The Hunt For The Perfect Laptop Continues
The Hunt For The Perfect Laptop Continues
This is a bit of a rant; feel free to skip it if you’re here for the KDE content. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and …
This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.
Thankfully I have some requirements for laptops that very significantly narrow my options:
- It must have a good, ergonomic keyboard
- It must have a pointing stick
That only leaves Thinkpads for me to consider.
I have also been confounded by the situation.
It is even worse when you are on the secondary market. The company's product pages are broken. Trying to compare across different release years is way harder.
I assumed the reason for this had to do with the production systems and supply chains. They can get a certain number of x parts at y price from a factory located in a given location. You get enough parts in proximity to each other and you make it a model.
Its one thing for a small company to have enough components to have only a few models but with the volume dell or HP moves, they would need to really invest in suppliers or actually make the components themselves.
I dont imagine the marketing people have come up with all the options, they're just the ones who have to try to sell want they're given.
Most companies still change their laptops’ keyboard layouts in random negative ways every year; ship with stupid screen resolutions, woefully bad speakers, and disappointing touchpads; and stuff the most powerful processor and GPU in there and don’t focus enough on tuning the cooling, power usage, and fan profiles.
I don't really get these nitpicks. If you're planning to use the laptop as your daily driver, do what every other power user does and get a set of good peripherals.
Walk into class
Pull laptop out of bag, put it on the desk
Whip out mechanical keyboard
Mouse, small set of stereo speakers
Pull out a large object wrapped in a blanket
Everyone else watches confusedly
Take off blanket, unveiling a 28in monitor
Whip out power strip
Put power strip on the adjacent desk, no one is sitting there anyway
20ft extension cord
The outlet is on the far wall, run the extension cord between the desks
Apologize to everyone bumped into a long the way
Play World of Warcraft the entire time
There is no perfect laptop as it is a subjective choice.
I got a MacBook Pro which is the one that ticks the most boxes for me. It is simply a well built and reliable piece of hardware with really nice battery life and performance.
Yes, Apple tries really hard to sink their machines with terrible software decisions and hostile repair policies. But that still does not undermine their machines build quality.
Also, this is trivial, but their website is simple and easy to use. They don’t bog one down with a slew of laptops that are hard to differentiate. I know what I am looking at, and what I will be getting.
The only other machines I own are ThinkPads. But Lenovo loses me whenever I get on their website. It is easier to look at an eBay listing for a second hand ThinkPad than to navigate and search their website for a new one. Also, their newer machines just aren’t as good as the older ones.
I say this as a user of an array of ThinkPads and ThinkCentres to quench my thirst for BSD (and sometimes Linux). I use these machines for writing, gaming, watching movies, and more. But I cannot depend on those machines for any critical or work-related tasks.
Framework laptops aren’t sold here so I have never used them. There is no point in importing one where the whole raison d'être is their modularity and repairability which requires their ecosystem to be present first.
P.S. Using Linux on M-series MacBooks
I have contemplated using Asahi Linux on the MacBook Pro, but I am sure I won’t get the best out of the machine especially w.r.t. battery life. Perhaps when the machine is no longer supported by Apple, I will experiment with it.
Anyone here have a StarLabs laptop (briefly mentioned in the article) and am opinion on it? I'm thinking about replacing my crappy System76 laptop and looking for something with good build quality.
Why crappy? I have System76's laptop and the quality is amazing.
I think it's (one of) the best laptop brands in regards to coreboot support. The build quality of my starbook is great. The biggest + for me is how helpful, polite and friendly the support staff is.
I’ve been daily driving a framework 13 for like 9 months now. I’m pretty happy with it as a Linux machine.I can and will nitpick here to some of the points made in the article - but I’d buy another / recommended it regardless.
- the touchpad. It’s a diving board style. It’s also got a good amount of play in it prior to clicking. The diving board style means it’s tough to click at the top. Tapping works great. The extra play takes a little getting used to. It’s 1000% functional and works well - but if you’re snobby about trackpads, you won’t like it. It’s way worse than an Apple touchpad, but an upper end windows touchpad. The trackpads play also tends to allow “crap” and dirt to fall in there. I’ve had to take it apart once to clean it out (which is super easy to do on a framework, but it’d be nicer if I didn’t have to do it at all)
- the price - it’s a bit high for the specs. But that comes with the territory of a non glued laptop
- battery life is ok
- speakers are kind of crappy. They are fine, but they ain’t wowing anyone.
- the keyboard is ok
That’s it. 9 months of daily use, I love it, that’s my complaints list. The idea here is that someday, a better trackpad, or keyboard, or speakers will become available-and it’ll take me 5 minutes to upgrade. It’s a desktop laptop. And for me, everything “just works” on fedora 42.
Another vote here for framework 13. Love mine.
I've had mine about 4 months, minimal issues. I got a 7840U slightly on sale when the new AI 300 series came out.
I'm also running fedora 42, but it's Bluefin, based on silverblue. Everything works out of the box.
My biggest complaint is the sleep battery drain, iirc it's something like a few percent per hour, so I just get in the habit of turning it completely off if I'm not home with it plugged in. Otherwise it's dead when I need it, which sucks.
Also the fan can be a little loud and overzealous under barely moderate load, though I've found keeping it in power saving mode helps keep things cooler. Though I've been using it for note taking during some schooling this week, and it's been stone cold and silent, lasts all day on a single charge. So it definitely depends on your load. I appreciate having the power available when I need it, but wish it was better at keeping itself underclocked (or whatever it needs to do).
And finally the stock Wi-Fi 6 card in it gives some people problems with certain routers. Though I've only ever had problems with my parents starlink router 🤷♂️ That's a quick $20 upgrade though, to Wi-Fi 7, I just haven't needed to 🤷♂️
But still I'd buy another in a heartbeat.
Keyboard is great. Screen (2.8k) looks great to my eyes, though others say it has issues. No flex in the body. Touchpad is a little funky, but still great.
Plus when I want to upgrade the platform in a few years, or any component breaks before then, I can just fix it or upgrade it.
Highly recommend.
I've got a Framework 16 and love it.
Framework are nowhere near the scale of any of the large manufacturers, and they've had to spend a huge amount of time and money on R&D, so their laptops are probably always going to cost more. IMO it's worth the price though, given you can keep updating it over time.
I bought a current gen Framework 13 earlier this year and love it. Fedora 42 has been working great on it.
I would echo all the same points.
Does the keyboard flex when pressing on it or typing? I've watched assembley videos and the keyboard doesn't seem well supported by the frame.
Literally zero flex on the keyboard. I just pulled it out and pressed hard on it. No flex of the keys pushing down through the metal (like a gasket mounted mechanical keyboard would do), and zero flex of the aluminum.
Got two frameworks, a generation apart. No flexing issues
I've been getting annoying amdgpu crashes every now an then. I've tried all the various BIOS and kernel params but so far nothing has worked. Next step is rolling back a kernel version, at least that's what I've gathered from all the threads about it. It's bothersome but not frequent enough to be a real pain.
(This is an amd framework 13 with fedora 42 / wayland)
- Good keyboard with text navigation keys (Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down) and a sensible layout: delete at the top right, no stupid replacement of normal modifier keys with fingerprint readers or copilot keys, no tiny arrow keys, etc.
- Good touchpad that’s precise, doesn’t lag, and allows clicking on most or all of the total area
I don't think these should be that important. Even if one uses a single device for every need in the form of a laptop, one can still attach a keyboard and mouse to it. The worst customizable keyboard and wireless mouse will still be better than whatever the laptop has built in.
Unless the point is to have a single device and not to carry a bunch of peripherals around? "Better" only if your criteria ignores the need to carry it around with the laptop.
The worst customizable keyboard and wireless mouse will still be better than whatever the laptop has built in.
Unless you have a laptop with a good trackpad and keyboard, then you don't need to carry around a bunch of extra stuff.
Why do so many computer manufacturers organize their websites around obscure names of model ranges that only they understand, or make you decide upfront whether you want a "home" or "business" or "creator" laptop? Why do they all make it as difficult as possible for you to browse what's on offer? Is it just because they all suck at website design, or is there some other reason?
I hate how dell has restructured their product lines recently. It's very unintelligible now.
I can't say for certain, but it screams "middle-management justifying their MBA salary" to me.
Maybe they believe that most of their customers don't really know much about computers beyond turning them on and "bigger nunbers = better". They might not be wrong.
Because that’s how people buy them?
Home users want cheap garbage with fast graphics for gaming. Business users want consistent reliability at a moderate price. Creators want high res graphics and don’t care what they pay.
HP is probably the worst offender in this regard - their website is almost unusable. Lenovo is a close second, and I say this as a compulsive ThinkPad buyer.
Edit: I think a lot of commenters here aren't reading the article. This isn't about your favourite laptop, it's about why manufacturer websites suck.
I have had exactly one HP laptop in my life, which luckily was a hand-me-down so I didn't spend any money on it, but it was enough to convince me to never get another HP product ever again.
20-odd years and the boycott is still going strong lol.
I've used a bunch of HPs over the years. Some of them ProBook, mostly Elitebook. Either way, the keyboards were always awful. If you want to be 100% sure each key press registers, you have to press surprisingly hard.
If you've always used Dell and Lenovo, this kind of thing sounds completely absurd. It's something that would never even occur to you. Why would you even think about whether the key presses register with 100% reliability? Of course they do. You press the button, a letter appears. That's all there's to it, right?
Wrong! HP thinks there should be an element of surprise if you type normally. Unless you hammer the keyboard like a wild animal, there's no way to get to 100%. Even if you get the fanciest model, the keyboard still has this HP trademark suckiness.
i know a laptop that’s amazing in almost every aspect except that it doesn’t run Linux. the Macbook Pro. to me there’s barely any real comparison to be made unless Linux or Windows or the keyboard layout is a hill worth dying on to you.
i have servers and my gaming PC on Linux, but i wouldn’t trade my Macbook with its unified memory, incredible battery life, best in class touchpad, and top notch screen for anything else. Windows is dying, and chip designers (outside of Apple) seem more interested in cashing in on AI than providing a user experience. i was excited to see what Qualcomm would do, but it doesn’t seem like OEMs or Windows are particularly interested in supporting that platform as a next leap forward, while Intel is bleeding on the side of the road and AMD is constantly side-eyeing Nvidia. i think it would be peak irony for Nvidia to come out of left field with a desktop class ARM processor that’s Linux native, but that’s a pipe dream. what the ecosystem needs is a real competitor to Apple that is more focused on desktop machines than enterprise contracts. maybe RISC-V Frameworks will break out in a meaningful way. but it just seems like anything else these days in a compromise based on some biased preference or moral judgement.
anyway all that said i’m glad there’s an ecosystem of people who are stubborn enough to work on this platform. i have my own stubbornness, but i just don’t have the motivation to apply it here
Hehe.. top notch screen.
I agree with everything you said, and I use a MacBook Pro for the same reasons. I made a similar comment but you have articulated the points much better.
I agree. About 10 years ago I had a some unstable dependencies hit in the middle of a major crunch/product release at work. When it was vital I was productive, I was instead trouble shooting my laptop. I moved to mac the next day and was surprised how far the OS had come, and that I could run zsh, nvim etc. Not to mention since apple silicon its rare I need to take a charger with me anywhere.
I still have a linux thinkpad for personal use, and all my personal servers are linux. My heart is linux, but a lot will have to change to take me away from a macbook.
The macbook pro is the perfect laptop except for the Linux hill that I must die on. Every time I look at other offerings, they all fail just like Nate is saying in some regard. Screen. Speakers. Keyboard. Touchpad. Thermals. Battery life. The MBP is truly best-in-class hardware. But I just want to use Linux...
i completely understand. as a Rust developer that uses Neovim, i have some hills like that too. and if i was more of an OS dev and/or had the time i might be interested to help improve the platform. my last attempt was a Thinkpad, but i had to have an external mouse for that thing, the fans were causing me to fail stealth checks, and the battery was basically a UPS.
I agree... I love my Macbooks for how well the hardware works, and I love how I can open up terminal and do pretty much anything I want. What I don't like is how consumer hostile it is when it comes to being able to upgrade or repair. I also don't like Apple's insistence on telling me what I do and do not want in a product. According to Steve Jobs no one wants a touchscreen on their laptop, and even though he's been dead for over a decade and the market has shown otherwise, they still don't have a touchscreen Macbook (and if they ever do release one they'll fawn over how innovative they are for doing so).
I also don’t like Apple’s insistence on telling me what I do and do not want in a product. According to Steve Jobs no one wants a touchscreen on their laptop
Anecdotally, I had a touchscreen convertible laptop before my current MacBook. I even got the pencil for it that let me draw on the screen, which I wanted to use for taking notes. The pencil sucked in practice (this was a >1000€ laptop, not much less expensive than my MacBook! maybe that’s just what I get for buying HP though.) and sooner rather than later I got an iPad for taking handwritten notes, and the touchscreen itself turned out to be a gimmick that I used in the beginning but eventually turned off.
Sometimes, they’re right. For example, kind of the reverse: people wanted floating windows on the iPad for years. I always said this would be incredibly awful to use in practice without a mouse. Now they added windows on the iPadOS 26 beta and I tested it and it was exactly as finicky as I expected it to be. Hopefully they’ll still polish it so that it’s at least as good to use as the old side-by-side view (which they unfortunately removed), but this really isn’t it right now.
People might want a device with all the input methods and the most versatile multitasking, but I don’t think this is reasonably doable in a way that’s as polished as devices built with a main input method and UI purpose-built for that input method. In the past I might have said that Apple are the only people that could do this correctly, and only by investing a significant amount of resources, but after the iPadOS 26 situation… oof.
The article actually shouts out Apple as doing things really well, which was surprising considering he’s focused on Linux which is only barely an option on current Mac machines.
Look into Asahi Linux. Its a community driven project Fedora (and other distros) to run on newer Silicon Mac's. I have it on my M2 MBP and its amazing. It may not be for everyone since it runs AARCH64 / battery isnt great (6+ hours). But its my best looking Linux install due to its screen
I was going to grab an M2 MBP for this reason! Why such a battery life difference? Can you expound upon that AARCH64 reasoning? Does the hardware work as claimed on the project website? Do you have a sense of what the future holds for asahi?
it’s not worth it to me. the battery life is a huge feature, and it does feel like Asahi development has slowed. i have enough computers to tinker with. i bought my Macbook specifically to be an entry point into my other machines, i.e. from the airport or brewery or coffee shop.
maybe when it makes sense to buy a new laptop i’ll find some time and motivation to contribute, but just using Asahi doesn’t really appeal to me.
Yeah I opted for the Framework 13, even with the less than perfect keyboard and lack of touch. My hope is that touch will be an option in the future. otherwise its a near perfect option.
Am I the only one that literally never uses the touchscreen on my laptop?
having a touchscreen is nice for the extra durability
No but on my 3 in 1 I find the touch screen and pen very useful as a big tablet for consumption, laptop for productivity and gaming, and writing and drawing pad.
I'm constantly trying to touch the screen on my work provided laptop, and my FW13. I spent a long time with a fancy Chromebook for my couch computing needs, when away from the desktop.
What I really want is a place that has physical locations that sells linux laptops and will give you something like apple care used to be with apple in the middle aughts. They will take care of anything and you just don't have to worry about it at all. I keep on thinking it would be great for microcenter to partner up with someone on this.
Companies usually handle this by using a hardware vendor with on-site support (like Dell) for hardware issues, and a Linux distro with corporate support (like RedHat) for software issues. Definitely more than a regular user would be willing to pay, though.
System 76 does a pretty good job with support. I've occasionally pinged their support about an issue I was having and they were quite willing to help - and pretty useful as well (no "did you try rebooting?" run-around).
ThinkPad P14s G6 (AMD) with the 2880x1800 touch screen? Only 60Hz though and $$$
The Thinkbook 14+ 2025 seems to check quite a lot of the boxes. Nevertheless, depending where you live you will have some high taxes to pay if ordered from Aliexpress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G_xM0qxA-8
The option with the TGX(Oculink) port to use an eGPU is particularly appealing for some.
There is a guide to install Arch on it: https://github.com/Cyber-Typhoon/Secure_Arch_Install_Oculink_eGPU