Best reasonably priced 15" or higher Windows laptop?

[retta283]

So the time has finally come for me to begin my transition back to Windows, and I need a new computer. I will be building my own desktop (will take me some time to figure out, been a while and want to get it right) so for the time being I will spring for a laptop to begin the transition instead of just sitting around doing nothing.

so here I am and I don't know what to look for. What I want is preferably a 15" or larger display, must be IPS and higher than 1366x768 (1600x900 is barely cutting it, ideally higher than this too). If IPS high-res 15"+ are too pricey I would consider 13.3" or higher. Decent specs for the price, unless it's a very good dual core I'd like higher. SSD at 128GB or higher, don't need much but 64GB is tiny. As many ports as possible but I'm not too picky on this one. Same goes for battery life, I can plug in when needed. Good speakers would be appreciated. Don't care about webcam/mic quality.

If anyone with more knowledge in the Windows laptop realm can give me some pointers, it would be greatly appreciated. Ideally want to spend less than $1,000.

 

[maflynn]

Ideally want to spend less than $1,000.

Take a look at Lenovo.com, especially now as they're holding a black friday sale. You can find a decent 14" thinkpad for about 1,200 and a 13" laptop for under a grand. There's a few larger laptops being sold on Lenovo for around a grand or just under as well.

 

[ctjack]

Also you could buy like mine: Lenovo Legion 5i 17 inch.
Comes with 6 core cpu, 16gb of ram, 1660ti gpu, matte full hd 144Hz display.
Lots of different ports which you might think of.
SSD option starting from 256 to 1tb.
Anyway ram and storage is no problem - can be changed later with whatever the size you want.
All for $1000.

 

[retta283]

I am thinking about getting the Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3. It will be about $1,500 but it seems pretty good spec wise and has 1080p res. Only thing I'm not sure about is the 8GB RAM, I don't know if you can upgrade RAM yourself anymore on these, if not I can probably configure it with 16.

 

[dmr727]

I am thinking about getting the Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3.

I think that's a strong choice. I'm late to your thread, but I was just about say that if you could find a way to increase your budget to around $1500, you'd have a lot of additional options.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I'd look at the Dell XPS 15. You can get it with a nice high resolution screen, I'd recommend it.

 

[retta283]

XPS looks good, too, I have good history with Dells in the 90s/2000s. I'm close to getting something today, the Lenovo seems like a bargain considering I can upgrade the RAM/SSD as I wish which will give me an even bigger discount. I think I can do the same on the XPS, but I haven't found concrete info on the current model. It is a bit more expensive for the model I want.

 

[TomOSeven]

If you're on a budget and don't need screaming performance, this year's Ideapad 5-15 line is incredible value.

600 USD for 1080p 15,6" screen at 300 nits (IPS and matte), really solid body, decent keyboard and trackpad, front firing speaker, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, great port selection and a modern Ryzen 5 U-series APU.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

You should also take a look at Acer notebooks. Their notebooks have been receiving some favorable reviews this past year, particularly the ones powered by AMD Ryzen APUs (if you don't need Thunderbolt 3).

Earlier this year I bought an Acer Swift 3 with the 10th generation Intel CPU (for the Thunderbolt 3 connectivity) as a budget replacement for a MacBook Air 2019.