HN Explorer

What’s the best sub 1k laptop?

16 points by mkdirpepper ↗ HN
Hey folks, I’m in the market to upgrade my kids computing power during the summer. They use chrome books for school and all but I’d like to get them proper windows laptops to create their own apps and they’re ready to move past scratch.

Thanks in advance!

27 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 70.7 ms ] thread
rg111
I don't know why HN folks do not use or mention Asus much, but their mid to high range laptops are surprisingly good.

Try Asus TUF series.

I can vouch for them.

is_true
I had 3 and they still work. One has 10 years
panda888888
My vote is for the Macbook Air M1 base model. Price with edu discount is $899.

Alternatively, check to see if their Chromebooks support Linux.

nextos
Me too, especially given that the M1 Air is (i) fanless and (ii) relatively friendly to Linux.

In the US you might also want to consider ThinkPad X13. With some discounts, it can be a good alternative if you prefer a standard architecture. In the EU sadly ThinkPad is sold via a third party reseller which has an atrocious customer service.

For around $600, depending on current deals, you can get a Surface Laptop Go which has a nice screen and just works on Linux. Avoid the baseline model if you can as it has an eMMC HD which is quite slow.

happymellon
> relatively friendly to Linux.

What makes you say that? Apple has never been friendly to Linux, and the M1 having zero support porting Linux by Apple continues this trend. What's more disturbing is that NVIDIA is friendlier.

nextos
I prefer x86 machines but M1's bootloaders are unlocked and Apple made some changes to facilitate running Linux: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994?ref_...

I still prefer open architectures, but the situation is better than with previous Macs, Chromebooks and even some PCs.

happymellon
Apple did something that they don't know why, so that meams it has to be to support Linux!

The majority of the hardware is not supported, and Apple has not provided any specs. Just having an unlocked bootloader is not Linux friendly.

themadturk
Asahi Linux is relatively easy to install and is pretty usable, even at this early stage. The key to Asahi's creation is the open nature of Apple's boot loader. No, Apple isn't supporting Asahi as such, but neither is it actively or passively standing in the way.
zamadatix
One could place a bet Asahi will get to such as stage at some point but at this stage you have to be a pretty die-hard tech nerd with a corner case usage scenario to claim it's "pretty usable" though. The speakers don't work, the USB ports won't work with 3.0 devices, the webcam doesn't work, the display brightness isn't adjustable, the touchbar doesn't work, and everything renders on the CPU since the GPU is unsupported killing the battery life. Eventually these things may be well supported or they may not.
themadturk
The only response I can offer to this is that I can browse the web, read email, and edit text with it. That's probably 85% of my computer usage right there. My MacBook Air doesn't have a touchbar, I can generally get by without video or games so CPU vs. GPU rendering and sound aren't critical, and I haven't needed to use a webcam (on that machine, that is) for months. Yes, USB is slow and battery life is shorter. But I use the Mac side most of the time anyway. Asahi is a fun experiment for me.
happymellon
It doesn't support the majority of the hardware and Apple hasn't provided any specs.

> Apple isn't supporting Asahi as such

That isn't Linux friendly, that's Linux indifferent.

steve_adams_86
I picked one up to tide me over until I can get the Mac Studio, and it has been amazing. I have to be somewhat disciplined about resource use – closing tabs, unused apps, etc. But it's an excellent machine by every measure at this price point.

Most shocking is the battery life:performance ratio coming from a maxed out 2017 MacBook Air. I really liked (and still like) that computer, but there's no comparison in terms of performance. If I run the 2017 machine pretty hard, it'll die after 3.5 hours or so. The new model lasts about twice as long, but out-performs the old one by a wide margin.

The only downside with the M1 I got is the lack of RAM. Even so, 8GB has been surprisingly sufficient for a lot of tasks. Most people would be just fine with this machine.

MH15
If you’re ok with Apple/macOS, this is the correct answer. Picked mine up at MicroCenter for $839. It’s been perfect for my workload.
greatpostman
MacBook Air m1 by far
happymellon
A kid would probably be disappointed with a laptop that can't play games.
camhenlin
There’s quite a lot of games on the App Store and on Steam that are either native or work totally fine on M1 machines
jiffygist
My dell latitude 5500 with 16 gb ram costed ~$900 (in my country)

Integrated graphics though

thylacine222
you can get XPS13s for under $1000 pretty easily.
markus_zhang
What's the best option to get cheap 6-8gb laptops for practicing devops? Need to be able to install Ubuntu/Debian, Kubernetes, Airflow, etc. basically everything needed to mimic Composer (except for the GCP and BQ part)
randomluck040
It really depends. Should it play games? If so, the MB Air is out of the windows. Then I’d try to look at something with a dedicated GPU or something Ryzen. If it should not, I‘d look at used Thinkpads for Windows/Linux or at the M1 for macOS. I think it also depends strongly on what should be developed on the device.
schwartzworld
Windows? Ew.

I'm a professional dev and I learned on a Chromebook that I installed Linux on. You can get away with much less computing power if you use Linux.

I don't know any devs who use windows except those specifically developing for the windows ecosystem.

aristofun
I doubt anything in that range can even come close to Macbook Air M1 base model.
toast0
Best depends on your criteria, which you haven't listed other than app creation, but people have been making apps for a long time on computers of various capability, so that doesn't narrow us down very much.

Lowest cost option is find something used that works, or from CDW outlet or the occassional crazy deal. Many chromebooks can run windows if you use a 3rd party bios. The keyboard layout is a bit sparse, which means no windows key. Check Mr.Chromebox for models his script supports and you'll get a minimal machine that boots UEFI capable OSes, you might need a keyboard driver depending on specifics.

If you want the most processing power for the $, get a basic desktop with integrated graphics. Ryzen 5600G or something Alder Lake with DDR4-3600 or so (DDR5 might be faster, but right now it's pretty close and DDR4 is much less expensive). Alder Lake boards are either DDR4 or DDR5 but not both, shop carefully. Desktop chips are going to be significatly faster than laptop chips, because they can use way more power.

ad404b8a372f2b9
Do yourself a favour and use this: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/laptop/ You can filter using many axes, like screen size, price, battery life, RAM, and so on... It'll give you a much better idea of what's available, rather than what's trendy.

Once you've selected a few promising ones you can check the reviews online.

On a side note, make sure you're not upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, most dev work has very low computing requirements. You could also buy second-hand and get something great for hundreds of dollar less than new. You can also buy new for considerably less than 1000$, especially in the U.S where prices are cheap. The laptop I bought back in college was 300$ and good enough to do any dev work I wanted (that's about the lower bound of what you can find brand new though).