 nits might not feel like enough on a glossy one.

But what I can say is that if you're gonna be

in a bright environment, lower is generally better.

Finally, if you plan on gaming,

throw out most of what I just said,

because the single most important thing for you

is the refresh rate of your panel.

A high refresh rate display,

paired with a good CPU and GPU,

will allow you to see much smoother animations on the screen

and make your gaming experience feel

more responsive and immersive.

We proved outright that going from 60 hertz to 144 hertz

results in a real-world competitive advantage

and while 240 hertz and above definitely starts

to succumb to the law of diminishing returns,

it's safe to say that more is more better,

at least for competitive gamers.

If sightseeing games are more your thing, though,

look at you with your three players,

a 1440p, 120 or 144 hertz IPS-type

is the perfect sweet spot, chef's kiss.

Speaking of which,

you might have noticed

that I've hardly touched on resolution.

That's because despite it being one of the big highlights

on a typical manufacturer's webpage,

for the most part it doesn't really matter.

Unless the laptop is extremely cheap or small,

it will have at least 1080p resolution.

And since laptops are pretty small in general,

1080p is enough for the image to look pretty darn good.

In our opinion,

pushing to a 4K display is basically just a waste

of battery life,

unless the 1080p option is a really bad panel.

A far more important aspect of the display is the ratio

of horizontal to vertical pixels.

For professionals in particular,

a 16:10 or 3:2 display gives you more vertical space

to work with for scrolling long documents

or editing complex video timelines.

Some laptops with great screens are the Surface Laptop,

HP ENVY 14, Dell XPS, ASUS Zephyrus M16 and G15,

and the Lenovo Legion Pro, they're good.

Oh yeah, we like touchscreens. You might not.

So hey, it's up to you, unless you buy a Mac,

then it's up to Apple.

- A really important part of a laptop

that you can't evaluate from the spec sheet alone

is the keyboard and track pad.

Given these are the bits that you'll physically be touching

every time you use it,

you'll want them to be really good.

The easiest way to figure out

if a keyboard and trackpad are good

is to watch some reviews.

Find a host who has some overlapping experience with yours.

See if you like the same kind of things.

Then find out their most recent opinion

on whatever machine you're considering.

We've got heaps of unboxings around ShortCircuit,

like this one right here and I think this one too.

So if you're lucky,

we've already taken a look at what you want.

And if you're not so lucky,

well, I guess it's time to head over

to a local big box store,

like Best Buy or somewhere and just try some out.

First thing to do is make sure your hands physically fit.

If they're falling off of the edge,

kinda like this, you need a bigger laptop.

To type fast, consistency is the key.

The more confidence your fingers have, the better.

So kinda just press around the keyboard.

If the whole thing flexes a bit, that can be fine,

but uneven squishiness can throw off your typing.

Feel around the J and K keys specifically.

This tends to be a soft spot on some laptops.

If the deck flex is good,

then you can evaluate the keys themselves.

Press around the corners to check the stability.

If the corner kinda dips below the chassis

before it actuates, don't buy it.

And finally, give the keys a press to see

how consistent the force required to push them is.

If some of them take more effort than others,

keep looking unless you're a hunt and peck typist.

For you, you probably wouldn't notice the difference,

but if you wanna improve your typing in the future,

maybe, you know, invest in something that's good.

Our keyboard standouts are the ASUS Zephyrus lineup,

basically any Alienware laptop,

but especially this one with the Cherry switches,

any Surface device, Dell's XPS 15,

and pretty much anything from HP's ENVY or Spectre lineups.

While you're tooling around with the keyboard,

it's a good time to evaluate the palm rejection

of the trackpad.

If the mouse accidentally clicks or moves around

while you're typing, real bad.

If none of those things happened,

try to use the keyboard and then slowly move

to touching the trackpad.

What you're looking for is to see

if the trackpad doesn't immediately start working,.

OEMs will do this to make sure

that your palms don't actually trigger it,

but if it's too aggressive

it can make the trackpad feel unresponsive.

After that,

check if the trackpad uses Windows Precision drivers.

If it doesn't, just don't get the laptop.

In 2021, no one needs snapdicks drunken drivers.

From there, I personally don't like trackpads

with high latency,

but depending on what panel you have

and your personal sensitivity to it,

you might not notice the difference.

So it kind of just comes down to trying as many as possible

in-person and hopefully you can figure out what you like.

Our standout trackpad champs are, of course, the MacBooks,

XPS 15 once again, and the Zephyrus G15 and M16.

The last big ones that we haven't mentioned

are weight and battery.

Weight is pretty simple

since it's just a function of performance

and how much you want to spend.

This one's real light, made of magnesium.

Not cheap. (laughs)

But the battery's a lot more complex.

I wish I could just say something like,

"Get an 85 watt-hour battery and you'll be good."

But like, these two both have 55 watt-hour batteries.

This one's four hours, this one's 16.

It (laughs) doesn't really work like that.

Because depending on the CPU, GPU, display,

and even the tuning of all of those things,

the battery life is just willy-nilly and will vary wildly.

Your only real choice is to find a reviewer

who has tested the config you like or something close to it

in an industry standard test,

like the PCMark battery life test.

Anything over about 6.5 hours will be serviceable,

with anything over 11 being pretty darn solid

for all day use.

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- If you still want to know more,

check out our playlist "Buying Game Laptops in 2021

is Way More Complicated Than it Should Be."

It's so stupid.

All the things that you need to know

to make an informed decision to buy

like a gaming laptop, ridiculous.