What's your deal breaker when buying a new laptop?

[Redaktion]

Some users will refuse to buy any smartphone if it doesn't come with a 3.5 mm audio jack. Are there certain features on a laptop that you absolutely must have when shopping for one as well?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/What-s-your-deal-breaker-when-buying-a-new-laptop.454819.0.html

[C]

For my case the deal breakers are:
- build quality
- reliability
- cool & quiet
- replaceable ssd
- performance

[abhipw]

1) Good build quality
2) Should be upgradeable and serviceable user parts (w.r.t RAM, storage etc.)
3) Durability
4) Ample connnectivity options (Display ports, thunderbolt etc.)
5) Less PWM
8) Good battery life
9) Good GPU+CPU performance
10) No throttling under load
11) System temperature should be low while gaming
12) Good after purchase service support

[Anon]

Here goes my list, from the top to lowest:
1. Replace-ability of the components (RAM, storage)
2. Completeness of connectivity (2 usb vs. 3 usb, thunderbolt 3)
3. Screen (brightness, glare, TN vs. IPS)
4. Sturdiness
5. Keyboard (reasonable arrow keys, dedicated home, end, delete, pgup, pgdown, typing experiences)
6. Heat and battery usage (thankfully these days most laptops are cooler)
7. Price wise
8. After sales service

[Kian Moeini]

The laptop of my choice should have very good cooling capabilities. it should have decent upgrade and serviceability. It should have a good ports and connections such as Thunderbolt 3 or an M.2 PCIe slot for eGPU purposes.I have set a bare minimum standard for myself in other parts of a laptop as well but those are priorities.

[phila_delphia]

Hey! Thank you for the article. As I decided, that my next notebook should be a real "all in one" I thought about this question very long.

I would not go without:
- convertible form factor
- 6c/12t 45w cpu
- midrange GPU
- thunderbolt 3
- thin bezzel
- precision driver trackpad
- crisp, backlit keyboard
- decent battery live
- solid build
- unobtrousive design
- quite bright display
- easy to access -> repaste / exchange battery
- at least 16 GB RAM (would have liked more)
- at least 1TB diskspace

In order to get this I did sacrifice:
- ultra lightweight
- 8 core processor
- better GPU
- UHD display
- 144hz

All the best!

phila

P.S.: Notebookcheck.net/com should cleary focus on testing the capability of the TB3 ports in the future as there are so many hidden obstacles.

I for example did not know that there is a big chance that the 8th/9th gen H processors are not optimized to support eGPU in comparisson to the 7th gen 4Core models:

-> 15% of performance loss: https://egpu.io/forums/builds/2015-15-dell-precision-7510-q-m1000m-6th4ch-gtx-1080-ti-32gbps-m2-adt-link-r43sg-win10-1803-nando4-compared-to-tb3-performance/#post-72109

[.]

If we're talking only about deal-breakers, then:
* Clit mouse
* Build quality
* Upgradeability / Serviceability
* Decent heat dissipation against throttling

[blah]

A screen that doesn't require non-integer scaling - ie 125%, 150%, etc. Many of the ultrabooks have a resolution so ridiculously high, that you have to strain to read the tiny UI. And Windows scales poorly.

Another important component is the cooling system noise and efficiency and as far as I know, Notebookcheck is one of the only sites that measures it.

[A]

1) a touchpad with physical buttons - those single pads are annoying as hell to use for longer than 10 minutes

2) Thermals staying 45 or less, I've never had good luck with lifespan of any laptop that gets hot, cause they only get worse with age

3) In-home warranty option, I don't care too much about serviceability since I always get in-home warranty. So their problem, not mine. Only exception is soldered HD, that is a big no. I can tolerate soldered ram if they give good options on the cheap.(min 32gb)

4) Good keyboard, I hate tiny arrow keys, especially for left and right key, even more so when they put page up and page down there and I always misclick. And keyboard should have good travel, I don't want my fingers to hurt. Preferably there are dedicated end key, lots of remote desktop use ctrl+alt+end.

5) Removable battery, cause the heat will kill the battery

6) 100% srgb screen, IPS - for when I do graphics

7) USB-C charging

8) At lease 10 hour battery life

9) A video out, don't care which be it vga, hdmi, display port, usb-c or w\e

10)  Linux support, I don't care if they offer it on their site, I just prefer that it works

[Muhammad Anhar]

- Thermal management
- Fans shouldn't be too loud
- Minimum of 60 fps when playing games
- Vivid and color accurate display
- More variety of ports
- 2 kg is enough

[Xiao]

• 10+h battery life
• Good build quality
• Weight <4lb [il]
  
  • 0 fan noise under web browsing[il]
    
    • Reliable OS. Turn on and switch off when I ask it to. Don't randomly drain battery. I had really bad experience with windows 10. [/il]
      

[pinoteres]

- screen ratio 3:2 or 16:10 with 14-16 inch diagonal
- weight lower than 2kg
- specs option with 32GB of RAM
- at least midrange GPU
- webcam on top of screen (no pop up key webcam nonsense)
- generic keyboard layout
- decent build quality
- USB-C charging (thunderbolt)
- below 3k USD

[Milan]

My selection boils down to three things:
- weight should be around or under 1,5 kg
- it should have a decent keyboard (chicklet keyboards are still cringy for me, but getting better - ThinkPad X230 was terrible)
- it should have a TrackPoint

Eventhough it's a short list, it narrows down the selection quite a lot. Currently, I know only about two models, I can choose from - Lenovo ThinkPad T14/T49x or HP EliteBook 745/840.

[Ivan Hong]

Deal Breakers:

1. Single Channel ram without option to increase to dual channel
2. CPU less than 8 thread
3. Poor Price/performance
4. No reasonable GPU option
5. Excessive cpu/gpu thermal throttling
6. Poor user serviceability/upgrade.
7. Extremely poor onboard audio
8. Extremely poor build quality and RMA process

Things that I don't care:
1. Weight, so long under 2.5Kg
2. No eGPU connection option
3. No 4K/1440P or 120/144hz screen
4. Poor Track pad
5. Limited Port, so long it has equal or more port than a MBP.
6. ''tactile'' keyboard, anything above/equal butterfly switch will do.
7. Limited screen brightness, anything above/equal 250nit will do.
8. Subpar battery life, 3-4 hours off grid browsing is enough for me.

[Indra Maulana]

16:9 aspect ratio, and poor battery life