Your pick for a laptop. (non-gaming)

[El Nenin]

Hello all. First post. I'm in the market for a new laptop. I have a $1000 budget. I know companies like Lenovo offer a military discount. So if the price after discount and before tax and shipping is $1000 or less that is fine. Right off let me say what I'm looking for specifically. 4 must haves. Metal chassis or lid (any metal ie. aluminum, magnesium, etc), 15" screen or larger, backlit keyboard, and a discreet video card. I'm not concerned about things such a as manufacturer, build quality, or storage capacity. Thanks in advance. I've owned several laptops over the years, but never one with the aforementioned attributes. I have attached a pic of a laptop I saw at Costco with these attributes. Just wondering if there is something better or something similar for less.

 

[El Nenin]

I hate metal chassis, I dropped my laptop once and it dented the corner, not bad but it's visible, I also had it in my carrying case and I put a flash drive, now the flash drive made a dent, I wish I could buy one of those ASUS TUF, they're plastic but I prefer the military grade plastic over any exotic metal.

For $900, it better have a SATA SSD or NVMe SSD, not a puny HDD.

I think they offer customization on the HP website. So let's say I swapped out the 16 GB of RAM for 8 GB and an SSD drive. What would you think of that combo at that price? Finally, what TUF laptop meets my other requirements. No metal chassis, in other words.

 

[defaultluser]

This Asus Tuf AMD Ryzen 4000 system is a way better deal that that shitbox. I don't think that this entry-level model has a full metal chassis, but it looks to me mostly aluminum.

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-GeForce-Battery-TUF506IV-AS76/dp/B0865RZR9S?th=1

That GPU is 4x faster, and the CPU has twice as many cores. The Zen 2 APU has the same per-core performance as Ice Lake. That 512GB SSD will blow you away (and you don't have to sacrifice 16Gb ram to do so)

 

[OFaceSIG]

Since gaming is out of the question, anything with > 8GB of RAM and NO hard drives! find those two things and the screen size you want for the least money and you'll be fine.

 

[El Nenin]

This Asus Tuf AMD Ryzen 4000 system is a way better deal that that shitbox. I don't think that this entry-level model has a full metal chassis, but it looks to me mostly aluminum.

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-GeForce-Battery-TUF506IV-AS76/dp/B0865RZR9S?th=1

That GPU is 4x faster, and the CPU has twice as many cores. The Zen 2 APU has the same per-core performance as Ice Lake. That 512GB SSD will blow you away (and you don't have to sacrifice 16Gb ram to do so)

One question though. Is this available anywhere online for purchase now? The link you posted says not available till October.

 

[defaultluser]

One question though. Is this available anywhere online for purchase now? The link you posted says not available till October.

B and h ha s the 1650 Ti version in stock. I guess that thing is such an amazing value, it's sold-out everywhere

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1561080-REG/asus_tuf506ii_bs74_ryzen_7_4800h_8gb.html

xoticPC has the 2060 version in stock, but it's $1200.

https://xoticpc.com/products/asus-tuf-tuf506iv-as76

If you're not a hardcore gamer, I'd pick up the 1650 Ti - it's around the same speed as a desktop GTX 1060., and everything else looks identical!

 

[defaultluser]

Personally, I wouldn't buy any NON-Intel based laptop. Why? Because Intel-based laptops run cooler and don't need to buy a laptop cooler.
Value or not, I wouldn't recommend going with an AMD based laptop.

In March I bought this: https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-R7-3750H-GeForce-FX505DV-PB74/dp/B07SXTDL1S

After playing with it, I put it back in the box, return it for an exchange because I couldn't get my money back but I knew that but I also knew that if I get an exchange it would be in a sealed box.......well, I still have it in a sealed box right here sitting in the closet with the hopes of selling it on craiglist one day. And when I sell it, I'll ask $700 for it. Brand new still in the box.

How horrible is it? I wouldn't even offer to sell it to anyone here. This is the 2nd and last AMD based laptop I'll ever buy, non of my other 10+ Intel-based laptops have ever run hot.

Sorry dude, but Zen 2 APUs are vastly superior to the old models. They have similar battery life to Ice Lake, and also support the same LPDDR4x memory chips (and their power savings on higher-end notebooks.) They clock at 4ghz, so they have the same IPC as "3.9 GHz-limited Ice Lake.



Hey. look ta that 20% performance bump!

And how about that battery life?



That's pretty close to XPS 13 for such a cheaply-built-system. A 35% increase over it's predecessor is no joke.

 

[El Nenin]

Thanks for your input. I ended up going with a Lenovo Legion 5 with a Ryzen 4800H and an AMD 1650ti. I got it off of their website for Just over 900 bucks after their own promo code and my military discount. I was about to pull the trigger on a Razer 15 that Amazon has for $500 off regular price, but I was unsure if it was the 2019 or the 2020 model. I heard some sketchy things about the quality control at Razer. Some folks have said they ironed a lot of them out in the 2020 models. Thanks again for the advice. I didn't go for the TUF machine because of the many complaints of insufficient cooling. Although I will not be gaming with this laptop I am glad that I have the option to do so. I also went without a metal body due to the advice of possibly denting it. Thanks for the input.

 

[defaultluser]

Thanks for your input. I ended up going with a Lenovo Legion 5 with a Ryzen 4800H and an AMD 1650ti. I got it off of their website for Just over 900 bucks after their own promo code and my military discount. I was about to pull the trigger on a Razer 15 that Amazon has for $500 off regular price, but I was unsure if it was the 2019 or the 2020 model. I heard some sketchy things about the quality control at Razer. Some folks have said they ironed a lot of them out in the 2020 models. Thanks again for the advice. I didn't go for the TUF machine because of the many complaints of insufficient cooling. Although I will not be gaming with this laptop I am glad that I have the option to do so. I also went without a metal body due to the advice of possibly denting it. Thanks for the input.

That's a good deal! looks like it's a bit less than that Asus 1650 was.. Llenovo makes decent products.