I’m in the market for a new laptop. Preferably under $2000 and have good specs. 16 GB ram minimum and 500 GB SSD minimum. What recommendations does Lemmy have? If more details are needed please specify what and I’ll answer
EDIT: thank you everyone for the answers 🙂 I do not need anymore suggestions
If you don’t care about gaming, just get a macbook tbh.
the new M1 ones are insane.
if you want to game on it, I got a Lenovo Legion that I really like.
$2000 should get you something pretty nice. Do you have anything specific in mind that you’re planning to do with it? Important stuff to keep in mind up front, in no particular order: do you play games? How big should the screen be? How long do you want to use it on battery? Any operating system preferences?
I’m a Mac guy so my goto answer would always be something from Apple. If I was looking for non-apple hardware though I would look at Framework laptops because lack of upgradability is my biggest peeve about Apple gear.
I’m eyeing the M1/M2 macs with asahi, but I’m going to let it mature more for a bit before I take the plunge.
This is like year 3. How much more you think they’re gonna mature?
The distro (asahi) is still in very early development, gpu acceleration was just recently added. That along with a esoteric architecture, will cause headaches for the uninitiated.
The macs themselves hardware wise are quite mature, but I can’t for the life of me use MacOS.
Lenovo Thinkpad T14s AMD. Runs Linux perfectly, is fast, has a great keyboard, has a great trackpoint, and has good battery life.
If it doesn’t run Linux, I don’t buy the laptop.
There are computers that can’t run Linux?
Linux support for Apple Silicon is still early stages, for example.
There’s no way to answer that question without knowing what you want to do with your laptop.
If you want anything but gaming, go for a Mac, especially if you are a musician (every Mac comes with GarageBand, is silent and has crazy battery life). You’ll also find the iWork suite installed for office work. No hidden cost.
For photo editing, built-in Photos app gives a good alternative to Lightroom.
For more advanced stuff you can also buy Affinity Photos or Pixelmator Pro, which are great alternatives to Photoshop, without the cost and the weight on the system
Little built-in apps like Reminders and Notes can be life-changer if you’re in GTD stuff.
The feature that impressed me the most back in the day was preview. Select any file and press the space bar. You’ll get instant preview (whatever the file is) without launching an app.
If you want to game, it depends on the games you play.
I would just be doing general use and for my studies. I was considering playing some games on it, like Escape from tarkov and games like that. Why do macs not work well for gaming? Also do you have a recommendation for what type of mac to get?
Macs are not good for gaming because it wasn’t delivered with a proper graphic card for years, so game developers left the platform.
Apple silicone Mac are pretty good for gaming now, if compared to similar form-factor PCs. Besides, Macs doesn’t lose any power when unplugged, contrary to PCs.
But the catalog is still lacking. There are good games (BG3, Metro Exodus, Resident Evil Village, Lies Of P, World Of Warcraft if it’s your jam) but nothing merely enough for a true gamer.
You could play Escape From Tarkov on a Mac using virtualizing software like Parallels Desktop, CrossOver or Game Porting Toolkit, but it won’t run natively, and I can’t make any promises on that subject.
You’ll have to do some research if you want to play some games on a Mac.
Otherwise it’s truly the best computer you can get. Not necessarily the most powerful (depends on what you’re doing) but definitely the best user experience.
I thought so too. Used a MacBook Pro for half a year. Never again.
As soon as you want to do more than opening preinstalled apps / installing apps from their store, it gets overly complicated. Customisability also is extremely limited.
Have such a hard time upvoting this, solely because OP posted their budget and they could get something much better. Apple is nice, but you’ll be paying out the wazoo to be limited to their ecosystem. Nice, intuitive ecosystem, wont lie. Really pays to be in it, but getting out is hell.
Honestly I’d rather do the extra leg work of finding good enough replacements for basic mac functionality than getting an apple product. I’m hella biased though.
