Anyone have any experience with the new CPUs?
I am in the market for a new midrange laptop. My opinion of Intel is really bad atm, but I’ve been happy with AMD in my last two desktops. I haven’t had a laptop in 20 years or more.
Any pros or cons to relate beyond online reviews?
Check the Laptop Recommendation thread. Lots of opinions there…
They run games slow as ass. Is that important to you?
It seems their compatibility with old software is not up to the task, at least not at the level I hoped for. There are a number of apps detecting the name of the cpu and deciding they won’t run. From the xbox app (so goodbye gamepass) to Epson software to Samsung recovery app, some vpns, even the Google driver utility.
It’s been good for me - no noticeable issues, runs extremely cool, great battery life. But I’ve just been using mine for basic productivity, web browsing, and streaming videos. When it comes to gaming, all I can tell you is that Regency Solitaire runs great.
They are in the “early adopter” phase, where they offer great battery life and cool temps, but suffer from compatibility issues, because they are new.
Do you want the power and ease of a macbook, as well as a the app compatibility issues, without having to go into the Mac OS ecosystem? Could be right for you.
In all honesty, if you are going to use it to browse the web and use productivity apps, and battery life is important, then they might be worth looking at. But right now, there are so many compatibility issues you would want to ensure the stuff you plan to do would work.
Ryzen laptop CPU’s run a lot cooler and use less power than the intel versions, maybe that is a middle ground?
This is spot on. If you’re planning to use it as a lightweight daily driver, it’s perfect. I’ve yet to feel it get very warm, maybe even less than my phone, and I’ve made it 2-3 days of moderate use before remembering to charge, just doing things like banking and YouTube.
But if you’re planning to do anything performance intensive, I’d stick with AMD for now, or Apple if that works for you. Unless it’s specifically compiled for ARM—which OpenRCT2 happily already was—there’s no contest on performance, and even the battery life returns closer to X86. At least the heat stays down. This thing really doesn’t get hot.
If my old laptop hadn’t died, I definitely would have waited at least a generation, but since I have a gaming desktop, it’s not a big deal for me.
I hardly game any more, and I am retired, so 5he majority of my usage will be web use, including some You Tube or movie viewing, plus email, etc.
A small amount of Word/Excel for my budgeting, etc. I will install a wireless printer and scanner, but I haven’t purchased those yet so no idea what brand. Definitely a VPN, and Malwarebytes. I assume the MS virus protection (Defender?) is still acceptable? Mostly I just want to do away with a desktop completely and use a small external dock for the drives from that desktop.
So it sounds like the Snapdragon would be fine. Battery life is definitely a consideration. But as I noted, I’ve been happy with AMD for several years, just no experience with a laptop version. I also have noted that fewer laptops appear to have touchscreens these days. Not sure how I feel about that.
The Surface laptops do have touchscreens, if that’s of interest.
For the uses you’ve stated, absolutely. Best Buy and other retailers are offering some pretty good deals on laptops with Snapdragon CPUs at the moment. I’ve been recommending them to people at work and home who ask me about laptops for high school and college students and work from home. I always ask questions about use, like “Will your student want to game on the laptop?” and “Will it be used for graphics intensive or processor intensive work like art, video editing, etc.?” because for those you really want a good AMD-based gaming laptop with a beefier GPU (which can also be found for relatively cheap these days).
But if it’s homework, web browsing, streaming, Office apps and connecting to work via the VPN to crunch some documents then Snapdragon is great because it does seem to have less power draw and cooler temps that lead to extended battery life while running all of that stuff no differently than an Intel or AMD chip would.
True, but they are considerably more expensive than some other brands. I was hoping to stick around $1k.
Amazon’sChoiceOverall Pick
I love my Surface Laptop 7. Best Windows laptop I’ve used. Love, love, love.
I have a gaming desktop and Xbox Series X for that stuff.
I know people have printer issues, but MS and the industry is moving to a new printer driver model. The old model was basically unchanged since the early days of Windows and had a lot of issues, including security. But a lot of modern printers already support this new system.
That Asus is looking more and more attractive. I suspect I can live without touchscreen. The MS version only has a 256 HD, so I am pretty sure I would end up installing a larger one anyway.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
Touchscreen is surprisingly useful on laptops. I find myself using it all the time.
Last minute change, I decided to go with the MS 7. I did want touchscreen, I loved my Surface from years ago, and I realized I have 2gb ssd still in the box on a shelf.
An extra few dollars, I will live!
That’s the one I would want, you lose the OLED screen but gain high refresh and general superior build quality.
I set up the Surface Laptop 7 for my ex a couple of months ago and was really impressed. Fantastic build, and the touchscreen is nice. Zero crapware. For her use (Office apps, web) it was fine and the performance/battery life is great.
Tried Baldur’s Gate 3 on it just for kicks and it ran about as well as it did on my M2 MacBook Air. Perfectly playable at 1080P. (Also fine at full rez during limited testing, but I’d drop BG3 to 1080P on any non-gaming laptop just to keep it smooth.)
Is that SSD 2230 (22mm x 30mm)? I imagine it’s 2280 (22mm x 80mm). The latter won’t fit.
Good info, I will check.
Windows ARM laptops are perfect for you. I’m very happy with my Surface Laptop aside from the X86 issues. It doesn’t come in an OLED variety this generation, but they do have touchscreens.