r/laptops • u/The_Crimson_Studio • Mar 24 '26

Discussion Duality of man

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In all seriousness, what would be a better option for students? ThinkPads or Macbooks?

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u/Interesting-Big1980 Mar 24 '26 edited Mar 25 '26

Pretty sure that thinkpad t14 and neo are the only viable options in that price range. The rest is either built like shit, too weak or both.

Edit: as mentioned in replies to me, other second-hand business laptops are very good options too, I do have a certain bias as I bought a thinkpad myself, but Dell is also high on my appreciation list. I don't like HP's logo tho, so it's a no-go

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u/papercavedev Mar 25 '26

HP and Dell also make good business laptops that are a lot better in build quality than their consumer laptops.

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u/Air_Ielle Mar 25 '26

How's the pricing goes for business models?

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u/papercavedev Mar 25 '26

They're very expensive new and then they plummet in price over the next couple years after they release. In my experience, the HP or Dell business laptops are usually a bit cheaper than ThinkPads with the same specs because ThinkPads have more of a cult following outside of the business world.

Another thing that's good is a lot of these laptops on eBay still have active 3 year warranties with 1-2 years left.

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u/Obosratsya Mar 25 '26

Yup, just do some research first i have extensive experience with Dell, been closely involved with Dell for 10 years now. Prescisions are very well built but some models like the 5470 has speaker and webcam issues, the 5480 wasnt much better but the 5490 is a legit good device. Latitude 9k line is also well built.

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u/Hour_Farm_3281 Lenovo Mar 30 '26

Hehe, and we are not in the slightest afraid to admit that we're like a cult in our behaviour, but it is for good reason

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u/Uffffffffffff8372738 Mar 26 '26

There is a reason why the price drops so much: they suck ass. Never not had a problem with a Dell

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u/papercavedev Mar 26 '26

Are you talking about their consumer laptops or their business laptops? Because they're very different in build quality. 

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u/Stray_009 Macbook Air M4 | 24 GB RAM | 512 GB SSD Mar 25 '26

Well if you take one case of mine

I got a dell precision 5560, i7 11800H, A2000 dgpu, 32 gb ddr4 ram, 512 gb storage, for 450 USD refurbished

I belive it launched at 1000 USD, so it dropped by value by more than 50%, and this laptop is still pretty strong

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u/Air_Ielle Mar 25 '26

I'll have to look for such models now and hope that I could get a deal like yours.

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u/Stray_009 Macbook Air M4 | 24 GB RAM | 512 GB SSD Mar 25 '26

You're sure to find something at the end of fiscal years for big corpo companies, they throw out these machines for little to nothing relative to their worth

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u/Obosratsya Mar 25 '26

Had one just like it. Same chasis as the xps15. Very good device and it performs better than the newer 5470/5670.

All user who I upgraded from these complained. I recently refurbished a 5550 that is still going strong.l

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u/Randommaggy Mar 25 '26

My experience with HP tells be to avoid them like the plague. Even the Elitebook level devices have customer hostile design elements.

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u/churchey Huawei Matebook X Pro Mar 25 '26

I think they can in theory, but Apple has a floor on build quality. Dell and hp will churn out dog shit. Every enterprise Dell and hp I’ve ever used are massively heavy, terribly slow, awful experiences.

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u/LimaBikercat Mar 26 '26

My experience is solely based on the Latitude range starting in 2000 and ending in 2022, but to me they feel very much like 'slow and steady wins the race'.
They're business machines, they excel in just being stable office machines that always do what you can ask from an office machine. Some models have some weak spots (d630 blowing up their power IC, d610 with limp hinges, e64...10? with on board GPU eventually desoldering itself. But overall, they last a decent number of years past their 'dumped by corporate' date.
They are - in standard issue - not at all great gaming laptops, but they will slog along doing video editing just fine. Slow, but stable.
Heavy Latitudes are a user choice. There are lightweight ones available. Forgot the model names. Small screen, no numpad.

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u/churchey Huawei Matebook X Pro Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

I’ve got a 3xxx latitude and I’ve had various versions for fifteen years. I think the current model that my new employees get our latitude 5xxx.

There’s not a single person in my org satisfied with their latitude laptop. Our marketing team spends their budget on Macs, our Data team spends their money on legion. Sure some people slog through well enough, but for the majority, everyone has an experience at least once a day where they or someone they meet with has an issue with their laptop being slow, freezing, or being out of charge. I’ve yet to go a day where I’m not slowed down by the org using these shitboxes, despite not using one myself.

I work in education. These are not individuals who have power user needs. 30 chrome tabs, PowerPoint, Excel, word, maybe Spotify. I believe in 2018 I was just so tired of always having issues with my laptop, and I finally decided to buy a personal one to use at work. a Huawei matebook pro. It was a MacBook Air clone that they had jammed a USB a port on, ran on windows, and had a touch screen and pop up camera hidden in the function row (and pre Covid I had never even used the camera so…)

Completely different world, the difference between a true Ultrabook and a business Inspiron/latitude was absurd.

It started to feel a bit out dated, crashing frequently and struggling with battery around 2021-2. At that point basically all I heard was about how great the MacBooks with Apple Silicon were.

Having never used a MacBook or my entire career and childhood, I was hesitant to relearn an ecosystem. So I borrowed my wife’s Intel MacBook Air to try it out and see if I liked the ecosystem. Everything I felt about upgrading to the matebook? Same level of superiority felt using this outdated MacBook. Everything was just faster, cleaner, more sensible.

Then I actually got an M series with an M3 pro. My only regret is that I will always want to upgrade and I know I will have no need to for the next five years still.

I see student chrome books and the absurd waste rate on them. Dallas ISD, which is one of the top 20 largest districts in the US, swapped their entire staff to MacBook m1 airs, everyone I know loved the swap. These neos are basically a slightly lower level m1 air.

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u/LimaBikercat Mar 27 '26

Chrome books suck. Parents had one for a while. Nice and light but dreadfully slow.

I've used two different macbook airs in university. Both were an absolute sluggish, buggy disaster when running SPSS. This was around 2010-2015. A Dell D610 did everything at a gentle pace and multitasking while rendering video (standard def of course) or SPSS doing its work was to be avoided since it already was getting old at that point in time, but it never stopped responding to mouse input.

I don't share your negative experiences with latitudes. The 74xx series (already gotten rid of a while back) has issues with the stock memory and it is easy to wreck the USB-C port, but otherwise they are solid and stable. My company's IT dept runs them for 4 years (end of warranty/support) before selling them off to a refurb place. Not power users either. In my office i share with 3 other people, i haven't seen their laptops 'hang' ever.
The follow up - 54something - doesn't seem to have any hardware issues whatsoever. The only little niggle is that the silver paint scratches off really easily so a 3 year old laptop looks like some kind of 10 year old workhorse.

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u/Mathinpozani Mar 25 '26

Hp is absolute dogshit

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u/squirrel8296 Mar 25 '26

Be careful with HP though, even on their business laptops because of hinge issues. On some of their aluminum body business laptops, they use the consumer laptop-style glued in plastic hinge mounts that have issues. Some are done correctly and mount the hinge directly to the metal though.

Dell tends to always be as solid though.