I’m looking for a 16” laptop to replace my Dell XPS 13. I don’t need a discrete GPU, but I understand most 16” laptops come with one. Given that, I’m fine with an discrete GPU, I just don’t want it to make the laptop loud, overly hot, or unnecessarily expensive. Also not very concerned about battery life as it will generally be plugged in all the time (but I do need the portability of a laptop). Screen brightness and resolution are important to me since my biggest reason for wanting to upgrade is being able to clearly see more on screen. (Usually I’ll have it plugged into an external ultra wide monitor, but when I’m away from home, I want a screen that is usable, and my current 13” is tedious to use with such limited screen real estate). I also need a quiet typing experience, and would even sacrifice having a great keyboard as long as it’s not loud to type on. Nice to haves, but not requirements, are touch screen, and num pad. Looking for AMD or Intel only. No Mac OS or Snapdragon processor.
Is 15.3” close enough to 16”? This Yoga Slim 7i 15 is a portable large screen laptop with no dGPU. I cant believe its already been a year since Josh’s team made this video so there are probably newer options out there. But maybe check out this video and then look at some newer competing options. Lenovo - Yoga Slim 7i 15 Aura Edition - 2024 - Review, Deals, Sales, Price History and Coupons | Best Laptop Deals
I personally have an IdeaPad Pro 16 which has an RTX 3050 from 2022. I needed the dGPU then for light video editing and streaming, but TBH the newer Intel and AMD iGPUs have gotten so much better along with newer and better codec support from YT that I don’t think I’ll need a dGPU for my next laptop and something like this portable Yoga Slim 7i would be just the kind of computer I would be looking at
Lenovos have one of the best displays in their yoga series laptops– like the yoga pro 7 or the yoga 9i. You have the option for a 3k OLED with 500 NITS brightness (yoga 9i 2025 has a tandam OLED display with brightness upto 1000Nits. These are creator oriented laptops so in some models you can find the RTx 5050. Although there are some yoga 7 models with igpu options you can look into those.
Most 16-inch laptops have dedicated GPUs. I’d look at 15-inch. There is the Asus Zenbook S16 that is 16-inch without but it gets very warm.
@Seth , @Cierra and I really like this 15-inch for light use:
@stevechoanity Hey Steve, to follow up on what Josh said – yes, I think the ThinkPad X9 15 is just fantastic. Actually, I’m typing on it right now. It is offered with and without a touchscreen (we have the touchscreen model here in the office). However, it doesn’t have a numpad which you said you’d prefer. On the bright side, the keyboard is centered as a result, making it more comfortable particularly when typing on your lap.
The only negative is I feel like it likes to turn on its fans when it’s plugged in, even if you aren’t doing anything super intensive. But the fans aren’t super loud. I just got used to it to be honest.
But yeah. I’ve seriously considered purchasing one of these for myself outside of work. That’s how much I like it. Let me know if I can answer any questions about it for you!
Hi Josh, I’m interested in the Zenbook S16 you mention and Asus have released a few firmware updates that, among all things, try to reign in the thermals (TDP went from 28W to 20W).
Is this something you could do a retest on?