Question Laptop recommendation

[tibibs]

Hi,

I'm looking for a replacement to my ageing laptop. I am more an adept of keeping my laptop for a while so I prefer put a bit more à first so that It can last longer (my current one is about 8 years old and is still confortable to use).

I'm looking for a laptop between 14 to 16 inch, about 2K or 3K (4K is a bit unnecessary at those density, but if there's no choice...)
It would need to be quite thin (easy to slide in a bag pack) and elegant.

The noise at low load should be pretty quite.

I would mainly need it for media, office, dev and a bit of gaming.

Budget is around 1400usd / 1300eur, flexible

I have a few takes but I'm sure you'll come up with some other points I might not have thought about and products I missed.

My takes are:
Framework laptop :
Pros: good for durability, look etc...
Cons: can get better performing and more compact for the price, only Intel

Asus zenbook 14X series
Which model to choose? Is it better to go for Intel or AMD?

Do you have any comments on my picks and other recommendations?

Thanks,

Tibibs

 

[Isaac Zackary]

I'm no expert, but at the moment both AMD and Intel are looking pretty good. Personally I've had better experience with Intel, but that's on desktop builds so I can't say that translates to laptops the same way. I like the Framework concept, but I don't think it has as good of battery life as the Zenbook, so check that spec out to see if it's for you or not.

 

[Isaac Zackary]

Another question is what kind of gaming? I can game on my Surface Go with it's 5W Pentium processor that's so old it's not even listed as compatible with Windows 11. Portal and Portal 2 work really well on it. But if you're into ray tracing and that sort of stuff a Surface Go would not cut it. It all really depends on the games specifically.

What I'm saying is even a low spec laptop these days can do gaming that would have been only possible on a high end desktop 10 or more years ago. At least that has been my experience.

 

[velo3100]

Could you be a bit more specific about gaming and dev? Also could you provide links which you use to buy laptops from?

 

[tibibs]

Hi,

Sorry I've a bit off lately.

Gaming, this would be some causal FPS. I would like to try cyberpunk for example. It doesn't need to be all the settings at high but should run it comfortably.

I think the budget can be bumped up a bit too, like starting at 1500 USD and up to 2000 if there's really something great that worth it.

I would buy the laptop in Hong Kong.

 

[Isaac Zackary]

Hi,

Sorry I've a bit off lately.

Gaming, this would be some causal FPS. I would like to try cyberpunk for example. It doesn't need to be all the settings at high but should run it comfortably.

I think the budget can be bumped up a bit too, like starting at 1500 USD and up to 2000 if there's really something great that worth it.

I would buy the laptop in Hong Kong.

Interesting. I'm no expert, but hopefully someone who is will chime in. But I don't see why either laptop wouldn't work.

Like I said, the Framework laptop has the repairability and upgradability concept built in. If you are pro right-to-repair, then this may be the laptop for you. The downside is it doesn't have the greatest battery life as it only has a 55Wh battery.

The Zenbook comes with a much bigger battery, I do belive around 96Wh. But Zenbook is not about repairability, which may or may not matter to you. If you keep it under waranty and buy a new one every couple of years then do whatever fits your fancy.

The processors are a bit different. Framework goes with mobile P procesors and Asus uses H processors (and the AMD ones) in theirs. So the Framework processors use a little less power, theoretically, but other than that they seem pretty comparable with slight differences here and there. I can't really vouch for one or the other, but for light gaming either computer should do.

The big question is bang for buck. The two computers with Core i7's may be pretty close in terms of specs, but which costs more? If it's purely bang for buck you're going for and battery life, then the Zenbook is probably the right one for you.

A Framework with a Core i7-1260P is $1,400
A Zenbook with a Core i7-12700H is slightly cheaper but a should be a slightly faster.