Operating System

First thing that will help narrow our search down would be the operating system preferred between the Microsoft Windows 10 , Mac OSX or Chrome OS. If you are using Mac OSX, there are limited options available with the Macbook Air 11/13”, Macbook 12” and Macbook Pro 12/15”. On the other hand there is a sea of laptops using Windows OS. Varying from 11.6” BYOD machines to 17” gaming behemoths.

Chrome OS is the newest kid on the block offering the smallest OS and the lest resource hungry OS. This allows the laptops with chrome OS, called Chromebooks to be the cheapest yet fast machines. These are targeted mainly as BYOD (Bring your own devices) for schools and in some cases business. The OS being more networking based has limitations of storage on the device itself and being a newer system faces some limitations as to what can be installed on it, for instance custom software for business and high end rendering. As the landscape of computing shifts more towards cloud, Chromebooks will become more popular.

Purpose

Next most important question is what is the purpose of the device for you. Is it going to be a Desktop Replacement / Everyday Use laptop, Business, School, Gaming ?

For schools ideally the want is for a rugged, light, portable laptop with good battery life to last the school day without charge. Chrome books fit this description perfectly and are budget friendly. There are 360 options with touchscreen and some have option of using a Wacom pen too. There is a 13” option in the form of Acer R13 which looks beautiful with its full HD touch display and USB C charging adapter. In windows OS, there are a few 11.6” options like the Lenovo Ideapad 120s, boasting 128 GB SSD drive for fast boot ups and a simple Celeron processor with bare minimum ram of 4 GB. Then we have the 13” 360 models in the from of Acer Spin 3 and HP Pavilion 360. Out of the two Acer boasts the latest i5 where as the HP has only a Pentium but the HP offers a pen with it. Apple users have the Macbook Air 13” as an option with its i5 7th gen processor and 9 Hr battery life and HD screen.

General purpose laptops for checking emails, browsing internet and watching some media, we need a decent sized screen ranging from 13” - 15” and a reasonable mid range processor and ideally 8 GB of RAM. Screen quality is better with 1920 x 1080 resolution otherwise the HD (1280x720) is OK as well. We would want SSD if it is in the price range as SSDs allow for faster boot ups, faster application launches, they produce less heat and are less susceptible to issues as they have no moving parts. The only downside to SSDs is that they tend to be more expensive than the traditional HDDs. SSDs come in 128/256 GB in most devices which is good enough for OS, Software and documents and some media content. Some higher end devices offer both SSD and HDD offering best of both worlds, speed plus volume.

For business laptop the primary requirement is portability and the ability to run all the work applications and preference for sleek designs. The most common machines in business need to run customized programs around databases or CRM meaning it would be Windows machines. As we move more an more towards cloud computing, barriers between the different operating systems are shrinking. In the windows platform, there are lots of options, ranging from HP Envy and Spectre to Acer Swift and Spin 5, to Lenovos new Yoga and Ideapad series, Asus Zenbook and Vivobook and last but not the least Dell XPS. Most of them have either the latest Ryzen chips from AMD or the Intel i5/i7 chips with SSDs and touch screens in the small and sleek form factor of 13” with full HD or higher resolution displays.

Gaming is a niche market but popular as of late with all brands having a segment of their brand dedicated to it. Acer has the Predator and Nitro line, HP has Omen, Asus developed ROG, Lenovo offers Legion and Dell owns Alienware. Almost all offer 15.6/17” screens, with i7 Hexacore or Ryzen 7 processor with 16 GB RAM, graphics cards ranging from 1050TI/RX580/1080 and stacked with SSDs and HDDs. They all have cool designs with good cooling systems and back-lit keys. Some companies offer graphics accelerators to allow consumers of business machines to extend it as a gaming machine via these accelerators.

External Factors

Type of body

• Clamshell

  Our rudimentary day to day laptop has this clamshell design. Most laptops on the market used to be in this from factor but lately the market for this style is shrinking. Even so most people prefer this for the ease of use. As an example I own a Surface Pro device and a Surface Book and I find the book to be more useful when I am using it on the sofa or bed.

  
  

• 2 in 1

  2 in 1 devices are essentially somewhere in between laptops and tablets giving users the option of using it as either. It has many advantages as these are touch screen, have cameras on the back like any tablet and some can utilize digital pens as well. They still have similar internal components as the clam-shells however they do not offer the same sturdy construction and battery life as a normal clam-shell laptop. These are very useful for people who want to take a snap, take notes and share it. Example of this would be architects, engineers, physiotherapists and other medical staff. I have had many customers buying these for real estate projects as well.

  
  

• Hybrid

  Next are our hybrid machines or 360 devices. These devices look like run of the mill clam-shell devices however they turn around on themselves to form tablets by rotating 360 degrees on the hinge. These like the 2 in 1 devices have touch screens and again some of them can utilize digital pens. These suit most people and the best example of this series are the famous Lenovo Yoga series and the Surface Book.

Screen

• Size

  Laptops come in 11.6” for mostly BYODs, 13 -14” for ultra-books and 15.6” for everyday usage laptops and 17” for gaming machines. Preference should the small 13-14” in most cases as they offer best portability and generally they have the best looking designs with SSDs. Most people still prefer 15/6” for home usage though.

• Resolution

  Now days most machines have either HD (1280 x 720), Full HD (1920 x 1080) , QHD (2560x1440) or 4K (3840x2160). No doubt the higher the resolution the better the picture quality of the screen, however when we are dealing with a laptop with 13-14” screen, anything more than HD is not necessary. The reason being, that if one was to put a 4k 14” screen on native resolution of 3840x2160 the text would be so small it would be not be legible. Also rendering all these pixels takes a toll on the graphics processor in the machine.

Connectivity

• USB connections

  Make sure to check the sides of the laptop to determine if it has all the ports that you need. For instance on the new Macbook Pros, there is only USB C meaning that you would need an adapter for USB C to USB B, USB C to HDMI/VGA, USB C to SD card reader and so forth. Different laptops will have different connectivity ports. There will be adapters for most things out there but not everything, especially legacy connections or peripherals.

• Media connections

  Similar to USB connections, media connections are the ports needed to connect your machine to external display or projectors. Most laptops had HDMI connections but since the formation of USB C Thunderbolt, USB C can handle media as well as data transfer. Which means some laptops will have just USB C Thunderbolt like the Macbook or have HDMI and in some cases like the surface, a mini display port. Again all adapters are available to convert these to what you want but ideally you would want everything in built instead of carrying various adapters everywhere.

• WiFi/Bluetooth

  All laptops have some kind of Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity but where they differ is the strength and speed of it. Bluetooth is not used much apart for connecting peripherals so its is not a big problem if you do not have the latest one however you want the best when it comes to WiFi as that is what you are connected to all day. There are 2.4 GHz, 5.4 GHz, MU-MIMO. One can always buy USB WiFi adapters to up their game too.

Overall Design

• Keyboard

  Keyboard, touch and feel can be important as well, a lot of the people like the deeper press although some prefer the opposite. There are some laptops with back-lit keys as well for night usage and gaming ones showcase RGB lighting as well.
  
  

  
  

• Track-pad

  The track-pad should be big and easy to use, the mouse on screen should follow your finger movements rather than accelerating too much. It should also support multiple touch gestures, for instance to scroll pages in any direction.

  
  
  

• Power pack

  Battery has been always a weak spot in laptops allowing for only couple of hours of vigorous use. With the invent of low power processors this has improved a lot and most computers give more than 4 hours of usage, however Macbooks and Surface devices seem to offer the best battery life in these for most consumers. All BYOD laptops have good batteries but the Chromebook being the least resource hungry use the least power.
  
  

  
  

• Cooling

  Heating of components is death to any electrical component. Not only does it restrict the efficiency of the machine but also damages the components permanently if left unchecked. Gaming laptops have good cooling systems with bigger exhaust fans. A lot of the devices have aluminium frames for better passive cooling however HP Pavilion line has lift hinge which lifts laptops of the surface of the desk for better cooling.
  
  

  
  

• Plastic/Glass/Metal

  The quality of any machine is reflected by the materials used in its production. For instance the usage of glass, aluminium reflects premium quality, on the other hand use of cheap plastic indicates inferior quality. This can be clearly seen between different models of HP, going from basic HP range to HP Pavilion, HP Envy and the most premium HP Spectre.

Internal Components

CPU

CPU is the brains of the computer, the better it is the better the overall performance of a computer. There are 2 main manufactures are CPU’s, Intel and AMD. As of this moment in New Zealand market, Intel’s laptop processors are ranked by i7 on top, followed by i5, i3, Pentium, Celeron on the bottom. AMD offers Ryzen 7 on the top, Ryzen 5, A12, A10, A9, A6, A4 and E2 at the bottom. Intel’s i5 or AMD’s Ryzen 5 is good enough for most people unless they need something for rendering photos/video/3D/gaming. For a detailed comparison check out CPU Hierarchy.

RAM

Ram is the temporary storage where the applications when open store their data. The more RAM one has, the more applications they can multitask between. Even opening lots of tabs on your web browser will use more RAM. Most computers out there have 8 GB and that is for a reason, so stay away from those 4 GB models unless checking email and watching Netflix is all that is needed from your machine. 16 GB or more is recommended for video editing and gaming.

Storage

SSDs have no moving parts hence, are faster, lighter, less susceptible to failure, use less power and generate less heat. The only downside is they are a bit expensive but the prices are coming down slowly and steadily. HDDs on the other hand do provide you with more storage for your money. With streaming services growing like Netflix, Prime Video, Spotify, most people do not need that extra hard drive to store any of the videos or music on local drives. Always go for SSDs if you can afford it, some people might prefer SSD + HDD solution to get the best of both worlds. This is more important when gaming or video editing and the like.

“SSDs have no moving parts hence, are faster, lighter, less susceptible to failure, use less power and generate less heat. The only downside is they are a bit expensive but the prices are coming down slowly and steadily.”

Graphics

The graphics processor and RAM help processing whatever you see on the screen, these components help render the video, images or 3D generated content. The more graphic intensive work load is the better components you need. For example most computers have an on-board graphics card to render basic imagery and video. However these mooch of RAM from your main computer, having a dedicated graphics card on the machine will help avoid this and the dedicated processor will do a much better job of processing content. It is needed more for content creators, using Photoshop, video editing or 3D work and gaming. If comparing two models and they are similar price, always pick one with the dedicated graphics over the on-board one.

Battery

Sadly this is where the advancement has been the slowest. The batteries for all electronics decline a lot in just a couple of years use and their capacity to hold charge reduces significantly.

“A reasonable depletion factor of up to 20% per year for three years, after which the battery will be considered to have served its intended lifespan.”

- Acer Warranty NZ

The other important thing is how long does it last once fully charged, most computers now promise 4-7 hours of usage and companies like Apple and Microsoft with their line up offer 9 hr-17.5 hour battery life. These numbers obviously come down when they are put under stress with different conditions for screen brightness. Assuming these numbers are on the lightest computational it still gives us a basis for comparison. In this regards Surface offers the best battery life in Windows OS. All Chromebooks and Macbooks offer good battery life too.