Which would you pick: Lenovo or HP?

[GTaudiophile]

Looking for a road warrior laptop. The most "intense" thing I do with it is Adobe CC, mainly Photoshop, InDesign, etc.

Two models I am considering...

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 14
-Latest version not yet out
-It's Lenovo...software bloat and all
-It's bigger and heavier
-Only about 4-5 hours of battery
-GeForce 840M
-User-upgradeable RAM and SDD

HP Spectre x360
-It is available
-Build quality
-Smaller size/weight
-Up to about 12 hours on battery
-No dedicated graphics
-Not upgradeable

Price is about the same.

Which do you pick?

 

[Commodus]

Sounds like you might have answered your own question. You want a "road warrior" laptop, so you need battery life and portability first. Of the two, the Spectre x360 will probably be better-suited -- just make sure you get one with enough RAM and storage to last you for a while; 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD would probably do it.

Alternatives? The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is on the expensive side (and you have to be open to using OS X), but it'd give you really good performance and battery life along with a really good keyboard and trackpad combo. Plus, OS X is typically much better at scaling high resolutions than Windows.

Also: the new Dell XPS 13 is pretty nice, too, especially if you want an eye-catching display. Get the 1080p non-touch model if you do; besides addressing Windows' scaling issues with very high resolutions, that'll improve battery life, weight and (of course) your budget.

(PS: this was probably best for the SFF, Notebooks, Pre-Built/Barebones PCs forum, but that's cool)

 

[kyrax12]

Why not try out for the T450s?

 

[GTaudiophile]

Would the GeForce 840M bring much benefit to 2D work? Photoshop? Over the Intel product?

 

[Commodus]

Would the GeForce 840M bring much benefit to 2D work? Photoshop? Over the Intel product?

Photoshop can lean on the GPU a bit for filters and similar rendering effects... the real question is whether or not applying a filter a few seconds faster is worth the tradeoffs you'd make.

 

[IamDavid]

Owned both. Battery life killed it for me on the Lenovo. Yoga 3 wasn't much better for time. HP is the better imo.