I’ve been searching around for laptops around the $1,000 price point for college and coding use, and I am struggling to decide how essential is a more expensive CPU is for my use case.
My two main contenders (but feel free to suggest something else if I’m missing something) are the Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition 14" Intel Core Ultra 7 258V with 32 GB of RAM for $1,100 and the HP OmniBook Ultra Intel Core Ultra 7 356H with 16 GB of RAM for $1,140 (I think that is with the student discount).
I know both laptops are over my price point, but at $1,000, the only laptops I could find had Intel Core Ultra 5 226V or the like. My question is does the processors in the above laptops matter, or can I go with something at my price point and still do software development on it? If I do need a higher end processor, which laptop should I choose? Is the more powerful panther lake processor on the HP make it the obvious choice. It seems to be the cheapest panther lake laptop I could find but from reviews and stuff I’ve read online, HP laptops are not the most reliable and the keyboard and build quality is not as good as the Lenovo. Also, it is even more over my budget.
Thank you for your help.