Ask HN: Best Personal Laptop in 2024?
With the Copilot+ (i.e. Windows ARM) computers on their way, and the M-series Macs already setting the precedent, what do you consider to be the best personal laptop option in 2024?
- Current gen MacBook Air
- 14" MacBook Pro
- 16" MacBook Pro
But I don't play any games on my MBP. If you want to game, don't choose a Mac laptop, even if you're thinking about doing streaming gaming online. It's terrible unless you're only in the most ideal of circumstances.
I have a 14" MBP M3 Max (waaay overkill, should have gone with an MBA) and a cheap $700 gaming PC (i5-12600K and an RX 6600). It's kind of the best of both worlds. The gaming PC spends its time booted to Linux when I'm not gaming.
Your answer will change radically depending on these things. Personally, an out-of-support Macbook Pro from 2016 with Fedora on it has worked really well for me.
Unless your buying a Mac, theirs no real reason to go over 1k USD. All laptops share one weakness, you can drop them.
I just ordered a new X86 ( no recall for me) laptop and I'll be putting Debian on it.
You would have to define "best" in terms of both how you intend to use a laptop, and your personal tastes and preferences. "Best" doesn't describe a quality of laptops, or a metric by which we can objectively compare laptops.
Personally I use an iPad Pro with keyboard as my personal and professional "laptop." Although it works for me and suits my preferences I would hesitate to recommend my setup to everyone or call it "the best." iPads do not (yet) have Copilot or other so-called AI features, though I expect that's coming, and I expect Apple will let me turn it off as they do now with Siri.