It's been almost six months since I bought my last laptop, a ThinkPad E585. I'm getting the itch to buy a new one; there was always a sense that this was going to be a transitional/secondary machine, and I'm about ready for a new toy.
While I can probably hold off that itch for a while longer, I've been thinking about what matters to me when I buy a laptop. This is totally a stream of consciousness, but maybe it’ll help somebody figure out what to do when they look for a new lapto... See more It's been almost six months since I bought my last laptop, a ThinkPad E585. I'm getting the itch to buy a new one; there was always a sense that this was going to be a transitional/secondary machine, and I'm about ready for a new toy.
While I can probably hold off that itch for a while longer, I've been thinking about what matters to me when I buy a laptop. This is totally a stream of consciousness, but maybe it’ll help somebody figure out what to do when they look for a new laptop, and maybe avoid a trap or two, because there are some things here that most reviews you read simply don’t talk about.
Size, Weight and Mobility
I used to own thick and heavy desktop replacements. I had a mobile laptop – an Acer Travelmate – when I was in school, but I didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I would now, because, well, I was a student.
My laptop is 15”, just under 20mm thick and weighs 2.1kg. It’s not ultra-mobile, but reasonably easy to carry that I leave home with it 2-3 times a week. I don’t actually need to take it with me most of the time, but being able to get some work down when you sit down on a bus or at a restaurant has value. I would not go back to heavier laptops.
When I buy a new laptop, these are pretty much the dimensions I’ll shoot for. These days, I wouldn’t consider any laptop heavier than 5 lbs (2.27kg) or thicker than 1 inch (25.4 mm). Actually, 25mm is pushing it; I want less than 20mm, and I don’t really have to compromise. Lighter would be nice, but 2kg is light enough that it stops being a priority.
15 inch is a little big when you sit down in a bus. I expect to fly A LOT with my next laptop, and I can already see using it in economy class being rather cramped.
At the desk, 15 inch is perfect. 14 inch would feel a little small, and 13 inch even more so. I’ve thought about having a 15” laptop as my main machine, and a 13” ultrabook or even a Surface as my secondary machine on the road. But I’d rather not deal with switching between computers (and I already have my current Thinkpad), and if I want a single machine, I’ll take the 15” and compromise on it feeling a little big on the road.
There are benefits to having a laptop designed to be mobile, other than it being mobile. Cheaper desktop replacements are usually made of crap and can literally fall apart in your backpack. Cheaper ultrabooks, on the other hand, are at least designed to take a little bit of abuse if you bring it on the road. The fact is f=ma, and there are some components that tend to become points of failure. Small and light laptops can sometimes be flimsy, yes, but they also do less damage to themselves, much like light people compared to heavy people.
My laptop’s battery doesn’t last 5 hours on low-power surfing. This hasn’t hurt me yet, but I really want something that lasts longer if I fly regularly. 8 hours or more would be great; I would tolerate 6 hours of "real" battery time.
Screen
I’ve had basically the same species of screen on my last 3 laptops – 1920x1080 matte IPS. That’s pretty much where things have been for several years, and where things will continue to be for the foreseeable future. 1366x768 is really too low when you work with documents. 4K would be nice, but on 15” I’ll most likely scale it back to the same size as FHD anyway, and 4K kills about 1/3 battery time, which is simply too high a price to pay. I wouldn’t get a UHD display even if it cost the same as the FHD one.
I have no real use for touchscreens or convertible tablet-hybrid laptops. The problem is that these so often come with glossy screens, up with which I will not put. There are simply too many disadvantages - unusable in sunlight, tiring on the eyes, smudges - that make them thoroughly unacceptable.
Most of the time, things like color, response times, contrast and brightness don’t really matter to a translator, unless you’re using the computer for fun too. Maybe brightness, a little bit, and maybe backlight bleeding. But it’s worth paying attention as to whether a notebook uses PWM to dim the screen – it doesn’t matter in most cases, but there are a few laptops that would flicker when the screen is dimmed. HP, I’m looking at you.
I’ve never used a screen with high refresh rate, although my next laptop will probably have one.
You literally have to try to get a TN panel these days. Please don’t try.
Keyboard
Most things about a laptop you can find out on the internet. In most cases people will tell you what to think, and you’d be fine. But the keyboard is the one thing that you can’t compromise or rely on others.
For me, the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys are non-negotiable. Razer laptops are just about perfect in every way, and I’ll never buy a Razer laptop until they fix their stupid keyboard layout.
Some people need a numpad. Some people hate it. I don’t want one as I’d rather have a centered keyboard, but I can live with it. It does make the keyboard pretty cramped, especially if you’re on the road, but my current laptop has a numpad too and I’ve gotten used to it. I even use it from time to time.
If there’s one thing that I regret about buying my current notebook, it’s that the keyboard doesn’t have backlighting. It’s an annoyance that I’ve learned to live with, but an annoyance nonetheless, and if I had known this beforehand, I might have reconsidered.
Thinkpads have a quirk where their left Ctrl and Fn keys are reversed. This can be changed via software, but the key sizes are out of whack too. I’ve grown used to it and it won’t stop me from buying a Thinkpad, but an annoyance is an annoyance.
Most laptop reviews spend their time talking about keyboard feel, and the conclusion I’ve reached is…I don’t really care. Yes, the click on a Thinkpad is nice, but I can get used to a softer or otherwise different feel without really being bothered by it.
What’s inside
…don’t matter. Seriously, all that matters is what’s on the outside.
4-core CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD; it’s actually hard to buy a laptop these days that DOESN’T have these specs at $600 USD and up, and that’s totally adequate for most people. Realistically, I want at least 16GB and so do you, but I can live with 8 if I must. The other things? They don’t matter, for work at least. If you do other things on your computer that need other things, you already know what you need. Most translators shouldn’t need to pay a lot for their laptop; the things that you need to pay for are mobility and build quality, not performance.
What will my next laptop be? Probably a Gigabyte Aero 15, although I’ll be waiting for review of its new refresh coming out in the summer. The MSI equivalents are a distant second – I actually like the keyboard layout, but 1 extra hour of battery time matters, and I want to be able to add a second stick of RAM and SSD without having to take the motherboard apart.
[Edited at 2019-05-28 07:38 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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