Poll-Yes or No- Buying Laptops with High Performance CPU's

@FrancoDT Same here, I have an inspiron 3501 in case I ever feel the need to go portable, but I use it mostly for testing apps and progs with as over the years I have mucked a few things up :) This laptop here is "my desktop"

@ThrashZone I have never had a heat problem with any of my intel's, this one is controllable with Alienware fusion for cooling and fan speed etc. This time last year here in the UK prices soared and availability dwindled due to our Covid lockdown, it got so bad just after Christmas I couldn't even buy a monitor or pc just low spec old crappy ones

Devlin1888 said:

Ive been intel for ages, But some people are ridiculous when it comes to brand loyalty, Next time im upgrading, Its whoever has the best at the time, if thats amd then cool, if its intel, also cool xD
If an intel fanboy(Not every user ofc) sees the new amd cpu outperforming intels, its immediate butthurt, and vice versa.
They do seem to run a bit hotter than they used to, If i was doing another intel build id just get the noctua air cooler at the v least, My CM does the job but i dont really like it sitting under max loads at nearly 90 degrees xD Bare in mind i am running at 5.1ghz too.

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I agree I like Intel would happily buy an AMD if the specs were right

glasskuter said:

Yes, I agree and that's what I've suggested to most everyone who have asked. I feel the i5 to be the sweet spot, enough speed to do most things and less heat. And for a few little old ladies who don't do much, I've told them to get an i3. I keep my mouth shut about gaming rigs that kids can overclock (both laptops and PCs). It's not worth losing friends over when their kids overclock and fry them.

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I agree i5 is the sweet spot. My main laptop was an old i5 and ran perfectly fast enough - enjoyable to use and no lagging. The slightly old Spectre X360 is i7 - and I do notice the difference - it's nice. But not actually necessary. I'd choose i7 if I could afford it but most i5's would suit everyone (even for photo and video editing on a consumer level). I say "most" as it depends which i5 it is - some are better than others.

I've read a lot about the Ryzen 5 which has a lot of kudos. However one model of laptop I was looking at had an i5 and a Ryzen 5 version. The Ryzen 5 was slightly cheaper and according to a lot of people, the better processor. But the reviews for that laptop were that the
Ryzen 5 wasn't nearly a match for the i5 (and some of that may depend on the individual laptop and general spec I guess and dependant on which version of i5 it is).

I've used only laptops for the past 20 years. I need mobility and can't take being tied down to a single spot with a desktop system. I've always kept two systems, one for performance and one for ultra-light portability.

glasskuter said:

It's Christmastime and Windows 11 time. I've had quite a few people ask me for suggestions on what laptop they should buy. Buyer are sucked in with thoughts of more speed, more cores, more threads, etc, etc. As we see here on this forum, heat issues are becoming more and more prevalent as CPU's have become faster. When you add that in with the fact that builds these days seem to have dropped in quality, in terms of longevity alone I've always felt it is a bad idea to pay big bucks for laptops with high performance CPUs since there's not much a user can do to control the heat inside the case. Since many of you know much more about such things than I do, what do you think? I value your opinion.

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Depends on how it is going to be used. If just cruising the web, you don't need a powerful cpu. If doing creative work like photgraphy maybe more and more memory video editing, more and lots of memory, gaming more CPU.

I have a base macbook pro 13" with an m1 processor. I use it for web browsing and portal to my desktop with remote desktop. Way more than adequate and I have the screen calibrated for photography viewing.

"Good idea" is dependent to what you need and do. With that, I'll always buy a laptop with a high-performance CPU. My 2014 Asus, and 2017 Lenovo Ultrabooks both came with i7 processors. My next notebook will also feature a high-performance CPU. That's me.

As a photographer and photo editor I need all the power I can when running programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

For me, I don't usually buy high end laptops. My preference is for laptops to be relatively light, small, and good battery life. I work in the IT field, so I have a work laptop and it's way more powerful than I need, but still not too big. I have a Dell Precision 5550, with 15.6" screen, Nvidia Quadro T2000 video, with a Core i9-10885H. So, this takes care of any high performance portable needs I may have.

My personal laptop is an Apple MacBook Pro, circa 2014, with a core i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. I don't use this all that much since building my new desktop last December.

I say a niiiiiiiiiice screen, good keyboard, 8-16 GBs of RAM, 256-512 SSD, speakers don't matter*, and a current i5 or reasonably recent AMD Ryzen 5 to 7. (This is for the non-gamer, non video editing type.)

If it's mostly going to stay home kinda plugged in, battery won't matter too much. If it's going to live outside, battery matters as well as enough NITS for the screen to be seen outside. The latter scenario significantly ups the price, but then that makes sense.

* because Bluetooth

I have always bought "Horses for courses" when it comes to purchases of computers - when I was buying professionally the specs would suit the user needs.
If the user was based in the office they had a desktop, salesmen had laptops both of these were basic models, engineers had access to both high powered Desktops and laptops. management had laptops with flashing lights and leather cases

Personally I spec laptops and desktops for the task at hand - in my case I am looking for something for still image processing and I usually have a laptop and a desktop at any one time - current devices are shown in my specs. As my processing is more processor based. you will not see any high priced spec graphics cards as all they have to do is keep a couple of 4k Screens refreshed

I used to buy laptops based on the best, biggest and fastest components, now as most mid-range specs are pretty good anyway, my most significant consideration is weight and screen size/resolution.

Well, with faster laptops, you have to be more cognizant of heating issues. Sometimes, a solid mid-range speed CPU with less heat issues but a goodly amount of RAM and quality SSD will go further.

Case in point - my wife wanted a Mac about 10 years ago. Well, we got it for her. She got one with an Intel 2.7MHz CPU (can't remember more than that other - Pentium quad core maybe?). I upgraded it to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB Samsung 860EVO SSD. She ended up disliking Mac OS with a vengeance, so I boot camped it into Windows, which we've now upgraded to Windows 10. That thing still boots quickly and runs strong. Sure, it can't do everything a new computer can do, but it's a solid machine that doesn't look like it's going to die anytime soon. She'll probably get 3-5 more years out of it easily. No heat issues with it.

For me, I need a small lightweight travel laptop that's fast and powerful. My Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga X1 laptop (system specs system 2) weigh just over 3lbs, and features 16gig of RAM, 1TB NVMe drive, an i7-7600U CPU, and a 14-inch OLED Touch screen.

I am a gamer, but since I don't game on laptops (that's what I built my desktop for), I don't require a dedicated gaming GPU on them. That also helps with heating issues. Yes, my laptop gets hot, but not to the point of being a problem.

Ghot said:

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That looks like an all-in-one desktop.

My latest laptop is LG Gram. It has 17", 2560 x 1600 display, 1TB SSD, 16 GB DDR4, with i7-1165G7. These specs are not "top of the line", however, they are reasonable enough. The other two specs are "top of the line" and nowadays are more important to me that processing power: weight 1.3 kg (that's 2.86 lbs) and battery life "up to 19.5 hours". In practice I don't know about 19 hours, but it's certainly way more than anything I've seen before. When I go to work, I don't even take the charger.

If you are going to Game on a laptop, it maybe wise to get one. I would only get one to do normal stuff.

When I look at the poll count, it's evident that most of you completely disagree with me. I don't have a lot of personal experience using a laptop because I never have cared much for them myself. I have based my recommendations to others based on the number of lappies I've seen with bad mobos, none of which had cpus lower than an i5. I realize that the needs of the user is the biggest thing to consider when buying any kind of computer. With that in mind, most active members of this forum are power users whose needs differ greatly from that of the average Joe Blow user who expects whatever they buy to last 10 years the way it did in the old days. Someone mentioned that laptops are now basically disposable devices kind of like tablets and phones. You get 2-3 years out of them and then buy another. It is that vein of thought that makes me totally against advising someone to spend all the extra money upfront for an extreme laptop that will probably give out way sooner than they expect it to. So,from your remarks I guess I can in good conscience recommend the i5 and its Ryzen counterpart, the i7 probably not, and the i9, not no, but h311 no.
Thanks to each of you who gave me your insights.

glasskuter said:

Someone mentioned that laptops are now basically disposable devices kind of like tablets and phones. You get 2-3 years out of them and then buy another.

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I've said this different ways before but here's a new way: AppleCare and PC warranties imply they're only good for 3 years-ish. And have done so for many years. Since you can't buy past 3 years -- although sometimes you can sneak in a fourth year. (My wife has one bonus year that way.)

It would be interesting if one day PC manufacturers were forced to include a 3 year warranty in the price. This would force them not to cut corners for they'd pay badly for doing so. (Similarly I want ALL cars to have forced 10 year warranties.)

For me, the laptop should basically be a clone of the desktop so it would have identical apps installed with the same data as with multi-million $USD in the market, each minute could cost $25 or more. Ofcourse it should be no larger than 17.3" so one can take it as a carry on, on the airplane and the power supply should be no bigger than what was on the ASUS G73/G74 machines. This is from my experience of using laptops/notebooks since the early 1990s.

glasskuter said:

Someone mentioned that laptops are now basically disposable devices

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I have been mentioning it for a whole decade, but no one ever listened. :) As for Intel vs AMD, the reason why I only buy Intel is because I don't play games and the only type of programs I use that are CPU intensive enough for it to make an actual difference all run faster on a mid-priced quad core (i5) with bigger performance per core when compared to similarly priced AMD choices. Another reason is that Intel Speed Shift has been continuing to evolve, it dynamically adjusts clock speed and power, automatically in such a way that the old concept of "TDP" essentially becomes meaningless as a result. The power consumption of Tiger Lake-UP3 can jump a whopping 50 watts (or thereabout) above the TDP. (For reference, the TDP of my i5-1135G7 is only 28 watts, so it can jump nearly 180% above the TDP.) These "jumps" in power generate extra heat of course, but it throttles back down again before it will overheat, so it can be useful only in situations when a performance bottleneck would otherwise occur for only a short period of time, which, for everyday normal types of workload, are situations that happen a lot more frequently than many think. It uses Artificial Intelligence to control these kinds of far-reaching optimizations. By allowing the temp to quickly rise from average/low to high, i.e. before it cools back down again at a relatively slower rate, it also saves on weight of the cooling system, which also helps to explain why that 17 inch LG Gram laptop weighs only 1.3kg in spite of the the fact that it uses an i7-1165G7. So basically, it's not the fact that we don't know. Rather, people who always buy Intel are always buying it exactly BECAUSE they know, and they also know full well about knowing.