I guess it's also worth noting that I plan to have a docking station, so the quality of the screen of the laptop itself is of little concern to me.
You haven't mentioned anything about making this thing mobile and you mentioned the screen isn't very important as you will have a docking station. Why a laptop instead of a desktop?
Fiance wants the mobility. She has this cutting machine she uses for some of the crafting stuff she does, and I guess there are software components to it. She wants to be able to have the laptop in the same room as the cutting machine when needed. So we were considering doing a gaming desktop and a separate laptop for her, but that just seemed like a little much, considering I bought a Series X and plan to get a PS5. I plan to hook the docking station up with my current office setup for work and have a KVM switch. But I can definitely see myself wanting to get out of the office from time to time and using it as a laptop in any other room of my house.
You'd want to check if the motherboard can handle more ram, if so you can buy it and replace it yourself if you need it. Same thing with hard drives. I usually buy the smallest drive from the OEM, then replace it with an M.2 that I bought on Amazon and reformat as soon as the laptop comes in. You're not going to be replacing the GPU or CPU but hard disk and RAM are generally pretty easy to access.
I use a laptop exclusively. It's normally on my desk hooked up to my docking station, peripherals, and 5120x1440 monitor. But it's super quiet, not a furnace, doesn't take up any room, and I can grab it and go when I need to. I generally don't need the raw power of the top end GPU, the mobile variants are generally more than enough for what I need.
Started at “over an hour” wait. Crept down to 58 minutes, then 54, 47, eventually all the way down to 10 minutes before I’d be let into the event. them it crept back up slowly until it was back to “over an hour.” Then the event ended without ever letting me in. Sad day.
Think I'm getting this: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/lapt...gion-5-series/legion-5-pro-16ith6h/82jd005yus
This is a company I kept coming back to when I made my last purchase in 2020. Had to cancel my order unfortunately due to the timing of the shipment and got an Asus Rog Zephyrus M15 or something instead but would've been better off with Eluktronics. They go unnoticed but get a lot of high praise when you google them or search on youtube. Nice that you can have a plain chassis as well. I think I ordered a Eluktronics MAG-15 Ultra Light Magnesium Alloy 15.6" 144Hz Gaming Laptop (1TB PCIe SSD + 16GB RAM) for like $1699 at the time. https://www.eluktronics.com/
I don't know about their new lines but I think this was the video that had convinced me to go with this one at the time. My focus was on thinner/less gamer looking laptops. Think you can even remove their logo from the screen lid.
Lenovo is fine. I hate the look of that laptop though. My first gaming one was a Lenovo. It had an expandable slot to remove the disc drive and add a 2nd GPU.. which I did lol. It ended up getting stolen though. Lenovo comes up with some interesting designs. https://www.newegg.com/dusk-black-lenovo-ideapad-y500-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834312439
I don't care at all if it's thin or less gamer looking. Their options are like, $600 more than the one I've selected.
I don't care about the look at all. I don't think the laptop will ever leave the house, and even if it did, that's just not something I care about. I'm already gonna have to drop an extra $200-300 for a docking station, plus whatever a KVM switch costs, cables, headset, etc. I'm not trying to add an extra $600 onto just the laptop.
I would avoid anything over 1080p on a gaming laptop. The GPU will go outdated quickly and its accelerated even further by an unneeded 1440p or 4k screen. IMO those are gimmics. I had a 4k one a couple of years ago. I never was able to run anything above 1080p. Even when it was brand new.
Show me an Eluktronics laptop that's 3070 and gets me 2 TB SSD, and 32 GB RAM for anywhere close to $1,800.
