Yesterday I told you I was researching to buy a second laptop which would become my primary laptop since the one I have now is mostly obsolete.
After two long days of research, I finally decided and placed my order too.
Yesterday evening I had 14 options placed on the favorites. In the morning they added up to 22, and then I started to narrow them down.
The final three I ended up choosing from were all Lenovo laptops. One IdeaPad, one ThinkPad, and one ThinkBook. They were all three at the same price too. What are the chances?
These are the 3 finalists:
- IdeaPad 5 Pro 16ARH7, AMD Ryzen™ 5 6600HS Creator Edition up to 4.50 GHz, 16'', 2.5K, IPS, 120Hz, 16GB DDR5, 512GB SSD, AMD Radeon 660M Graphics, No OS, Cloud Grey
- ThinkPad E15 Gen 2, Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 up to 4.20 GHz, 15.6", Full HD, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, Free DOS, Black
- ThinkBook 15 G2 ITL, Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 up to 4.70 GHz, 15.6", Full HD, IPS, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, No OS, Mineral Grey
IdeaPad has a metal case (aluminum), a bigger (16") and a better display. On the other side, the RAM is soldered and also low-power (which is fine if you want it to consume less, but not fine if you want better performance).
ThinkPad is part of a successful series, doesn't have soldered RAM, and has better connectivity than IdeaPad. More security options too. I've read it gets really warm underside though.
ThinkBook is the only one of the 3 which has a gen 7 CPU and has the best connectivity of all 3. At the same time, 8 GB is soldered and 8 occupy a slot.
The decision was difficult and for a long time leaned toward the IdeaPad because of the bigger and better display. But I didn't like that the entire RAM is soldered and favors power saving instead of performance by design.
So, in the end, I decided on the ThinkBook. It's not perfect, none of them are. But for the price range I had in mind, it seems to offer the best performance with the least compromises.
I also tried to find options with more than 16 GB of RAM, after @mypathtofire recommended that. None of the options I found were in the price range or they were severely lacking in other areas.
In the end, my pre-conditions are met:
- 16 GB RAM
- 512 GB SSD
- relatively silent (I checked the noise level on specialized sites)
- min. 15.6", FHD, 1920x1080, anti-glare; is it a decent display? hard to say, but if it's not I can use my old PC's monitor (thanks @ph1102 for suggesting it)
- a keyboard without pitfalls - it doesn't seem to have any, but I purchased a USB keyboard and mouse too
- price was 884 USD, so in the upper range of 500-900 USD
I'll have to wait a full week for it! They probably ran out of stock as I was ordering. There was 1 remaining when I last checked.
And this concludes these long two days when I barely made time for anything else.