Advice on engineering student laptop

[erikmath2705]

Hi!

I'm looking for a new laptop for my engineering studies. It'll be used for a wide variety of tasks, and has to be very capable. I'll typically be doing CAD work in SolidWorks, programming, everyday tasks and connecting external equipment.

I've looked at mobile workstations and I'm currently trying to decide between the Lenovo Thinkpad P52s and Dell Precision 5530. So far, I'm tilting towards the dell because of the more powerful GPU.

My questions to you are,

- Are there any other laptops I should be looking at?
- What CPU / GPU should I am for?
- Any other specific features or specifications I need?

Keep in mind that the laptop has to be able to run new software of equal variety for years to come.

My budget is in the realm of $3,000

Thank you in advance!

 

[zoltan.boese]

The laptops you listed are above $2000, you write you may go up to 3000 with your budget. The Quadro M1200 is better, but you did not mention specifications as RAM or cpu. So it is hard to compare the product lines.
Here are some recommendations other than what you already mentioned:
Fujitsu Workstation Celsius H770 and HP ZBook Studio G4 come with Quadro as well. Here is a test on the latter
https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ZBook-Studio-G4-Xeon-Quadro-M1200-DreamColor-Workstation-Review.258940.0.html#toc-verdict