51-70k Lightweight workhorse that goes on and on

L

LaatSahab

Herald
Budget: 50K(flexible)-70K(Strict)
Usage: Work (Excel, Proprietary B2B portals, GDS), Hobby coding (C and Python), occasional YouTube/movie
Requirements (in order of priority):
1. Battery Life
2. Fast boot and load
3. Good Network card, don't want erratic or frequent network drops in a Radiowave-rich environment
4. Performance
5. Lightweight
6. Screen quality
7. Sound quality

Need a full-size keyboard, not backlit. Screen resolution of at least 1080P. RAM expandability would be preferred if it's an 8GB model but would prefer LPDDR5 in that case. SSD at least 512GB, PCIe4.0 one.
Brand preference is not strong, have used Dell, HP, and, Asus laptops in the past so won't mind going for them again or opting for others such as MSI, Acer, Mi, etc but would avoid the newer ones such as Honor and Evita and the likes.
 
If battery life is an important consideration, and you're ok with Mac OS, you can check if you can get a Macbook M1 Air in your budget. It easily lasts the entire day on a single charge.

If not, you can consider Ryzen 7330u or 7530u based laptops. They are basically refreshed model of the 5300u and 5500u with slightly higher clock speeds.

Lightweight and full size keyboard are contradictory. Full-sized keyboard won't be there below 15.6" and most light weight laptops use 14" screen. If you consider 1.7kg as light weight, then you can get both. If you want something below 1.5 kg, then your choices are going to be extremely limited unless you forgo the numpad.

Sound quality, you should just drop. Laptops don't have good sound quality. Just use a decent pair of headphones or external soundbar for watching movies.
 
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Anything under 2.5 Kg is OK. Screen size of 13 to 15.6 inches is OK. Was tempted to go for Mac but don’t know how it would play out in my use case where I have to create and work with Doc and Excel files and later send them as pdf and also edit some pdfs. Work detail also involves taking screenshots and editing them so use Snipping Tool a lot.
I do use both Android and Apple phone for work so if same functionality is available in Apple, won’t mind going for it as long as future OS updates don’t slow it down deliberately.
 
The deal with Excel on Mac is, it behaves bit differently than Windows, ex. When filtering a column, in excel you make your selections, click on, then the rows are updated, whereas on mac, it updates live. But if you’re looking for battery, you cant go wrong with a MacBook. The screenshotting capabilities I dare say are similar.
 
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Marcus Fenix said:
I had shortlisted this one as I am itching to replace my Dell XPS 13.

www.hp.com

HP Pavilion Aero 33.8 cm (13.3) Laptop 13-be2055AU, Gold

Stream, listen, browse and do all the things. More modern, more premium design elements on mainstream devices for a great price
www.hp.com www.hp.com

Advantage for hp is that they have dedicated home/end keys which are very helpful in coding.
Ryzen 5 6 cores/16GB RAM/512 GB SSD/1 Kg weight.
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Beware though. I have heard some bad stuff about HP's customer support.
 
Mr.J said:
Beware though. I have heard some bad stuff about HP's customer support.
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Yeah I know. HP basic models are utter garbage. First the battery goes and then the charger.

Only reason for this one is the dedicated home/end key, Ryzen 7000 series CPU and light weight.
 
IMHO, the MacBooks are the only computers worth buying in the last 3 years. Nothing comes close to them in terms of battery life, integrated display+speakers and overall experience across all 7 of your requirements.
If you don't want to purchase the newest M3 based Macs, then definitely consider buying from the M2 or even the M1 generation if your workflow can support it.
 
Apple's pathetic storage and inability to do DIY upgrade has always been their downsides.

They're trying to sell their cloud storage which is why storage capacity is limited.
 
LaatSahab said:
Even the 2020 MacBook Pro are 1L+ on Amazon and Flipkart. 2020 M1 Air do fall in budget but then 256 GB SSD is a limiting factor.
Click to expand...
While I do absolutely hate this about Apple, in OP's case, it doesn't seem to be a major factor. 256 GB should be OK for their usage. Unless they want to run VMs and docker containers.

Thinkpads, as suggested by @frozenscotch , are also a good option
 
Vivobook 14x (K3405ZFB-KM541WS 16+512) is currently available on amazon for 68k. I has a great oled screen and decent size battery plus gpu also if you want to light gaming in future. Network card i think would be mediatek or realtek but you can replace it with an intel one.
 
gourav said:
While I do absolutely hate this about Apple, in OP's case, it doesn't seem to be a major factor. 256 GB should be OK for their usage. Unless they want to run VMs and docker containers.
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While the storage might not be the limiting factor here, the absolute lacklustre 8 GB memory will. Unless you are someone who only opens up 4 tabs on Chrome and perform only basic tasks such as writing notes, this machine will have a very less shelf life in the long run.

Also, the suggestions in this thread are exactly what is wrong with people nowadays. The OP has clearly mentioned that he wants upgradability if memory is 8 GB and want at least 512 GB of storage. It's evident that battery life isn't the only thing that the OP is looking for. But, sadly, most of us lack reading skills.
 
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AINDRASIS_GUPTA said:
the suggestions in this thread are exactly what is wrong with people nowadays
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There's nothing wrong with the suggestions. Only 2 people have suggested Macbook, me and one more person.

I have already mentioned "if battery life is important" for Mac. I have also made other suggestions for other cases and also given caveats to OP's requirements.

The other suggestion, while it has a bit more fanboyish tone, has rightly pointed out that very few Windows laptops suit OP's requirements the way a Macbook Air does. It's lightweight, has great battery, great screen, good sound quality, has amazing performance (I have used M1 mac mini), and great build quality. Keep in mind that any Windows laptop which also fulfills those requirements, will also come close to their price. It will have more memory and storage, but will also have poorer battery life.

Our job as forum members is to help the OP make their decision by informing them of various options and their pros and cons, we are not tasked with making the decision on OP's behalf. And just because the OP has mentioned some requirements, there doesn't magically appear a machine which fulfills all those. If someone asks for a gaming laptop which can run AAA games for 10 hours on battery, will you expect people to only reply if they have some wonder laptop with alien technology battery?

AINDRASIS_GUPTA said:
Unless you are someone who only opens up 4 tabs on Chrome and perform only basic tasks such as writing notes, this machine will have a very less shelf life in the long run
Click to expand...
This is patently false. This comment shows that you've not actually used a Mac with Apple silicon. I had a mini with 8 GB RAM and did coding all the time, running django and node dev servers, Jupyter Notebooks, etc., and also did occasional photo editing, some gaming, ran multiple browsers with videos and 10+ tabs while coding, and while doing all that, never faced any problems. The machine is very snappy even under heavy load and my Windows machine with NVMe SSD and 16 GB RAM also fails to feel as fast. Only Ubuntu feels comparable.
 
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gourav said:
There's nothing wrong with the suggestions. Only 2 people have suggested Macbook, me and one more person.

I have already mentioned "if battery life is important" for Mac. I have also made other suggestions for other cases and also given caveats to OP's requirements.

The other suggestion, while a bit more famboyish tone, has rightly pointed out that very few Windows laptops suit OP's requirements the way a Macbook Air does. It's lightweight, has great battery, great screen, good sound quality, has amazing performance (I have used M1 mac mini), and great build quality. Keep in mind that any Windows laptop which also fulfills those requirements, will also come close to their price. It will have more memory and storage, but will also have poorer battery life.

Our job as forum members is to help the OP make their decision by informing them of various options and their pros and cons, we are not tasked with making the decision on OP's behalf. And just because the OP has mentioned some requirements, there doesn't magically appear a machine which fulfills all those. If someone asks for a gaming laptop which can run AAA games for 10 hours on battery, will you expect people to only reply of they have some wonder laptop with alien technology battery?


This is patently false. This comment shows that you've not actually used a Mac with Apple silicon. I had a mini with 8 GB RAM and did coding all the time occasional photo editing, some gaming, ran multiple browsers with videos and 10+ tabs while coding, and while doing all that, never faced any problems. The machine is very snappy even under heavy load and my Windows machine with NVMe SSD and 16 GB RAM also fails to feel as fast. Only Ubuntu feels comparable.
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I can agree with him. I have a 16gb mba and it blows away my 16gb desktop in terms of memory management. Even though im doing heavy coding and running dockers. Only dealbreaker for a base mba would be the 256gb storage which indeed is very low
 
gourav said:
This is patently false. This comment shows that you've not actually used a Mac with Apple silicon. I had a mini with 8 GB RAM and did coding all the time occasional photo editing, some gaming, ran multiple browsers with videos and 10+ tabs while coding, and while doing all that, never faced any problems. The machine is very snappy even under heavy load and my Windows machine with NVMe SSD and 16 GB RAM also fails to feel as fast. Only Ubuntu feels comparable.
Click to expand...
The difference is - this is an MBA. Not a Mini that uses active cooling.

Also, buying more memory has never been about now, it's about securing a longer life use of your machine. And with zero upgradability (classic Apple), one must be really short-sighted to invest such a large sum of money on a restricted machine. I've seen countless MBA M1 users over the last three years learn the hard way that 16 GB memory is absolute bare minimum in 202x.
 
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ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (2023) AMD Ryzen 5 Hexa Core 7530U - (16 GB/512 GB SSD/Windows 11 Home) UM3402YA-KM541WS Thin and Light Laptop on Flipkart

75whr battery so battery life shouldn't be an issue. It ticks all your requirements except for the full size keyboard.

68990rs after ICICI rupay credit card discount
 
+1 on the MBA M1 as well but I'd also not feel comfortable recommending 8G/256G in 2024. 16G would be perfect but I don't think OP can get that in their budget in India, unless they go for second-hands. And I'd also recommend AppleCare+ or some other insurance for peace of mind.

8G might work just fine but chances are way higher SSD swap will get used which will considerably increase SSD aging which you wouldn't want.
 
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Ordered today in the morning, and will be delivered tomorrow. If it turns out well-suited for my needs, will keep it for longer else pawn it off to a family member or online soon.
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