2016 - Which windows laptop to get

[shellylh]

What are the suggestions for high end 15" Windows laptops for someone who does a lot of graphics?   It is for a friend of mine. 

[grawk]

I'd get an Alienware with those conditions but if possible wait for the nvidia 1080 to come to portable which should be soon

[shellylh]

Damn, those are heavy (at least the quad cores are).  Anything similar to Macbook Pro 15" retina in term of quality, performance, weight, and battery life (besides just Macbook Pro 15" retina + Windows on bootcamp - I already mentioned this to her)?  

Edited June 19, 2016 by shellylh

[grawk]

The razor blade looks like what you want potentially

Or the Alienware 13.

Both of those have enough graphics horsepower (better than MacBook) but slightly smaller screens.

[n_maher]

I'd suggest an Origin 15.  Pick your poison based on price.

[Dusty Chalk]

My MSI gaming computer has killer graphics, but is also quite heavy at 17".

[Iron_Dreamer]

20 hours ago, shellylh said:

Damn, those are heavy (at least the quad cores are).  Anything similar to Macbook Pro 15" retina in term of quality, performance, weight, and battery life (besides just Macbook Pro 15" retina + Windows on bootcamp - I already mentioned this to her)?  

I'm using a Dell Precision M3800, now discontinued, but the successor model looks to be about 1lb lighter (Precision 15 5000 Series). If you're going to end up needing even more graphics power, then you get into the heavy true desktop replacements.

[shellylh]

Thanks guys!  I'll pass along these recommendations.

[Grand Enigma]

Are they looking for a truly portable laptop or something that is more "transportable?"

Will they be using the laptop screen as a primary display or have it docked to a larger screen for typical use?

Do they store lots of media locally or on external drives/cloud?

[shellylh]

Not sure but I think they are looking for something a little lighter than a really heavy 17" laptop but they won't be carrying it around all the time - they mostly work from home.  They will be having it docked to a larger screen for typical use.  Not sure about the media storage. 

[Dusty Chalk]

MSI have great graphics, so just look at their 15" offerings and don't get one with two drive bays like I did.  In fact, if one drive bay is still too heavy, maybe look at SSD based offerings. 

[MexicanDragon]

I'm sure they know they need this, but a quad core i7 processor, 16-32GB DDR4 RAM, SSD (256GB minimum, 512-1TB), GTX 970m graphics or higher (probably GTX 980m unless they're going to wait for the probably-much-better GTX 1070m or 1080m,) or the workstation graphics which I don't deal with at all so have no comment on, other than get 4-8GB RAM version

The Origin EON15-X Pro (the professional/non-gaming line from where Nate recommended) has desktop processors. The i7-6700k is the processor that Jeff and Chris have in their gaming desktops, if that tells you anything about how powerful it is.

M.2 SSDs are super small (2 postage stamp sized, and about half the height of your usual SSD,) so those can be super light, but these aren't quite svelte machines. It'll be smaller than Dusty's, though.

**BRENT**

[n_maher]

8 hours ago, MexicanDragon said:

The Origin EON15-X Pro (the professional/non-gaming line from where Nate recommended) has desktop processors. The i7-6700k is the processor that Jeff and Chris have in their gaming desktops, if that tells you anything about how powerful it is.
 

Odds are that the 15-X Pro will be my next laptop.  My Alienware is going on 7 years old, has been rebuilt twice and worst yet, partially overheated during my last gaming activity and smelled "toasty".  Hard to blame it for deciding that it's had enough, it's had the best run of any computer I've owned.  

[falkon]

Nate, if you need portability+gaming but not both at the same time,  I think the razer blade stealth + core is where it's at right now.

[n_maher]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll go do some research. 

[Grand Enigma]

32 minutes ago, n_maher said:

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll go do some research. 

Enjoy that.  The Razer Core is currently more elusive than a GTX 1080.

[velvetx]

I tried the Razer Blade Stealth at CES this year it's a pretty nice machine.  If you are going with that you would definitely need the Razer Core which is really expensive for what it is.  That and the performance for what it is according to what some reviewers have said is not as high as expected.

Razer Blades though are very nice looking (basically a gaming macbook pro) but I don't know about reliability.  Personally I don't trust razer as a company as they have made some pretty cruddy products.

I guess what you need to figure out first is what is your budget.  I will say no matter what you do do not buy a lenovo.  Their trackpads are terrible and reliability in the past for me have been an issue.  The other issue with gaming laptops is their battery life is not that good (reason being they are meant to be desktop replacements with high performance graphics cards not travel machines as they are heavy).  

I think the new nvidia 10 series mobile graphics cards are set to hit in a few months so i would probably wait.  They are much cooler and more efficient than the maxwell cards and the gains are pretty dramatic.

Edited June 24, 2016 by velvetx

[robm321]

My Lenovo has been very reliable. I haven't heard any association between Lenovo and reliability issues before? 

Agreed, that the trackpad sucks though. 

Edited June 24, 2016 by robm321

[grawk]

lenovo makes an awfully wide variety of laptops.  The good ones are good, the shit ones are shit.  

[skullguise]

4 hours ago, grawk said:

lenovo makes an awfully wide variety of laptops.  The good ones are good, the shit ones are shit.  

Agreed.  Same with Dell & Toshiba in my experience as well.....

[falkon]

I have had bad luck with Toshiba.  Every laptop of theirs I've had experience with has been at worst, complete dogshit and at best, subpar in its category.

Dell is decent recently with their XPS lineup. Lenovo T and X series laptops are usually good quality but can be annoying with spyware and bloated software suite.

I actually like the Microsoft Store quite a bit for laptops.  Although they can be overpriced, I like the clean installs of the signature editions and overall, they have good tech support.

[crappyjones123]

Any suggestions for non graphics inclined work? I am in need of a windows machine - even macs with bootcamp are not allowed for whatever reason. The ability to write on the computer would be nice although not necessary. Leaning towards a surface pro 4 but having not used a pc in probably 6 years I have no idea what the current landscape is like. The T460s is another option. Is there anything else I should be considering? Julie does a little bit of CAD work for roofing but mostly excel and estimating software stuff so after this year I was thinking I could give her the laptop for work instead of selling it. Keeping that in mind, any suggestions?  

[tkam]

Surface Pro 4 or the Dell XPS 13 would be my recommendations.

[MexicanDragon]

The Tkam is wise; either of those suggestions would work incredibly well. I'd probably go XPS 13 or 15, because most of my laptoping is NOT at a desk. I have an HP Pavilion X2 for my work rig, and it's a budget windows tablet/PC, but there is no way I could handle that form factor as an only machine.

FWIW, I'm on an i7 ultrabook with a late 2012 build date, and if it just had a proper amount of ram, it would still be fantastic. As it stands (with 4GB) I have 50+ Chrome tabs open, along with Steam, and a few other things. I've even done some light gaming on this. 1080p touchscreen is fantastic on this size, but if you go for a 15, do 4k.

Oh, if you're going to be doing rounds and whatnot and having it, definitely go SP4. If it's more classroom/after school/main laptop, XPS.

**BRENT**

[crappyjones123]

For rounds I'll have my iPhone. No one carries tablets at my hospital other than admin. Too bulky and in the off chance there is a code and I am expected to help in some remote fashion, then the tablet just gets in the way. This machine will likely just sit in the residents lounge where we have to log patients every day and do dumb modules. For whatever reason the hospital just started this requirement of no Macs. I'm still trying to press them to let me use the MacBook air with boot camp since they freak out every time they see parallels but in the event i need to buy a new machine, I'm starting to gravitate towards the surface. Does anyone have experience with using it for processor intensive tasks? I realise it is a hybrid between a tablet and a laptop but in my stereotyping head it's still a tablet and therefore not powerful enough to handle the job that it might be used for in a year.