Anyone Able To Help Me Find A Laptop?
1I’ve been a desktop pc person my whole life. I’ve never really bothered keeping up with laptops. Especially over the last several years, I’ve been way out of the loop.
Now circumstances are requiring me to go with a laptop. The single biggest thing I want, however, is a docking station that can run multiple monitors. 90%+ of the time, I’ll be stationary at home and using it like a desktop. It’s that last ~10% that requires me to be able to be mobile that means I have to go laptop.
Price point is under $1,000.
My other list of desirables:
15" form factor
16GB of RAM (When I am mobile, I’ll be doing heavy photoshop work and when I’m home, I’ll be doing VERY heavy spreadsheet work)
Dedicated graphics card but it doesn’t need to be really high end
At least 512GB storage, 1TB is even better
That’s really it. I’ve been looking mostly at gaming laptops since they are more likely to have 16GB of ram and a video card. However, it seems almost like docking stations are a thing of the past now. Most things seem to be port replicators and even those seem like very few of them are anything beyond glorified USB hubs. I honestly don’t care too much about brand, weight, thinness, etc.
I want to be able to plug in 2 monitors (If I can use the laptop screen as well, great. If not, I’m fine with that), keyboard, mouse, USB headset, an external USB hard drive, and external speakers.
Is what I want even a thing? Especially a docking station that provides power as well as connections for the other things?
I’ve been looking for weeks now and just can’t seem to come up with something that works.
Thank you for any suggestions!
- 8 comments, 6 replies
- Comment
Most laptops with a docking station can only do 2 external monitors. Any more, and seek a laptop with a dedicated graphics card. Also docking stations are old fashioned, you can get a usb c port replicator so it’s just one cable going to your laptop.
My suggestion for the port replicator.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=36656
Seconding the ‘port replicator’ approach, most brands have taken to docking through usb-c (or better yet thunderbolt 4), as the standard can support display out through display port.
Some brands have optimized docks (Razer, for example) but for the most part they’ve become a generic accessory, with some even including LAN ports (a once-common port that has been sacrificed to the pursuit of thin laptops.) But for the most part, large-format docks have become relegated as specialist gear for people that still need access to older port formats.
@rileyper I don’t agree on the old fashioned bit. There’s this idea that if manufacturers stop making something it must be out dated. They stopped making docking stations as a cost cutting measure. Hp’s slim dock did not support older ports.
Once USB3 became fast enough carry everything, they no longer had to custom design their boards to accommodate the dock port. They could just lease the technology from a 3rd party vendor.
My biggest gripe is that the modern docks provide a smaller footprint and a neater presentation (on the desk) than the replicators. W/o dock you have everything connected to replicator, power supply cable to replicator and possibly one for laptop, and then the cable across the desk to connect to the laptop. More horizontal space is being taken up.
All of the above is incorporated in the dock and, since everything is incorporated, you can power the laptop with the lid shut. All the port replicators I’ve worked with required you to open the laptop, power it on and quickly shut the lid, if you want to work with just your monitors.
Last spring/summer I bought my college-bound son a near-new Lenovo ThinkPad P51 mobile workstation on eBay: i7 7820HQ (2.90GHz), 16GB Ram, 512GB SSD, 15" FHD 1920x1080, Quadro M1200 graphics, W10Pro. Still had a year left on factory warranty.
ITEM PRICE: $720.00
Purchased a Lenovo 40A5 (powered) docking station online for $30 and picked up matching HP 22" monitors locally on Craigslist for something like $75. He and his brother set everything up in minutes.
I think you can find similar deals (well, maybe not still under warranty) today if you’re willing to buy ‘pre-owned’.
Pretty sure you’ll need to stick to higher end engineering workstations in order to employ docking stations - they’re still a common accessory for those machines.
Also consider HP Zbook 15 (my favorite) and Dell Precision (not my favorite, but works) with your desired features & price point; should find something that you like out there.
TLDR;
/image mobile workstation
this seems to be the closest i could find for 16 gigs of ram and 2 display outputs
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Y540-15-15-6-FHD-Intel-Core-i7-9750H-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2060-16GB-RAM-512GB-SSD-Black-Windows-10-81SX015GUS/921861606
it has hdmi out and mini displayport out and with the 2060 gpu it should support all 3 displays at once
So first off, I want to thank everyone who replied and offered suggestions here, especially @compunaut , @djslack , and @dashcloud as you all made me realize I never considered Lenovo.
Now, for the true Meh/Mediocre part of this story and also the story of my damn life, here’s a great laugh for you. When I realized I hadn’t thought of Lenovo I went and looked at them and finally found the exact perfect laptop I’ve been looking for. A good processor, 16GB of RAM, decent video card, good battery, 1 full 1 TB drive, a true Thunderbolt port for good docking options, and a price of just under $900 on sale. It was perfect. So I figured I’d take a couple of weeks to make sure I could drop the cash on it. The Lenovo Slim 7 GTX.
Literally the next day I went to send the link to a friend to see if he saw any big red flags on it since it seemed too good to be true.
Literally the day after I find this perfect laptop it’s fucking discontinued and no longer available. Any-fucking-where. I could have bought it when I first saw it but I didn’t and now it’s not available anywhere. I’m so fucking pissed off at myself and disappointed for not pulling the trigger when I finally found the perfect laptop.
But it’s also the story of my damn life. lol And oh-so-perfectly Meh. Le sigh.
Here is the laptop that could have been (Literally the only place that still even has the page up for it is NewEgg. The Lenovo page doesn’t even exist anymore)
https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-00NR2
@Bingo wow, that’s terrible timing!
@djslack Right? lol I really just have to laugh otherwise I’d just collapse in tears. Story of my damn life. lol It does hurt, though. It was just freaking perfect.
That said, maybe the perfect thing to show up on Meh or Woot eventually?
@Bingo @djslack It was 86d because the new model is 11th gen CPU and an RTX2060 GPU.
@Bingo a few (hundred) bucks more gets it with a 512gb SSD: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1543439-REG/lenovo_82ae0004us_15_6_ideapad_slim_7.html
Lenovo has a dock that’s not utter garbage for Thinkpads and other units that have the big rectangle charger port. Dell docks I believe have a reputation for being terrible. But now a USB-C port replicator can do it all universally. If you get a laptop that charges via USB-C you can have a true one cable connection.
honestly it might be a good idea to keep an eye on https://computers.woot.com
They tend to have sales pretty regularly, though I think most are refurbs
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/workstations/c/workstations?q=%3Aprice-asc%3AfacetSys-ScreenSize%3A15.6+in&uq=&text=# There’s a nice one for just under a $1000 with a 15.6’’ screen, 1 TB solid state drive, and an Nvidia Quadro P1000 card.
B&H is a nice site to check- some good options there currently.
For $900, this is a good deal. Hard to find in stock, however.
Costco Item 1501111
HP Pavilion 15.6" Touchscreen Laptop - 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7
Model 15-eg0073cl
Backlit keyboard, 16GB, 512GB SSD.