Photographer's Laptops A quick comparison |
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Originally, I developed this page for my own use, as a brief summary to help me choose a replacement for my trusty Alienware gaming laptop which is expected to die any day now after six years of service.
Some of my friends were also interested, so I made the page accessible by invitation — as long as you know the URL. Now I decided to make it public, hoping it may become of interest to a few people with needs and preferences similar to mine. Those are mostly related to portability and performance; the former limits the choice to narrow-bezel 13-inch screens; the latter — to the recent-generation Intel mobile processors (more on that will follow). Strictly speaking, CPU performance is not so important if your laptop is dedicated to photography alone (storage/retrieval, postprocessing), but even some of these tasks will benefit from it (raw development, panorama stitching, and more). My particular needs exceed those, though: I want to be able to run the GNU C++ development environment smoothly, as well as to use our flight analysis software, and that, with more than 40 000 flights per day in the States, is not so trivial. In addition, I would very much like to be able to play some not-so-cutting-edge games, even if in low-quality graphics mode and in reduced resolution. Good source of information: notebookcheck.net !! | ||
Legend: | ||
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Last Update: 2017/10/18 | Base Components | Display | Connectivity | Size [mm] & Weight [g] | Power | Price ($US) | Notes | |||||||||||
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CPU | RAM [GB] | GPU | SSD [GB] | Size [in] | Sp | Res | WiFi | BT | Ports | W | D | H | Wgt | Batt [Wh] | Dur [h] | |||
This is my 6-year old gaming laptop I want to replace: | ||||||||||||||||||
Alienware M11X R3 | i7-2637M | 8 | 540M/2GB | 0 | 11.5 | - | 1366×768 | n | 3.0 | 2×U3-U2-H-S-s | 286 | 233 | 33 | 1996 | 63 | 8 | 1420 | [1] |
Here are 13-inch travel laptops I checked: | ||||||||||||||||||
Dell XPS13 | i7-8550U | 8 | HD 620 | 256 | 13.3 | g | 1920×1080 | ac | 4.1 | 2×U3-S-CT-A | 304 | 200 | 15 | 1305 | 60 | 22 | 1170 | |
HP Spectre 13 | i7-8550U | 8+ | HD 620 | 256+ | 13.3 | t | 1920×1080 | ac | 4.2 | C31-2×CT-A | 308 | 224 | 10.4 | 1110 | 43 | 11.6 | 1400 | |
Razer Blade Stealth | i7-8550U | 16 | UHD 620 | 256-512 | 13.3 | 3200×1800 | ac | 4.1 | U3×2-CT×2-A | 321 | 206 | 14 | 1350 | 321 | 206 | 14 | ||
LG Gram 13 | i5-7200U | 8 | HD 620 | 256 | 13.3 | t | 1920×1080 | ac | 4.1 | 2×U3-H-s-A | 307 | 211 | 15 | 939 | 60 | 11 | 1100 | |
Samsung Notebook 9 | i7-7500U | 8 | HD 620 | 256 | 13.3 | g | 1920×1080 | ac | 4.1 | 2×U3-C3-H-s-A | 315 | 218 | 12.7 | 862 | 54 | 11.5 | 1200 | |
Xiaomi Mi Air 13 | i7-6500U | 8 | 940MX/1GB | 256 | 13.3 | t | 1920×1080 | ac | 4.1 | 2×U3-C3-H-A | 310 | 211 | 15 | 1280 | 40 | 9.5 | 990 | |
The new great thing from Microsoft, somewhat bigger and heavier: | ||||||||||||||||||
Surface Book 2 | i7-8650U | 8+ | GTX1050/2GB | 256+ | 13.5 | t | 3000×2000 | ac | 4.1 | 2×U31-C31-S-A | 312 | 232 | 23 | 1642 | ? | 17 | 2000 | [2,3] |
And this is the wunderkind pocket Windows computer: | ||||||||||||||||||
GPD Pocket Mini | x7-Z8750 | 8 | HD 405 | 128 | 7 | t | 1920×1200 | ac | 4.1 | U3-C3-h-A | 182 | 109 | 19 | 503 | 26 | 5 | 480 | |
Notes |
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About CPUs: Dell and HP are using the recent 8-th generation processors. While these were expected to be a minor upgrade of the last year's 7-th generation, this may not be the case: most benchmarks show speed improvement of 30 or even 40 percent. I'm expecting the other companies to catch up by the Black Friday; this may be worth the wait. The Surface uses a slightly better 8-th generation CPU, the i7-8650U. It differs from the '8550 (Dell, HP) only in the closk rate, zbout 5% faster, and this is reflected in a 5% improvements in speed benchmarks. The GPD Pocket runs an Atom processor, designed for low power use, not speed. It uses just 2 W when idle, 4 W "typically" (whatever that means). The power usage of the i7-8550U is about four times higher than that — but so are the CPU benchmarks CPU Mark of 8126 versus 1892 About screens: There are very few things in computing that I dislike more thah highly reflective screens. |
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Posted 2017/06/18, last updated 2017/10/20 | Copyright © 2017 by J. Andrzej Wrotniak |