alt Hacker NewsI was recently in the lookout for a new laptop. I wanted something BEEFFY! Specs wise but 13 inch at most.
I literally couldn't find anything on the PC side. I wanted an x86 because I prefer Linux Mint as my OS (didn't care about windows) , but it was impossible to find a good laptop with good GPU , more than 64gb ram and decent build materials (ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop).
So, if settled for a 128gb ram M4 max Macbookpro. It has been pretty solid so far. I'm a power user, so the RAM is used quite a lot (one of the reasons I wanted x86/Linux was to avoid virtualization overhead in docker/podman).
Macs are way more expensive than other laptops, but their level of tech sophistication is miles ahead of anyone.
Now, if only Asahi was more complete.
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This is how opinions differ. IMO plastic is better than aluminium. It is robust (if done right), lighter and doesn't have good thermal conductivity (which makes laptop usage possible, MacBooks can be uncomfortable for lap usage if too hot).
The metal is more "luxury", though.
> I wanted something BEEFFY! Specs wise but 13 inch at most.
One thing to bear in mind is bezels are a lot thinner than they were a few years ago.
~7 years ago, my daily driver was a Latitude E7270 - a 12.5 inch ultrabook with dimensions of 215.15 mm x 310.5 mm x 18.30 mm, 1.24 kg, 14.8 inch body diagonal
Today, an XPS 14 has dimensions 209.71 mm x 309.52 mm x 15.20mm, 1.36 kg, 14.7 body diagonal - and a 14-inch screen.
The 12.5 inch segment hasn't disappeared - it's just turned into the 14-inch segment.
What about something like [1].
1 - https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-2025/
> (ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop).
Which thinkpad? Typing on a loaded P16s currently; it's not metal like old MBP or even my travel surface pro, but it feels... fine.
Did you check what Framework offers?
The HP Zbook G1A is what you wanted. It's Strix Halo with up to 128GB of unified RAM and built like a MBP.
> ive got a thinpad and the platic build is just terrible. The screen bends when pulling it to open the laptop
Damn. I was at IBM in the early 2000s and for many decades you used to be able to beat people to death with IBM hardware, including Thinkpad laptops and model M keyboards.
Which Thinkpad do you have? Lenovo have introduced some lines with the name but diminished quality.
ASUS ROG G14 is as close as you're going to get on the x86 side of things or that new chonk of a surface with the Ryzen 395+ and 128gb of ram. both are like $2500+
What are your use-cases for 128gb of RAM? I find it hard to imagine what you could be doing with that, so it must be interesting :)
You do have 13" options, though 14" is much wider. If I was going for 13" workstation, I'd go for Asus ProArt PX13 with Ryzen AI Max 395 (if I got that right, there might be a plus somewhere) and 128GiB of RAM. They've got ROG Flow X13 with older hardware or Z13 with same hw as above, but that's a tablet computer instead.
At 14", thin-and-light gaming computers like Asus G14 or Razer Blade 14 look decent, or some of the workstation models from Lenovo or HP.
Still, for me, at 13/14", portability and battery are most important, so I am going with Thinkpad X1 Carbon atm (next gen should again allow 64GiB of RAM).
I am a longtime Windows user and it brings me absolutely no joy to report that the M4 I am forced to use for work runs the Rust compiler a good bit faster than the big fancy gaming PC I just got with a 9800X3D.