High reliability laptop? Very Budget.

[LabRat 891]

Used and Refurbished, expected.

Requirements:
-Well under $1k, <$500 preferred.
-Durable, Reliable. Parts available.
-Performance sufficient for multitasking, many-tabbed web browsing.
-Dual-Channel SO-DIMM capable
-NVME slot(s)
-USB 3.x port(s)
-No dGPU (IME, they always seem to have issues w/age)

Preferences:
Ryzen 4000 or better APU preferred.
CD/DVD/BD drive preferred.
Screen Size is mostly Irrelevant, but 1080P+ preferred.
Backlit KB is verge of a 'must have'; can do without (or replace w/ backlit KB later?)

Laptop may end up main PC for some time, games are last on the list (but, still on the list).

Suggestions?
I was thinking a late-model ThinkPad, off the top of my head.
How're HPe Probooks and Elitebooks, these days?


Edit:
So far, these are attractive @ $150-350 shipped

Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen1 and Gen 2 - Ryzen 7 4000U or Ryzen 7 5000U
Lenovo ThinkPad T14S Gen1 and Gen 2 - Ryzen 7 4000U or Ryzen 7 5000U
HP Probook 445 G7 - AMD Ryzen 7 4700U
HP Probook 445 G8 - AMD Ryzen 7 5800U
HP ProBook 445 G9 - AMD Ryzen 7 5825U

 

[DeanoVIP]

Personally from experience, the Thinkpads are solid! Even the older P52, P53 are amazing and well built, lots of expandability. I had a P50 and I used to game on the quadro card, I kid you not that thing never went over 70c and was still quiet, ok it was chunky but great. I have a P14s with the 4750u and its built well, 2 years of use I opened it up and no real dust build up, only a single ram slot as one is soldered but overall great quality. If you look at intel options, you do have Thunderbolt which can offer you a little more room to upgrade for rapid storage or eGPU. Some of the Dell XPS's are fairly good too, but Thinkpads would be my go-to.

 

[Space Lynx]

@LabRat 891 I don't think you will find a better deal than this at $379 (no Costco membership required, yet you still get that amazing 90 day return policy and top tier customer service if anything goes wrong during warranty period):

https://www.costco.com/acer-aspire-5-15.6%22-touchscreen-laptop---13th-gen-intel-core-i5-13420h---fhd-1920-x-1080-display---windows-11.product.4000233966.html

I can't tell if the ram is upgradeable or not though... if it is not then this is a pass... if it is then a $30 stick of ram should slot right in, but again I have no idea. I think the igpu on this is 48 execution units, which is not bad for raptor lake igpu. It will run Zoom virtual background. Costco has a Intel n305 chip laptop for $299, this one will not run virtual background.

Also, if you ever decide to run Linux someday, the newest versions of Linux utilize ecore to run the background tasks, and there was a news article recently I saw that showed an Intel laptop like this one getting 36 hours of battery life... cause Linux is using the ecores so well... wild.


edit: I think the L in LDDR5 means the ram is not upgradeable? am I correct in that assumption? in which case I just wasted both our time. sigh.

​

 

[joemama]

I think the L in LDDR5 means the ram is not upgradeable? am I correct in that assumption? in which case I just wasted both our time. sigh.

Isn't that L just for low power?

 

[LabRat 891]

Personally from experience, the Thinkpads are solid!

Never owned, worked on many. Agreed.

Even the older P52, P53 are amazing and well built, lots of expandability. I had a P50 and I used to game on the quadro card, I kid you not that thing never went over 70c and was still quiet, ok it was chunky but great. I have a P14s with the 4750u and its built well, 2 years of use I opened it up and no real dust build up, only a single ram slot as one is soldered but overall great quality. If you look at intel options, you do have Thunderbolt which can offer you a little more room to upgrade for rapid storage or eGPU. Some of the Dell XPS's are fairly good too, but Thinkpads would be my go-to.

The soldered RAM kills it. But, IIRC, the T-series typ. had dual SO-DIMMs.

Isn't that L just for low power?

That is correct. However, LPDDR is pretty much exclusively soldered-on.
DDR4(L?) OtoH would be merely low-power spec SO-DIMMs.(DDR3L, existed)

@LabRat 891 I don't think you will find a better deal than this at $379 (no Costco membership required, yet you still get that amazing 90 day return policy and top tier customer service if anything goes wrong during warranty period):

https://www.costco.com/acer-aspire-5-15.6%22-touchscreen-laptop---13th-gen-intel-core-i5-13420h---fhd-1920-x-1080-display---windows-11.product.4000233966.html

I can't tell if the ram is upgradeable or not though... if it is not then this is a pass... if it is then a $30 stick of ram should slot right in, but again I have no idea. I think the igpu on this is 48 execution units, which is not bad for raptor lake igpu. It will run Zoom virtual background. Costco has a Intel n305 chip laptop for $299, this one will not run virtual background.

Also, if you ever decide to run Linux someday, the newest versions of Linux utilize ecore to run the background tasks, and there was a news article recently I saw that showed an Intel laptop like this one getting 36 hours of battery life... cause Linux is using the ecores so well... wild.


edit: I think the L in LDDR5 means the ram is not upgradeable? am I correct in that assumption? in which case I just wasted both our time. sigh.

That would be a great value, just not for me. No hate for Acer, but I'm aware of how they build "Aspire" laptops. Not the durability and modularity I'm looking for.

Thunderbolt is neat and all, but I'd rather have better pre-DX10 game support of AMD.
I 'believe in' the APU as a platform, and accept I'm probably not going to get USB4 in my price bracket.


I have a $332 offer sent to me on a HP probook with a R7 5825u, upgradeable RAM, etc.

HP ProBook 445 G9 14" FHD AMD Ryzen 7 5825U 16GB 256GB SSD

Seems attractive but, I'm not sure of HP's 'pro' line's quality since they de-branded "enterprise" (and reorganized internally, some. IIRC)

 

[unwind-protect]

I have a T14 AMD gen 1. I like it. But only one of the RAM modules is socketed, the other one is fixed.

 

[LabRat 891]

I have a T14 AMD gen 1. I like it. But only one of the RAM modules is socketed, the other one is fixed.

I wonder if the Gen2 or Gen3 are different? 'Seen a lot of T13 and T14s otherwise decently spec'd and in my price range.

Edit: just checked out the maintenance manuals. No dual SO-DIMM on either gen2 or gen3.
That sucks. Looking like a (AMD) ThinkPad is off the menu.

Edit 2: the L14 and L15 seem to have dual SO-DIMM.
Seeing on Lenovos site that the L series is supposedly plastic, that's a downer. Not sure yet if deal breaker.

 

[unwind-protect]

I wonder if the Gen2 or Gen3 are different? 'Seen a lot of T13 and T14s otherwise decently spec'd and in my price range.

Edit: just checked out the maintenance manuals. No dual SO-DIMM on either gen2 or gen3.
That sucks. Looking like a (AMD) ThinkPad is off the menu.

Edit 2: the L14 and L15 seem to have dual SO-DIMM.
Seeing on Lenovos site that the L series is supposedly plastic, that's a downer. Not sure yet if deal breaker.

Well, you can have dual-channel 32 GB in the T14 gen 1. Or single-channel 48 GB.

 

[DeanoVIP]

Just to add with some of these laptops that have one soldered ram and the other socketed, if it has 8gb soldered and you add 16gb stick, it will run in dual channel for 16gb of the 24gb available. But if it is a route you take single channel running is better than too little ram

To be honest for web browsing, and lots of tabs and some office work any older quad core will be more than enough even a T480, unless your doing some serious work that requires heavy processing power. 16gb of ram should cover you for quite a few tabs and applications open 32gb should do it all which most will support upto.

 

[LabRat 891]

Just to add with some of these laptops that have one soldered ram and the other socketed, if it has 8gb soldered and you add 16gb stick, it will run in dual channel for 16gb of the 24gb available. But if it is a route you take single channel running is better than too little ram

Was expecting (hoping) to shell out for 2x32GB DDR4-3200.

Do I need 64GB? No.
Will I ever need 64GB? probably not.
But as a (low-graphics) desktop-replacement... Why not?

To be honest for web browsing, and lots of tabs and some office work any older quad core will be more than enough even a T480, unless your doing some serious work that requires heavy processing power. 16gb of ram should cover you for quite a few tabs and applications open 32gb should do it all which most will support upto.

On that note: I was considering some oldarse ThinkPad, and LibreBoot. 'Just entirely writing off 3D acceleration. (+rem. batt.)

Though, something approaching my old R5 3600-5600's performance level, would be much more "highly acceptable" (very little 'compromise'). NtM On the graphics-side, Vega 8 (w/ dual-channel DDR4-3200) isn't a total slouch.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-Vega-8-Ryzen-4000-5000-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.453150.0.html

 

[DeanoVIP]

If your not concerned about weight:

Thinkpad P53 with a i7 9850H which is not too far off a 3600, has 4 ram slots and 3x nvme slots... so not too shabby. I think your lose about 10% on CPU performance but I doubt your notice anything. They are really easy to service and look after and you have thunderbolt too. Quadro card or you can disable and just run off the Intel iGPU.

You can get some with a Xeon but not really worth it and they do a larger one the P73 as well. In the UK you can pick up a decent P53 for £450.

 

[LabRat 891]

If your not concerned about weight:

Thinkpad P53 with a i7 9850H which is not too far off a 3600, has 4 ram slots and 3x nvme slots... so not too shabby. I think your lose about 10% on CPU performance but I doubt your notice anything. They are really easy to service and look after and you have thunderbolt too. Quadro card or you can disable and just run off the Intel iGPU.

You can get some with a Xeon but not really worth it and they do a larger one the P73 as well. In the UK you can pick up a decent P53 for £450.

A lot about that suggestion is attractive. However, I don't need or want a dGPU.
In my time as a Technician working on Laptops, dGPUs were a common failure point (cold solder joints).
ATI-AMD or nVidia; HP, Dell, Asus, Lenovo, etc. didn't matter.

That's what's attracted me to an APU. Decent battery life, decent graphics performance, good legacy compatibility. Portability is a big plus, too.
NtM, I've owned a couple pre-Ryzen APU laptops; they were used hard, upgraded, and sold working (or, still are working + on-hand).

Intended use is basically as an 'anywhere in the house' Laptop, and a 'take w/ me in the car' Laptop.
Little to no compromises on what I'm used to on CPU-RAM-Storage; 'acceptable' compromise on graphics.
It'll probably mostly be heavy web browsing, etc, and some older games.
Running Unity engine games on all-low, is about the most-extreme gaming I'm thinking of

So far, my 'ideal' laptop is
~15" Al or Mg chassis
1920x1200 (1080 OK) [VRR or high refresh would be great, but hard to ascertain if-equipped; potentially upgradeable]
SATAbay-equipped and/or dual NVME slot-equipped
Dual SODIMM slots [for upgrade or replacement in failure]
Backlit KB + dedicated Left and Right mouse click buttons [+points for 'the nub' pointing device]
Zen 2 or Zen 3 8-core APU w/ Vega 8 [no dGPU, or no-cost-add and disable'able]
[Used/Refurb, <$400]

-and I'm willing to compromise into a much more affordable 13-14" w/ less expansion, if otherwise golden. (Would be easier to move about w/ anyway.)