Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Indeed.

I know of two "best laptops ever made":

Drew DeVault says it's the X200:

https://drewdevault.com/blog/Fucking-laptops/

« The best laptop ever made is the ThinkPad X200, and I have two of them. »

He has a very strong case. I own one. It is certainly one of the best ever.

On the other hand, Brad Taunt says it is the X220:

https://btxx.org/posts/x220/

« The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you’re wrong if you think otherwise. »

Ulaş Türkmen agrees:

https://okigiveup.net/blog/why-thinkpad-x220-is-the-best-lap...

I also have two X220 machines, and I use them more than the X200 now. They still work perfectly, while my X200 is getting flakey. (Although with its SSD and 8GB of RAM, it runs Alpine very well indeed and could be a daily driver.)

The X220 has a slightly shallowed screen; that's a weakness. But mine are 100% usable: between them, I run Haiku, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Ubuntu, and Pop OS, and all of them go like stink and are daily-drivable on this 2011 hardware.

 help



I have an X230 which was upgraded with a quad-core CPU (i7-3612qe), 16gb RAM, SSD, and 1080p screen, and it makes a pretty decent around-the-house laptop. I'd rate it pretty highly; it's not quite as fast as my 6th gen X1 Carbon but the X1 is starting to get quite flaky.

I tried one, and nearly bought one from a friend a couple of years ago, but I can't get over the horrible chiclet keyboard.

Life is too short for modding machines I want to be daily drivers, like fitting an X220 keyboard to it.


Good Speakers, Oled Screen Good Keyboard, 32GB ram+

That's my 4 minimum requirements for a laptop nowadays. As I don't just work on my laptops, but also listen to music/podcasts and watch video content.


Good keyboard is my #1.

If that is good enough, I will put up with a bad screen.

Good speakers is very nice to have, I admit, but I do not do podcasts or videos. I do listen to the radio a lot, however.

I do not own a single laptop with 32GB RAM. That I don't care about. My desktop does, but the biggest laptops are 24GB, which was massively cheaper. Most are 16GB which I find enough for even quite intensive use.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2027 batch! Applications are open till November 2.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: