[markyc]

- retina screen

- great touchpad (and gestures)

- all day battery

- no noise at all (optional but for me a big plus)

- hinge that stands the test of time

- aluminum (of very resistant) body

i'll buy a laptop that checks these off under $1600, but so far m1 air is the only one I found, and it's cheaper than that

[zibzab]

But most of these are meaningless if you don't work full days on the run. Most of us sits in an office with a big monitor and a mouse and keyboard most of the time.

And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either. During the most productive period of my life (by a huge margin, now I understand) I only had a $200 laptop. It was literally sold as "the cheapest laptop you will ever find".

(I give you the noise though, I hate fan noise)

Edit: do hinges ever break? Unless you sit on it, I have never seen this happen even with the cheapest laptops.

[kitsunesoba]

Whether you can get away with a cheap laptop really depends on what you’re doing.

Like for someone who works in Photoshop/Illustrator/Sketch/Figma even a little will need a great screen and almost without exception you’re not going to be getting that in a $200 laptop. This admittedly can be worked around with a “cheap” $300 IPS external monitor, but at that point you’re spending more on the monitor than your laptop which feels upside-down. (I know this from experience — at one point I had to do PS work on a $500 Gateway laptop and it was miserable because a quarter of the document’s details weren’t even visible).

Or if you’re compiling code a lot, you’re going to want more oomph than a $200 laptop can provide, because otherwise you’re going to be twiddling your thumbs and getting distracted and breaking flow waiting for code to compile. For me this is particularly impactful, and any reduction in compile times is easily felt.

As for hinges, on even a number of “mid tier” laptops, they tend to get loose and wobbly over time. I’ve seen a number of IdeaPads owned by friends and family suffer this fate.

[markyc]

I hear you

I was very surprised after I bought a nice big monitor and great mouse that I ignored them most of the time, so now I just work off the laptop, it works best for me, which I never would have guessed in my desktop years

That said, I've been very productive with a creaky noisy cheap lenovo with ubuntu so in my case it's not just about productivity but also comfort

Re: do hinges ever break? they tend to, when you use the laptop 10 hours per day

[timeon]

I haven't used mouse since I switched to mbp - and I use autocad/rhino a lot.

> And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either.

Among other reasons some people are concerned with energy use in general.

[FearlessNebula]

I think you’re underplaying two things:

- not just a great touchpad, literally the best one in the game undisputed

- all day battery life. And not PC laptops that claim 14 hours of battery but see 5 in reality, I’m talking actually 14 hours of battery in real world use.

[timeon]

- decent speakers