Laptop buying help

[psps]

I am a Mechanical engineering student. I want to buy a laptop that will be capable of handling basic CFD simulations, FEA and CAD along with all other casual work. My budget is upto Rs.60000 in India. Can anybody please suggest me some good options to choose from? If possible please also give technical comparisons and heating issues.
I have read that Nvidia GPUs accelerate many of the commercial CFD, CAD and FEA packages. So can you suggest whether I should go only for Nvidia?
I need to buy the laptop asap.

 

[sn8ke]

Lenovo Thinkpads are ubiquitous in engineering. And for very good reason.
I would look to the X series personally. x220, x230, x250, x260. There are also 2-in-1 models which convert to a tablet with wacom digitizer and included pen if you would like that for use with CAD etc. Those models have a T at the end. x220t etc. The newest are x260 line.

Those are the more portable 12.5" ones with better battery life and options. With the 6 cell + sheet battery I can get 15-20 hours of actual usage. If you want a bigger screen and a discrete nVidia graphics card I would suggest the Lenovo T series such as the t440, or t460.

I don't have time to go into technical comparisons but just look up the models. If you have questions there is a VERY active subreddit here and everyone loves to answer questions or discuss Lenovo/IBM computers. I will say that heat is not an issue on the x-series at all. Barely any warmth even under full load. Expect to feel the warmth and hear the fan when using CAD type stuff though. Not loud but noticeable.

 

[TidusZ]

I really like the look of the keyboard, battery life, and overall ruggedness, but the pricing seems about 2x the price of similar hardware in a worse package. $1155 to get the x260 (cheapest x series they have) which has a 6100u processor, 12" screen, 500 gb hdd, etc. I'd have to spend a bit more to replace with an SSD as well since their price to upgrade to an SSD is ridiculous.

Is there like a noname brand that sells rugged laptops like this with good keyboards but without doubling the price? It's basically exactly what I want though

 

[psps]

Lenovo Thinkpads are ubiquitous in engineering. And for very good reason.
I would look to the X series personally. x220, x230, x250, x260. There are also 2-in-1 models which convert to a tablet with wacom digitizer and included pen if you would like that for use with CAD etc. Those models have a T at the end. x220t etc. The newest are x260 line.

Those are the more portable 12.5" ones with better battery life and options. With the 6 cell + sheet battery I can get 15-20 hours of actual usage. If you want a bigger screen and a discrete nVidia graphics card I would suggest the Lenovo T series such as the t440, or t460.

I don't have time to go into technical comparisons but just look up the models. If you have questions there is a VERY active subreddit here and everyone loves to answer questions or discuss Lenovo/IBM computers. I will say that heat is not an issue on the x-series at all. Barely any warmth even under full load. Expect to feel the warmth and hear the fan when using CAD type stuff though. Not loud but noticeable.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions, but the laptops you specified don't fit the budget I had specified above.

 

[sn8ke]

Yeah, their prices are quite high unfortunately. Their secondhand prices are extremely low however and it's pretty easy to find them in near mint condition for 1/4th of the retail cost or less depending on the model. They are used by governments and businesses all over the world, and they usually upgrade to the latest model every year, so they offload them to refurb companies to resell. Ebay is filled with certified refurb shops that sell them with official warranty, and even Lenovo themselves sell them. I've never paid full price for one, and they've all been perfect.

I understand you might not want a used one, or perhaps the market is different in India.

As far as the ruggedness and keyboards, Dell Precision (marketed as made for CAD), and HP Elitebooks are probably their main competitors. Panasonic Toughbooks of course, but those are pricey too. IBM is legendary for their keyboards and ruggedness, and Lenovo kept it up. The x220 is seen by many as the best laptop/keyboard ever made, but indeed it's a few years old now. There's also the x240 which I didn't mention as it was seen as a kind of failure, but only because they changed the design for that model.

Smaller or "no-name" companies that sell similar laptops cheaper:
https://system76.com
https://minifree.org (custom Thinkpads)
They are sold as Linux-based laptops but you can put whatever you need.

 

[psps]

Yeah, their prices are quite high unfortunately. Their secondhand prices are extremely low however and it's pretty easy to find them in near mint condition for 1/4th of the retail cost or less depending on the model. They are used by governments and businesses all over the world, and they usually upgrade to the latest model every year, so they offload them to refurb companies to resell. Ebay is filled with certified refurb shops that sell them with official warranty, and even Lenovo themselves sell them. I've never paid full price for one, and they've all been perfect.

I understand you might not want a used one, or perhaps the market is different in India.

As far as the ruggedness and keyboards, Dell Precision (marketed as made for CAD), and HP Elitebooks are probably their main competitors. Panasonic Toughbooks of course, but those are pricey too. IBM is legendary for their keyboards and ruggedness, and Lenovo kept it up. The x220 is seen by many as the best laptop/keyboard ever made, but indeed it's a few years old now. There's also the x240 which I didn't mention as it was seen as a kind of failure, but only because they changed the design for that model.

Smaller or "no-name" companies that sell similar laptops cheaper:
https://system76.com
https://minifree.org (custom Thinkpads)
They are sold as Linux-based laptops but you can put whatever you need.

Thanks a lot for the help. I actually liked those lenovo laptops but they are beyond my budget And I don't want to risk laptop for second hand market as I have never tried the online second hand market. If possible can you please help me choose from the options I have in front of me? These options might not be perfect for CAD, CFD etc. due to obvious reasons, but I have to choose best from them. The options that I have are:

HP Pavilion 15 au084tx
Lenovo Ideapad 500S(14)

 

[sn8ke]

I know I seem biased towards Lenovo, but in that case I would lean toward the HP Pavilion. Lenovo quality starts to drop off and even out with other companies in the lower end models, and that Ideapad scores 9.47 on DeltaE2000 (lower is better, 10 is considered poor), 57% sRGB and 39% Adobe RGB test results (higher is better) which suggest a poor viewing and colour reproduction experience. To me that is a killer for a laptop that will be used for anything other than standard web browsing. It's also a TN display which will provide poor viewing angles. Lenovo usually has options to upgrade to IPS display, but with those RGB scores I doubt it would help much. I was using this video and written review for reference: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-500s-14ISK-Notebook-Review.160989.0.html


It's harder to find detailed review specs for the HP Pavilion (it might have a different name depending on country). I used this for reference: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05161804
If you can find one, compare the colour scores to that Ideapad. I would expect it to be equal or better, and I would be very surprised it it were worse. I am not a fan of HP keyboards or trackpads, but that is personal preference and really you would have to try them out to decide which one you can live with.

The Ideapad has what I would call mediocre battery life, at 30 wH, testing for just under 6 hours idle, and just over 1 hour at full brightness and load. So at half brightness and medium usage I would expect around 3 hours.
I can't find tests for the HP Pavilion battery, but the HP website lists it as 41 wH which is a bit better. Remember to uninstall all the software it comes with that you will not use, as they are battery drainers since they usually have update software always running the background.

The Pavilion also has newer nVidia graphics with more memory as well. I see it listed as 4GB GeForce 940MX vs 2GB GeForce 940M on the Ideapad. I would upgrade the Pavilion to 16GB RAM (at least 8), and install an SSD drive which will help performance and battery life.

Maybe you are wondering about the i5 vs i7. Well there's trade-offs you'd have to decide on. Is slightly faster processing more important to you (example: rendering, encoding) or is display and viewing experience (example: design, editing). Actual differences aren't much anyway, we're talking just seconds difference of render time. i5 would have a bit better battery life. Just as a note I also would not go for AMD chips in a laptop. They can be considered for desktop computers, but I would stick to Intel technology for laptops.

 

[psps]

Even I have gone through the same source for lenovo and couldn't find any review for the HP laptop! The fact that worries me is that the HP laptop is very new, actually an updated version of HP Pavilion 15-ab523tx. (The HD version of this laptop was ab522tx and I found it to be more popular than 523tx for unknown reasons.) Now HP is replacing the old ab series laptop by the new au series. So it's hard to find the reviews. Another problem is the DDR4 RAM. I think I will have to wait a bit before increasing the RAM as it's hard to find DDR4 right now. I don't know if I can request anybody to review the laptop.

 

[sn8ke]

Yeah not having any reviews makes it tough. The fact it's so new would make me feel comfortable that it would be better performance wise compared to that Ideapad, but I'd be concerned with the screen and keyboard since there's no detailed information. I very much doubt it will be worse quality than the Ideapad screen though. Will you buy from a shop or online? If it's new maybe a local shop will have them on display? But this depends on where you live I guess.

The HD version of that HP is probably more popular because it likely offers an upgraded higher resolution IPS display. IPS are very nice and provide good viewing angles and reduced glare for not much more money. Or people will choose an i5 IPS laptop over an i7 TN laptop for example. I certainly would.

Sorry I can't help more with those laptops.

 

[psps]

Yeah not having any reviews makes it tough. The fact it's so new would make me feel comfortable that it would be better performance wise compared to that Ideapad, but I'd be concerned with the screen and keyboard since there's no detailed information. I very much doubt it will be worse quality than the Ideapad screen though. Will you buy from a shop or online? If it's new maybe a local shop will have them on display? But this depends on where you live I guess.

The HD version of that HP is probably more popular because it likely offers an upgraded higher resolution IPS display. IPS are very nice and provide good viewing angles and reduced glare for not much more money. Or people will choose an i5 IPS laptop over an i7 TN laptop for example. I certainly would.

Sorry I can't help more with those laptops.

Maybe I will visit a store and see if I can preview the laptops. Anyways thanks a lot for your opinions and help