Quote from: Dorby on December 27, 2021, 18:42:22
What gives anyone the impression that a brand is "premium"? Or an extra 0.3 inch "thinness" is premium? Who decides that perception?
It's such an ironically wonderful thing Nvidia's marketing team decided to screw customers hard with their GPU branding this year, because their screwing up informed the world of what is good value and what is not when it comes to laptops.
Look at the best selling high-performance lineup - Legion, ROG and Tong Fang, are they overpriced ultra-thin laptops? Look at revised MacBook Pros compared to last 5 years, do they look thinner now that they've become more efficient?
No.
Premium refers to an amount you pay extra for something. By definition, if a thinner laptop costs €1000 more than an otherwise identical thicker laptop, then you're paying a €1000 premium for the thinness. And by the act of buying it, you are declaring that those 0.3" in thickness are worth €1000 to you. And if you lose performance by going for the thinner laptop, that lost performance is also part of the premium. By the principles of the world we live in, making a laptop thinner without compromising other qualities is more difficult and therefore more expensive. They are going to be more expensive. And whether it's worth it or not, that's decided by sales.
Nothing is stopping a manufacturer from clearly declaring a TGP. But we all know that thermal constraints of chassis is far from trivial subject. Blame Nvidia if you want, but it's an inherent feature of sophisticated power management. That is what allows processors to survive in an unfit chassis. In the olden days, they would just go up in flames. And again, it's up to you whether you buy it or not. Whether you buy a laptop without knowing proper specification. Whether you buy expensive silicon with low power limit. But you can't escape the complexity of performance quantification.
Because they offer value. And many people actually do play games. I don't have a problem with that. But I also recall business laptops costing over 5k in top of the line configurations and workstations going over 8k. You don't have to buy it. It can be unfortunate when such configurations are sent for testing as most people won't consider them. But if you don't need it and can't afford it, then don't buy it. It's silly to bring out cheap gaming laptops here as people who consider paying over 3k for an X1E are probably not considering them. Thick and heavy laptops are only relevant as far as seeing how much you're losing. What is actually the price you're paying.
The new MBPs might look thick, but I think they are actually a tiny bit slimmer and very similarly thin in any case. It's just an optical effect. And plenty of people are not happy about it. The new processor is a lot more efficient and works well in a thin chassis. So, you don't really need more cooling, yet you're paying the price of a thicker look without getting any better cooling. It might be more comfortable on your legs. The thicker sides might have helped them with integrating other ports. So, there might be upsides. But I wouldn't mention MBP in this discussion. Apple has made more than one questionable design choice lately.