Desktop replacement laptop needed.
August 26, 2015 7:37 PM   Subscribe

My husband is looking for a laptop to replace his desktop. Weight is not an issue but power (lots) and screen size (large) are. Battery life doesn't really matter either. He currently uses the computer to: browse the internet, play lots of Steam games (windows), and do some 3D modeling (SolidWorks). Looking for around $1000 price range.

I was going to suggest Lenovo because the last windows laptop I had was one. And he liked the Yoga that he can draw on. But the BIOS spyware thing has put me off.

He likes Toshiba in general.

Should have SSD for fast boot up, but otherwise doesn't need much disk space. Bonus if it has an HDMI/DVI out.

Brands we'd like to avoid unless there's a compelling reason not to: Compaq, Dell, HP.

Please give me your recommendations.
posted by ethidda to Computers & Internet (22 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: There is no good answer. I shopped for a decent laptop with a 17 inch screen and found a massive gap between the media-consumption garbage and the $3k desktop replacement laptops. Look at Sager/Clevo stuff; they are middling-well built and not too expensive. HP Zbooks are apparently the replacement for ye olde Elitebooks, only not as good.

If you are willing to live with 15.6 inch monitor, you have more options - there may even be something in your price range.
posted by BrunoLatourFanclub at 8:04 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Yep, no good answer: as emptythought said last year "this category kinda sucks now, and i hate it." It sucks even more this year. Either you double or triple your budget to get into "deductible business expense" territory, or you're going to get a heavy, hot underperforming lump.
posted by holgate at 8:22 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


MSI makes gaming laptops with big screens and a wide range of hardware options. AFAIK they aren't a premium brand, so hopefully they are reasonable priced.
posted by askmehow at 8:25 PM on August 26, 2015


Response by poster: 15" laptops are acceptable, though of course not as ideal as 17" ones.
posted by ethidda at 8:55 PM on August 26, 2015


The Wirecutter reviewed gaming laptops priced near $1000 and didn't find any great ones, but does have a few recommendations, in particular the Asus ROG GL551 and Acer Aspire V15 Nitro. Both have 15.6-inch 1920×1080 displays.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:14 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


the BIOS spyware thing has put me off

Are you talking about (a) the Superfish adware that Lenovo was boneheaded enough to include in some of its OEM Windows images or (b) the preloaded Computrace firmware that silently adds exploitable services to any Windows installation?

The former was unique to Lenovo as far as I know, and I can easily understand having a desire to punish Lenovo in the marketplace for it, but it was never BIOS spyware and is relatively easy to clean up.

The latter fits the "BIOS spyware" description rather more accurately and is quite widespread across laptop manufacturers. Avoiding Lenovo won't really help you avoid that.
posted by flabdablet at 9:39 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anandtech reviews are excellent and trustworthy.
posted by conrad53 at 11:12 PM on August 26, 2015


Thinkpads never had superfish fwiw, though some did have computrace.

A gaming laptop for a thousand bucks is difficult unless you are getting an off brand like an MSI, or a used computer. I'd recommend the latter, with a new hard drive.
posted by gryftir at 11:33 PM on August 26, 2015


You could get an Apple MacBook Pro and run Boot Camp. Apple makes uniformly excellent, high-powered laptops. SSDs are standard and the screen resolution beats nearly all the alternatives — and no spyware/malware to really worry about. If budget is an issue, you could periodically check into refurbished models or wait another 4-6 months for a hardware refresh, when older models will be cheaper.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:27 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Why a laptop? If for portability, I think a smaller form factor and an external display would work better.
posted by katrielalex at 1:32 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Please give me your recommendations.

Don't buy anything like this.

Before you read on, or think about any of the things i'm about to say, have you considered exactly when/how/why a cheapo laptop(even a chromebook!) and a new or upgraded desktop wouldn't solve your problem? "I wanna do this stuff on the couch!" isn't a good reason to flush essentially the same amount of money that would cost again down the toilet. A $700 desktop is better than any laptop you can buy for under $2500 or so unless it's on fire sale(and possibly, not that great of a machine, just having good specs on paper), and a $1200 or so desktop will be so incredibly much more powerful than any laptop available at ANY price that it's not even a comparison.

The cheapest laptops like this worth buying basically get going at $1500.

Looking for around $1000 price range.

lol

In that price range, if it's strict, all you can really get are gaming laptops, and fairly entry level ones. I'd look at something like, i guess, a lenovo y50(NOT THE 4K ONE, the screen is awful. the touch model has a good ips screen, however).

This nets you an 960m, which is about as powerful as a desktop gtx 750ti, a quad core haswell i7, 8gb of ram, and possibly even a small SSD boot drive or hybrid drive.

I can't vouch for that asus mentioned above, but i will say that similarly designed MSI systems with a single fan cooling both a high powered mobile CPU and upper midrange mobile GPU were very noisy under load.

The "bios spyware" problem is something that can be disabled in settings, at least on most models. Is it stupid, annoying, and makes me distrust the company? Yea. Is it as bad as some places have represented? well, no.

The best "relatively full power" mobile system i ever had, which always ran cool and quiet but was thick and heavy as a brick was the top of the line asus G series. I've owned the 15 and 17in model. They're extremely well built, have very overspecced cooling, and just run great. The lenovo fits your budget, but it's just.. ehh, ok.

If you can flex the budget, this is a good buy... i guess. I mean these things are never a good buy. A $650 or so desktop would punt that thing into the sun*. But as far as laptops go, it's a solid deal. A lot of other companies sort of just slap their sticker on someone elses engineering. Asus makes everything, they're a major manufacturing firm that makes other companies laptops as well. If i wanted a system to do solidworks stuff on and game i'd buy one of those because i know it can handle running hard all day without overheating or getting irritatingly noisy. I've torn down several for repairs and always marveled at how well designed and overbuilt they are inside. Carefully damped fans and air ducts(and pricier, high quality fans), big chunky oversized heatsinks, lots of extra screws and reinforcements, thoughtful decisions of how to position things so you can easily upgrade your ram/hard drives(there's space for several!), modular components so that if say, the video card fails, it's just a module you can pull and swap which is very unusual for laptops. Easily replaceable screens if you crack one(i actually upgraded the screen in mine to a nicer one than they ever even sold, because it was a standard part readily available on ebay! no stupid proprietary connectors!). Seriously can't say enough thumbs up shit.

The only other stuff that can handle that is fairly north of $2000, and then you start looking at dell precisions, thinkpads, etc.

I looked at the landscape, threw my hands up, and bought a used macbook pro retina and decided to forsake gaming performance for an otherwise awesome and reliable machine. It can handle the non-gaming system intensive stuff i do excellently, but has middling-at-best gaming performance. The problem with a lot of cheap gaming laptops is that they take an expensive CPU, and very expensive(even to a manufacturer) mobile GPU and throw a bunch of garbage around it. Even sager/clevo machines fail pretty often.

On preview, there's also this version of the g751. Yea, there's cheaper machines like this with a 970m, but you get back to the single fan problem. Another thing to consider, besides noise and reliability with that, is that with one fan you're not getting all the performance you're paying for more than likely. With two cooling systems, both processors can utilize their turbo function to run above their rated base speed and give you more performance. Most single fan laptops barely cut it on keeping the normal rated speeds while being loud.

Also on preview, bear in mind that's such a chunky heavy machine that they sell their own freaking backpacks to carry it around. It wouldn't even fit in my huge gutter punk survival gear looking weekend trip pack unless i crammed it in the main compartment. The power brick is also the size of a pomeranian. But, it's quiet, reliable, and very well built. It's the best non-pro Big Powerful Laptop i know of. If you look on any gaming or computer forum, you'll find they have a stellar rep as well with the only complaints being "it's heavy and big".

*Short addendum on this. Mobile cpu power has basically caught up to the desktop, as far as desktops running at stock speeds go. However, mobile GPU power, while closer than ever this generation with the 980m almost being a desktop 970(and the 970m landing somewhere near a desktop 280x, that's still VERY powerful!)... a desktop 970, which is a ~$300 part, still completely steamrolls them all. A $2500 laptop is slower than a maybe $1000 desktop with a gtx 980 or AMD fury.
posted by emptythought at 5:30 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Just went through this myself. What your husband is looking for will START at $1700 for a low-end machine. That will get you a 17.3" screen, only a 2.6Ghz or slower i7, maybe a GTX970M with a few GBs of RAM if you look at the MSI world, 16GB RAM, and around 128GB SSD plus storage drive.

It will run extremely hot, so it can't be on his lap without a cooling pad. The trackpad mouse will get in the way, so an external mouse will still be needed.

That being said, the gaming laptop I just bought is perfect for me (and I am unable to physically sit at a table for more than a few minutes, so a necessity), but I am happy with my games and simulators getting "only" 20fps and my HD videos taking 10 minutes to render instead of 4 minutes, for example. Most people would not be happy with these, but I am.

Plus what everyone else has already been saying...
posted by TinWhistle at 6:50 AM on August 27, 2015


Best answer: I'm not someone who grasps the nuances of specs terribly well, and I would hesitate to call myself a serious gamer (although I've gotten more into games in the past few years). That said, I am a former owner of a few desktop replacement laptops.

... And I'd suggest not going that route.

I'm sure there have been some improvements over the past couple of years, but -- generally -- those things are royally irritating to actually bring anywhere, and don't truly match the performance of a solid desktop (dollar for dollar). My machines were not gaming-oriented (specifically), but I did need them to run music production software, which is more-or-less equally taxing.

Last year, as my Asus desk-replacement finally started to feel its age, I switched to a mid-to-high-end Asus desk unit + Asus Transformer tablet/laptop hybrid. The former handles my high-intensity stuff (music production and current games) with ease, while the latter comes with Windows/Office and can theoretically run any full Windows program (limits apply, naturally). But the key thing is that I can now actually go mobile with it, instead of marshaling cords, cramming everything into a special case, and then dealing with shoulder strain. Now, my travel computer is just one of many things inside my carry-on luggage, instead of being it.

The whole setup (including a solid photo-editing capable screen for the desk unit) only cost ~$400 more than your target budget. In 2014, mind you; you could probably hit it almost exactly with current pricing (if you didn't buy the newer, sexier tablaptop version that apparently came out recently, and just stuck with the older one I bought). Yes, there are things I don't bother to do on the li'l guy, for space and power reasons. But the joy of actual mobility makes me feel just fine about leaving the high-octane stuff at home.
posted by credible hulk at 7:23 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Returning to say, I'm not a paid shill for Asus, or nuthin'. I do think the company offers very solid machines at a competitive price, though. Particularly compared to HP/Compaq, which was the previous brand of desktop replacement laptop that I'd had the misfortune to own.

If your husband is really set on a mobile workhorse/gaming rig, I'd probably still suggest them.
posted by credible hulk at 7:34 AM on August 27, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes, I'm aware that you pay a premium for a laptop. The computer is in a room that needs to be cleared out for several hours a couple times a week. I figured buying a laptop is still cheaper than building an addition or renting a larger house.

I had hoped this category had improved the last time I looked at it (12 years ago)... I will take all the comments into consideration. Thank you.
posted by ethidda at 7:46 AM on August 27, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks for all your answers! After talking with my husband, we decided that we will completely rearrange the room so that the computer can be hidden and the rest of the room will be usable without the computer being moved. (He already has a fairly high end desktop that's working just fine. [Well, except for the DVD drive, but who uses those anymore anyway, right?]) Marking the answers that convinced me.

Maybe the market will be better in several years.
posted by ethidda at 10:15 AM on August 27, 2015


There are portable desktop cases with carry handles (like this). With the price difference between laptop and desktop parts, you could even buy extra monitors and put them in the few locations you use it regularly.
posted by flimflam at 10:16 AM on August 27, 2015


I agree that the options you want aren't really available at your desired price point. If you can't spend more on a screaming fast laptop and you can't move the PC to another room, your best solution is software plus a laptop with high enough specs to make you happy while still being within your budget. (Caveat: this solution assumes that no-one in the room with the computer will be using the computer during the time it's unavailable to your husband.)

TeamViewer is free for personal use and you can see, hear and control the main computer through the laptop as though you were natively using those programs on the laptop. If your husband wants to do 3D modeling but the laptop isn't powerful enough, this a good way to let him use the main PC without needing to be in the same room. (TeamViewer can also be used when you're away from home and want to connect to your home PC.)

Steam recently set up game streaming, from one PC to another PC on the same network. Just like with TeamViewer, you control the games exactly as if you were using the host PC. You can play anything in your Steam library that way.

If you want to focus more on hardware than screen size, get a laptop with HDMI output. You can transfer the display to a TV or an external monitor, which will help alleviate any issues with having a smaller screen. (I use my TV for gaming with my desktop PC via HDMI out, and it's pretty amazing.)
posted by i feel possessed at 10:23 AM on August 27, 2015


Do make sure that if you "hide" the computer, that it still has adequate ventilation. If hiding the PC was the main concern, for whatever reason, that might have been relevant in the initial question. Other people may have made the kinds of suggestions I did had they known it wasn't 100% necessary to replace the original computer. I feel like you may have buried the lede a bit there, y'know?
posted by i feel possessed at 10:34 AM on August 27, 2015


Response by poster: i feel possessed: The question was about a desktop replacement laptop. The amount of space we have for a computer is very limited. But I'm realizing that instead of spending $1000 on a laptop, we should probably spend $1000 on very clever furniture.
posted by ethidda at 11:00 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


The amount of space we have for a computer is very limited.

HDMI and USB cables can go 5 metres (16') each. You might not need to keep the system box of a desktop PC in the same room as your screen, keyboard, mouse and speakers. Just something to keep in mind while working out your clever furniture.
posted by flabdablet at 12:33 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


You might not need to keep the system box of a desktop PC in the same room as your screen, keyboard, mouse and speakers.

This can very much be done. It rules. You don't even need a quiet computer if it's above the water heater next to the bathroom, or behind the couch, or whatever. You can throw a couple beefy fans in it to really pump the air in and out and just not even care how much noise it pumps out because you don't hear it and it'll run even more cool and efficient.

There's also these and these, which are crap for data transfer but work fine for keyboards and mice.

With those the computer could be in the freaking basement. And in fact, i've known of people doing that. All you really need is space for a monitor/keyboard/pointing device. There's also solutions for bluetooth, if you're using that for input devices.
posted by emptythought at 12:34 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


« Older more like what doesn't it mean   |   Documenting my physical transition from female to... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.