My current Dell XPS 13 has been my trusty old companion for the past 4.5 years and I’m very happy with it.
Inevitably, the battery isn’t what it used to be anymore - it won’t reach full charge anymore and discharges in 2-3 hours of normal use (webrowsing, coding etc).
I could replace the battery, but at 4.5 years, I guess it’s time for an upgrade.
My general requirements:
- Good Linux support
- Portable (13-14")
- Great battery life
- Good keyboard
- A nice screen that doesn’t have too much glare
- At least 16Gb RAM / 1Tb SSD
This is my work machine so I’m not especially budget-sensitive.
Durable build would be awesome, I travel quite a lot and it gets banged around in my bag.
I work in cybersecurity and do coding, so it doesn’t need “content creator” features. The less “bells and whistles”, the better.
I’d love a microSD-card slot.
I think I’d melt of happiness if it also has a HDMI port.
I don’t game on this machine (except chess.com, lol) , so don’t really need gfx performance.
I don’t need touchscreen or 2-in-1 functions.
Reasonable mic/cam - but I think that’s pretty much given on a modern high-end laptop…
I’m thinking I’m probably going with new Dell XPS 13 or some ThinkPad variant, but I’d be happy to hear some suggestions and experiences (both good and bad) of recent purchases from the community.
Ps. Framework/System76 don’t ship here. Unfortunately. I’m stuck with the big-corpo brands.
I personally have the opposite problem. I’m located in the EU and absolutely abhor the ISO layout. My kingdom for an ANSI. And I honestly have issues finding ANSI layouts in the EU. In most stores you get to select “Qwerty” and what you get is an ISO UK variant… 🤦♂️
Anyway, if your only problem is the layout, I would recommend getting one with the closest layout to the one you need, because a frame.work laptop is light years better than dell or lenovo in terms of consumer-friendliness, reparability, sustainability, etc.
Edit: if I would need a new laptop, I would definitely get a frame.work, but if I couldn’t, I would go for a schenker. The German company offers lots of customisation, and has pretty good options (based on clevo chassis, afaict)