- decent design; no gamer laptops, blinking led monstrosities, etc. for me.
- decent performance; I'm an engineer. I actually lose time when things run slowly. Lots of time. Kills my flow and I bill a premium rate.
- decent screen. I look at this thing for the better part of a day. Also, I dabble with photography once in a while and occasionally some frontend stuff. So, HDPI/250 dpi or better.
- Decent ssd storage. I'm done with spinning disks. Not a thing in my life in the last decade.
- A keyboard and trackpad that are genuinely good. I use laptops as laptops and I hate having to plug in external peripherals for input.
Besides some of the led bling I find gaming laptops work pretty well as work machines (and some are toned down so much, they’re not embarrassing for adults).
I also know a couple professionals that use them as their main machines (one does ed visualizations so the gpu..)
They tend to have lots of ports including wired Ethernet.
Have great performance.
Decent video cards.
Are somewhat fixable/ upgradable.
Downside is power consumption. Sometimes the screens are just ok.
I ended up going with a system76 machine which comes with Linux so I didn’t have to futz with it. This model is a rebranded “Clevo” gaming machine too, but you wouldn’t know by looking at it.
The only comment my Razer Blade 15 gets is that it looks nice, when people notice it at all. The LED on the keyboard is programmable if you don't like that and I find it handy for low light situations. The triple-snake logo isn't that obtrusive either.
I would not recommend getting a 4K. I have the 4K Dell XPS 15” and I wish I got the normal screen instead. Too much time wasted on resolution problems with some apps on Linux, and it only came with a touchscreen gloss finish - bad mistake.
> and it only came with a touchscreen gloss finish
Why do so many laptops only have a 3/4K option with a glossy finish? Personally, I can't stand glossy screens - sure, the colours look good in a showroom, but they're just too reflective in real-world use.
- decent performance; I'm an engineer. I actually lose time when things run slowly. Lots of time. Kills my flow and I bill a premium rate.
- decent screen. I look at this thing for the better part of a day. Also, I dabble with photography once in a while and occasionally some frontend stuff. So, HDPI/250 dpi or better.
- Decent ssd storage. I'm done with spinning disks. Not a thing in my life in the last decade.
- A keyboard and trackpad that are genuinely good. I use laptops as laptops and I hate having to plug in external peripherals for input.
- Linux compatible & hassle free.