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I downsized from a 15" MBP to a 13" M1 Air, and I haven't felt much pain from the smaller screen. My approach to IDE-driven development is about the same on both. The big difference is solo laptop vs laptop+external monitor(s).

As someone who travels frequently, the M1 Air has been simply amazing. It's so small and sturdy, and fairly light compared to the bigger/bulkier/heavier 15 I had before... and I'm at far less risk of breaking the screen while it's in my bag.

The bigger machines have a much greater surface area which the contents of the backpack can put pressure against. So the larger screen laptops are more susceptible to being pressed too hard near the middle of their screens and breaking.

I wish there were some ultra-rigid screen backs which would eliminate that concern. I don't need something as serious as a Panasonic Toughbook, but something with some arched curved ridges to add strength would be nice.

I kinda followed a similar trajectory. Started with a 15" MBP (2011) for years, and was super happy with that. It was a beast. But it was also a tank of a laptop.

Then I got a Surface Pro 3. It was FAR more portable, enough to make me realize just how much less portable my MBP was. I couldn't bear to bring the 15" back out. However, the SP3 was definitely too small of a screen for dedicated work. Great for college & notetaking, but reliant on external displays.

Now I've been using a 13" surface laptop for a few years and that's really struck me as the right portability vs productivity balance. 13 inches is big enough for two columns of code, and fits in basically any backpack pouch easy. I probably won't be going back to 15" when this dies.

Over the years, I've gone back and forth on laptop size. I used an 11" (?) Asus Chromebook for my light-duty travel laptop for ages but there really isn't a high-quality substitute these days and, honestly, I'm hard-put to complain too much about my 14" MacBook Pro and, if I did as much travel as I used to, I'd just get a MacBook Pro Air. At one level I wish they still made a smaller model but, honestly, when you add up the weight of chargers and other associated electronics, the difference isn't much and the keyboard on a 13" laptop is pretty much what I want.

> Toughbook

I bought and old one second hand a few years ago and it is actually nice; bulky but light enough and really unbreakable. So when backpacking it is a good companion that can be used as a little flat table, can be used in the heat, cold and in the rain, you can drop drinks on it, drop it and beat someone’s head it before getting to work. The only real disadvantage is the battery life, so I carry a spare which works for me when on trips.

My personal laptop is an M1 MacBook Pro 13”, the device I use most frequently for work is a Surface Pro X. I really appreciate having a small, relatively lightweight device that I can easily carry without worrying about it. I don’t really feel hindered by the screen size of either except for some specific cases - code review in Azure DevOps can be a bit cramped for example. If I’m doing serious work for more than a couple hours I almost always have an external monitor to plug into though.

I gradually went from 17” to 15” to 13” laptops for my personal machines.

The main thing I miss is the expansive keyboards on the bigger machines. The 17” ones even had a number pad, and some my 15” ones did too.

My current work laptop is a 15” Thinkpad P15 Gen2 with an i9-11950H, 64gb of ram, and an rtx 3080 mobile. It’s a beast but very reasonably sized for its specs. It’s a little bit chunky but I wouldn’t expect anything less with a high performance cpu and gpa. Lots of ports, 15” OLED display. I love it, even if the battery life is abysmal. It’s a workstation.

But my personal machine needs to be small enough to throw in a bag and not think about, so its a Ryzen powered thinkpad X13. The screen is a little dim and the battery life is way worse than a comparable dell XPS 13, but it was inexpensive and does everything I need. The major downside to the size is the keyboard is also shrunk, so lots of typing sucks.

The biggest problem with both machines, and its true of all thinkpads, is that Lenovo put the function button on the leftmost of the lowest row instead of ctrl button and I often try to copy paste and accidentally hit the function key instead of control. I ended up getting a mouse with some extra buttons and I’ve assigned one of them as ctrl instead, but it would be better if the ctrl button would just be where it was supposed to be.

Really depends on how much time you spend working portable or not. 14" seems like the best compromise for me on power, portability and screen size. 15" is a little big and the lightweight 15" laptops feel a little too flimsy at times.

I bought a used Thinkpad 220 and it's a cool little swiss army type of device. The keyboard is VERY different from modern thinkpads. More tactile and a lot of cool features. Would be interesting with a technical update. I think the Japanese Panasonic Let's Note may be the closest modern equivalent.

I had one of those XPS machines (though a 13) where the webcam was in the "chin" under the screen, and also not in the center horizontally. I basically never used it.

Their later designs have crammed it in at top-center as is more typical.

> Ability to charge from USB-PD

Not a given on the Thinkpads the author mentions as being near-perfect, which are known to get perma-bricked using PD from a charger while plugged into a monitor also providing PD: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/X1-Ca...

2016-2019 MBPs also had an issue with PD on the left side causing thermal throttling.

> I've always owned 15" laptops, and i've never had any trouble fitting them in bags, even in a sleeve. I understand why people might want 7" or 10" netbooks, but a 12" machine just seems like a waste of space to me. I understand that most people feel very differently, though!

I've settled on the 12" size, mostly because it's the smallest viable laptop that you can still type on. If you look at the ThinkPad X201 [1] as an example from the post, the device is the exact width of the keyboard with no bezel. So, you could have an 11" or smaller device, but it would mean sacrificing a lifetime of typing muscle memory to do so.

[1] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/3822/lenovo_x201.JPG

> I've always owned 15" laptops, and i've never had any trouble fitting them in bags, even in a sleeve. I understand why people might want 7" or 10" netbooks, but a 12" machine just seems like a waste of space to me. I understand that most people feel very differently, though!

In my freshman year of college, I still hadn't gotten a smartphone yet due to being on my parents' phone plan still, but since there was wifi everywhere on campus, I used to carry around a Nexus 7 tablet everywhere. I could literally fit the 7" tablet in my pocket, which always seemed to take people by surprise. I think 7" is a lot smaller than some people realize; I don't think I could even type comfortably with both hands on a netbook that small!

My 12 inch Macbook is half the weight of a 15 inch model of the same year. That's almost a kilo less in your bicycle bag or backpack. It's very noticeable, especially if you're always on the go, but not always between desks.

If you do a lot of walking around, using public transport etc. And you tend to want to pull your laptop out and use it in places where you maybe don't have a proper desk/table to put it on then having a really small laptop can be really nice.

I remember loving my ~8 inch netbook during university. With virtual desktops it was more than adequate for coding projects even if the best seat I could find was on the floor against a wall.

The added rigidity feels good too, even something really cheaply built out of plastic will have little to no flex, and probably survive being dropped at that size.

Power delivery should absolutely come on every device, period.

I believe the primary appeal of a 12” laptop is that it’s the smallest that one can make a laptop while still having a full size keyboard. Any smaller and you have to start shrinking keys, which has strong negative effects on usability.

This is part of why the 12” MacBook and its spiritual ancestor, the 12” PowerBook G4 were popular.

For me, 12" is the smallest size you can fit a non-compromised, normal keyboard layout in.

I also carry around a smaller messenger bag which 12" laptops just about fit in. I tried to pull off a 17" Dell mobile workstation, but got very tired of lugging around a backpack and having no battery life.

A high-quality wifi card and software is more valuable to me than ethernet ports, which are so bulky that I don't especially care if they come built in. The Framework approach here is ideal.