Lightweight power laptops ... which laptop fits this?

RobotDoctor · October 29, 2018

For those of us who travel for business a lightweight laptop is a preferred choice. While most can settle for a business machine some need better graphics capabilities for performance. I have found that gaming systems can fit the requirements very well but gaming systems in the past were not light nor in a small footprint.

I have seen a trend in the past year of lightweight, power performing, small footprint gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards that can be used as a lightweight mobile workstation. Companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, Asus seem to be in the forefront of this trend. My current laptop is a Dell 13" XPS with an i7 dual core processor and integrated graphics with 8gb ram. This machine has performed well but it lags when I use an offline robot programming software package and I simulate a robot program for testing. After 3 1/2 years of dealing with this I decided to upgrade my laptop. I have scoured many reviews of several machines to make the choice I made. Out of curiosity I am posing this scenario to members of the board to see other points of view.

The criteria is a laptop with a screen that is no larger than 15.6", dedicated graphic card (4gb or greater), 4K screen not necessary. I am looking for a machine less than 4 1/2 pounds. I would prefer 3 or more USB 3.0/3.1 ports and prefer dedicated ethernet (RJ95) port and HDMI port. While I would like a SD card reader I can over look this if the laptop is upgradeable. 2 SSD slots is preferred either with 2 m.2 slots or 1 m.2 slot and 1 2.5" SSD slot. Battery life wanted is no less than 5 hours. I can always plug in, even on an airplane as long as the power charging brick isn't a 200+ watt unit.

Thanks in advance.

PixlPutterman · October 30, 2018

For those of us who travel for business a lightweight laptop is a preferred choice. While most can settle for a business machine some need better graphics capabilities for performance. I have found that gaming systems can fit the requirements very well but gaming systems in the past were not light nor in a small footprint.

I have seen a trend in the past year of lightweight, power performing, small footprint gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards that can be used as a lightweight mobile workstation. Companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, Asus seem to be in the forefront of this trend. My current laptop is a Dell 13" XPS with an i7 dual core processor and integrated graphics with 8gb ram. This machine has performed well but it lags when I use an offline robot programming software package and I simulate a robot program for testing. After 3 1/2 years of dealing with this I decided to upgrade my laptop. I have scoured many reviews of several machines to make the choice I made. Out of curiosity I am posing this scenario to members of the board to see other points of view.

The criteria is a laptop with a screen that is no larger than 15.6", dedicated graphic card (4gb or greater), 4K screen not necessary. I am looking for a machine less than 4 1/2 pounds. I would prefer 3 or more USB 3.0/3.1 ports and prefer dedicated ethernet (RJ95) port and HDMI port. While I would like a SD card reader I can over look this if the laptop is upgradeable. 2 SSD slots is preferred either with 2 m.2 slots or 1 m.2 slot and 1 2.5" SSD slot. Battery life wanted is no less than 5 hours. I can always plug in, even on an airplane as long as the power charging brick isn't a 200+ watt unit.

Thanks in advance.

I work for HP, I think our new zBook Studio G5 might fit what you are looking for.

RobotDoctor · November 4, 2018

For those of us who travel for business a lightweight laptop is a preferred choice. While most can settle for a business machine some need better graphics capabilities for performance. I have found that gaming systems can fit the requirements very well but gaming systems in the past were not light nor in a small footprint.

I have seen a trend in the past year of lightweight, power performing, small footprint gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards that can be used as a lightweight mobile workstation. Companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, Asus seem to be in the forefront of this trend. My current laptop is a Dell 13" XPS with an i7 dual core processor and integrated graphics with 8gb ram. This machine has performed well but it lags when I use an offline robot programming software package and I simulate a robot program for testing. After 3 1/2 years of dealing with this I decided to upgrade my laptop. I have scoured many reviews of several machines to make the choice I made. Out of curiosity I am posing this scenario to members of the board to see other points of view.

The criteria is a laptop with a screen that is no larger than 15.6", dedicated graphic card (4gb or greater), 4K screen not necessary. I am looking for a machine less than 4 1/2 pounds. I would prefer 3 or more USB 3.0/3.1 ports and prefer dedicated ethernet (RJ95) port and HDMI port. While I would like a SD card reader I can over look this if the laptop is upgradeable. 2 SSD slots is preferred either with 2 m.2 slots or 1 m.2 slot and 1 2.5" SSD slot. Battery life wanted is no less than 5 hours. I can always plug in, even on an airplane as long as the power charging brick isn't a 200+ watt unit.

Thanks in advance.

I work for HP, I think our new zBook Studio G5 might fit what you are looking for.

I looked at the zBook but it lacked in some areas compared to the Razer Blade 2018 base model. There was only one m.2 ssd slot in the zBook where the Razer Blade base model had slots for one m.2 ssd and a 2.5" ssd. This will allow for a storage of 6tb, which is something I really want. The zBook did offer an SD card slot so that would have accounted for an additional 512gb of storage. The Razer Blade also has a RJ95 port (Ethernet) and this was something I wanted to eliminate the need to carry a USB/Ethernet adapter. The Razer Blade base model comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q Design GPU with 6gb GDDR5 memory compared to a NVIDIA Quadro P1000 GPU with 4gb GDDR5 memory. So the edge goes to the Razer Blade. Also, the Razer Blade had 3 USB 3.1 compared to 2 USB 3.0 of the zBook.

At the end of the day a small advantage goes to the Razer Blade base model but the HP zBook Studio G5 is a very nice laptop and certainly one to consider. Thanks for the suggestion. I ended up going with the Razer due to storage upgradeability, GPU and port setup.

PixlPutterman · November 5, 2018

For those of us who travel for business a lightweight laptop is a preferred choice. While most can settle for a business machine some need better graphics capabilities for performance. I have found that gaming systems can fit the requirements very well but gaming systems in the past were not light nor in a small footprint.

I have seen a trend in the past year of lightweight, power performing, small footprint gaming laptops with dedicated graphics cards that can be used as a lightweight mobile workstation. Companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, Asus seem to be in the forefront of this trend. My current laptop is a Dell 13" XPS with an i7 dual core processor and integrated graphics with 8gb ram. This machine has performed well but it lags when I use an offline robot programming software package and I simulate a robot program for testing. After 3 1/2 years of dealing with this I decided to upgrade my laptop. I have scoured many reviews of several machines to make the choice I made. Out of curiosity I am posing this scenario to members of the board to see other points of view.

The criteria is a laptop with a screen that is no larger than 15.6", dedicated graphic card (4gb or greater), 4K screen not necessary. I am looking for a machine less than 4 1/2 pounds. I would prefer 3 or more USB 3.0/3.1 ports and prefer dedicated ethernet (RJ95) port and HDMI port. While I would like a SD card reader I can over look this if the laptop is upgradeable. 2 SSD slots is preferred either with 2 m.2 slots or 1 m.2 slot and 1 2.5" SSD slot. Battery life wanted is no less than 5 hours. I can always plug in, even on an airplane as long as the power charging brick isn't a 200+ watt unit.

Thanks in advance.

I work for HP, I think our new zBook Studio G5 might fit what you are looking for.

I looked at the zBook but it lacked in some areas compared to the Razer Blade 2018 base model. There was only one m.2 ssd slot in the zBook where the Razer Blade base model had slots for one m.2 ssd and a 2.5" ssd. This will allow for a storage of 6tb, which is something I really want. The zBook did offer an SD card slot so that would have accounted for an additional 512gb of storage. The Razer Blade also has a RJ95 port (Ethernet) and this was something I wanted to eliminate the need to carry a USB/Ethernet adapter. The Razer Blade base model comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q Design GPU with 6gb GDDR5 memory compared to a NVIDIA Quadro P1000 GPU with 4gb GDDR5 memory. So the edge goes to the Razer Blade. Also, the Razer Blade had 3 USB 3.1 compared to 2 USB 3.0 of the zBook.

At the end of the day a small advantage goes to the Razer Blade base model but the HP zBook Studio G5 is a very nice laptop and certainly one to consider. Thanks for the suggestion. I ended up going with the Razer due to storage upgradeability, GPU and port setup.