Hey everyone,
I am a uni student who’s looking to replace his old gaming laptop with a more portable office machine. After looking at reviews and such I have shortlisted some models but I’m not sure which one to choose since they’re all very similar to me, those being: the slim 7i 15in, x9 15, yoga pro 7, zenbook s14/16, yoga 2-in-1, thinkpad t16, in order of relevance.
My workload mainly includes programming and finance related projects of small to medium size, and reading textbook pdfs. I’d like to have a very nice, high refresh rate display that’s larger than 14in. Portability(weight) and battery life are my second concern, where I’d like to have an entire 8h day with work at e.g. 70% brightness. Just last week I got to try out a haptic trackpad for the first time so that would be a nice to have but it’s not a must, as long as it’s decent enough. I game mainly on my desktop pc, but being able to run FPS games at 60+ fps would be nice.
I am based in Germany budget being around 1.5k euros. The X9 has a very nice student discount at 1699, but I’m not sure about the keyboard travel being so low, and it seems it’s thicker than the yoga. For now the Slim 7i looks like the safest choice, but I’d like to hear your inputs as well.
I just looked at Lenovo’s site and they’re selling a fully specced out slim 7i (258v, oled, 32gb ram) for a thousand bucks, meanwhile the x9 is 1699 with the same specs on paper, would say the x9 is still a better value proposition? I also went to a store to try out the zenbook s16 because it was my initial choice, but the keyboard felt very mushy and flat; the s14 intel version did not have that issue but 14inches is just a tad bit too small.
At $700 or so more for the X9, assuming the core specs are the same, that would convince me to advise you to go for the Yoga Slim 7i as long as it has a good quality screen and is the 15 inch model.
Update: I got the Slim 7i 15’ model, everything seems nice, except the keyboard… It’s a German layout with the tall enter key, and it’s so freaking confusing to type on, since I’m used to the general US layout. Also this is the first time having a pc screen that’s glossy, so that needs getting used to.
About the keyboard problem now, unlike the yoga, you can spec the X9-15 with different layouts, one of which being the US one, if the antireflective coating on the X9 is also better, I may have to consider returning the Yoga and get the thinkpad despite it being 60% more expensive. Another thing that’s making it hard to choose the thinkpad was the lower keyboard travel, on paper it’s worse because of my preferences, but is it really that noticeable?
I would like to hear you guys’ opinion on this. Should I return the Yoga and get the X9 or should I give it some time to get used to the machine?
I think the biggest problem with the X9 (apart from the port selection) might be thinking it’s a ThinkPad when it is only in name. In my personal experience, I found even the “newer” ThinkPad keyboards better than the X9 models (though it is absoluetely subjective).
I would try to test out an X9 keyboard in person if possible.
