New home laptop spec options....

[Armistice]

Three things: (1) this not a recording machine, it's to be a general purpose "whatever" laptop that doesn't do anything particularly arduous (2) I'm buying off the shelf, no mods (3) current laptop is a 5 year old i7/8GB/1TB hard drive/Win10 HP machine.

I have questions...

Given my current experience, and that new machine will have a 512GB SSD - what's "better" - 16GB RAM & i5 or 8GB RAM & i7 ???
(frustratingly the 16GB/i7 machines are at a premium - but these two options are on special. 8GB machine has only one slot)

Should I care if my chip is AMD Ryzon vs Intel i series - given what I'll be doing with it - ie. not much?

Given the hardware I'm currently on am I going to be blown away by any new laptop given the SSD and any newer chip / RAM combo - and perhaps I shouldn't sweat anything else and just go cheap?

Why do I need a USB-C port? Quite happy with standard USB x 3 of various speeds which allow for mouse & two external drives - seems to me I'm going to have to buy accessories / cables at some point with a USB-C - but they pretty much all come with it these days.

Anything else I should consider? 15.6 in non-touch screen is the screen spec.

Oh, and if a spec says "Expansion ports - SD card reader" that means I can install one myself doesn't it - not that there is one installed.

Thanks in advance..

[CrowsofFritz]

Are you one of those people that keeps tons of tabs and windows open like my dad or are you good about that?

[Tadpui]

I'm always a proponent of getting the best CPU you can afford, and fitting everything else around it in the budget. Of course everything in the machine contributes in one way or another, but the CPU is the core of the machine that determines what its life span will be. You can always add RAM or storage or peripherals, but the CPU is really the heart of the machine.

I think that for laptops, Intel still has the market cornered. Ryzen is a superior value when you want a lot of cores for parallel processing (think video rendering or transcoding) but they're pretty power-hungry. If you were looking for a desktop machine, I'd recommend Ryzen hands-down because even their "normal" core count chips are a terrific value. But Intel seems to have a better handle on squeezing performance out of a battery-operated computer without draining the battery in 5 minutes.

You can always go cheap, but in 2020 I wouldn't get anything older than an 8th gen Intel CPU (model number that starts with an 8, like 8665U or or 8550H). The i5, i7, and i9 are all pretty stellar CPUs today, so it's hard to go wrong. For general uses, the i5 from 8th gen forward is a pretty amazing chip. The i7 just adds more cores, and the i9 is more geared towards the computer geek enthusiast.

16GB of RAM is great for virtual instrument sample libraries or editing/rendering video or doing other fancy special-purpose things, but more than 8GB doesn't really buy you much per dollar for general use cases with Windows 10 today. It never hurts to have more RAM but for surfing the web, editing the occasional document, streaming Netflix, etc. it's not much help.

The SSD will be a huge help for general speed in booting, waking from sleep, opening apps, and overall feel. Whether you pick a laptop with a SATA (older/slower) or NVMe (newer/faster) SSD in it, it'll be very responsive and snappy-felling.

As far as expansion ports on a laptop, I'm not sure what they mean. A lot of times there will still be open slots inside the chassis for more RAM or an additional m.2 SSD. Some of them even allow for replacing the CPU or GPU. But that's a finicky operation in my limited experience. I've only operated on a couple of laptops to replace bad parts, and it's not fun. I have to assume that they just mean "there are USB ports on it".

Anyways, enough jabbering. Hopefully this'll at least give you some perspective when you're browsing the kajillions of options out there.

[Armistice]

Are you one of those people that keeps tons of tabs and windows open like my dad or are you good about that?

I'm good about that...

[Armistice]

I'm always a proponent of getting the best CPU you can afford, and fitting everything else around it in the budget. Of course everything in the machine contributes in one way or another, but the CPU is the core of the machine that determines what its life span will be. You can always add RAM or storage or peripherals, but the CPU is really the heart of the machine.

I think that for laptops, Intel still has the market cornered. Ryzen is a superior value when you want a lot of cores for parallel processing (think video rendering or transcoding) but they're pretty power-hungry. If you were looking for a desktop machine, I'd recommend Ryzen hands-down because even their "normal" core count chips are a terrific value. But Intel seems to have a better handle on squeezing performance out of a battery-operated computer without draining the battery in 5 minutes.

You can always go cheap, but in 2020 I wouldn't get anything older than an 8th gen Intel CPU (model number that starts with an 8, like 8665U or or 8550H). The i5, i7, and i9 are all pretty stellar CPUs today, so it's hard to go wrong. For general uses, the i5 from 8th gen forward is a pretty amazing chip. The i7 just adds more cores, and the i9 is more geared towards the computer geek enthusiast.

16GB of RAM is great for virtual instrument sample libraries or editing/rendering video or doing other fancy special-purpose things, but more than 8GB doesn't really buy you much per dollar for general use cases with Windows 10 today. It never hurts to have more RAM but for surfing the web, editing the occasional document, streaming Netflix, etc. it's not much help.

The SSD will be a huge help for general speed in booting, waking from sleep, opening apps, and overall feel. Whether you pick a laptop with a SATA (older/slower) or NVMe (newer/faster) SSD in it, it'll be very responsive and snappy-felling.

As far as expansion ports on a laptop, I'm not sure what they mean. A lot of times there will still be open slots inside the chassis for more RAM or an additional m.2 SSD. Some of them even allow for replacing the CPU or GPU. But that's a finicky operation in my limited experience. I've only operated on a couple of laptops to replace bad parts, and it's not fun. I have to assume that they just mean "there are USB ports on it".

Anyways, enough jabbering. Hopefully this'll at least give you some perspective when you're browsing the kajillions of options out there.

Indeed it does - and I'm starting to see how they segment their offers to move you up the line as well. Thanks for the info!

[vomitHatSteve]

I'm gonna recommend the opposite of Tad here. For a general-use machine, one of the big issues you tend to run into is that modern web browsers are huge RAM hogs. And CPU speed has been a game of diminishing returns for some time now.

I also think you won't see a huge difference in the upgrade in general. If your old laptop has been seeming to slow down lately, the more likely cause is that you need to clean it up. (uninstall some stuff, flush caches, clean the dust out, etc)

[CrowsofFritz]

Are you one of those people that keeps tons of tabs and windows open like my dad or are you good about that?

I'm good about that...

Then RAM shouldn’t matter. If you’re not doing anything arduous, both of those laps are fine. I would just get the less expensive one. Unless there is a chance that you really might do arduous tasks on it in a pinch if your PC dies are something.

[CrowsofFritz]

I'm gonna recommend the opposite of Tad here. For a general-use machine, one of the big issues you tend to run into is that modern web browsers are huge RAM hogs. And CPU speed has been a game of diminishing returns for some time now.

I also think you won't see a huge difference in the upgrade in general. If your old laptop has been seeming to slow down lately, the more likely cause is that you need to clean it up. (uninstall some stuff, flush caches, clean the dust out, etc)

I agree about the RAM if he has multiple tabs open. That’s why I asked that question, but he said he’s good about it.

I also agree that this shouldn’t seem like a big upgrade and should maybe look into other solutions before pulling this trigger.

[Armistice]

Thanks [mention]Tadpui[/mention] , [mention]CrowsofFritz[/mention] and [mention]vomitHatSteve[/mention] ...

I've uninstalled everything I can on this machine - it's fine once it gets going but I was about to buy it its third new battery and I got to thinking that perhaps it was about time to retire the thing while it's still actually working and I can keep it as back up for when I need to burn or rip a CD etc. seeing you don't get a drive anymore.

The thing about the SD reader is interesting - I'm assuming there's just space for one but it isn't installed. The appropriate size slot is in the chassis - I use that for downloading photos and loading up the car's sound system, but it's easy enough to get a stand alone one if I have to, or just network new and old PCs together for a bit, or indeed install one - maybe there's an option to get one added before shipping. Haven't investigated that yet.

There's a bunch of other changes I want to make to things that this beast won't support - I need something lighter with a much longer battery life - even with a new battery I won't get 2 hours out of this so I always have to lug the power along with it. Plus it's always inflicted its horrendous beatsaudio soundcard on me and I've grown tired of disabling it - every time I listen to a tune here it sounds awful - so it'd be good not to have to deal with that any more.

I shall go back and look at the specs again. The thing about USB C is one thing I'm still undecided on. I guess I should get one, it being the way of the future and all - but I can see I'm going to have to invest in cables etc. because I have no actual USB C devices to plug into it. Oh well.

[Armistice]

So below is the leading contender at the moment... because it's in stock and on special. What it doesn't have is a USB C port - as I said, I'm not really sure what I'd use that for at this point in time anyway, but I guess I may regret not having it in the future...

There is an i7-1065G7 at the same price, and same everything else, which has USB C (still 3 ports total) but no RJ-45 - not that, in the history of this current laptop, I've used that more than once - but still, nice to have the capability. I don't know. I'm torn...

Anything else I should think of?

(It does have an SD reader - became obvious when I went to the full spec)

• AMD Ryzen™ 7 3700U with Radeon™ Vega 10 Graphics (2.3 GHz base clock, up to 4 GHz max boost clock, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)
• Windows 10 Home 64
• 15.6" diagonal FHD SVA anti-glare micro-edge WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
• 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• 512 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 USB 2.0 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 RJ-45
• 1 AC smart pin
• 1 HDMI
• 1 headphone/microphone combo
• Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN
• 802.11ac (1x1) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth®

[Tadpui]

It looks like (on paper, at least) the Ryzen 7 3700U edges out the i7 1065G7 in clock speeds, but it consumes a little more power. Not much, just a little. At base clock speeds, they're the same TDP. (side note: It's still weird to see a Ryzen 7 that's only 4 core/8 thread. But that seems to be a necessity for laptops, due to power consumption and heat dissipation. The desktop version of the Ryzen 7 is 8 core/16 thread, so I'm still wrapping my head around a 4-core Ryzen 7)

I'm not sure what they mean by "data transfer only". Do those USB ports not deliver any power? So using a bus-powered audio interface or charging your phone wouldn't work? I really don't know.

I'm not familiar with WLED displays. I know QLED and OLED but I'm not sure what the distinction of WLED is. I can only hope that it stands for WILD light emitting diode, because I'd buy one of those (a quick Google says it stands for WHITE light emitting diode, which is the common backlighting method for LED displays in TVs and monitors)

That looks like a solid machine to me, depending on the price point.

What's the brand and price point of this machine?

[Armistice]

You've got to bear in mind [mention]Tadpui[/mention] that stuff is expensive over here...

It's $1299 - 25% through work, so $975.

https://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaSto ... t=&sel=NTB

GF is also nursing a dead laptop and made an executive decision (you did what, honey?) via her work to buy a new Dell laptop - $1400 for an i5(10th gen) with 8GB, a 256GB SSD and a 14 inch screen - sigh She doesn't really know much about computers - and nor apparently does the purchasing person at her work...

I asked if she could cancel the order seeing she doesn't have it yet, but she said "No".

[WhiskeyJack]

So below is the leading contender at the moment... because it's in stock and on special. What it doesn't have is a USB C port - as I said, I'm not really sure what I'd use that for at this point in time anyway, but I guess I may regret not having it in the future...

There is an i7-1065G7 at the same price, and same everything else, which has USB C (still 3 ports total) but no RJ-45 - not that, in the history of this current laptop, I've used that more than once - but still, nice to have the capability. I don't know. I'm torn...

Anything else I should think of?

(It does have an SD reader - became obvious when I went to the full spec)

• AMD Ryzen™ 7 3700U with Radeon™ Vega 10 Graphics (2.3 GHz base clock, up to 4 GHz max boost clock, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)
• Windows 10 Home 64
• 15.6" diagonal FHD SVA anti-glare micro-edge WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
• 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• 512 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 USB 2.0 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 RJ-45
• 1 AC smart pin
• 1 HDMI
• 1 headphone/microphone combo
• Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN
• 802.11ac (1x1) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth®

All those specs blow my desktop daw out of the water. So if this isn't going to be a DAW i think it is safe to say you will be fine with it.

[Armistice]

So below is the leading contender at the moment... because it's in stock and on special. What it doesn't have is a USB C port - as I said, I'm not really sure what I'd use that for at this point in time anyway, but I guess I may regret not having it in the future...

There is an i7-1065G7 at the same price, and same everything else, which has USB C (still 3 ports total) but no RJ-45 - not that, in the history of this current laptop, I've used that more than once - but still, nice to have the capability. I don't know. I'm torn...

Anything else I should think of?

(It does have an SD reader - became obvious when I went to the full spec)

• AMD Ryzen™ 7 3700U with Radeon™ Vega 10 Graphics (2.3 GHz base clock, up to 4 GHz max boost clock, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)
• Windows 10 Home 64
• 15.6" diagonal FHD SVA anti-glare micro-edge WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
• 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• 512 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 USB 2.0 Type-A (Data Transfer Only)
• 1 RJ-45
• 1 AC smart pin
• 1 HDMI
• 1 headphone/microphone combo
• Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN
• 802.11ac (1x1) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth®

All those specs blow my desktop daw out of the water. So if this isn't going to be a DAW i think it is safe to say you will be fine with it.

Exactly - mine too, I'm sure. So what am I worrying about? I'm not - just trying to work out the peripherals in my head. Logic tells me I need a USB-C port - or will in the future - but for what?

And Tad's question about whether the USB-A ports give out current is a good one - I don't do that much, but I wouldn't want to NOT have it.

[Tadpui]

[mention]Armistice[/mention] I think even $1200 USD would be a fair price for a machine with those specs. $1200 AUD seems fair to me, although I don't know the exact exchange rate. I just know that the times that somebody has told me a price in AUD and I thought they meant USD I did a double-take So I think that means that this strikes me as a fair deal

[Armistice]

I think in the end I'm going to end up with the least powerful option - the Ryzen 5, simply because of the ports - that "data transfer only" thing with USB was exactly what it said. So I'll settle for less speed but a USB C port which may be useful to me in the future, 2 x USB 3.1 Type As which can also output power and a network port.

Just checking the benchmarking specs on the chip, it's at least as powerful, in theory anyway, as the Xeon in my recording computer so I figure it'll have to do.

Annoying that they have so many options, none of which are exactly what I want. But for under $1000 I guess I have to make choices - it starts to get pretty expensive with higher specs, and for just a general purpose machine it'll have to do.

[Tadpui]

[mention]Armistice[/mention] fair enough. I guess it depends on which Ryzen 5 is in it, but even the older ones are still pretty good. They've just come a long way since the Zen 2 architecture came out last year, and they're pretty damned awesome nowadays. I think that's a good call for the USB port. At very least you can just get a USB 3 hub and plug it into the USB C port and have all of the older USB connectivity you want when docked.

I agree with the overload of options. That's why I hate shopping for pre-built computers. There are too many options! And since there's really no such thing as a DIY laptop, you're stuck endlessly scrolling through subtly different models looking for just the right one. It's maddening.

I was going to suggest a Microsoft Surface Pro, but I just went to Amazon.co.au and holy crap they're crazy expensive over there. For an all-around general-purpose machine, the Pro version of the Surface is perfect. Mine has an 8th gen i5 (4 core, 8 thread), 8GB of RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD, and it screams. It's perfect as a Netflix streaming, web surfing, remote recording, email and document writing machine. At the $800 USD I paid for it, it'd be hard to find a challenger. But for the $1500 AUD that I'm seeing them for in Australia, I couldn't recommend it.

[Armistice]

@Armistice fair enough. I guess it depends on which Ryzen 5 is in it, but even the older ones are still pretty good. They've just come a long way since the Zen 2 architecture came out last year, and they're pretty damned awesome nowadays. I think that's a good call for the USB port. At very least you can just get a USB 3 hub and plug it into the USB C port and have all of the older USB connectivity you want when docked.

I agree with the overload of options. That's why I hate shopping for pre-built computers. There are too many options! And since there's really no such thing as a DIY laptop, you're stuck endlessly scrolling through subtly different models looking for just the right one. It's maddening.

I was going to suggest a Microsoft Surface Pro, but I just went to Amazon.co.au and holy crap they're crazy expensive over there. For an all-around general-purpose machine, the Pro version of the Surface is perfect. Mine has an 8th gen i5 (4 core, 8 thread), 8GB of RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD, and it screams. It's perfect as a Netflix streaming, web surfing, remote recording, email and document writing machine. At the $800 USD I paid for it, it'd be hard to find a challenger. But for the $1500 AUD that I'm seeing them for in Australia, I couldn't recommend it.

I really do like the concept of the Microsoft Surface. GF bought one of the first series, which was a mistake - it's a clunky piece of crap - but the latest series seem to be excellent - but yeah, they're crazy expensive here.

I'm looking at the HPs because we get discounts via work through a secret back door - but I should perhaps go in the front door of the HP store and see if there's something closer - they're giving away $200 vouchers with purchase at the moment - and I may pay $100 more but get what I actually want and not be making compromises. Will have a look today - and now that you've mentioned Microsoft, I should investigate that too - I know we get discounts on Office 365 etc. via the same facility - maybe they have hardware in there too and I've missed it...

[Armistice]

So [mention]Tadpui[/mention] - I'm going to push the button on this tomorrow - it's $980 direct from HP - and I'm not getting a staff discount, anyone can buy it for that from the HP store through the front door as it's on special at the moment...

And here's the same machine, which, undiscounted, has a RRP of $1399 direct from HP, available from a large local retailer for $1599. Buyer beware indeed...

Capture.PNG

[Tadpui]

[mention]Armistice[/mention] I did a bit of searching for similar machines in the states, and I think given the exchange rate, that's a pretty good deal. Anything I could find that was a terrific deal turned out to have half of the RAM and a quarter of the storage. The same machine (in silver, plus a 1TB HDD) sells for about $900 USD ($1306 AUD), so I think that $980 AUD is pretty darned good. I don't see anything about the Pavilion that makes me turn up my nose. I think that HP makes very respectable midrange laptops. I think that'll be a solid all-around machine.