Anyone pay 2 grand for a laptop? (What is really a good deal or not?)

[MaxDepth]

Saw an add for Lenovo Labor Day deals. For the "The Maserati of business laptops" (their quotes, not mine), Lenovo is selling their X1 Carbon, starting at $1247.40 - saying you're saving $831.60.

My question - does anyone really lay down 2,000 USD for laptops nowadays? I ask because I've been equipped with company laptops since the dawn of time, and I bought a thinkpad for my wife 11 years ago and didn't pay anywhere near that. (Even accounting for inflation)

I mean, is that really a deal?

 

[heymrdj]

Had a new Lenovo P51 with Xeon and 32GB of ram here at my last job before I left, it was so nice to work with that I would have spent my own money for it. I also had an HP Dv9500t 17” with the largest Core 2 Duo, max ram, and dual wd black hard drives (320gb each) you could order it with in 2007. That laptop lasted me for 6 years and was worth every penny. I paid about 2700 for it with a 3 year accidental protection warranty with next day shipping. Sadly used that about 5 times lol. But it aged really well and I used it most of the time in my dorm running the screen for games, while also outputting to my tv through my tv tuner, as my laptop was my dvr as well. That thing worked damn hard every day.

I’ve actually been looking to go away from a desktop a bit and look at another desktop replacement laptop. Nothing in that field that’s decent is under 2K

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have. Several times.

There's a difference between a laptop that costs $2k with all the options, but which, when you get down to it, still has the trackpad, screen, hinge design, reliability and build quality of an $1000 laptop, vs. a laptop that's $2k for the base model. I'd rather have the latter, even if I have to upgrade some bits later. I'm very tactile, so I want that extra keyboard/trackpad quality.

That said, the X1 Carbon is a nice hunk of hardware. The ones on sale are the 5th gen ones - the 6th gen ones just came out. They would have started at ~$1200 new, but the configs being offered are higher-end. But it's also a moot point since it looks like they're out of stock, so... sorry. :-(

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've pretty-much always purchased budget consumer-grade laptops. And, inevitably, they fail, sometimes mechanically, sometimes electronically, who knows. They rarely last more than 3-4 years of solid usage. Maybe 5-6 at most. Usually, it's the screen hinge that goes. (Maybe I'm just an animal when I open them, who knows.)

So, I'm not well-versed in the $1000-and-up laptop category. But, they say "You get what you pay for", so they should inevitably be nicer laptops, metal hinges, magnesium frames, easy-access upgrade panels. I've worked on a few of a (late) friend's laptop, he would get the top-of-the-line quad-cores, etc., they were really nice. And they did seem to have decent build quality to them.

 

[gdansk]

Spending $2000 on a laptop is uncommon, I'm sure. There is a thread on Slickdeals right now about a X1 Carbon for less than $1000.

Maybe the X1 is better now but work gave me one years ago and was awful. Especially compared to the macbook "pro" that I bought for $1300. Hopefully they didn't pay anywhere near Lenovo's MSRP. The keyboard is better but that's about it.

 

[JustMe21]

Ultrabooks are excessively priced, but because they are light, companies charge a premium price for it. Of course, it also doesn't help that so many people pay such high prices for the Apple Macbooks that are expensive, have built in batteries, and soldered in memory and drives. Gaming laptops with all the bells and whistles are also a bit over the top in cost when there are plenty of decent performing gaming laptops for around $1000 or so. I tell people to look into refurbs that have a 1 year warranty since that's what most new laptops come with as well, plus you can generally buy an extended warranty too.

 

[blankslate]

I've gotten a Alienware 17 r4 that would've been 2k with all optioned out internal components on sale for about $1500.
I chose somewhat lesser internal components to help lower the price. but did get a 3 year extended warranty with onetime free battery replacement.
It is not as nicely built as the Lenovo business oriented laptops but it is a noticeable step up from laptops in the 1k price range with solid hinges use of metal in more places than lower priced laptops.
it is not light though and while understated (for a gaming Laptop) if you turn off the LEDs fit would raise eyebrows slightly in a business setting... but you can put in 2 SSDs in addition to the 2.5 inch HDD easily enough as well as get access to the RAM without having to remove anything more than the bottom... (which is simple)

If I had no limit to the money I would spend on a laptop I would get a decked out 17 inch RazorBlade Pro and a skin to cover up the glowing logo on the lid and exclaim loudly in coffee shops "Too bad that Macbook Pro can't play GTA V at 1440 with max settings at over 100 fps... LOSER!!"
With a skin to cover up the logo if you turn off the LEDs the Razorblade Pro would likely go unnoticed in a place of work... aside from audible fan noise under load.


_________

 

[ZGR]

I think the price is worth it if: The user can reapply thermal paste, upgrade RAM, upgrade drives, has a good display, and can easily swap out batteries.

I spent $2k on my Macbook Pro back in 2012, and have replaced the battery once, the keyboard 3 times (I killed them with soda, juice, etc.), the RAM, the SSD, took out the CD Drive for another HDD/SSD, and have had 1 power supply die.

The laptop's bottom is scuffed up, and I will continue beating this poor thing up until the logic board dies. I have been overclocking the GPU over 25% since I got it. I even tore out a speaker wire from the logic board and re-soldered it so the sub woofer works again.

I will never buy another Mac again because Apple obviously doesn't want owners to repair it. This laptop of mine would have died a long time ago if I couldn't repair it. I refuse to spend money on a repair that I can do myself.

The newest laptop I get to play around with is my friend's Razer Blade Pro 17". It has 2 SSD's in RAID 0, a GTX 1080, 4k, and a 4c8t i7 that clocks pretty high. My least favorite thing about it is not being able to make a custom fan curve. Razer's software is pretty basic, so setting a fan speed is just 3 options. The laptop's fans do not kick in until the laptop is already way too hot. This is the same problem with my Mac, but 3rd party software supports it. I will have to keep looking to find supported software.

Oh, and this point do not buy a $2k laptop that has a quad core i7. 6 cores+ or bust.

 

[Oyeve]

I purchased a Lenovo y700 17" laptop a couple of years ago for around 1k. After buying more memory and 2 2tb SSD drives to replace the 1tb spinny drive and the 128gb M.2 ssd the cost came to around 2k. Worth it? To me, yes, as this laptop will last me years. Also its a gaming laptop so the times I don't want to boot my beast of a main PC the laptop works fine as a gaming machine.

 

[Charlie22911]

I got a Gigabyte Aero 15x, i7 8750H, GTX 1070 Max Q, 32GB RAM, 500GB primary m.2 SSD, and 2TB secondary m.2 SSD.

Repasted it with conductonaut and I have zero throttling issues even under heavy loads, and it gets 8 hours of battery life easy under actual non-gaming use. Best $2000+ I ever spent on a laptop.

Gone are the days where gaming\high-end laptops are thick desktop replacements with what is essentially an integrated UPS

 

[fire400]

ThinkPad Yoga X1-Gen1 (Intel-gen6 CPU) is MSRP for $2600+
Found it on eBay for $1,200 w/extended warranty, tax-free with minimal shipping,
i7-6600u16gb/1080p/512gb M.2-non-NVME (searched deep for the non-1440p version to save on battery life).

Getting the Samsung NVME drivers to install on the operating systems (win7 and win8.1 dual-boot) was a pain the @$$, the loops required to make it work were absolutely ridiculous, but the performance gains are truly phenomenal compared to the traditional SATA/M.2 bandwidth cap, as of this writing. Took me several hours to get it to work.

Anyway, the laptop was trash on Win10, and the touchscreen stopped working on an FCU in 2017, the only fix was to keep re-applying firmware "upgrades" over and over after each computer restart.
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkP...h-Screen-No-Longer-Working/m-p/4243483#M91692
Never sent it in for repairs, it would be a waste of time trying to get the touchscreen to work on Win10.

Other than that, I know of a real estate agency that is using several i5 variants of the ThinkPad Yoga X1-Gen1 on Win10, and none of them have been sent back to Lenovo warranty yet.

Another system that was trash at ~$1300 (4gb RAM, 180gb SSD) with tax, +$2000 with high-spec add-ons, was the HP Folio 9470m.
HP chose the Intel ultra low voltage processor, i#xxxU-gen3 option, instead of opting for the i#xxxM-gen unit.
The performance was terrible, especially on Win7 that many organizations needed the laptop for at the time; and with a lot of corporate software, the laptop was too slow to operate in multitasking versus the Lenovo T430s or equivalent Dell Latitudes at the time.
Docking stations were junk also, and the various hardware boards across the entire laptop, randomly, would consistently fail, over and over and over again. Would never buy this again.

Overall, it's hit and miss. I thought it felt fun spending a lot of money on high-end hardware.
Instead, I would spend $2,000 on two laptops (+$1,000/each) instead, and keep them redundant in software to each other.
The cost in time for a system down is worth more than $2,000 than having one really nice laptop.
I wouldn't put a low price tag on your career if your job involves having a laptop that needs to be ready 24/7.

 

[capsulej]

Generally when Im in the market for a 2K+ laptop im less concerned about deals and more concerned about getting all of the features I want/need.

 

[slightlyhuman]

dropped $2500 few months ago for a sager with a coffee lake CPU and 1080m. it's a nice machine.

also has 144hz g-sync.

 

[slightlyhuman]

july 2018 i picked up a sager with coffee lake i7 and a 1080. paid $2700 IIRC. honestly, not worth it. i was bored and working away from home at the time. it's been a tiny desktop unit since i got back home. it does haul ass though.

 

[corkyg]

Short answer to OP's question is "yes!"

 

[lakedude]

When I was single with no kids I'd overspend on electronics, including laptops. We were struggling a bit at first so this went the other way for a while. Therefore I've had machines from one end to the other. The very cheapest have not been reliable and the most expensive have not been worth the cost. Also the newest most expensive stuff tends not to have the bugs out.

It is very annoying to spend a small fortune on a laptop with the latest state of the art hardware only to have it work sub-optomally for months while they get the bugs out.

IMHO a laptop does not need to last for decades because it will be obsolete long before then. Still you want a few good years trouble free. I'd be upset if one didn't last at least 5 years.

Midrange is where it is at for me. We have had good luck with all but the cheapest laptops.

 

[ResonanceAud]

What do you guys do to be able to spurge $2K+ on laptops? I do admit that the thinner gaming laptops like the Aero is nice with a big battery and all.

 

[Charlie22911]

Yes, I have a 2018 Aero 15x.
I’ve upgraded the ram to a 32GB matched pair of ram (stock is 16GB single channel), swapped the Primary SSD to a 512GB 970 EVO and added a second 2TB 970 EVO, as well as replacing the thermal compound with conductonaut. All power limits are set to max and all cores at max turbo (4.2GHz) without throttling. So I’ve got more money in this machine than most.

It’s crazy that a machine with that amount of power can also swing 8hrs of battery life doing normal non-gaming stuff. Sure it was pricey, but it’s an amazing tool for someone who travels as much as I do; it’s worth it for my use case.

I 100% agree that the sweet spot is in the middle though, and the midrange is what I commonly recommend these days.

 

[lakedude]

What do you guys do to be able to spurge $2K+ on laptops?

I'm an electronic technician. When I was spending that kind of money on laptops I also had a side job doing computer repair.

The second job had extra money coming in while at the same time it burned up free time. This kept me from needing to spend much on entertainment.

Since both my jobs dealt with computers I considered the expenses somewhat work related, even thought these were my personal "for fun" machines. I liked to keep up with the latest technology.

Now I have a family and need to be more conservative. Also I eventually learned a lesson about being on the bleeding edge, especially with graphics cards. My last laptop was clearance priced at $650 which was very reasonable for an i5 with a 1050ti GPU, a factory SSD and a lighted keyboard. It is intentionally not the latest hardware saving both money and agrevation.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Saw an add for Lenovo Labor Day deals. For the "The Maserati of business laptops" (their quotes, not mine), Lenovo is selling their X1 Carbon, starting at $1247.40 - saying you're saving $831.60.

A caveat to that is the $2000 may be fake, and $1200 might have been the price they wanted to sell to you all along.

It's a sleazy marketing trick. Since you are mentioning Lenovo, I saw them do this too, but I'm pretty sure they are not the only company doing this.

I was watching leaks of Lenovo's product for weeks. It said the launch prices would be $999. Guess what? On the day of the launch, it said it was on "sale" for $999, and it had the higher price(I don't know exactly, $1200 or similar much higher number).

Because people don't keep track of prices in every single consumer product category out there(you can't really), the fake sales entice buyers, because it also has a fake timer saying it'll expire. You'll see if you watch several of such deals, certain companies do such "sales" 365 days of the year.

If you have the product 30% off all-year long, then its not really 30% off. There are worse companies that have have jacked up prices only to bring it down to the regular prices and call it a sale.