I am up for laptop replacement at work, which one please?

[djlenoir]

We have a three year laptop cycle, so whichever laptop I select, I will be stuck with it for three years. Keeping that in mind, I am replacing a Lenovo W530, which has been a decent laptop, but the 170w power brick has not exactly been a joy to travel with constantly. The W530 is running a i7-3740QM CPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB Samsung SSD. I have been using Hyper-V to run a full lab these past few years.

All of these replacement offerings appear to fall into the "Ultrabook" category, so I may have to learn to leave the lab at home and remote into it going forward.

I do not have the exact specifications, just what was sent in the company email to me. So, without further ado, here are the contenders:

1. Dell E7470 (i7-6600U, 16GB, 256GB, 3.32lbs)
2. Lenovo T460s (i7-6600U, 16GB, 256GB, 3.09lbs)
3. HP 1040 G3 (i7-6600U, 16GB, 256GB, 3.15lbs)
4. HP ZBook Studio (i7-6820HQ, 32GB, 512GB, 4.4lbs)
5. Toshiba Tecra Z40t-C (i7-6600U, 16GB, 256GB, 3.24lbs)
6. Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (i7-6650U, 16GB, 256GB, 1.73lbs)

NOTE: All of these, except the ZBook, would come with a docking station (or port replicator) for home use.


Is there a standout winner here? Which one do you think I should pick? Including the 'why' part would be most helpful to me.



Considering I will be using this for at least the next three years, I am trying to figure out which one gives me the best future proof opportunity. Are the CPUs, RAM, and HDDs upgradeable (besides the Surface Pro 4)? I know the Dell has a M.2 slot, but not sure on the others, or if that even matters for a laptop. I appreciate all the input.

 

[giantpandaman2]

Hard to recommend anything when you don't say what you use it for other than Hyper-V and "lab." By lab do you mean Matlab? If so, are the calculations heavy duty or lightweight, etc.?

Do you travel a lot?

Does color gamut mean anything for you?

Do you need massive graphics power? (GPU accelerated calculations or video work?) I mean the ZBook has a professional level Quadro and the SP4 has an HD520 or Iris. That's quite a variance. I wouldn't touch a Quadro unless I needed it...but if I needed it I wouldn't even be looking at something with an HD520.

Do you want/need to use a stylus?

Do you need to connect to fast storage via USB? (USB-C/TB 3.0 compatibility would be useful)

Future proofing is less of an issue now more than ever since laptops are not advancing all that quickly. The most important thing is to get the right laptop to match your usage pattern.

 

[nerp]

I'd be torn between the Thinkpad and the Surface. Don't go for the Toshiba.

The Dell is probably decent as well.

 

[Bryf50]

The Zbook Studio is an outlier among those choices. If you want something with similar capabilities to your W530 that would be the one to go with.

 

[linkgoron]

The studio is by far the best laptop in that list

 

[fralexandr]

do you do CPU intensive tasks? do you find yourself using more than 4 threads/2 cores? If yes, the only option is the zstudio... The i7 U models are dualcore 4 thread.

At least some of the options have mSATA SSD + HDD Bay, but make sure to check if that's important to you.

 

[holden j caufield]

I also have a w530 32gb ram, run msata, 2nd drive, and 3rd drive in the dvd caddy. I've used a number of the ultra low voltage cpu and my goodness they are terrible.

Even running a few vm's is awful on the dual core cpu. I tried the vm's running from home on my w520 w530 and remote into them from an ultrabook but it was an awful experience. I'd choose the zbook, not that it's my first choice but the other ultrabooks are a huge step down from a w530.

The dell precision lines come with a a true quad core and high res screen. If you want to run a bunch of vm's the screen real estate of a QHD+ or 4k UHD type screen is pretty awesome if your eyes can handle it.

 

[corkyg]

Another vote for the ZBook Studio.

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews...s-and-netbooks/hp-zbook-studio-1308737/review

 

[Commodus]

Considering I will be using this for at least the next three years, I am trying to figure out which one gives me the best future proof opportunity. Are the CPUs, RAM, and HDDs upgradeable (besides the Surface Pro 4)? I know the Dell has a M.2 slot, but not sure on the others, or if that even matters for a laptop. I appreciate all the input.

To me, the HP ZBook Studio seems like the best choice for someone coming from a quad-core laptop. You probably need performance above all else, unless you know that remote control is good enough.

As a general rule for laptops: buy on the assumption that you can't upgrade anything. You can sometimes upgrade RAM and storage, but it's not guaranteed (you can't upgrade either on the Surface Pro 4, for example)... and it's extremely rare that you can upgrade CPUs. You want to know that you could live with the system as-is for those three years.

 

[djlenoir]

I appreciate the feedback. There was justified criticism that I did not provide enough information on what I actually need out of the laptop (what do I need from it?).

I travel pretty much every week (air travel) for my job. The most demanding things I do are run the virtual machines using Hyper-V (about 10 VMs, half servers), and occasionally play not-to-demanding games (current W530 has a Quadro K1000M).

I also use it to stream my Slingbox hosted at home, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, as well as listen to music. However, I realize that any of the options would handle the video or music streaming just fine.

Concerning the upgrade ability of the laptop. Realistically, I would replace the drive with SDD, or add an additional SSD (if supported) over time as they get larger and cheaper. I store a lot of videos files for training purposes and movies for entertainment (no not pron).

One other thing that I have found myself doing quite a bit with my W530 is using the rear USB port to charge my cell phone on long flights when there is not a charge option available at my seat. It supports the ability to charge when the laptop is sleeping, so it gives me a giant backup battery option.

The TB3 options seems important from the future proofing perspective because I have seen port replicators and even external full video card expansion options using TB3. My two cell phones use USB-C connectors, so that could be a plus for charging/syncing them, but I have survived with standard USB 3.0 for that thus far just fine.

The rest of my usage would involve standard Office suite of applications, Skype for Business meetings, many web browser tabs open, etc. Standard work related stuff.

 

[giantpandaman2]

Well, in terms of USB and TB3 the only computer on there with it is the HP 1040 G3. That would preclude the need to "upgrade the drive with a bigger SSD" since you can just use extremely fast externals if necessary.

The quadro on the Zbook just seems like absolute overkill for your usage. The weight/battery life penalty might be something you can live with coming from your W530, however.

To me, ideally you'd get something with 32 GB RAM, USB C/TB3, an HQ series CPU, but no discrete GPU. Unfortunately none of those exist on your list. So let's go through your list:

1-3 are almost the same, but the 1040 has USB C. Among them, I'd probably just pick the one that feels the best keyboard/trackpad wise.

Zbook I've already talked about. I'd pick it if you can live with the weight/battery life issue.

I don't have enough experience with Toshiba's business line to make a comment. Their consumer line have terrible screens with terrible glare problems...but consumer doesn't equal business. If they did, I'd never look at an HP...

Finally the SP4 probably just doesn't have the battery life or upgradeability that you desire. (The only "upgrade" you could do would be to put a large SD card in it.)

The good news is that USB-C/TB3.0 is probably coming to all business laptops this year if you can wait a little bit. The bad news is that none of the U series computers on your list are going to get HQ series CPU's. =(

So, after all that...I'd lean toward the Zbook. You just need the RAM and the HQ CPU.

 

[holden j caufield]

Honestly your best option is the w530.

I don't know much of the zbook but the w530 has 9 cell replaceable extended battery, ultrabay slot, docking port which also will take a slice battery. I've had my w530 run on near 20 hours, could even put in a 3rd battery in the ultrabay.

Also 3 drive options, and thinkpad reliabilty. And even more so you know it works with all your vms and you don't have to reinstall anything.

Skylake isn't even a big jump in performance vs the ivy bridge. I know the dual cores won't be very good running 10 vms. Allocating 10 vms (some of them servers vm) to 8 virtual cores is tough doing it with 4 virtual cores isn't very good.

 

[djlenoir]

You make a good point Holden. Maybe I can request to wait another six to twelve months before swapping out my W530. If not, I think I am going with the ZBook.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[giantpandaman2]

You make a good point Holden. Maybe I can request to wait another six to twelve months before swapping out my W530.

Not a bad idea. If the W530 is still doing fine, why change? Skylake has had pretty wonky Windows 10 drivers anyway.

 

[Blue_Max]

Don't discount those graphics... the ZBook's Quadro M1000M is almost as fast as a GTX 950M so your gaming on the side will be pretty decent. :thumbsup:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-M1000M.151582.0.html

If you can stand carrying that extra 1-2 pounds, the graphic/CPU power + RAM is worth it.

(Part of me would also enjoy that the workplace is providing a ~$2000 laptop instead of $1000 one!)

 

[win32asmguy]

Owner of the Zbook Studio here. Its a nice business ultrabook. Compared to the W530 its very thin and light. The 150W power brick it comes with is very small and light as well.

A docking station will be shipping soon, using the Thunderbolt 3 port. It will plug into both the power connector and first Thunderbolt 3 port on the laptop at the same time, allowing you to charge the machine while docked.

The laptop has two M.2 SSD slots. It can take either SATA or PCIe SSD in each slot.

The FHD Matte display has good color and viewing angles, probably better than I have seen on anything else so far. It could probably benefit from a calibration if you know someone with a hardware calibrator.

The Quadro M1000M is a "special edition" for the Zbook Studio, having 4GB of ram instead of 2GB. The gaming performance is between a GTX 950M and GTX 960M. The bios has an option to disable integrated Intel graphics and only use the Nvidia card which is nice.

Let me know if you have any other questions.