$2k-$2.5k budget for laptop

Looking for new laptop. Incoming sophomore, so although excel is not an immediate concern, I don’t want to have to buy another one for a couple years. Therefore, prefer windows, unless someone can make argument for staying in Apple ecosystem (beneficial for school or smth). Budget is all in, meaning add-ons, accessories, upgrades, tax, etc must be included. Thnx so much for help.

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Lenovo X1 Extreme--absolute powerhouse and the extra screen real estate is great, and it can run multiple monitors, so it basically can replace any dedicated desktop computer

Also, incredibly good keyboard which is important if you're using it as a standalone often 

 

I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad 3 Gaming for $680+tax. It has an RTX 3050 Ti GPU, Ryzen 5 5600H CPU, 512 GB SSD, 8 GB ram that could be upgraded easily, 120 Hz, and more. It's very quick and has the numpad which is a must. Just looked at it again and the price is now $599+tax from the same Ebay seller I bought it from. Its a very powerful laptop and cheap I don't think you can get a better bargain.

 

Cheapest Macbook Air for college (you want iMessage and AirDrop in college) and then once you start working, a cheap Windows laptop if the bank doesn't provide a device (nothing matters besides the WiFi card and keyboard because you will be remote logging into your work desktop so things like RAM and GPU does not matter).

 
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I really like my Dell XPS and you could load it up for that budget. I'd start with a 13 (or 15 if that's what you want, but it's heavier and not really necessary), then choose the upgraded processor and memory. The 13 should give you plenty of room with that budget and the 15 will be right at it. Personally, i'd go with the 13 and then use the extra money to grab some monitors, dock and full keyboard so you can plug into that back at your room / dorm. This should allow you to do pretty much any task that will come your way for the next 3-5 years (and your post-college job will likely give you a laptop).

 

HP Spectre 15 inch. I have the top line version and it’s wicked fast. I was able to run VDI last summer without any problems while my colleagues struggled and I was also able to use it as a gaming PC running games at 150-200 fps at a 1080p resolution and closer to 120fps at a 4K resolution.

Also has the numerical pad on the side which is great when entering numerical data on excel and stuff during the internship. Also looks very sleep and when the 360 screen is a good thing for when you are crunched for space on a table when you have 2 monitors and a keyboard and stuff so you can just fold the laptop to make it essentially look like a screen too.

 

I got an almost maxed out P1-Gen 3 from Lenovo and it’s great, but not for college for a few reasons:

  • battery life is bad. Maybe like ~4 hours on a good day between charges
  • heavy as fuck; but to be fair it’s compared to the Dell XPS 13 I had back in college / first 2 years out of school

For pros, the thing is a beast and better than most desktops I’ve seen in terms of stats, fantastic screen, great keyboard and love that I now have windows 11 on it - plan on making this the last laptop I ever need (hopefully can rock whatever iPad is around by the time this thing is outdated)

I’ve heard great things about the carbons at Lenovo, so would recommend as I love their keyboards and it’s a basic banking laptop. However my XPS was great for college so would also recommend one of those (but not the 13” since it’s pretty small)

 

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