I am in the market for a new laptop, I don't really need to do much on it, pretty much web and email with the odd spreadsheet, so specs aren't important in one sense, I have been running an Atom based Windows tablet for the past few years for this purpose, which was fine but as web pages get more and more graphically intense with all sorts of widgets etc I find myself waiting about a lot. So my tolerance limit of its performance has finally been reached, when you start browsing on your phone as it is quicker than your computer it is time to upgrade, as whilst phone is good, I like things to render quickly, well and not be waiting and that tends to be better on a proper machine. Budget is not an issue, though I would probably stop at £1500, size is, a machine over 30cm/12" wide is getting a bit large IMO, my current machine is 26cm. I thought for this time around I would avoid netbook power as it never seems to last long enough, where as some of my other laptops I use for work purposes with proper CPUs are still going strong with snappy performance 10 years later. I quite like a 2 in 1 and touch but these are not essential, just nice to haves, battery life again non important, its something I will use indoors mostly, my use model really fits tablet user consumption model but can stand typing anything at length on a tablet, hence wanting a laptop. A good screen is essential, good colours viewing angles more so than resolution but would liek at least 1080p. I am currently eyeing up Dell XPS13 seems to fit the bill, it is at the upper size limit but before I jump on it, I thought I would as if anyone knows of alternatives, from a hardware perspective Apple would appear to have what I want in the form of the Macbook but my lack of familiarity of the OS puts me off, I have no reasons to dislike it, it is just not what I know so worry about compatibility and rendering issues as I have experienced in the past on Ipads. Anyone know what the Windows experience is like on a Macbook if I bought one and didn't get on with it? any other machines I should look at?
Yup the Spectre is a touch larger than I am after, its 3cm wider than the XPS 13 which is already larger than I wanted really but accept due to screen size/performance.
I use a Surface Pro 2 with a type cover, it's absolutely fine for typing on and you can literally yank the keyboard off when you no longer require it. I specifically went for the 2 over the 3 for the dimensions alone, it's notably smaller whilst offering the same grunt under the hood, and 1080p is already plenty on a screen of this size over the 1440p of the Pro 3 or the random-sounding 1824p of the 4. The marginal extra thickness of the 2 over its successors wasn't enough to make me want to sacrifice the smaller form factor.
I like the surface but it's stand keyboard don't really suit the way I would use it, or how I would use it, in a rather impulsive mood this lunchtime I went for a touchy feely session with the MacBook and almost came out with a Toshiba Radius 12 Perhaps not as premium as I was considering but a proper processor and a crisp screen plus ports, forget about needing those until I realized that the mac didn't have any. Unfortunately they only had one they had performed a restore on, too me that makes it secondhand so I left it.
I ended up with the radius 12, seem a lot of machine for £699, at just under 300mm wide whilst it comes in at my limit I still feel it is a bit too big for my use in the same locations as my old w510, shame there wasn’t better hardware in the macbook 12, that 2cm width size difference would make it for me. I won’t put up a full review, it’s fairly well covered online here, http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/24/toshiba-radius-12-review/ Review sounds a bit harsh in the odd respect, I have no problem with touchpad for example but fair in others, battery life is poor on the 4k model, battery usage on full depletion is 80% screen I probably should of bought the 1080p one and saved 100quid, it’s the right res for a small screen really and there would be better life, but actually battery life is not a concern for me, it was more so my daughter (7) wanting to run touch games on it, GPU grunt is sufficient but if you want to run any games from the app store you will need to drop down from 4k to at least 1080p, to be fair my old laptop couldn’t do it at all @ 720p, whereas this one will play loads really well. The display is great very crisp with really good colour, CPU power is good, feels comparable to my desktop 3770k in general web/office use, so happy on that score, page rendering is great. 4K at 12.5” is a bit of a joke really you have to scale 250% may as well be a 1080p screen looks nice though, crisp, fan noise is minimal and no more waiting. I deliberated for a while on the XPS 13, it would have equally good screen and even better supporting hardware (thunderbolt 3 etc) but in the end this Toshiba was £500 cheaper and will do all I want and felt good enough.
Been using this for a few days, pretty happy, should anyone be looking for similar I'd say its pretty good for the dough, I have already drop tested it a couple of times as yet it has no damage, will it last....with me who knows. Battery life in normal mode seems around 5.5hrs, in power options there is a Toshiba Eco mode that can be enabled which drops a lot of things (seems to restrict CPU to 1Ghz for example) and even with notching up the brightness a little will manage ~9hrs so not too bad for the screen fitted, performance of Skylake seems reasonable in this mode to me, of course I am coming from Atom It can still emulate and play Android games for example.
