PC Laptop choices?

[tomorrowstops]

So, now that I've finally purchased Bitwig, I'm kinda back looking at laptops again. After reviewing the suggestions here, the one I'm most drawn to is the Razer Blade Stealth 13. I'd go with the i7/GTX1650/16gb/512gb option. Price is reasonable ($1400) and reviews seem ok. I wish it could go up to 32gb of ram, but I probably don't *need* it anyways, especially since I'm surviving now on 8gb.

Another one I looked at was the Asus Rog Zephyrus G14 2020. I'm still wading through all of the model options (why is PC stuff so...dense?) But at first glance, there's an 8 core/16gb/1tb machine for only $1450? That doesn't seem right...gotta look into it more!

[Jimantronic]

Both of those laptops look thin to me. I'd be wary of any PC laptop that looks like it doesn't have much thermal mass and airflow through it. I'm suffering the consequences of that choice... I went for a Lenovo Yoga 730 15" which I'd done loads of research on and looked like the perfect mix of everything for my Bitwig machine as it's touch screen, can fold like a tablet, plenty powerful and a nice sleek design. But oh my word, it HOWLS its fan if you do so much as look at it. I've tried all the tweaks and drivers and registry settings and such, but it's no better. Something about the sound of laptop fans really winds me up, so I'm selling it after 3 months....

I'm actually going the opposite route and looking to switch to a mid 2015 macbook pro, but I'll ping another thread up here about that.

[antic604]

Another one I looked at was the Asus Rog Zephyrus G14 2020. I'm still wading through all of the model options (why is PC stuff so...dense?) But at first glance, there's an 8 core/16gb/1tb machine for only $1450? That doesn't seem right...gotta look into it more!

If that's the one with AMD CPU Ryzen7 4800HS I mentioned on 1st page of this thread - then go get it!!!

[tomorrowstops]

Both of those laptops look thin to me. I'd be wary of any PC laptop that looks like it doesn't have much thermal mass and airflow through it. I'm suffering the consequences of that choice... I went for a Lenovo Yoga 730 15" which I'd done loads of research on and looked like the perfect mix of everything for my Bitwig machine as it's touch screen, can fold like a tablet, plenty powerful and a nice sleek design. But oh my word, it HOWLS its fan if you do so much as look at it. I've tried all the tweaks and drivers and registry settings and such, but it's no better. Something about the sound of laptop fans really winds me up, so I'm selling it after 3 months....

I'm actually going the opposite route and looking to switch to a mid 2015 macbook pro, but I'll ping another thread up here about that.

Ugh. This is definitely what I’m trying to avoid. My 2013 MBP is dead silent 99.99% of the time. Hmmm. What specs did you get on that Lenovo?

[machinesworking]

Both of those laptops look thin to me. I'd be wary of any PC laptop that looks like it doesn't have much thermal mass and airflow through it. I'm suffering the consequences of that choice... I went for a Lenovo Yoga 730 15" which I'd done loads of research on and looked like the perfect mix of everything for my Bitwig machine as it's touch screen, can fold like a tablet, plenty powerful and a nice sleek design. But oh my word, it HOWLS its fan if you do so much as look at it. I've tried all the tweaks and drivers and registry settings and such, but it's no better. Something about the sound of laptop fans really winds me up, so I'm selling it after 3 months....

I'm actually going the opposite route and looking to switch to a mid 2015 macbook pro, but I'll ping another thread up here about that.

Ugh. This is definitely what I’m trying to avoid. My 2013 MBP is dead silent 99.99% of the time. Hmmm. What specs did you get on that Lenovo?

I think this whole thread is testimony to my thoughts that most of the time, Apple gets laptops right, and PC hardware in general beats out mac desktops in terms of bang per buck.

The question then becomes how to find the fastest, most quiet touchscreen Windows laptop? I've been curious about long term real world experience with the dual screen Zenbook line?
Just as expensive as a MacBook Pro but with a double touch screen. The real question is how quiet is it when you're pushing it?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... gLFRPD_BwE

It would be worth it if the build quality was high and the thing remained quiet. You could go ten years easy with that much power.

[mgw38]

We have a dual screen Zenbook at work. Excellent laptop, the only thing is that you can forget mobility. Battery life is ridiculously non existent. You better have a power outlet next to you at all times.

[machinesworking]

We have a dual screen Zenbook at work. Excellent laptop, the only thing is that you can forget mobility. Battery life is ridiculously non existent. You better have a power outlet next to you at all times.

Nice, and I'm not at all surprised about battery life with 8 2.4ghz cores and 1 1/2 touch screens!

So the question is how quiet is it? I have a 2012 macbook pro that used to be quiet, but not surprisingly 8 years later it can roar on occasion.

[Taika-Kim]

Thing is, you need to decide between several mutually exclusive parameters. You can't have a high powered CPU with long battery life under high load, etc. Whatever you choose, make sure that you have the right to freely try the computer out at home before settling on it. Also make sure that the screen is bright enough. Also you usually pay a slight premium for extra stylish design. If you don't need a GPU, you might get a better system for less by choosing a business model without one. Also look at companies that sell audio computers, they have most probably settled for components that provide the best performance. And I'd wait also for the new Ryzen laptop CPUs, they are rumoured to be on par with Intel desktop I9 CPUs.

[tomorrowstops]

I think this whole thread is testimony to my thoughts that most of the time, Apple gets laptops right, and PC hardware in general beats out mac desktops in terms of bang per buck.

I dunno man, seems like the past few years, Apple has really messed up their laptop line. Between the T2 chips, shitty cooling designs, junk keyboards and where it all seems to be heading with the ARM chips....

Overall it seems that laptops from both sides of equation are now forever going to be challenged by their own physical format. High powered chips are cheap, and great specs sell units, but physics are....well, physics!

[drdriller]

Depends on which model. The 9550 model was great (ultimately died due to a ram short while I was in a math class at university), but the 9570 model I purchased has some awful DPC latency issues which make working with "real-time" audio a very frustrating experience.

I like my XPS 15 except for that DPC issue. It's great for software development and mobile CPU intensive work, but that DPC latency kills it's audio performance. From what I've gathered the currently available model (7590) also has similar issues, despite Dell claiming it doesn't :

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-conf ... 048.0.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/ ... for_music/

So I wouldn't go the XPS route for audio work. Programming/software development definitely, but not audio.

I got a xps13 9300 this year and i'm really pleased with audio performance and latency.

the Realtek asio provided is really bad but with Asio4all i get better latency with the internal audio than with my NI audio 2 soundcard, my Motu M2 perform only 1ms better than the internal soundcard at 48k / 512 samples.

[Jimantronic]

Ugh. This is definitely what I’m trying to avoid. My 2013 MBP is dead silent 99.99% of the time. Hmmm. What specs did you get on that Lenovo?

It's a Yoga 730 15IWL with i7 8565U 1.8ghz CPU, 16gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with a 4k touch screen. But the fan on it! You can fire it up from cold and just browse the web for 5 mins and fan will kick in quite audibly. Try and do anything serious on it and it howls away. There's just something about the tone of a small whooshing that makes me feel really wound up, I hate it way more than is reasonable

I also really want to aggregate audio devices so I can include my modular and use an Expert Sleepers ES-9 and I've struggled with Windows 10 dropping usb Midi devices if I have more than about 4 plugged in simultaneously and I've tried various hubs and power solutions to no avail. Seems it's just a thing Windows does with usb midi

So I'm swapping for a mid-2015 2.8ghz macbook pro 15" with the R9 M370X graphics. I'm currently working out which rare and annoying screwdriver I need to open it up (Wiha 42467 PL4 for reference I believe) so I can put some decent heatsink paste on there, cos I heard that can make a good difference especially on these older machines

[tomorrowstops]

Ugh. This is definitely what I’m trying to avoid. My 2013 MBP is dead silent 99.99% of the time. Hmmm. What specs did you get on that Lenovo?

It's a Yoga 730 15IWL with i7 8565U 1.8ghz CPU, 16gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with a 4k touch screen. But the fan on it! You can fire it up from cold and just browse the web for 5 mins and fan will kick in quite audibly. Try and do anything serious on it and it howls away. There's just something about the tone of a small whooshing that makes me feel really wound up, I hate it way more than is reasonable

I also really want to aggregate audio devices so I can include my modular and use an Expert Sleepers ES-9 and I've struggled with Windows 10 dropping usb Midi devices if I have more than about 4 plugged in simultaneously and I've tried various hubs and power solutions to no avail. Seems it's just a thing Windows does with usb midi

So I'm swapping for a mid-2015 2.8ghz macbook pro 15" with the R9 M370X graphics. I'm currently working out which rare and annoying screwdriver I need to open it up (Wiha 42467 PL4 for reference I believe) so I can put some decent heatsink paste on there, cos I heard that can make a good difference especially on these older machines

Gotcha. Its been my opinion for a while now that the last year of great Apple laptops was 2015. I just have hard time these days buying a computer of that vintage or older (like mine). And for me, I’d much prefer to stay on a 13”, so the performance gains I’d see in ‘upgrading’ to a higher spec of the same vintage would be minimal. This all being said, I’m not totally sold on PC laptops either - I’m starting to think of abandoning the format altogether and go desktop. I really just want a robust system that can handle whatever software I throw at it! I’ll still have my MBP in all scenarios, since its just so rock solid and will never die.

[machinesworking]

I dunno man, seems like the past few years, Apple has really messed up their laptop line. Between the T2 chips, shitty cooling designs, junk keyboards and where it all seems to be heading with the ARM chips....

Overall it seems that laptops from both sides of equation are now forever going to be challenged by their own physical format. High powered chips are cheap, and great specs sell units, but physics are....well, physics!

IMO, what kills both sides is this whole thin and light thing, across all formats.
That Zenbook, two screens and 8 cores should be built like a tank, it's not, looks like a Macbook air really. I would personally love a tank, I want the laptop format for live shows really, otherwise it would be desktops all the way. I carried Marshall half stacks to and from shows all the time, an 8 pound laptop is not a deal killer to me, I'm not a 10 year old girl.

I would not count out a move to ARM, if Apple does it, it will be an improvement, it's not going to be done just because they aren't happy with Intel. I knew people who were mad that they stopped using PPC chips, and I get it to a degree, but reality is reality, Intel started killing the PPC line in power and heat performance. It's very possible Apple sees that happening with ARM vs the chips Intel and AMD put out. Plus being able to design the chips themselves. It's not going to be a PPC to Intel jump either, since iOS is basically OS X anyway.

It's obvious to me that Apple is taking the whole integration of iOS and OS X on as a slow process, presumably to drag developers into it without kicking and screaming, but as a certain long thread about Catalina started by a developer here with attest, that's not happening.

[tomorrowstops]

IMO, what kills both sides is this whole thin and light thing, across all formats.
That Zenbook, two screens and 8 cores should be built like a tank, it's not, looks like a Macbook air really. I would personally love a tank, I want the laptop format for live shows really, otherwise it would be desktops all the way. I carried Marshall half stacks to and from shows all the time, an 8 pound laptop is not a deal killer to me, I'm not a 10 year old girl.

yeah, I hear ya. I don't perform live or even travel these days. Hell, my laptop hasn't left my desk in months. There is just something about the intimacy of the screen right in front of my fingers on the keyboard. However I've been using a 32" monitor in addition for the past few months, so I guess I can't even hang on to that!

It's obvious to me that Apple is taking the whole integration of iOS and OS X on as a slow process, presumably to drag developers into it without kicking and screaming, but as a certain long thread about Catalina started by a developer here with attest, that's not happening.

And thats the thing. Its not that the net gain of the whole ARM thing won't be positive. I'm sure in the end it will be great and we'll forget all about Intel just like we did PPC. The problem will be the transition, which these days seems to be even more painful than ever before (T2/Catalina).

[antic604]

I would personally love a tank, I want the laptop format for live shows really, otherwise it would be desktops all the way. I carried Marshall half stacks to and from shows all the time, an 8 pound laptop is not a deal killer to me, I'm not a 10 year old girl.

Well, this machine should be working for you pretty well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAEVLUeYaf8