Posted 2 days ago

You've got a grand to spend on a laptop...

What are you buying?

Something that is good quality, upgradable memory and storage, supports a thunderbolt dock. Would be for video editing, maybe some gaming but something that'll have decent power and last a few years. Battery life and weight not a priority. Would consider used, but would have to be like new.

If it was £900 or £1,100 that's OK.

I miss my Legion 5 Pro 5800H with the 3070 but it didn't play well with the TB dock and I switch between Windows, Mac and Linux systems using that single TB cable.
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  1. Willy_Wonka's avatar
    Unless it is for gaming I would buy a £400 laptop

    & spend £600 on other things (edited)
  2. psychobitchfromhell's avatar
    I haven't got a grand to spend on a laptop, so I'm buying nothing. Are you offering me a grand to spend on a laptop?
  3. MIDURIX's avatar
    I'd want an OLED display.
  4. bonzobanana's avatar
    Why not buy a cheap Celeron laptop for around £50 and a decent powerful desktop computer for around £950 and then use the laptop around the home to stream games from the main computer or do video editing remotely in your garden or even away from home. A simple Celeron laptop can have up to about 14 hours battery life. Laptops are such a compromise anyway with a limited upgrade path. I've personally never seen the point of gaming laptops after having one many years ago and the battery life was awful, it was too big and it performed like crap compared to a much cheaper desktop computer for gaming etc. Always the fans were so annoying it was like constantly standing next to one of those hand dryer machines in public toilets. I had to use it with full size headphones or it would do my head in. Admittedly I had it on maximum performance which also meant maximum fan noise but then what is the point of paying for a powerful laptop and restricting it to low power performance, I might as well have just bought a cheaper laptop that performs that way in the first place.
    mogsog's avatar
    This ^

    Gaming* Laptops by they're nature are just too inefficient at shedding heat and as a result they're cpu and gpu performance suffers massively.

    *(in comparison to their desktop equivalents)

    I wouldn't ever buy a gaming laptop after seeing comparative performance numbers from the same chips and seeing just how much worse they are inside a laptop.

    (also having to fix them and feeling the heat that comes off them under load)

    You're paying a lot of money for worse performance. (edited)
  5. Wongy111's avatar

    sorry but...
  6. pekoz1's avatar
    OP Just trying to understand your setup....but I may have misunderstood....

    So you had the Legion and a TB dock......but youre also plugging the dock into other mac or linux systems?

    If your only issues were the TB dock not the Legion wouldnt you need to focus on that rather than the laptop? Otherwise you may repeat the problems...

    Out of interest was it a Lenovo or third party TB dock?
    Brydo666's avatar
    Author
    I wasn't clear - my TB dock is actually a monitor.

    I have a 38" LG UltraWide with TB support. My keyboard, mouse, webcam and speaker plug into the monitor then I connect the single TB cable from the monitor to the laptop I want to use. It's either my work thinkpad, personal thinkpad T480s (running dual win/linux), macbook or my wife uses her Dell. It's super convenient. Due to the lack of TB support from AMD, I wasn't able to do the same with my Legion 5 Pro and this required additional cables and such which is a little inconvenient.

    I'm selling the MacBook Pro to get a higher powered Windows machine, I'd have another Legion 5 Pro again but I'd like a laptop that I can use with just the TB cable like the others. It's much neater.

    I understand that for video editing and gaming a desktop system is the best choice, but I do need portability from time to time and really appreciate the silent nature of using laptops over desktop systems. Gaming is something I can do without but editing 4K videos is something I do at least once a week.

    In summary I'm looking for a laptop that is Intel (For TB support) and can comfortably edit 4K videos. Upgradable memory and storage would be good - one option I considered was the Dell XPS 9530 but many reports of the fans kicking in for minor tasks but to a dated cooling system. I have the option of a Razer Blade 14 with Ryzen 6900XT and 3070 for £1K but that won't play well with the TB. Curious to what other options there are.

    Maybe I just need to hang onto the MacBook. It does everything great but I mess up my keyboard shortcuts all the time and would rather exclusively work with Windows.
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