Holiday 2011 Laptop Buyer’s Guide

That’s a Wrap

And that just about does it for our laptop holiday buyer’s guide. Obviously this is mostly one man’s opinion, and some areas are rather subjective. I’ve also skirted the whole Black Friday madness and largely avoided digging around for door buster sales. I’m sure you can find some great deals on other laptops if you look around, and if you’re not looking for anything more than a typical consumer laptop a lot of the differences start to blur together. Fact is, outside of gaming and certain CPU intensive tasks (tasks which a lot of people still don’t do, e.g. video transcoding), for a lot of users any reasonable laptop made after 2007 is still “fast enough”. That’s where the discussion of build quality comes into play.

I’ve got a Core 2 Duo laptop that’s perfectly fine as far as performance is concerned, but the hinges are wearing out. I have plenty of friends that ran into the exact same problem with Core Duo/Core 2 Duo or Athlon/Turion X2 laptops—blown hinges and cracking plastic cases. Battery life and performance have certainly improved over the years, but if you’re normally plugged in that’s not a major concern. It’s hard for me to imagine something coming along in the next five years (outside of gaming and video editing) where a modern Core i5 or even AMD A6 laptop will prove to be too slow. The HD video revolution was the last major bump in requirements; if all you’re doing is surfing the web and writing email, plus some Office applications, 2004-era hardware can handle it. We’ve hit a plateau, and build quality and display quality are the areas that seem to have the most problems right now as far as laptop longevity is concerned.

5000+ words later and I still feel like there are plenty of other mobile laptops that we could mention. One area I didn’t get into was the difference between business and consumer laptops. I’ve been the head laptop reviewer at AnandTech since 2006, and something that has become very clear to me over the past five years is how much of a gap we frequently see between the business and consumer models. Consumer models typically offer more in the way of graphics performance, often at lower prices, but I’ve got several laptops that have been around for at least three years and the hinges are all feeling very loose. I’ve also used some ThinkPad and Latitude laptops that are even older where the hinges are still doing fine. Plus, nearly all business laptops still give you a matte display; not everyone prefers anti-glare, but I certainly do.

Business and/or school for the next five years: Lenovo ThinkPad T420 for $950

It may seem like a small thing, and if you upgrade laptops every couple of years it probably won’t matter as much, but if you’re looking for a laptop that can last through four years of college I would strongly recommend passing on gaming and consumer laptops and going for a business laptop instead. My top three picks are all similar in terms of size and features: the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 ($950 for the 1600x900 model with the current sale), the Dell Latitude E6420 ($1172 with an i5-2520M, 6GB RAM, 1600x900 premium panel, and Quadro NVS 4200M), and the HP EliteBook 8460p (no sales on this one currently, so you end up paying a lot more compared to the T420 and E6420—around $1800 right now). As long as you get the 1600x900 LCD upgrade (all three laptop offer such a display), I’d be happy with any of these three business laptops. You get a good keyboard, great build quality, and an attractive design; yes, they cost more than consumer models, but that’s because they’ll last a lot longer. I’d recommend going with whichever laptop costs the least, which means right now the ThinkPad T420 would get my vote.

There are some other topics I never quite got to as well, like 3D displays. Let me put this succinctly: fuggedaboutit! Watching a 3D movie at the theater or on a large HDTV is one thing; on a laptop, though? Seriously, what are you going to do: whip out your stylish 3D glasses to watch a movie while you’re on a plane? Sit in the library on campus, again with the glasses? Certainly you’re not going to be playing any 3D games, because you’d really need a GTX 580M just to reach playable frame rates in most titles. But I’m curious: are there any readers that actually like 3D displays on notebooks? Okay, sure, the 120Hz refresh rates would actually be nice, but does anyone want to view 3D content on a notebook? I’ve tried it and was not impressed; if you disagree, please let me know where I’ve gone astray!

There are still a lot of laptops out there that I haven’t had a chance to test. I can tell you that every time I wander through a Walmart, Costco, Target, etc. I’ll take a minute to go bang on some laptops—it drives my wife crazy! What I’ve found is that the consumer laptops stocked by such stores have all been chasing the bottom dollar, and the result is that build quality and display quality are in the dumps. I can’t remember the last time I saw a laptop with a decent display at any of the local stores. Ironically, the tablet revolution is at least getting manufacturers to focus on their displays more, but while we’ve got 1280x752 IPS panels in several tablets (and we’re talking about 2560x1600 tablets in the next couple of years!), we still get shelves full of 1366x768 TN panel laptops. So, my final request this holiday season is for the laptop manufacturers to take a chance and start offering $100 display upgrades on more of your systems. I know I’d happily pay $1000 for a good 1080p 15.6” laptop rather than $850 for a 15.6” 768p display, and I’m not the only one. If you build it, we will come—and our reviews in the next year will continue to praise the companies that get the importance of a display.