Laptop Buyer’s Guide For The 2020 Holidays
By: Al Javier
Tags: Shopping, Gifts, Holidays, Laptop, Guides And Tutorials

It’s the holiday season again and there’s a bunch of sleek new laptop models out there. Which one should you get? Inspired by my friends' constant questioning of specs and model names, I’ve decided to write a dedicated guide — one that isn’t sponsored by a big name manufacturer or brand. This one’s real. I’m here to teach you how to properly watch out for trickery commonly employed by retailers and maybe break the jargon used as marketing buzz words.

Ready? Let’s begin.

Image by Jaycee Mariano

Online or Traditional?

The first major question is, would you opt for e-commerce or go to the malls to check and test out the lineup yourself? This is important as there are different variables at play here. Some are beyond your control and you should be prepared for this.

Online

The thing with ordering online is, well first off, if you’re coming from the general western part of the world, you’re not unfamiliar with ordering expensive electronics via Amazon or Best Buy. If you’re from, say, the Southeast Asian region, this might be concerning, especially if there’s no cash-on-delivery option. Naturally, Online buying has a lot more things you can’t control, like the time of fulfillment, or the parcel might go missing — that sort of thing. I urge you to only buy from reputable sellers and not some shady store with an obviously-fake price, do your research.

Traditional

I have more experience purchasing computers and related items this way, and is my preferred method as you can test the product immediately if its fully operational, or a dud. Plus you know where to return it, and there’s a huge chance they have stock for a replacement, and the process is instantaneous.

What Is The Laptop’s Purpose?

Use case is an extremely important aspect of getting, well, pretty much anything. Is it a general purpose workstation? A spreadsheet encoder? A social media notebook? Will you develop apps with it? Or will you play demanding games with it?

Your purpose of buying a laptop is more important as it narrows down the choices that may appeal to you, or the person you’re giving that laptop to.

Social Media Consumption

Most things run on a web browser nowadays, and most laptop models are designed around running web browsers really well. If you or your gift’s recipient’s use case falls under the category of Twitter, Facebook, or even Reddit, literally any entry-level laptop will do. If you have extra money to burn, a Macbook Air, because that’s easier to carry around when it’s back to school.

I recommend anything within the (USD) $400 to $500 range. Don’t overspend on a laptop with immensely high specs. That’s probably overpowered for this purpose. These machines will usually have decent power and somewhere around the 8GB of RAM. Windows 10 tends to consume almost half of that immediately, so be wary of 4GB RAM models.

Image by Kaboompics.com

Workstation

I’ll go ahead and group the use case of app development, multimedia, and business in this category. This can generally range from $400 to $1000 depending on what scale of the workload is going to be put on the machine.

App developers, of whatever kind using whatever language or framework tend to use a lot of RAM and processing power (CPU). Graphics don’t really matter a whole lot — unless they’re using the graphics chip for machine learning or some other highly specialized use case. A $600 laptop should be okay as long as the CPU and RAM are decent. I’m talking the Intel H CPUs, just look for the H at the end of the model name, like Intel Core i5-8300H, or 9300H etc. For AMD, check out the Ryzen U series, similar in nomenclature, Ryzen 5 2500U, or 4700U etc. Don’t cheap out on RAM, you’ve been warned.

If you’re doing multimedia work like photography or illustrations, using a lot of Wacom peripherals, that leans a little heavier on graphics. Try finding a laptop equipped with an Nvidia MX350 graphics, or the AMD Vega 9. The distinct difference of laptops equipped with these versus those without is simple: they have a dedicated graphics chip capable of working alongside the CPU. This is helps reduce the CPU workload and extend its lifespan, plus the performance generally tends to be better.

Doing documents and assorted office work? Being tasked to do Zoom or Skype calls? Any laptop running Windows 10 that has a half-decent webcam should help. Just don’t ever cheap out on RAM, trust me on this. Terrible things will happen if you decide to opt for a 4GB machine.

Video Editing / CAD

This particular use case is graphics intensive, and is possibly one of the priciest to grab. Unless you take my tip right now and skip to the gaming laptop advice.

If you’re serious about CAD and/or video editing, the Quadro laptops are what you’re after. They’re not cheap. While there are exceptions, they generally have a price tag that’s higher than most gaming laptops. And their availability is always in question, compared to our next entry.

That sucks right? Let’s move on.

Gaming

Be honest, you’re here for this purpose. Even if you say you’re not, you still want to run games on your laptop anyway.

There’s a wide range of machines capable of running games, but which ones can run Cyberpunk 2077? Or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla? Perhaps you just want to play Counter Strike on it and call it a day. Whichever it is, I assure you, it’s expensive. It always will be. Let’s get it out of the door now, gaming laptops will always have hefty price tags, that’s expected. Still want one? Okay, let’s keep going.

Image by Fredrick Tendong

Gaming laptops are nothing more than regular laptops with powerful hardware. They can do whatever a normal laptop can, but so much faster. A lot of gaming laptop models are notoriously heavy and bulky making them not suited for frequent on-the-go use. There are slimmer and more stylish lineups out there but those gravitate towards the $1200 to $2000+ range.

What does this mean if you’re not really a gamer but need all this horsepower for a laptop? Turns out this is a cheaper alternative if you do video editing and CAD a lot. There are ultrabooks with gaming GPUs, which means you can use them if you need excellent color accuracy with the screen.

If you’re the type of person who likes to game on the side but also depend on their laptop as a workstation, consider a gaming laptop.

There’s also a lot of models with subtle design that doesn’t explode with RGB christmas lights. Again, they’re generally more expensive due to their slimmer form factor. Just prepare a budget range of $600 to $2000+. Still cheaper than a Macbook Pro.

Speaking of a Macbook Pro, these aren’t gaming machines. Don’t expect them to be. I’ve heard one person ask me if that is a good gaming laptop. They’re not for 2 reasons: 1. Hardware is not geared towards gaming, and 2. The operating system lacks support for a lot of games. While they’re certainly powerful machines, don’t get one because you want to game on it.

Specs Demystified

I’ll briefly go over some of the commonly thrown laptop specs by retailers and a bunch of online sellers.

Image by Pok Rie

CPU

The CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is what you’d usually look at to determine the overall speed of that machine. I’m oversimplifying of course but what you need to know is that model nomenclature is confusing. Not on purpose. Let’s try to break that barrier now:

Intel

The Core series is the most well-known for Intel, and they tend to be on almost every laptop for sale right now. The 8th gen to 10th gen lineup of Core series CPUs are pretty good, most sellers are transparent enough to just copy and paste the spec sheet, revealing the generation and type of CPU. There are suffix letters denoting the series of the chip, H series is geared towards performance, while the U series is for power saving.

AMD

They have an even more confusing lineup but if you’re after an AMD laptop, or just so happens your child is bugging you to get one, it’s probably because of the Ryzen series. Can’t really go wrong with any of them, depends on your budget — which we will tackle later.

GPU

The Graphics Processing Unit is kinda like your computer’s CPU but is specifically designed around rendering computer graphics. These are not the same as Integrated Graphics. The main difference being is that a GPU is a discrete physical chip on your laptop’s motherboard, while Integrated Graphics is built right into your CPU.

To help you get started, Nvidia is the easiest one to latch onto, as AMD tends to have the worse nomenclature compared to its closest competitor. If you’re aim is to do some gaming, go for the Nvidia GTX 10 or 16 series of cards. If you’re extra serious about graphics, go for the RTX 2000 series.

To be fair to those who want Radeon, there are a few laptops with the RX 5500 GPU out there, they’re not common, and I heard the build quality isn’t up to par compared to mainline Intel + Nvidia machines. I’m currently using something called an RX560X, which turns out to be just one of its many retail names — making AMD the most confusing for graphics.

RAM — Random Access Memory (GB)

Your laptop’s RAM determines the amount of applications and processes you can run at a time. The more you have, the more apps you can run concurrently. The less you have, the more likely it is for your machine to slowdown and eventually crash. I will keep repeating this but don’t buy a 4GB laptop.

HDD / SSD (GB and/or TB)

Hard Disk Drives are the older generation of storage media, they’re cheaper and tend to have higher capacity and lifespan. They’re meant to work alongside the Solid State Drive nowadays.

SSDs are expensive, and the price goes exponentially higher for bigger capacity. You’ll want to use this for your operating system’s boot drive.

Image by Karolina Gabrowska

Budget

Depending on your purpose above, and what specs you generally want, higher budget means higher performance and portability. Quick tips time:

Concept Stores Are Pricey

If you purchase from a branded concept store, as in the store with the brand name, they generally tend to be more expensive. There are reasons for this, but that’s outside our topic. Go for reputable retailers. This applies to online as well.

Older Generations Are Still Fast But Cheaper

Don’t always go for the latest and greatest, because they’re obviously going to be more expensive. I recommend you check out 2–3 year old models because they’re still fast and future-proof for today’s workload, especially if that workload only involves web browsing.

It’s Buying Time

If you decided to go online for purchasing, this is the end of the line for you. I can’t really ask you to test the device first or get a feel for its build quality, that sort of thing. I recommend watching some well-known content creators on YouTube for laptop reviews to at least know what it’s like owning that specific model. I do also suggest that you record your package arrival and opening so if it just so happens you receive a paperweight instead of a laptop, you have good proof.

Common Sleight of Hand In Retail

I’ve had the displeasure at being at the receiving end of some of this stuff when I first bought a laptop. They’re evolving every year.

Image by Felix Lichtenfeld

Upgrade Switcheroo

Do you want an upgrade for that laptop? Know the make and model of the RAM or SSD, these are usually the only things you can upgrade when buying a laptop. It’s common that retailers switch up the common Kingston drives for some cheap and unknown maker then charge you all the same. Ask them to show the upgrade’s origin or packaging.

Installation Fee

If you so happen to apply an upgrade, you will be charged for installation fee. Which I think is unfair, installing NVMe SSD and RAM is so hilariously easy, you can look this up on Google and do it yourself for free.

If they say they’re moving Windows from the preinstalled HDD to the SSD, and it costs money, be prepared for a hefty fee. Unless you really don’t want to move Windows yourself — prepare cash on hand.

Promo Coupon And Warranty

Does that laptop come with freebies or a coupon? Do you NOT care for those? Or maybe that “free" upgrade requires you to register the employee’s name instead of yours?

This is a giant red flag to step away from that store. They will register the coupon and in turn the warranty under their name. You’ll have basically no ownership of the laptop that you paid for. Avoid this at all costs!

Some Final Things To Consider

Always remember to test your laptop of choice before getting it. Don’t ever rush to grab one because your EQ is running short after 2020 robbed you of a good time.

“But my friend says X brand sucks, Y brand is better!” Don’t listen to that argument. Everyone says every brand sucks. You should pursue doing research before buying anything, it’s good for both your brain and your wallet. You at least now know better.

On the topic of Used Laptops, I really don’t recommend this. No amount of reassurance stickers is going to make that thing last longer or magically remove defects. Unless you’re really strapped for cash, then go for it, no one’s stopping you.

Image by Lisa Fotios

Conclusion

Okay that was a lot, if you made it this far, congratulations! You now know way better than you otherwise would have. This is baseline knowledge and there’s a lot more to consumer electronics that the marketing people sweep under the rug.

I didn’t do laptop recommendations because that means making assumptions about your use case and budget, and even current location!

Anyway thanks for reading. I hope this helps you in some way, or at least clears out much of the smoke and mirrors of laptops and computers in general.