- I wanted to make it
back-to-school laptop guide. But if I say the HP ENVY 14 is sweet, it'll go from sweet to sold
out in about 30 minutes. So instead, you guys are
getting something even better, a start-to-finish laptop buyer's guide so you can make your own decision. Also, it will include
some honorable mentions, like the aforementioned ENVY 14. It really is pretty sweet. So if you want one, (chuckles) move fast. And move fast to check out our sponsor. MSI's CLUTCH GM41 LIGHTWEIGHT
WIRELESS
gaming mouse is only 74 grams, has a PixArt 3370 sensor, and features up to 80
hours of battery life. Check it out at the link down below. Right out of the gate, the Dell XPS 15 is the
benchmark for Windows laptops. It excels in performance, build
quality, and battery life. The only small problem is that it costs over 2,000 U.S. dollars. Now, I think Dell might have
financing options available if you need them, but before you lock into
an agreement like that, I should tell you that it is possibl
e to find something with more power, a longer-lasting battery or something much lighter
for less than half the price. The first and most important
thing you need to decide is how much performance you actually need, as well as your budget. Because these two factors will determine what type of laptop you're looking at. Be honest with yourself. If you don't really need that
top-of-the-line RTX 3080 GPU, sacrificing some FPS could
either save you a ton of money or get you a better built machine that
's more comfortable to daily drive. With that said, if performance
is your top priority, you're probably going
to want a gaming laptop. Generally speaking, they
have the best cooling, they feature the fastest processors, and they're cheaper than
equally powerful laptops that are marketed at
professional creators. If you primarily want a
laptop for school or work that has enough grunt
to game on your brakes, you'll be perfectly fine with either a GTX 1650 or an RTX 3050. Here are a couple of
budg
et-friendly options. Any of these should serve you very well. So I would personally go
with whatever's on sale and then return it and try
again if I end up hating it. If you're looking for
something powerful enough to really crank the details
in AAA games at 1080p, or if you wanna drive a
high refresh rate panel for smoother animations, the RTX 3060 Mobile delivers
nearly a 40% bump in FPS over the 3050 Ti and
comes highly recommended, especially an ASUS Zephyrus G14. And we've also seen some
re
ally nice fire sales on last-gen 2000 series RTX models. Above that, however, things start to get a little complicated, a lot complicated. In many cases, the model of GPU that you choose, and that you pay for, can have less of an impact
on real-world performance than the cooling and the power delivery of the overall laptop. (exhales strongly) There is honestly way
too much to cover here. So instead we made a playlist that you can watch called "Buying a Gaming Laptop in
2021 is Way More Complicat
ed Than it Should Be." Also get subscribed because I'm sure that the shenanigans are far from over. Moving on then, if gaming for you means playing TextTwist in your browser or the occasional round of
Rocket League, great news! Integrated, or IGP use,
have gotten shockingly good. So you wanna avoid a laptop that has low-end dedicated graphics, like these ones. In my opinion, they just aren't enough of an upgrade over modern integrated GPUs to be worth the extra
power draw and heat output. Your e
mulated PlayStation 2 Classics are gonna run fine without them. As for CPUs, AMD keeps
things pretty simple. The bigger the number,
the more faster it goes. And I can easily recommend both the Ryzen 4000 and 5000
series processors on mobile. They have exceptional efficiency, which means great performance in compact or lower-priced machines
that typically end up with smaller batteries. I would hesitate however
to go for a Ryzen 3000. The name seems to suggest that these are based on AMD Zen 2 cor
es, but they're actually
based on an older design that is significantly slower
and less power efficient. As for Intel, whoa, if it's got five numbers
followed by an H, like this, that means it's a faster
model with more cores. And if it ends in HK, like this one, it's a super fast boy and is generally capable of overclocking. If instead it's got four
numbers followed by G4 or G7, like this, that means it'll
have at most four cores, and is intended to be
snappy and power efficient, rather than ca
pable of
handling heavy workloads. Now, for most people only four CPU cores isn't gonna be a problem. But if you plan on
running fluid simulations or editing 4K video,
an H-series processor, or ideally an 8 Core from AMD
would be the better choice. Something to note,
though, is that for Intel, their latest 11th Gen processors were a significant upgrade. They finally switched from
14 nanometer to 10 nanometer. So if the latest and greatest
isn't within your budget, you can't assume that
last year
's model will be same, same, but slightly worse. The good news, however, is that in the few years prior to that, Intel was basically
rehashing the same designs. So you'd be hard-pressed
to tell the difference between an 8th Gen processor
and a 10th Gen one. I'd only go 7th Gen and older though if the price was very
compelling on a used device. Fortunately, RAM is simple.
Get 16 gigs if you can. Windows and Chrome are gonna
make quick work of 8 gigs. And if 8 gigs of RAM is
all that meets your bu
dget, make sure you choose a machine that can be upgraded
down the line with slots that look like these ones. Even if you're not tech savvy, iFixit has excellent teardowns that can both help you
choose an appropriate model and perform the surgery. Framework, by the way, gets
an honorable mention here for their outstanding attention to the upgradability of their machines. They even go as far as making the integrated ports swappable. Storage is a similar story to RAM. You're probably gonna want at
least 500 gigs for your SSD, but if a 256 gig one is all
that you can fit in your budget, just make sure that the
laptop you're considering can be upgraded down the road. Something you might have
realized by now, though, is that since Intel didn't do a whole lot to improve their laptops between
8th and 10th generations, it is entirely possible
that someone might think that their old laptop is slow, but it actually just needs a little bit more storage or RAM. Neither of them is super
expensive t
hese days. So chucking 16 gigs of Ram
into a three-year-old laptop, maybe with a battery refresh that can usually be found with a quick part number search on eBay, could give it a whole new lease on life. While you're in there, by the way, make sure to blow out the cooling system because overheating is the biggest cause of premature laptop failure. Now to address the elephant in the room. AMD and Intel aren't the only
options for CPUs anymore. Bringing us to the Apple M1. The MacBook Air and Pro
M1s are in almost every way the best thin-and-lights on the market. They're extremely snappy, feel great to use, have excellent screens, and the battery life is unmatched by anything that shows
this logo on boot up. But they aren't perfect. The M1 chip has only been out for a year. So there are some growing pains. For instance, our Mac guy, Jonathan, has to use Teams in a Chrome window since there's no native app yet. And there's no way to
install full x86 Windows. As for us, the inability to
r
un professional programs like SOLIDWORKS and Altium, not to mention games, makes the M1 Mac a complete no go. So a beautiful machine, much better keyboard than the old ones. Just make sure that
everything you're gonna need will run on it. And Chromebooks are a similar story. If you're on a budget or
you already have access to a powerful desktop, 95% of the time a
Chromebook is going to do everything you need it to do. But if a Chromebook is your only computer, your professor or your boss
could e
asily provide you with some mandatory piece of software that you either can't run or
are going to have to install in a hacky, time-consuming way. And at that point, you'll probably wish that you'd saved up another 100 bucks and
got a Windows device, or spent the same amount and gotten a used ThinkPad, like this one. - Having the fastest laptop
around though means nothing if the screen sucks. How will you appreciate
all the new T-shirt designs on theltgstore.com? But seriously, the screen is
the
thing you will interact with most on your laptop. So it really makes sense to skimp on it. There are three main panel types: your TN, IPS type, and OLED, and only one that you should choose. TN looks terrible by today's standards and should basically be
avoided at all times. OLED panels look amazing, with crisp blacks and vibrant colors and incredible saturation, but they're normally not super bright, which kind of matters if
you're taking this thing into bright areas like outside. They struggle
with reflections and they're terrible for battery life, which leaves us with IPS. And IPS-type panels. LG trademarked IPS. So other brands have
to use different names for the same tech. Once you know the panel type is okay, the color space is the next key thing. This describes how many different colors your monitor can produce. It can get a bit confusing since there are a bunch
of different standards. But unless you know you need something else, aim for near 100% coverage
of sRGB, pretty basic.
The vast majority of
applications, webpages, and games are tuned for sRGB. So unless you're doing
professional color work, going beyond that to Adobe RGB or a DCI-P3 is not a requirement. More expensive machines
may come factory calibrated to account for the slight differences from one panel to the next. But there are quick and dirty
ways to calibrate it yourself using test patterns that are good enough if you're not doing color-critical work. Something you cannot change after the fact is your
panel's brightness. It's tough to recommend a
single brightness number since 250 nits might be fine on a matte display while 400 nits might not feel
like enough on a glossy one. But what I can say is
that if you're gonna be in a bright environment,
lower is generally better. Finally, if you plan on gaming, throw out most of what I just said, because the single most
important thing for you is the refresh rate of your panel. A high refresh rate display, paired with a good CPU and GPU, will allow y
ou to see much
smoother animations on the screen and make your gaming experience feel more responsive and immersive. We proved outright that going
from 60 hertz to 144 hertz results in a real-world
competitive advantage and while 240 hertz and
above definitely starts to succumb to the law
of diminishing returns, it's safe to say that more is more better, at least for competitive gamers. If sightseeing games are
more your thing, though, look at you with your three players, a 1440p, 120 or 144 her
tz IPS-type is the perfect sweet spot, chef's kiss. Speaking of which, you might have noticed that I've hardly touched on resolution. That's because despite it
being one of the big highlights on a typical manufacturer's webpage, for the most part it
doesn't really matter. Unless the laptop is
extremely cheap or small, it will have at least 1080p resolution. And since laptops are
pretty small in general, 1080p is enough for the image
to look pretty darn good. In our opinion, pushing to a 4K displ
ay
is basically just a waste of battery life, unless the 1080p option
is a really bad panel. A far more important aspect
of the display is the ratio of horizontal to vertical pixels. For professionals in particular, a 16:10 or 3:2 display gives
you more vertical space to work with for scrolling long documents or editing complex video timelines. Some laptops with great
screens are the Surface Laptop, HP ENVY 14, Dell XPS,
ASUS Zephyrus M16 and G15, and the Lenovo Legion Pro, they're good. Oh yeah
, we like
touchscreens. You might not. So hey, it's up to you,
unless you buy a Mac, then it's up to Apple. - A really important part of a laptop that you can't evaluate
from the spec sheet alone is the keyboard and track pad. Given these are the bits that
you'll physically be touching every time you use it, you'll want them to be really good. The easiest way to figure out if a keyboard and trackpad are good is to watch some reviews. Find a host who has some
overlapping experience with yours. Se
e if you like the same kind of things. Then find out their most recent opinion on whatever machine you're considering. We've got heaps of unboxings
around ShortCircuit, like this one right here
and I think this one too. So if you're lucky, we've already taken a
look at what you want. And if you're not so lucky, well, I guess it's time to head over to a local big box store, like Best Buy or somewhere
and just try some out. First thing to do is make sure
your hands physically fit. If they're falli
ng off of the edge, kinda like this, you need a bigger laptop. To type fast, consistency is the key. The more confidence your
fingers have, the better. So kinda just press around the keyboard. If the whole thing flexes
a bit, that can be fine, but uneven squishiness
can throw off your typing. Feel around the J and K keys specifically. This tends to be a soft
spot on some laptops. If the deck flex is good, then you can evaluate the keys themselves. Press around the corners
to check the stability.
If the corner kinda dips below the chassis before it actuates, don't buy it. And finally, give the keys a press to see how consistent the force
required to push them is. If some of them take
more effort than others, keep looking unless you're
a hunt and peck typist. For you, you probably wouldn't
notice the difference, but if you wanna improve
your typing in the future, maybe, you know, invest
in something that's good. Our keyboard standouts are
the ASUS Zephyrus lineup, basically any Alienware
laptop, but especially this one
with the Cherry switches, any Surface device, Dell's XPS 15, and pretty much anything from
HP's ENVY or Spectre lineups. While you're tooling
around with the keyboard, it's a good time to
evaluate the palm rejection of the trackpad. If the mouse accidentally
clicks or moves around while you're typing, real bad. If none of those things happened, try to use the keyboard
and then slowly move to touching the trackpad. What you're looking for is to see if the trackpad
doesn't
immediately start working,. OEMs will do this to make sure that your palms don't actually trigger it, but if it's too aggressive it can make the trackpad
feel unresponsive. After that, check if the trackpad uses
Windows Precision drivers. If it doesn't, just don't get the laptop. In 2021, no one needs
snapdicks drunken drivers. From there, I personally
don't like trackpads with high latency, but depending on what panel you have and your personal sensitivity to it, you might not notice t
he difference. So it kind of just comes down
to trying as many as possible in-person and hopefully you
can figure out what you like. Our standout trackpad champs
are, of course, the MacBooks, XPS 15 once again, and
the Zephyrus G15 and M16. The last big ones that
we haven't mentioned are weight and battery. Weight is pretty simple since it's just a function of performance and how much you want to spend. This one's real light, made of magnesium. Not cheap. (laughs) But the battery's a lot more co
mplex. I wish I could just say something like, "Get an 85 watt-hour
battery and you'll be good." But like, these two both
have 55 watt-hour batteries. This one's four hours, this one's 16. It (laughs) doesn't really work like that. Because depending on
the CPU, GPU, display, and even the tuning of
all of those things, the battery life is just
willy-nilly and will vary wildly. Your only real choice
is to find a reviewer who has tested the config you
like or something close to it in an industry st
andard test, like the PCMark battery life test. Anything over about 6.5
hours will be serviceable, with anything over 11
being pretty darn solid for all day use. - Big thanks to Drop for
sponsoring this video. With drop you can bring home the battle that changed the Marvel
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into a battlefield and order your Infinity Work Keycaps today at the link in the video description. - If you still want to know more, check out our playlist
"Buying Game Laptops in 2021 is Way More C
omplicated
Than it Should Be." It's so stupid. All the things that you need to know to make an informed decision to buy like a gaming laptop, ridiculous.
Comments
"If i say the Hp Envy is good, it will go from good to sold out in 30 minutes." Thats a whole flex
Its badass knowing that you can single-handedly cut up the buying market by dropping a video
For a back to school device, I would be particularly looking at durability and repairability. School devices are hard to not abuse.
Another important factor: key layout. Language can always be changed in the OS, but key layout is fixed unless you get something like a Thinkpad with replaceable key layout options. For example, here in Québec brick-and-mortar stores basically have to sell laptops with the ANSI Canadian French layout or at the very least Canadian Multilingual Standard, so that people can actually use them. But online stores may only sell models with U.S.A. ISO layouts; which means you're getting fewer keys; and typing in your language could be a serious avoidable pain. Lots of people buy expensive laptops online, only to realize that they ended up with the ISO layout, which absolutely sucks for typing in French; or worse they end up with the european AZERTY "French" layout which is arguably even worse (at least USA ISO is still QWERTY). Canadian French ANSI is required by schools in the province and provincial public institutions in both official languages pretty much only use this one exclusively because it is proven to be better for typing both in French and also even just for typing in English. The older Canadian Multilingual Standard ANSI is still used by some federal institutions, but is low-key gradually being replaced by U.S.A. ISO just because most unilingual anglophones don't know how to tell the difference and the supply of U.S.A. ISO is easier to come by. And don't even get me started on how hard it is to preserve multilingual layouts for the various First Nations and Indigenous languages and prevent them from getting phased out too.
I love how LTT won't let Dell have it with the "Financing" issue with his buying guide video.
The biggest flex is: "If i say the Hp Envy is good, it will go from good to sold out in 30 minutes."
It's nice to see that AMD has final matches the naming scheme with the Zen 3 for mobile and desktop CPUs
i love how most of the budget options are more expensive than my main pc lol
I can now stop spending an hour teaching my family and friends how to look for a laptop, which usually ends in me just picking one for them, and send them this video. Thank you LTT!
Glad to see Jarrod's Tech getting some recognition, the man really knows how to make proper laptop reviews.
I have been looking into what I should look for while buying a laptop for like the past month, and this is probably one of the best videos I've watched, and also probably one of the best on this entire platform itself.
The video structure was really good, especially bringing so many people in talking about the stuff they know a lot about. Can agree with some points on my HP Envy x360 I bought last year. Screen is cool (including the touch capability), keyboard and trackpad are amazing, battery is okay and since my main PC is at my desk and I mainly need the laptop for work or traveling, the perfomance is enough. Only thing I made a mistake on is the soldered 8GB or RAM. Looked at the wrong model number and bought the 8GB model to save money for now. Perfomance is still good for now but I will regret this.
Lots of great advice!
The explanations of laptop cpu’s and gpu’s actually clarified a lot for me. This is a really well organized and executed video!
Linus can you please tell me where to find that Portal 2 wallpaper you have?
Even after all these years, I think way over a decade now that I've been following Linus on YT, every video I watch regardless of release date, is still relevant and fun with great presentation. Tl;dr Linus is a legend.
Wait, DELL has a financing option? But what about extended warranty!
Another shoutout to Framework. Let's keep cheering for them.
Great video guide, I really like to watch your reviews especially when I got Asus G14 after watching your review.
really man linus did two sponsorship in just 10 seconds. that is why i am giving him the award businessman of 2077