Laptop Advice

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The_Imp_ZA

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HI, looking for some laptop advice. Budget is R7000 - R9000. Maybe slightly more if there's something worth pushing it up for.

Use case would be a bit of office work, web browsing, Youtube, and some light gaming on older games (Hades, Balatro, Warframe, old RPG's ect).

Mainly looking at secondhand on carb. It's currently a tossup between a Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 and a Macbook Air M1. Open to other suggestions though. I plan on putting Fedora on the Thinkpad cause **** Win11.

I've never used a Mac so getting some experience with that OS is somewhat interesting to me. Downside is if it's **** and I go insane. 13 inch screen feels a little bit small. Also no ports on the mac so I need a thunderbolt dock. Most of the M1's for sale only have 8GB RAM and non-upgradable 256GB storage, which feels kinda bad in the year of our lord 2025. Retina display is apparently really nice though so 🤷‍♂️. Also no fan noise which is nice.

Pros of the Thinkpad are the same as with any other Thinkpad. Good build quality, user upgradability, and it will probably outlive me.
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
HI, looking for some laptop advice. Budget is R7000 - R9000. Maybe slightly more if there's something worth pushing it up for.

Use case would be a bit of office work, web browsing, Youtube, and some light gaming on older games (Hades, Balatro, Warframe, old RPG's ect).

Mainly looking at secondhand on carb. It's currently a tossup between a Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 and a Macbook Air M1. Open to other suggestions though. I plan on putting Fedora on the Thinkpad cause **** Win11.

I've never used a Mac so getting some experience with that OS is somewhat interesting to me. Downside is if it's **** and I go insane. 13 inch screen feels a little bit small. Also no ports on the mac so I need a thunderbolt dock. Most of the M1's for sale only have 8GB RAM and non-upgradable 256GB storage, which feels kinda bad in the year of our lord 2025. Retina display is apparently really nice though so . Also no fan noise which is nice.

Pros of the Thinkpad are the same as with any other Thinkpad. Good build quality, user upgradability, and it will probably outlive me.
Click to expand...
Avoid M1 mac..

ThinkPad all the way..
 
Hi, I have a dell g3 gaming laptop if you are interested. Has a ssd and 1tb harddrive ,16gb ram i7
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
HI, looking for some laptop advice. Budget is R7000 - R9000. Maybe slightly more if there's something worth pushing it up for.

Use case would be a bit of office work, web browsing, Youtube, and some light gaming on older games (Hades, Balatro, Warframe, old RPG's ect).

Mainly looking at secondhand on carb. It's currently a tossup between a Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 and a Macbook Air M1. Open to other suggestions though. I plan on putting Fedora on the Thinkpad cause **** Win11.

I've never used a Mac so getting some experience with that OS is somewhat interesting to me. Downside is if it's **** and I go insane. 13 inch screen feels a little bit small. Also no ports on the mac so I need a thunderbolt dock. Most of the M1's for sale only have 8GB RAM and non-upgradable 256GB storage, which feels kinda bad in the year of our lord 2025. Retina display is apparently really nice though so 🤷‍♂️. Also no fan noise which is nice.

Pros of the Thinkpad are the same as with any other Thinkpad. Good build quality, user upgradability, and it will probably outlive me.
Click to expand...
I'd go for the ThinkPad if those are the the only options.....however I'd rather look for an AMD based laptop around that price range, it usually has better graphics performance since you also wish to do some light gaming.

Of course a cheap gaming laptop would be infinitely better performance wise. Even a RTX 2050 is better. You won't get as good a screen at R11-12k though, it all depends on what you find acceptable.
 
Slckrck said:
I'd go for the ThinkPad if those are the the only options.....however I'd rather look for an AMD based laptop around that price range, it usually has better graphics performance since you also wish to do some light gaming.
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Something like this?


Build quality doesn't look that great. Also non upgradable ram and storage kinda **** ngl.
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
Something like this?


Build quality doesn't look the best though ngl.
Click to expand...
Nah I'd avoid an R3.....the R7 is R9k though....just remember the screens aren't the best at this range, serviceable but not the best.....I will say the R3 (even though it only has a 128gb harddrive) is way better than any celeron around that price.

Also if screen is your priority, I remember seeing a Asus Vivobook 15 Oled for R8k on Amazon.co.za recently.....but remember the budget was spent on the Oled screen so the rest of the chassis isnt that well engineered pretty flexible lol
 
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The_Imp_ZA said:
What are the downsides?
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Tiny screen, can't upgrade anything, but the worst is the heat.. it heats up to the point where you could cook an egg on it and this is running nothing but slack and three or four browser tabs at a time..

Also, mac OS is not great for gaming..
 
Slckrck said:
Nah I'd avoid an R3.....the R7 is R9k though....just remember the screens aren't the best at this range, serviceable but not the best.....I will say the R3 (even though it only has a 128gb harddrive) is way better than any celeron around that price.

Also if screen is your priority, I remember seeing a Asus Vivobook 15 Oled for R8k on Amazon.co.za recently.....but remember the budget was spent on the Oled screen so the rest of the chassis isnt that well engineered pretty flexible lol
Click to expand...

I checked out the Asus. Youtube reviews don't look that great. I've also had bad luck with Asus products in the past. Screen is very nice though.

I saw a Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for R7000 on carbonite. I'm thinking about going for it. Looks decent for what I'm looking for.
 
I saw this while browsing Amazon specials recently, it looks to normally be around the R12k mark but its on special with a 2050 card in it so will help a bit with the gaming part



 
WAslayer said:
Tiny screen,
Click to expand...
2 times the resolution though than most of the Windows alternatives.
WAslayer said:
but the worst is the heat..
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My M1 air doesn't get hot even when it's 40 degrees outside. No fan as well so it's double as impressive.
WAslayer said:
it heats up to the point where you could cook an egg on it and this is running nothing but slack and three or four browser tabs at a time..
Click to expand...
Perhaps the old Intel versions that is 5 years old. Time moves on.
WAslayer said:
Also, mac OS is not great for gaming..
Click to expand...
Fair but that is also slowly changing. Old games should be fine for the most part as well.
 
I was looking for the same thing for my oldest but couldn't afford anything that could play those games and couldn't find anything that was able to play those games for under R13k.

your best bet is Lenovo with 30 series GPU anything lower then that will drop frames like crazy.
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
I checked out the Asus. Youtube reviews don't look that great. I've also had bad luck with Asus products in the past. Screen is very nice though.

I saw a Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for R7000 on carbonite. I'm thinking about going for it. Looks decent for what I'm looking for.
Click to expand...
Yup sounds solid for the price also AMD graphics runs Linux a little better. Although for a couple grand more you could always upgrade to a newer R7.
 
CrypticZA said:
I saw this while browsing Amazon specials recently, it looks to normally be around the R12k mark but its on special with a 2050 card in it so will help a bit with the gaming part



Click to expand...
You'd have to upgrade the ram though, 8gb isn't enough for windows anymore.
 
open to getting refurbished???
for 7 to 9K you can get a decentish ex company lappy, Dell I5 from partserve,
plenty of upgrade options, plenty of parts and decentish specs for a ex work machine,
especially a latitude that they keep around for as long as possible.
 
CrypticZA said:
I saw this while browsing Amazon specials recently, it looks to normally be around the R12k mark but its on special with a 2050 card in it so will help a bit with the gaming part



Click to expand...
Maybe it's decent for the money but the "gamer" aesthetic kills it for me. Keyboard and design looks horrible.
 
Jet-Fighter7700 said:
open to getting refurbished???
for 7 to 9K you can get a decentish ex company lappy, Dell I5 from partserve,
plenty of upgrade options, plenty of parts and decentish specs for a ex work machine,
especially a latitude that they keep around for as long as possible.
Click to expand...
Do they have an online catalogue, or only in person?
The reviews for their PE branch are dreadful.
 
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