This is going to be a bit vague, but I have an opportunity on the horizon (I want to say it's more or less a done deal), where having a Winders™ notebook would be helpful, possibly even necessary. I currently use Windows in a VM (or two) on my '18 Mac Mini, which as you know, is Intel based, so I'm able to run X86 Windows apps/services - but that's a Mini. And our other two notebooks in the house are ASi (Apple Silicon), not including some slightly janky Windows notebooks taking up space in the gear closet. To be clear, I prefer MacOS by a decent margin
My requirements:
Reasonable high performance, with plenty of RAM/storage, probably 32GB / 1TB minimum
Good portability, thin, light
Very good battery life
Options for legit (not 3rd party) extended warranty, including accidental damage
And then I figured, if I do this, might as well tilt it towards a slightly more gaming centric model, and enjoy the huge library of available games, including the 40+ I own by way of collecting freebies over the last several months. However, I wouldn't want it to have too much of a gaming-zany design, if that makes sense.
My initial research led me to the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, this has a 15.6” WQHD IPS display (weirdly, no cam), AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS, 40GB RAM (24GB to 40GB is only $100), 1TB SSD, a bunch of ports including GbE and HDMI - and a GeForce RTX 3070 8GB, in a thin package, with good battery life - as configured, ~$2199 and in stock. The problem is the warranty channel, I've used tons of ASUS gear, and had some replaced, but through the distributor (NewEgg), there's some notable negative feedback about the support channels 0 the other complaints I've heard is poor trackpad (though I'd use a mouse, mostly), and not the most rigid chassis.
So then I started researching some options from companies that offer 1st party service, with multi-year warranty options, accidental damage (more or less like AC+), and I wound up at Lenovo. They have a couple of variants of the Legion 7, Gen 6, the non-slim model can be configured with a Ryzen 7 5800H, 32GB/1TB, an apparently very nice 16" WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS display, RTX 3070 for ~$1860, but a months (with an S) out. For another $185 / $254 I can do a 2/3 year next biz day repair / complete accidental damage coverage.
They also have a Legion 7, Gen 6, Slim and it's, well, very slim, pretty close the same specs as the other machine (it's a 5900HX), slightly smaller battery (though apparently excellent life), loses the GbE and HDMI ports, and this machine also comes with an RTX 3060 6GB, less GPU performance, but less power consumption, and the 3060 is certainly no slouch for what we'd assume would be our typical gaming use. About the same price, same service options, etc.
Anyway, that's where I'm at, very early in the review process (call it "pre-shopping") for a Windows notebook specifically for professional use while also being something we could use for some occasional gaming, so here it is, in the gaming forum
(I might move this into the tech area later if it makes more sense)
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