What’s the best sub 1k laptop?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31369424

by mkdirpepper • 4 years ago

16 27 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hey folks, I’m in the market to upgrade my kids computing power during the summer. They use chrome books for school and all but I’d like to get them proper windows laptops to create their own apps and they’re ready to move past scratch.

Thanks in advance!

runjake• 4 years ago

A used ThinkPad?

Otherwise, Wirecutter might be a good starting point: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laptops-for-...

But do your due diligence with anything Wirecutter recommends and get "second opinions."

Also, check out Reddit and Hot Deals on Slickdeals.net.

rg111• 4 years ago

I don't know why HN folks do not use or mention Asus much, but their mid to high range laptops are surprisingly good.

Try Asus TUF series.

I can vouch for them.

is_true• 4 years ago

I had 3 and they still work. One has 10 years

panda888888• 4 years ago

My vote is for the Macbook Air M1 base model. Price with edu discount is $899.

Alternatively, check to see if their Chromebooks support Linux.

nextos2• 4 years ago

Me too, especially given that the M1 Air is (i) fanless and (ii) relatively friendly to Linux.

In the US you might also want to consider ThinkPad X13. With some discounts, it can be a good alternative if you prefer a standard architecture. In the EU sadly ThinkPad is sold via a third party reseller which has an atrocious customer service.

For around $600, depending on current deals, you can get a Surface Laptop Go which has a nice screen and just works on Linux. Avoid the baseline model if you can as it has an eMMC HD which is quite slow.

happymellon4• 4 years ago

relatively friendly to Linux.

What makes you say that? Apple has never been friendly to Linux, and the M1 having zero support porting Linux by Apple continues this trend. What's more disturbing is that NVIDIA is friendlier.

steve_adams_86• 4 years ago

I picked one up to tide me over until I can get the Mac Studio, and it has been amazing. I have to be somewhat disciplined about resource use – closing tabs, unused apps, etc. But it's an excellent machine by every measure at this price point.

Most shocking is the battery life:performance ratio coming from a maxed out 2017 MacBook Air. I really liked (and still like) that computer, but there's no comparison in terms of performance. If I run the 2017 machine pretty hard, it'll die after 3.5 hours or so. The new model lasts about twice as long, but out-performs the old one by a wide margin.

The only downside with the M1 I got is the lack of RAM. Even so, 8GB has been surprisingly sufficient for a lot of tasks. Most people would be just fine with this machine.

MH15• 4 years ago

If you’re ok with Apple/macOS, this is the correct answer. Picked mine up at MicroCenter for $839. It’s been perfect for my workload.

greatpostman• 4 years ago

MacBook Air m1 by far

happymellon4• 4 years ago

A kid would probably be disappointed with a laptop that can't play games.

camhenlin• 4 years ago

There’s quite a lot of games on the App Store and on Steam that are either native or work totally fine on M1 machines

jiffygist• 4 years ago

My dell latitude 5500 with 16 gb ram costed ~$900 (in my country)

Integrated graphics though

thylacine222• 4 years ago

you can get XPS13s for under $1000 pretty easily.

markus_zhang• 4 years ago

What's the best option to get cheap 6-8gb laptops for practicing devops? Need to be able to install Ubuntu/Debian, Kubernetes, Airflow, etc. basically everything needed to mimic Composer (except for the GCP and BQ part)

Mildlypolite• 4 years ago

I vote for a used thinkpad!

randomluck040• 4 years ago

It really depends. Should it play games? If so, the MB Air is out of the windows. Then I’d try to look at something with a dedicated GPU or something Ryzen. If it should not, I‘d look at used Thinkpads for Windows/Linux or at the M1 for macOS. I think it also depends strongly on what should be developed on the device.

schwartzworld• 4 years ago

Windows? Ew.

I'm a professional dev and I learned on a Chromebook that I installed Linux on. You can get away with much less computing power if you use Linux.

I don't know any devs who use windows except those specifically developing for the windows ecosystem.

aristofun• 4 years ago

I doubt anything in that range can even come close to Macbook Air M1 base model.

toast0• 4 years ago

Best depends on your criteria, which you haven't listed other than app creation, but people have been making apps for a long time on computers of various capability, so that doesn't narrow us down very much.

Lowest cost option is find something used that works, or from CDW outlet or the occassional crazy deal. Many chromebooks can run windows if you use a 3rd party bios. The keyboard layout is a bit sparse, which means no windows key. Check Mr.Chromebox for models his script supports and you'll get a minimal machine that boots UEFI capable OSes, you might need a keyboard driver depending on specifics.

If you want the most processing power for the $, get a basic desktop with integrated graphics. Ryzen 5600G or something Alder Lake with DDR4-3600 or so (DDR5 might be faster, but right now it's pretty close and DDR4 is much less expensive). Alder Lake boards are either DDR4 or DDR5 but not both, shop carefully. Desktop chips are going to be significatly faster than laptop chips, because they can use way more power.

ad404b8a372f2b9• 4 years ago

Do yourself a favour and use this: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/laptop/ You can filter using many axes, like screen size, price, battery life, RAM, and so on... It'll give you a much better idea of what's available, rather than what's trendy.

Once you've selected a few promising ones you can check the reviews online.

On a side note, make sure you're not upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, most dev work has very low computing requirements. You could also buy second-hand and get something great for hundreds of dollar less than new. You can also buy new for considerably less than 1000$, especially in the U.S where prices are cheap. The laptop I bought back in college was 300$ and good enough to do any dev work I wanted (that's about the lower bound of what you can find brand new though).

jtmaher• 4 years ago

Thinkpad L14 (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-business-lap...).

What’s the best sub 1k laptop?

Related Stories