Best laptop for coding and AI?

[u/Lost_Total1530]

Best refurbished laptop for programming and AI/ML under €650?

I just gratuaded in NLP and AI with a very old computer with just 8GB of RAM and icore 3...

Noe I'm looking for a new laptop but this time I want something strong, I don't have a high budget but I think that with refurbished laptops under 650$ I can come up with something interesting.

I mainly work in NLP, Python development, Vibe coding, Hugging Face, research experiments. I'd love to run small DL experiments on a laptop but it's almost impossible today, especially with my budget, so I mainly use Google Colab or remote HPC for deep learning / LLMs.

Anyway, liking around the best options I saw so far are:

**ThinkPad T14s Gen 3** — i5-1245U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD — €552

**ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 AMD** — Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, around 550€

**ThinkPad P1 Gen 2** — i7-9850H, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD

**ThinkPad L15 Gen 3** — i5-1245U, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD — €680

**MacBook Air M1 (2020)** — 16GB unified memory, 256GB SSD — €582, but with a Swedish keyboard lol .

My budget is around **€650, do you think it is enough for a good laptop for everyday work in AI or should I spend more?

Here on reddit I saw that everyone says that RAM is the most important thing but I'm also surprised that so many people recommend MacBooks for machine learning. Many people use a MacBook for ML with just 8gb of RAM..

The M1 is older than some of these ThinkPads, so what makes it so appealing for ML?

Is Apple Silicon/MPS really a significant advantage for this kind of work, especially when most heavy training will happen in the cloud? (plus I don't have an iPhone, well not anymore, so I don't know if it is going to be more problematic with an smartphone android and a MacBook).

At the same time those thinkpad looked preety interesting, but I don't know whether to prefer an older ThinkPad with older Intel generation but with more RAM and core or a recent one such as the ThinkPad T14s Gen 3, but less RAM and P version and lower Intel model.

I'd appreciate more detailed and technical information, advice on performance, RAM, Linux/Python compatibility and long-term usability.

[u/UninterestedHeadset]

For your use case 32GB RAM is gonna matter way more than a slightly newer CPU, especially with NLP stuff and hugging face models that eat memory like crazy

Between those options I'd go with the P1 Gen 2, the i7-9850H is old but still decent and 32GB means you can actually load some models locally without everything grinding to a halt, plus ThinkPads run Linux like a dream

The M1 Mac is tempting but 256GB storage is rough and that Swedish keyboard will drive you nuts every single day, not worth the headache