I’m sick of my laptop breaking after just three years. I want a laptop that:
- comes with a nice APU
- does not have a dGPU
- comes with a chonky thermal solution
- has lots of battery juice
- has lots of modern ports
- is repairable
- is rugged, bulky and thick
- is equipped with a nice, thonky keyboard
- isn’t one of those stupid, low-quality “gAmIng lApTOp”
So far, only the X220 and MNT Reform comes close to this description - the former is a really slow machine for today’s time, and for some reason, still damn expensive. The latter is just too expensive to the point that I’ll have to sell all eight kidneys in my family.
Do they sell anything like this in today’s time, with a reasonable price?
PS. Thick is a strong requirement. I want a really nice cooling solution, plus it also serves it’s purpose as a melee weapon to removed-slap those ultra-book trash-talkers.
You’re comparing a ThinkPad X280 with an IdeaPad S540, which is not even half the price of the same device - which is not fair, but that’s just part of the entire assumption, that is, good, reliable technicians and spare parts availability.
The laptop crashes 1 2, if I carry it with my palm on the left side - because apparently, the memory shorts itself to the aluminum case.
The repair experience was so frustrating, because just after one year of use, the system board was damaged, and when I repaired it, not only did the Lenovo authorized technician lose a few screws, but also busted the right speaker. I would be without a laptop for almost two to three months.
I rarely close the laptop lid, as I used to leave it on an empty, clean dining table, so there should be no hinge issues, but it broke down one day, and ripped the entire bottom shell. That was when I had to pay to replace the palm-rest, but this new technician from a Lenovo authorized center destroyed the DC jack. Also, my left speaker blew off, and soon the slightly degraded battery died suddenly, leaving me with no device.
For the last six months (starting from December), I’ve not had a laptop to use, and obviously, I couldn’t work on software projects, learn LeetCode or apply to jobs. Just recently, I got a spare battery to use this device, but the DC jack blew again. For the DC jack alone, I had to go thrice, and finally, when I inspected the repair myself yesterday after buying a multi-head screw driver kit, it turns out that the technician never replaced it to begin with, and used a solder to complete a brittle, makeshift circuit.
It did not ‘just’ break after three years. The device was a pile of smoldered shit, and the repair experience was even more horrible, with lost and damaged parts - most of which were M2.0 x 3.0mm Philip screws 6 out of 22 missing, and the essential M2.0 x 5.0mm Torx T5 screw for the base plate - 2 of the 9 missing. I did not play games or run highly demanding applications or LLMs - maybe a little bit of ‘Battle for Wesnoth’ and ‘Final Fantasy 6’ here and there. When not in use, my device stayed in the laptop bag, or the dining table.
It is my first laptop btw, and my experience with it was simply terrible. There’s barely any CRUs or FRUs available, and I’ll have to order from China to India, which would be quite expensive as they’re not bulk orders. My main idea was to look for refurbished laptops that matched the description in the post. I’ll probably never be able to buy a new device, given my present circumstances.
Well it sounds like that laptop was problematic, not laptops in general.
I have a 26 year old laptop that still boots. A 15 year old one (Lenovo) that still runs fine (just replaced a fan in it last month, for $15).
I’ve carried many laptops over the years, and the better brands (Dell, Lenovo) have held up well, and I traveled for work a lot every Friday/Monday for years) .
But… The consumer lines of these brands don’t do so well. I think that’s a key difference. I’d never buy the consumer line of Dell hardware for example (Vostro), as it’s known to not be very good.
Yeah, business tier laptops like the ThinkPad and Dell Latitude (excluding the 3xxx line) lines are generally seen as reliable computers but cheaper laptops like the ideapads are very much not so.
I would never buy an Ideapad but I really like Thinkpads.
If I were you I would just buy an old used Latitude 5xxx or ThinkPad in good condition from the last 3-6 years (or newer if you can afford it). They will most likely work perfectly fine for what you want to do. I have also replaced the tiny ass 256 GB SATA SSD with a 1 TB NVME one.
If you were ever considering an x280, please get one with an IPS 1080p screen. I got the one with an TN panel It’s horrible (awful colour, awful resolution, and awful viewing angles) compared to the IPS one. Luckily you can buy an IPS replacement on eBay so I did that.
If this was your first laptop I wouldn’t go overkill by buying some rugged laptop just yet. It might just have been a laptop constructed on a monday.
Honestly you will probably be fine by buying whatever computer that’s in decent condition on the Facebook marketplace or some other local site. Yes a bunch of ports is very nice but you will seriously have a hard time finding any thing with that nowadays. So unfortunately it’s just easier to buy a USB-C dongle/dock with all the ports.
Btw from what I can find the x280 was just slightly more expensive than the s540 was new.