Mission-Super-Impossible | Buying a Laptop

tldr; Buying a laptop, level of difficulty : so-very-hard-near-impossible-super-legendary-level-hard.

You're making an investment that'll stay with your for years. You're buying something you're going to see, use, spend time on everyday. You've got to make the right decision. It should be perfect.

You find the right specifications at the right cost, but then its just so ugly.

You find a beautiful laptop, but then its specifications are barely good enough for browsing the net and running MS Excel.

You finally find the right specifications, the beautiful keyboard you've been looking for with the perfect trackpad, and bam, it costs twice as much as what the ugly-but-right-specifications laptop costs.

Oh and of course, then there's the high end MacBook Pro, that's priced at everything I own, combined. The cheaper MacBooks aren't worth buying.


Looks                     +         -       +      -
Specifications       +       +       -       -
Price                     ++       ~      ~      -
Can Buy                 N       Y       Y      N

I wasted 30 minutes perfecting the margins of that table. Man. 

So here's what I want.
  • 6-8GB RAM. I always have A LOT of tabs open in several windows and CPU intensive programs like Android Studio, IntelliJ IDE. I tried react-native and that's super CPU intensive too.
  • A 14' display. 15.6' are too big. 13.3' is too small. 14' is just perfect.
  • I'm going to replace the HDD with an SSD, so it really doesn't matter what comes with the laptop. Its silly why laptop makers aren't selling SSD by default now.
  • Under 2kg. Laptops really shouldn't be too heavy. They're meant to be carried around everywhere.
  • A decent battery life. Manufacturers that quote upto 8 hours of battery life really mean it can run for 4 hours on normal use. 8 hours is just when its the screen is on and you do absolutely nothing. So, anything that runs for 2-4 hours on normal use is good.
  • And lastly, a very nice keyboard.
Notice the arrow keys - this is how they should be - unlike the newer models that squish the up and down arrow keys. No silly keypad, big check :D The keys should be slightly more spaced than this.

I'll update here once I find what I'm looking for.

Update.
Asus P2430U. Everything I wanted, and it's super affordable!
1TB, 8GB RAM, Intel i5 (6th gen, though I really don't see much difference between the gens), 14 inch laptop, exactly the keyboard I wanted, 9 hours of battery life (yeah, I never believe them, but even it works 30% of the time they claim, I'd be content).

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 3, 2016 at 12:01 AM

    MacBook pro 840HN/A

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 15, 2016 at 12:01 PM

    Hai Rishabh .. have you already bought this Asus P2430u ?
    please help me out with your review on it.

    Thank You

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rishabh BhardwajOctober 16, 2016 at 5:44 AM

      Hi Naresh,
      Yes, I bought the Asus P2430u. I love the laptop - like I mentioned above, the battery life is really great, runs for about 6 hours (really does), love the keyboard. I extended the RAM to 8GB. Its affordable, decently lightweight (the battery is sort of heavy since its a 6 cell battery, adding about 400grams to the laptop).

      So, I definitely recommend it.

      Delete
  3. mamumDecember 24, 2016 at 10:00 AM

    I just bought this model asus p2430u from Bangladesh at BDT-46400 from laptop fair.
    it has 8gb ram which may be extendable up to 16 gb.
    1tb hdd,core I-5 6th gen processor with 2gb grafix
    battery is very good.
    the laptop has 3 years international warranty.
    ........
    I asked them for asus p2430uj but by mistake the provided me asus p2430u,
    can u please tell me what is the difference between these two models???
    in which date asus p2430u came to market?
    is uj better than u?

    ReplyDelete
  4. mamunDecember 24, 2016 at 10:43 AM

    another important thing in back side of the laptop there is a sticker where in the the left side written model number:p2430u but in the right side 2430uj has written(not as model number) in the battery also written 2430uj.
    thats why i'm a bit confused about its exact model number...!!!

    ReplyDelete

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