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Comment by sgarland | Hacker News Reader

…is 14”. It is the perfect balance between portability, weight, and screen real estate.

I’ve tried 13”, 14”, 15”, and 16”. 14” is where it’s at.

I've got an LG Gram 17-inch laptop that weighs about the same as a 13-inch macbook air.

Having a huge screen on a super-light, super skinny laptop is so handy for portability and all the extra screen real-estate is great for a developer. Its difficult to go back to a 14-inch.

I wish more laptop manufacturers would make ultra-lights with large screens.

I was recently helping someone shop for a laptop and stumbled upon the LG gram. I was really impressed with the build quality and how light it was. I think it was a 16in though. I prefer smaller screen 13/14 but I was very tempted to get one myself.

That is impressive, but I’m also extremely sold on ARM viz. Apple Silicon. I haven’t touched a Windows laptop in years. The only thing that feels as snappy is my gaming desktop, and I would wager that my M4 Pro could probably beat it in pure computational power.

Sounds nice but how's the durability. I'm just afraid that width and that skinny just a random misstep may break it.

Having used a few different sizes, I agree, for portability 14" is perfect, but I would add 1 thing. The screen should be 16:10, not 16:9.

I have a Thinkpad T61 and its screen size is 16x10, to me that is the perfect Laptop.

One more thing, no number pad. It should have a keybord like the old thinkpads.

The MBA (MacBook Air) easily beats the MBP in my opinion. 32GB ram, M4 CPU really is enough for the vast vast majority of tasks. I use mine to process video and 40 megapixel RAW images, and it flies. And the portability is significantly better than the MBP.

It has no fan, but it rarely even gets warm, with no noticeable throttling.

I used an MB or MBP for the entirety of the Intel era, but these days I have a really hard time seeing any meaningful benefit of its increased size and bulk over the MBA.

I disagree. Bigger laptop screens will always be nicer to use and what actually matters is the total package I have to carry around so different laptops are perfect in different scenarios. For me personally, my framework16 just fits in my slimfold backpack and my daily needs also just fit in that tiny and light and super comfortable backpack so that is my daily driver. For the couple times I travel in a year I have my old framework13 I end up bringing because I need a bigger backpack and more auxiliary junk for travel

agree, 14' MBP is the best - has the most ports, and better memory than MBA, but without the bulk of the 16' MBP

I made the mistake at a job once of getting a 16”. They offered both, and I figured why not go big? Except most of the time, it’s docked, so not like I need the screen, and when I have to travel, it’s difficult.

Learned my lesson; never again.

I'm all down for 14" laptops too. My two favorite laptops are the 14" MacBook Pro I use for work now, as well as my personal 14" Thinkpad X1 Carbon. They have the best combination of performance and size, for me at least. I get as-close-as-makes-no-difference desktop performance out of something with a days worth of battery that can fit into the small backpack I use for bike commuting.

Agree, but you gotta be careful to measure both the laptop size and the screen size though. Some of them have a lot of passing around the screen.

If there was 14.5" I would prefer it though. Although I wish they focused more on the keyboard than the display.

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