This is a bit of a rant; feel free to skip it if you’re here for the KDE content.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://pointieststick.com/2025/07/13/the-hunt-for-a-perfect-laptop-continues/
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://pointieststick.com/2025/07/13/the-hunt-for-a-perfect-laptop-continues/
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Really well articulated. Owning an FW16, I agree with his criticisms of the FW13 (for the models share problems), and have learnt of two worthy competitors.
Not very programmer-related, but lately I’m facing issues with the structure of laptops: I see hinges failing even with the most care, as they are mounted to leverage on the plastic/aluminium chassis instead of having a solid framework. It may be on not so high-end laptops, but I took a look at several older laptops and they seem stronger; I even resorted to repurposing an old tower in fear I could break my laptop.
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@Samuele, I agree. I’ve some old HP laptops, similar to:
They’re infinitely sturdier than anything that my family has been able to purchase since, excepting the Frameworks. Most’re obviously designed to fail.
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I couldn’t agree more. Reducing the product lines was actually the first thing Steve Jobs did at Apple back then to save it from going out of business. He said we need a low and a high end product both for mobile and desktop. Four products, period.
I wish there was a Macbook Air with a proper forward del key, Ctrl-Fn-Keys instead of Fn-Ctrl and proper Linux support with open drivers by Apple. But that’s not going to happen so we’re stuck with what we have now. I’m currently on a years-old ThinkCentre AIO on the desktop and a beaten up Dell Latitude 7310 (smallish and ok keyboard) on the go, both from Ebay.
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Thanks, a very worthwhile rant here.
I haven’t (yet) tried help from ChatGPT for my next laptop purchase, but probably should. Same requirements, plus 16:10 ratio, dedicated Ethernet and HDMI slots, and replaceable disk and memory… aka. Quest for the Holy Grail! I haven’t found 1 contender on the market right now. Help most welcome indeed.
My shortlist, last I checked:
- System76 Darter Pro (Eth, HDMI at back)
- KDE Slimbook VI AMD 14 (HDMI Eth at back) - 999 EUR
- Tuxedo Pulse AMD 14 slim black (HDMI, microSD, NO Eth) - 968,07 EUR
- SCHENKER VIA 14 Pro graphite (M24) AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS + Radeon - €1,160.89 (near identical to Pulse)
- XMG EVO 14 (M24) AMD Radeon or INTEL 7 (Eth at back) 1,000 EUR
- ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 Intel Core i7 (no Eth, RAM soldered) – 16:10 starts with Gen9
- ThinkPad P14s Gen 5, 14.5" WUXGA (Eth, RAM upgradable)
- TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen9 - AMD (HDMI + Eth at back) - 1100 EUR
- ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 (metal) 5 (Eth on left) RAM soldered?
In the meantime I pray for my moded X200 i7 board to survive another 15 years (purchased that one in 2009, still running strong 12hrs/ day). When manufacturers knew how to make reliable no non-sense hardware…
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Love how the arrow keys stick out instead of being squashed: my laptop has them shrunk so that they enter in the rectangle of the keyboard, but they are too small!
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The larger the (bl***) touchpad, the smaller the keys…
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@ngraham What did you end up buying ?
Nothing. I’m back with my existing device — an HP Pavilion Plus 14 — until I find something that can actually outdo this little $500 wonder.
Can we keep this open? Please everyone, post suggestions if you find any.
My last try was a Starlabs Starlite. It’s not exactly bad but it’s pretty slow and the touch screen has serious problems with Wayland. Sending it back - if Starlabs follows up on their promise to take it back. So staying on the beaten Dell Latitude 7310.
When I replaced my xps15 with an 8th gen intel it was for a thinkpad t15g g2 with an 11th gen intel, and the only decently affordable laptop that could do 128gb of ram with 4x dimm slots, and happened to have a 3080rtx gpu as well. Arch/KDE work great on it though, once you figure out dynamic wallpapers cause a 100gb memory leak .
It’s a bit long in the tooth now, using it with arch these past few years I wish for better amd cpu and anything but nvidia drivers for graphics. I’m hoping for a new framework 16 to replace it with amd, but even their (better) dgpu is nvidia now, which for my money I want a decent amd gpu, NOT nvidia and their proven terrible drivers.
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Not sure how much folks are still interested in my laptop ramblings, but I did get a chance to try two high-end laptops for a few weeks before eventually returning both.
HP EliteBook 1040 Gen 11 2-in-1
On paper it should have been the perfect device. 2.8k OLED screen, great speakers, big battery, tough case, text nav keys.
Unfortunately I simply could not get used to its keyboard. Most of the keys were large and low-travel, which I didn’t like. The arrow keys, by contrast, were super tiny and positioned close to the PageUp and PageDown keys. ThinkPads use this arrangement too, but the keys are much larger and harder to mis-press. On the EliteBook, I could not stop pressing the wrong arrow or text nav keys. They were simply too small for my fingers.
The Delete key was also not in the top-left corner. Instead the power button/fingerprint reader was there. Baffling placement, and I couldn’t get used to the Delete key being farther to the left.
Finally, the battery life was unexpectedly poor; only about 5 hours of actual use, vs the 7-8 I can get out of my Pavilion 14 plus. The Intel Core Ultra 155H CPU was just not very efficient.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10
Again, on paper it was perfect. Unfortunately this one got off to a bad start: choosing the nice OLED screen bundled an Intel IPU6 “Computer Vision” camera which didn’t work in either Arch or Fedora.
There were other Linux compatibility issues, too: I experienced micro-stutters on both distros. Apparently this is an issue with the Intel Xe GPU not having have a reliable driver yet! I was not expecting this at all. I expect both issues to be solved in a year or two, but they’re deal-breakers right now.
Battery life was also disappointing — even more so because this computer uses Intel’s Lunar Lake CPU, which is heavily marketed for power efficiency. To give Intel some credit, I did see the power usage drop as low as 1.8 watts when the machine was on but idle. However once I would actually start using the machine, it would go up to 7-9 watts. With only a 57 watt-hour battery, actual battery life was about 6-7 hours. Again, worse than my Pavilion 14 plus! And with poorer CPU performance to show for itself, too.
Finally, I sprang for the haptic touchpad and was disappointed in its implementation. It mostly works brilliantly — except for a 1cm tall dead zone at the top. This dead zone is there to emulate buttons when you’re using the trackpoint, but it’s extremely frustrating when using the touchpad as a touchpad.
This machine went back to the vendor as well.
The hunt continues.
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Very, thanks! There are so many laptops on the market, it’s hard to even keep track of the new ones coming out. It amazes me how even companies like HP and Dell make 342 different models and not a single good one.
Unfortunately there is no perfect laptop. You can only get close to what you want. There’s always something that falls short.
The best hardware I ever used was the ARM based Macbook Pro. The battery life and trackpad are the best parts of it (thanks ARM and FingerWorks). The speakers beat any other laptop I’ve had too. But I just couldn’t use MacOS long term, or be bothered fighting to put Linux on it (though I did run Asahi for a bit).
I’ve owned Apple, Asus, Clevo (and other branded resellers), Gigabyte, Lenovo and Sony laptops and the best I’ve owned that wasn’t Apple, was IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads. They were also well supported back in the day (and today) on Linux because of business contracts and Linux devs being issued them.
I’m currently running a Thinkpad T14s Gen 4 AMD system, which replaced a Thinkpad X260. And the only things I really miss are the detachable battery and the form factor. 12.5" was perfect for a mobile device, sitting between the too small 11" (Which I had in a Gigabyte X11) and larger 13.3" (which I had many laptops in). I had a few 15.6" laptops over the years and I really didn’t like the form factor. The reason I chose a 14" device over the X1 and X13? Cost. When spec’d to what I wanted, the X1 and X13 where far more expensive than the T14S.
Unpopular opinion: As a long time Thinkpad user, I hate the nub-mouse on the keyboard and instead use a mouse or the trackpad. I wouldn’t miss it if it disappeared tomorrow.
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I very much feel you. A laptop is nothing I’m looking for, but I have similar issues with input devices (and currently also graphics cards). And if I cannot find the perfect mouse or keyboard, how hard it has to be to find a whole computer sticking on the keyboard? 
In fact, I don’t understand why laptops are not more modular. It shouldn’t be hard to make the keyboard panel changeable and to develop some nice layouts for different use cases. A good laptop case does not need to change with every new iteration, so better having a good and boring case that just works (so that keyboards from 10 years ago can still be build in) than always new issues to deal with etc. I know it’s just one part of the laptop and just an example. But also a part where most laptops would fail to make me happy.
I am used to buying previous-gen enterprise laptops (Latitudes, Thinkpads, etc.) They are easily user-serviceable and they can be found for relatively cheap on the refurbished or second hand market (so I won’t be too disappointed if some aspects are sub par). I stick to FHD screens.
Unfortunately, Intel 9-10th gen have become too slow for modern usage, 11-12th gen tend to run hot and noisy and there are not as many AMD options on the refurb market yet. Also, display quality has gone down, now standard issue FHD panels have limited color space and only higher-end variants with 4k displays are better in this regard.
Looking now at the HP 845 G8 with Ryzen, however I have read that the standard display is poor quality.
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Framework laptops are pretty modular.
Not perfect but much easier to replace parts than on other vendor’s models.
I second that. My last new laptop was a 2012 Macbook Pro. I’d buy new if there was anything comparable on the PC market but until then I will keep buying refurbished. There’s absolutely no problem with running KDE on a 10 year old office machine.
There are even laptops where the inner hardware is soldered (like storage or RAM). It’s nice to have few alternatives as you linked, but few vendors are not enough. A keyboard with number pad on my language is no available. If I would like to have a laptop, that would be a must have requirement. Other vendors have such keyboards, but do not build their hardware modular. That’s the issue I describe. It should be a standard and no “one or two vendors doing it right”.