Best Laptops for Programmers 2020
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- Indepth guide of how to pick a laptop for software development.
As a professional programmer for over a decade, I talk about what specifically you should look for in a programming laptop.
Enquiries: josh@justjosh.tech
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Favorite Laptop (All Time): amzn.to/30Y8DjS
Monitor: amzn.to/3cfSTgw
Keyboard: amzn.to/2xq5wqu
Mouse: amzn.to/34wrc0d
Camera 1: amzn.to/2R0UKxh
Camera 2: amzn.to/34WOBrr
Main Lens: amzn.to/2LEGacy
Close Up Lens: amzn.to/2JAVXY0
Main Key Light: amzn.to/2ETUNEG
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#ProgrammingLaptop #SoftwareDevelopment #LaptopReview
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Im not a programmer i dont have money to buy any laptop, its 4 am, why am i watching this
sem here, mann
So the answer is, you have to start learning some programming language. 😊😁
Bruh I feel you, it’s 3:42 here
@@cream9292 because you don't have anything better to do.
A- kai only a frog
I often get asked for suggestions for laptops for programmers, but having never been a professional programmer myself I've never been able to recommend anything, so instead I'll just link people to this video 👍 good stuff!
Thanks Jarrod!
Btw Jarrod, one of the reasons I focus mostly on qualitative reviews with benchmarks where necessary is because you do such a great job!
@@JustJoshTech Haha thanks sometimes I feel I go too overboard with data rather than just talking more plainly 😅
Jarrod'sTech it sets you apart imo. I feel like Jarrod owns the data space when it comes to laptops, which isn’t a bad thing. Like a video version of Notebookcheck
Why dont you WhatsApp him....this is a public thread lol
Based on what he mentioned in order:
1. Macbook Pro 16" -> 10:23
2a. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 (15") -> 10:38
2b. Surface Book 2 15" -> 11:00
3. AERO 17 -> 11:28
4. Dell New XPS 15 7590 -> 11:50
5. HP Spectre x360 -> 12:01
6. Lenovo Yoga C940 -> 12:15
7. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 -> 12:35
8. Macbook Pro 13" -> 12:49
Thanks.
thanks
anggastudio god bless you for saving us time
Hi I'm planning to buy the 16 inch macbook pro base, can you recommend what specs can I boost, but not too much
GateCrashers for coding they’re actually really good, underneath its just unix thats been modified to not use the ‘monolithic’ kernel to a more modular kernel, but the functionality is still there. Windows on the other hand uses msdos which has been built on top of for decades and still has so much legacy components that its annoying to deal with. Also the ‘feel’ of using a macbook makes coding for long periods of time more enjoyable.
" The best Laptop you need for programming is the laptop you currently have" - Jesus Christ
😂 😂
_"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can't always be sure of their authenticity."_
-Abraham Lincoln
@@allura4756 "Abraham Lincoln was a good old man. He hopped out the window with his *ick in hand." - 2 Live Crew
@@allura4756 lol
😂😂😂😂😂🤪🤪👌
What kind of psycho uses light color scheme for coding?
Lukáš Staňa umm, me? :D
lol took the words out of my mouth
Lol. I'm so n00b
@@JustJoshTech kubernetes
@@JustJoshTech I use white too!
I will buy a Macbook Pro 16" to run "Hello World" in Python after watching this video
How much is it please???
@@nirminnour9745 just watch the vid
@@vovabaranets9164 why
@@nirminnour9745 bc he says js jn th vid
@@vovabaranets9164 ah ok thank you so much bro
Anyone getting into programming, you dont need anything fancy and expensive. An old ThinkPad with a few upgrades like an ssd or ram, works JUST fine!
Prove it
clearly you know less buddy.
Jim Bob It depends. To get started and for many projects you are totally right. When you need to compile larger programs you may want a faster processor, or if you get into machine learning a good GPU is also helpful.
Sanyuj Gupta lol. Tell me another joke
Thinkpads actually punch far above their weight. Their keyboards are godly.
Im so happy, finally a laptop reviewer who won't cry about a missing sd card slot. It hurts so much to see youtubers review laptops for their own use case, which is only filming vids.
Exactly! Almost nobody cares about video editing and color accuracy except the youtubers themselves.
I never realized it until i read your comment, and i agree with you...
I mostly use my laptop for coding, browse the net and media consumption...
100% fact
I need an sd-slot tho 🤷♀️ so it's kinda important to me.
Or gaming. I love gaming, but not on my work laptop
This guy makes coding sound like competitive gaming.
Competitive programming
@@YousufZiaTheOneAndOnly yep theres a competitive programming
Ever heard of Hackathon?
@@dreamsanity34 what's that?
programming has always been competitive.
I’ve been waiting for something like this!! So tired of reviews for video editors
Glad I could help
As a senior in uni, any laptop would work great, but programming on a desktop with 2+ screens is a dream for me.
And investing in a mechanical keyboard was the best decision in my life.
What if you have a crappy cpu
@@daronma9041 It would still get the job done, because I do most, if not all my work on my desktop anyways
@@GreenLinuxPenguin would you recommend the Lenovo Ideapad 5 14” AMD? I want to learn how to code before finishing my senior year of high school
@@oliver4710 you can learn to code on anything, but that will serve you well in college, so go for it
@kostis- k7tc can you think of any reason why it wouldn't work
0:50 and THEN I'm gonna give it,
a Doug Score.
😂😂😂😂
Awesome video! I personally use a MacBook pro-15inch as my programming laptop, works great only thing id say is a low point for it is the keyboard.
I use a 13inch 2020 model only thing I don't like is the touch bar
@@kaim4210 Intel or M1?
@@abhinavjha3082 Intel as I'm studying to become a software engineer so need to dual boot windows
@@kaim4210 Can I ask why? Which software is Windows specific? And which country are you from?
@@abhinavjha3082 okay so I'm from ZA(South Africa) and my college still use Windows machines so my lecturer before starting to course encouraged me to dual boot.also when it came to finding ides we use netbeans and its much easier finding older releases on windows than on mac. We also use hyper v which Windows only
I am a programmer working for the govt. I ended up going with a Lenovo Thinkpad P53. I dont mind a heavy laptop for very high performance with zero throttling, best in class thermals, best keyboard in class, tons of battery life, easy access to ram and ssd m.2 upgrades.
I got the 4K screen thanks to your suggestion about seeing more code on the screen.
Be careful about 4K though. I had some trouble using 4k on ubuntu in the past. To make matters worse, it uses much more power
@@quaternion4565 4K has been perfectly fine for me. I get 7 hours programming in visual studio at 40% brightness with battery saver turned on.
"zero throttling" lol
@@magicstick5811 whats wrong with saying zero throttling if its true for my usage? Throttling can be converted to an float value. If i am describing the comparison of a zero sum value with a float value then why is it incorrect to state its value as zero in this context?
@@esjihn ok sundar
Your voice is so soothing, heavily recommend to people who want to feel relaxed while learning about tech
@@shanephiri3968 🙂Haha
You are being sarcastic, right?
Eew
10:23 to see his picks
thanks
No love for the lg gram?
I read that as "To see his pecks"
Thanks 🙏
4 am and am going to sleep
youtube : watch best laptops for pragrammers 2020
me : but am not a programmer
youtube : just watch it idiot
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"if you dont know, you probabaly dont need it" burnnn
That's true for 95%+ of computer users in the world... me included. I make a living writing and doing economic analysis with my old 16gb thinkpad and I under use it most of the time.
True
Just remembering my first enterprise java position / working on a 10.1" asus netbook. Good times.
I'm just trying to get into this as a hobby and I can tell I don't know what I'm getting myself into. Wish me luck.
ur not alone good luck ✌🏻
Same
I enjoyed this video and own a surface book 2 as my weapon of choice. However one area we differ on is font size. I prefer a larger font (usually 14px) because seeing many lines of code is great but not at the cost of vision.
After 10+ years of programming, I find that my eyes are still strong and don't feel strained at the end of the day. That wasn't the case in my early years using smaller fonts. Plus it also helps when I am sharing my screen with someone else. They can see my code much easier and I find this helps greatly when teaching others.
One other tip to add is use a font that supports ligatures, such as Fira Code or JetBrains Mono. You'll have a much easier time fixing and even preventing bugs when you can easily spot small mistakes such as = vs == vs ===, or !=.
I had to buy a new laptop for college recently. I've got an Apple MacBook Air 2020 and I'm so satisfied with it! Yay! :)
By far the best video on programming laptops
Thanks mate!
I'm a programmer. The Dell XPS 13 is looking good to me at the moment purely because I may need to travel overseas a lot and it offers a lot of power in a tiny package.
me looking at this video on my dell xps 13 7390 which i use for coding. (00>)
Guys get a 15inch laptop regret getting a 13inch. :(
Pretty Boy Flizzy yep its too tiny
Get the bigger version if there is a 15 or 14, better quality for your price and still really portable
"Line of codes" - strange. Never think about my work in such manner. No matter how many lines do you see while debugging.
i just zoom in haha
Yeah, I do use a Mac, but find that argument a bit silly.
usually seeing that many LOC at once makes it hard to read I usually crank up the font size to something I can comfortably read from a bit further away. Typically I zoom in until the code window fits nice with the folder structure on the left and the debugger/terminal on the right at the same time. Code shouldn't be more than 80~ish char wide anyways.
@@dahlola yeah the lines of code is silly argument but a big screen for a programmer is a great advice considering the hours.
@@danbo967 loc helps to see the full functions at a glance.
40-50 lines max is ok i guess.
30 lines on screen at a time is the min limit for me.
I am fond of high width in a screen (21:9 LG screens) so I can divide the screen into 3 files to see all of them at once.
UI is on the 15 inch laptop screen. the code is on the external wide screen, 3 source files are open at a time.
Love your work!
Also kindly make a video for best laptop of CS Students on a budget. That would help me and many of my friends a lot!
Good stuff, Josh. My favorite is the X1 Carbon with 4G build-in. For very heavy lifting I RDP into a powerful VM using 4G. Works very well
Hans-Peter Kruger very good choice especially for the keyboard…thinkpad just has best keyboard
4G LTE connection you mean? is RDP same as RDC (remote distance connection)? tx
Jie Li yes, I mean 4G LTE. Not sure what RDC is. Probably the same thing. Essential a Remote Desktop connection to a faster box in the cloud.
@@hpkruger01 what about if i have a powerful home pc at home, i can RDP to that? the cloud VM do you refer to Amazon cloud machine or sth else? tx
Im a frontend developer and I can tell that this dude knows what he's talking about.
Paolo Falconi that's because even frontend people don't know shit . You ask them to integrate a video to a page they shiy their pants.
@@ashishgoswami6303 wow, so now I know, backend devs are pretty rude and arrogant people
Abbas Ali also they get paid more
@@ashishgoswami6303 less than full stack devs so keep calm 😂😂
You lost me at I'm a frontend
Nice vid. Thanks.
Although a couple of points missed. IMHO for fast compiling and running MANY apps simultaneously you'll also want:
- very strong CPU (high clock freq, high number of cores)
- lots of RAM, the more the better. Having just 16GB is really "entry level", and as you run more heavy-duty apps concurrently, your system will run slow..
- fast SSD (i.e. NVMe)
- "fast" filesystem (i.e. Linux filesystem)
- if you plan on running simulations(e.g. using TensorFlow) fast, then an NVIDIA GPU with a very high# CUDA cores (the higher the better) will serve you well
Agree with your SSD point, it's essential. But he hit the nail on the head on everything else.
Using my Dell XPS 15 for uni and it's probably one of the best laptops I've bought. Thermals could be better out the box, but I can still do some light gaming on there when I use a cooling pad
...but it only took michaelDELL...3+ YEARS TO MAKE A BETTER PRODUCT HERE IN...2022
"go to the store to try out keyboards" *cries in quarantine*
Seriously?!
you can still do that
If you're building cloud native applications (Kubernetes/Docker Swarm) it doesn't really matter what OS you choose. Windows now has pretty good WSL support with Windows Home (currently in preview) and Docker containers are now supported under WSL. You just need lots of RAM and a CPU with ideally 4 or more cores.
You probably don't even need that if you can run your dev cluster in the cloud.
Finally someone addresses this subject from the perspective of a coder. Very good message as well. If you have to ask if you need it you probably don't.
Jesse L. +1
th-cam.com/video/LZmi7InKU0I/w-d-xo.html
It is just a damn advertisement. Who codes on Mac? Like come on... There is windows for c# and shit like that, and linux.
Also based on the notebooks that he recommends most of them are just too expensive. I know that python is slow, but pc wont help that much (just a joke).
Buy a fucking 2010-2015 pc and you are good to go. Get it to 8gb to have more freedom while opening tabs and that's it. And maybe HDD to SSD just to open up your IDE faster.. Or stick to vim and you good to go to do most of work.
@@rand_kk who codes on Mac? Like 99.9% of Bay Area devs?
A. My company has over 2,500 employees plus contractors, and I'd say approximately 85-90% of our devs do their coding on Macs. I never would have guessed it, but that's the reality.
The best laptop for coding is the one you enjoy spending your time on, it reaaaaally doesn't matter if you see 60 or 80 lines of code at a time... Just get one that is powerful enough and suits your other needs like weight, OS, keyboard, build quality, looks... The best laptop for coding is the one you think is the best..
What if you don’t give a fuck but you have the money to buy any of them?
@@mobonwogolekukun7551 buy all of them 🙄
@@mobonwogolekukun7551 Most likely the best MacBook pro on the market.
By just watching the aesthetic of this video you´ve won my subscription. Awesome channel with great content. Keep it up bro
Thanks Juan! I appreciate the nice words
Thanks a lot josh , this video helped me a lot for picking a perfect laptop for me as a developer.
Fonts - you can always change the default system font. I found the old fashioned courier font to work the best for me. Thus "showing more code on the same size screen" is not really a thing.
Windows - DO NOT USE DPI SCALING - like 150% - Instead lower the screen resolution to 1080p. This prevents wasted screen real estate on system controls. For example the exit button (top right corner) won't be overly big due to poor DPI scaling at 150%, this results in more lines of code on the same screen.
Ports & Lightweight - Lenovo T480 series and not the X1 carbon. Better ports (including full sized Ethernet) , better battery and a very strong case. I would not recommend the X1 Carbon. The T480 series was built for technical people on the go. It tries not to sacrifice features at the cost weight, whereas the X1 Carbon is more focused on weight. With the X1 you may need to carry external adapters (eg. full sized Ethernet)
HD Size - BIGGER IS BETTER! - Code takes up a LOT OF SPACE! Much more than the actual program itself. Get the biggest HD you can afford or make sure you can open up the case and install a new drive. Also, if you are working with graphics, the apps and the actual raw files take up a lot of space too.
I was thinking the same. Changing the font improves everything, rather than adjusting the whole screen scaling. Simpler fonts are way easy to read fast and effectively.
>don't change dpi, lower the resolution?
Please re-read what you have written. What's the point in buying a 4K panel then if you still crank it down to FHD? It will be even worse than off-the-plant FHD panel because on 4K cranked down to FHD everything will be blurry ah. So please...
@@Kitulous THERE IS NO POINT TO BUY A 4K Panel for a small screen, PERIOD! You have to realize, just because you increase the resolution, it doesn't mean everything automatically benefits! The same applies for TVs. As a general rule of thumb, the bigger these screen, the higher the resolution. Why? Because when you go bigger, all the flaws are magnified. For example, watching a lower 1080p video on a 15" screen will look just fine, but watching it on a 55" screen, you'll start to see all the flaws, as they are magnified. Now, if you go 4k on a 55" screen, all the flaws start to disappear. A 15 inch screen is too small to notice the flaws in detail. To make matters worse, Windows doesn't scale DPI very well. Moreover, your GPU performance will suffer as it tries to crank out more pixels, resulting in more battery usage. Instead of wasting money on a 4K panel, getting a bigger panel a lower resolution will be much better both on your eyes, your wallet and performance.
3:00 - if you are a programmer you know how to change a font, so buying laptop for god knows how much more just to have better defaults ain't a smart choice, also yea wider screens are better and you can code just on laptop, but most of the time mine sits closed while monitors take up the work
Awesome stuff Josh, hopefully you'll come out with a 2021 version once all these fleshy 11th gen intel and Apple silicon based laptops hit the market. As a programmer myself, I have been using macs and found the unix based system priceless. However, I am a sucker for thinkpad keyboards, but I despise the 16:9 aspect ratio and I prefer macos over linux in most cases. That being said, I am extremely interested in future generation x1s (nano, carbon and so forth which are rumored to be 16:10) and apple silicon based macbooks for their efficiency.
Anyone else has a tendency to avoid any laptop with the word "book" at the end of its name?
Im pretty sure you compared XCode Lines of Code to Visual Studio Lines of code. "A Macbook shows more lines of code" is a rather uncareful statement. I've developed on both but I dont thing it has to be like that. It also heavily depens on your preferences. What font you use and what display scaling and resolution you use and what control pane you like to keep visible and so on.
this video has so many errors it boggles my mind.....you can have 4k at 100% scaling and have sooooo many lines of code but you won't be able to see anything. if you make the right resolution/scaling choice, a higher res display (which the windows laptops have) can display much more code despite their 16:9 aspect ratio. not to mention the surface can display even more than the Mac. not defending any company in particular just pointing out facts
@@vedshah8784 - I was trying out an LG Gram 17". 1440p 16:10, pretty ideal at 100% scaling if you ask me. I actually liked the keyboard pretty well too, and I didn't think anything would be able to pull me away from a thinkpad.
Some people would be turned off by the body flex necessary to make it so light, but I don't mind at all. I've seen mixed things about how well suited it is for Linux, but other than that, I think it fits the bill for most things.
@@c433z yeah there's a bunch of great options suited to different people......but this entire "number of lines of code" metric is so stupid and highlights the incapability of understanding the fundamentals of how scaling works across different resolutions ......watching this really bothers me.
At that point I decided this is not a video for anyone actually looking for good advice on this matter. If a person is talking about such things, putting random screen scaling on, comparing default fonts etc they really don't have a clue about anything. Good thing it came early so can go to someone else for tips.
@@vedshah8784 You can make any size screen display as much as you want with higher rez and scaling, but it's going to be harder to see if the text is too small. I think that's why he recommends bigger screen sizes or only smaller sizes that have a 16 : 10 or 4 : 3 ratio.
Mouse, trackpad?!
*Laughs in vim
I liked this comment with my keyboard.
*laughs with you in emacs
Vim makes me cry
@@fabiancarrasco9841 Joy or sadness?
TheHollow Knight frustration when I have to use my arrow keys, or being unable to scroll. Also the experience I had with vim was bad since I would log in to a server to use it and sometimes the server would crash so everything I had done was not saved.
As far as i am concerned, the keyboard is the most important thing that i look for in a laptop, i spend most of the time writing code, i also use vim extensively, everything else can be upgraded ( you can basically get a better display from all manufacturers, you can upgrade RAM, hard drive, processors etc) but you can't upgrade the keyboard unless you are planning to use an external keyboard, that means the only laptop that i'm comfortable programming in is a Thinkpad x1 carbon/extreme
Waiting for the next video about this!
I'm working on it!
@@JustJoshTech lets goo 💯💯
I trust this man with my life
Thanks, I guess!
Hey Josh. I follow I think probably every tech reviewer on TH-cam. I just recently started following you. I must say, you've become one of my favorites. Your videos are informational, have high quality sound and video, and your voice is easy to listen to. Keep doing what you do. Also, I'd love to see a video on your software developer journey.
Thanks for the nice words. I definitely plan to do a video on my career path
Omg. I’m an engineer, working with sales of telecommunications and know very little of your area.
This video was a lesson.
Thank you.
Great video, we are waiting for your next video, keep healthy and keep uploading
Just Josh you might want to make an update with the new Dell XPS 15 2020.
Indeed. These new XPS models just make every laptop out there look a decade old.
And the new MBP13
Hope you do an update with the new AMD laptops and the new Xps 15,17
Also the xps 17
The screen and trackpad is nicer that's all, makes no difference to coding
Finally a hardcore expert came up to give a good reasonable review rather than others
I appreciate that!!
Reasonable review?
How could you feel that a guy who recommended a good mouse and keyboard and also suggested a MacBook be "reasonable"? (Mind you, the MacBook Trackpad is great for regular use, but has severe selection issues, especially if you're dealing with huge lines of code, I personally faced this a lot)
He also literally compared VSCode to XCode and claimed "Mac shows more lines of code". Doesn't it sound like a dumbf*k apple fan just trying to justify his fandom?
@@nikhilpaleti3872 you have a lot to explore , just give a try before stating your view otherwise it's just worthless , depends upon person to person and usage also
@@themysteriousindian8694
Not about tries, just explain to me how is "Mac shows more lines of code than Windows" just not pure form of bulls*t?
Okay, my MacBook Trackpad experience might be unique to me, maybe my 3 months of using it is less, but the fact that even the 16" one has the worst keyboard in the market is simply a fact! As a coder, I can't live with that
@@nikhilpaleti3872 to be honest it doesn't matter which laptop or build you use what really matters is how much flexible you are I have seen people using high performance smartphone and they install linux in it and cast it over tv and do coding so it really does not matter ,all you gotta do is be flexible and keep your code safe that's it rest you can do whatever you want I have even seen people buying macbook just in order to show off that they are using brand ,that kind of dumbass would never use it to it's full potential . So buy it just for simple mail purpose ,it really doesn't matter to me . I feel more comfortable in Linux then windows then Mac but if troubleshooting works come I am good with any scenario ,so buy using variants this dude gota a taste which he shared with everybody . *I know you might not accept him but yeah he's right !*
Several programmers I know use custom mechanical keyboards, to get the right "feel".
I like my late 2015 macbook pro. Runs Ubuntu, made of metal, display is good, keyboard is alright, has an escape key for vim.
The new macbooks aren't as good but I do miss out on USB-C.
Screw USB-C, not worth the extra Benjamin's and all other sacrifices that are necessary. Your model is still the best MacPro yet.
i got the same one! i just wish it had a more powerful gpu but oh well
Why wouldn’t it run ubuntu
I love when he pets the imaginary animal sitting on the keyboard.
Man we need a new one video like this, specially after all cpu war going on
My minimum requirements:
16:10 / 4:3 aspect ratio screen QHD-ish
16 GB RAM
i7 or equivalent with a minimum of 4 cores (Handy for virtualization)
2 USB C / Lightning ports (for 2 external 4K screens)
Good trackpad
512 GB SSD
Max 2 kg in size
And 4 hours of battery
I'm currently using a Macbook Pro 15". I really hope that more PC manufactures start experimenting with the aspect ratio, and start putting more USB C ports on the PCs.
Looking forward the upcoming xps15 hopefully it gets a 16:10
why trackpad matter when you're going to use 2 external 4K screens. why not a mouse
PC or laptop?
if it's PC, asrock do make cheap MTB with usb c
This was the video I was waiting for , thanks a lot!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
And here I am, with my 8 year old laptop, 3 ram, and without some keys on the keyboard.
Same
I'm a data scientist. I was using an early 2013 MacBook pro 13 inch for quite a few years, until it got sluggish for most things. I wanted to get a MacBook pro 15 inch, but I didn't trust the butterfly keyboard in the post 2016 ones. And I also didn't want to spend a whole lot on a laptop, so I bought a used 2015 MBP 15 inch (2.6 GHz i7 4960HQ, 1 TB SSD, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 750M) in April 2019 for $850, as it has all the ports and a good keyboard. But probably because of the GPU (I guess), the laptop always heated up even with moderate tasks like coding, browsing with many chrome tabs open, and some music playing in the background. Also, due to the battery having 800 odd cycles, I was getting only about 4 hours of battery life. Due to the CPU throttling from heating frequently, I decided it wasn't for me, and sold it. I started looking at Windows alternatives. I bought a used Razer blade 15 advanced 2018 model in Aug 2019 (i7 8750H, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Nvidia GTX 1070 Max-Q) for $1150. It had a great 144 Hz screen and great GPU, but the battery life sucked because of these; I was getting only 3-4 hours on average doing normal tasks. I also didn't like typing on it's keyboard and that it felt heavier than it actually was, weirdly. So, again, I sold it, and was considering smaller laptops even though I knew I'd be sacrificing on power. But then I came across a great deal on a Dell XPS 15 9570 (i7 8750H, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, Nvidia GTX 1050Ti Max-Q) for $1250 in Oct 2019. So I bought it and have been pretty satisfied using it so far. I have done thermal repasting on the CPU and GPU, as I read on forums that the thermal paste on the Dell XPS 15 has historically not been great. And I also installed a program to undervolt the CPU by 100 mV. With these 2 mods, it runs cool for non-intensive tasks and I've been getting 8-9 hours battery life doing these normal tasks like browsing, TH-cam, Netflix and general coding. It feels lighter than the Razer blade for some reason, even though technically they're supposed to be of identical weight. And the icing on the cake, it has all the ports I use - USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, SD card slot. The only thing I would wish for is a 16:10 aspect ratio screen instead of the 16:9 that it has. But overall, I highly recommend it - it's a great balance between weight, performance and battery life.
I love how he says, "Hi, I'm Josh"
Great video, my personal list is almost the same in this order:
1. Macbook Pro 16" (with Parallels if you need full VS2019)
2. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2 (15")
3. Dell XPS 15 7590 (or wait for the 2020 version)
4. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8
5. Dell Latitude 9510 (coming soon)
6. Macbook Pro 13" (would recommend to wait for the 14" model, if it ever comes)
Best laptop for programmers is any brand, any model, as long as it has a Lenovo ThinkPad keyboard.
I take it back, this was a great video and you really know your stuff, thank you
u r the humblest dude I have ever seen , keep up the good work buddy and pls tell me about the macbook air 2020 , Thank you!!
I know I'm a bit late but being limited money-wise at the moment, I got the Air 2020 for studying and coding and it would have been a great buy if the cooling issues weren't that big of an issue. I regularly get CPU temperatures above 90 degrees celsius when on group video calls or having more than one program running. On idle it rarely goes below 60. I handed it over to get it fixed (I even have Apple Care) and they said: "It is only throwing yellow errors and we only pay for the red ones, you can have your fan replaced for 250 bucks but you'll have to pay that out of your pocket." I hope the CPU burns up within the next months so I can get a fix that falls under warranty. I definitely do NOT recommend buying an Air. The only thing that keeps me from selling it and getting another laptop is that during the semester I don't have time to spend weeks or even months without a laptop until I can afford a new one. Also I had a Pro late 2017 for some two and a half years that broke right after the warranty ended. I used it every day for 8 hours straight so it did a good job but I hated the TouchBar, it has to be the worst invention Apple has ever come up with. DO NOT ever buy a MacBook with a TouchBar if you actually want to get some work done and not just play around and watch movies.
Awesome video Josh!
Really informative and hits a lot of good points!
Having tried programming on a 12, 13 and now 15 then I must agree that 13 and under is simply just frustrating to program on. The added real estate of a 15 inch improves multitasking a lot! On top of that most modern 15 inch laptops can be had in really portable sizes!
I'll be working for the next three months to get myself a good laptop and start programming
How did it go?
Oh really?
All you have to say about XPS is "big heavy and bulky"?
XPS 15 7590: 357mm * 235mm * 17mm, 1800gr weight
MBP 15 2019: 349mm * 240 * 15,5mm, 1830gr weight
XPS 15 "2020": 344 * 230 * 18 / 2.05kg
MBP 16 : 358 * 246 * 16.2 / 2.0kg
+ it has a type-c charger (indeed can help to save some weight in your backpack)
about that scaling starting around 2:54 - 150% is too small and so you use 175%? what's the default scaling on macOS?
and another thing - not only AERO 17 doesn't have 16:10 it also seems to have more toolbars visible so less space for code.
Very informative video. Thanks Josh.
Anyone wasting 1500$+ on a laptop to learn programming is not interested in learning programming. Even a used laptop with 6th Gen i5 and 8GB RAM would work perfectly, even to learn containers. These laptops would cost maximum 500$, add 100$ to get extra RAM and SSD and its a perfect development machine.
Clearly you don't know professionals
@@sanvirajzahinhaque9795 yes I don't know them because I lead them at work. No one ask for a 1500$ machine to learn programming.
@@bmujeeb nobody buys a 2K+ laptop to learn programming. Pros buy them to get job done. 500$ laptops do not have the creature comforts of a 2K laptop. Not the power, not the build quality and not the endurance
@@sanvirajzahinhaque9795 I use a dell e7470 with i5 6300u and 16gb RAM. I run VM, develop python and Java. It works perfectly fine. It costs at this point in time 499€.
@@bmujeeb If you can get away with it then good for you. But most pros i know do not use a cheap or mid range laptop
For me any laptop from 2009 and up can do programming. The real reason you consider buying a MacBook is because it OS is Unix like
This video its what I 've been looking for, I must buy a new laptop for programming and I do not know what to buy. Thanks!!!
cop a mbp 16
J moneysign nah. It’s not all that great they finally fixed issues that they never should’ve had and people are going crazy over it. Plus I’ve seen a few just go out on people
I know I'm a bit late but being limited money-wise at the moment, I got the Air 2020 for studying and coding and it would have been a great buy if the cooling issues weren't that big of an issue. I regularly get CPU temperatures above 90 degrees celsius when on group video calls or having more than one program running. On idle it rarely goes below 60. I handed it over to get it fixed (I even have Apple Care) and they said: "It is only throwing yellow errors and we only pay for the red ones, you can have your fan replaced for 250 bucks but you'll have to pay that out of your pocket." I hope the CPU burns up within the next months so I can get a fix that falls under warranty. I definitely do NOT recommend buying an Air. The only thing that keeps me from selling it and getting another laptop is that during the semester I don't have time to spend weeks or even months without a laptop until I can afford a new one. Also I had a Pro late 2017 for some two and a half years that broke right after the warranty ended. I used it every day for 8 hours straight so it did a good job but I hated the TouchBar, it has to be the worst invention Apple has ever come up with. DO NOT ever buy a MacBook with a TouchBar if you actually want to get some work done and not just play around and watch movies.
I've been using three Mac Book Pros (15'', and two 16'') in the last 6 months as a dual machine for Windows/macOS development running VS/WinDbg/Hyper-v and Fusion on macOS with Xcode. In these last 6 months the 15 inch was replaced due to sound issues in Windows. Two other 16'' stopped working due to some motherboard issue (devices just stopped working), Apple is checking that now.
Regarding the actual performance from a developer point of view. The thermal design is very poor so that if you keep even a single VM running the fan will spin like hell and the laptop will be hot. This is happening in Hyper-v in Windows and in Fusion in macOS. If you do a kernel debug using WinDbg (to a named pipe to a vm running on single cpu) the same problem - very loud fans, not very comfortable to debug for a long time.
There is a possibility to load Windows from a boot camp partition and use it in Fusion - my colleagues tried that, same fan noise. The only positive thing about these devices is a very fast SSD, so if you do a rare compilation work on a large project you are going to be happy as it will be very fast.
If you are doing daily a development work for Windows or macOS using virtual machines you will be disappointed for the quality you get given the price you pay.
P.S. From a non developer point of view, I find it very disappointing that connecting any external screen to 16'' MBP just makes it hot due to the very well known issue with the GPU consuming 15W of power more, this results in more heat and thus laptop fans constantly spinning while you do nothing resources intensive and just have a second screen hooked up (not 4K screen, regular screen).
In college I used an old Thinkpad x1 Carbon I bought off ebay for $350. It's light, durable and lasted me 3 years of college with no problems. Unless you're using multiple VM's or 3d game dev, you don't need a powerful laptop at all. I chuckle a little whenever I see freshmen rocking up to CS101 with $3000 macbooks and still have no clue what terminal is. If you really wanna improve at programming, you should get the cheapest junk laptop you can find and then install linux, that will force you to learn how to use command lines fast. After you get a job your company will give you a nice laptop anyway.
Well to be fair, he does looks like a "light theme" guy, and with a name like "Josh" he probably smell like vanilla too
Bruh!🤣🤣🤣🤣
Uhuhhhh what?
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Programming is basically writing on a colorful notepad, there's no need AT ALL for any kind of Macbook Pro or any laptop over 600 bucks. Crazy to see a programmer using a Macbook Pro, makes me think they have 0 idea about Hardware.
The main question is : “ will you ever start programming??? ”
Great video . Finally a developer making video for other developer.
Great video but I disagree with few things.
The first thing is about the screen size because you want to see "more code". Yes seeing more code is efficient for debugging, but when it's about 10-20 lines of code it's not that big of a difference and also if you write a class with more than 200-250 lines of code, your design is wrong. Usually a class should be around less than 100 lines of code but it can extend to 150. but if you manage to get to 200 lines of code inside a class, it's a red flag.
The second thing is about the mouse and the trackpad. Yes it can be useful but eventually using a mouse or a trackpad will slow you down, and as you said: "Time is money". You should learn keyboard shortcuts as much as possible. As the more you know, as the fast you write your code.
Besides that, you write about the keyboard, the keyboard should be comfortable because you're going to write code in long sessions.
Also about ram and cpu, you can have 8gb of ram as you said, but you should aim to 16gb if you can because you're going to use most of it when you code, and about the cpu, you should get the latest i7 or i9, and if you can, aim to 6+ threads and not 4 because it's also important for using threads when coding.
Very good review! The keyboard on xps15 is very very good. Much better than on Mac. The best keyboard for now is on the Surface pro tablet. Much better than the Lenovo thinkpad one.
Upgraded my xps15 to 64 GB of memory for cheap. Cannot do that on macs, had to upgrade the retina one as I needed more RAM. Macs are pretty reliable in my experience but professional Dells like xps, precision or latitude and Thinkpads are indestructable. You can buy one used for cheap, upgrade the RAM and they will serve you for decades.
175% scaling on windows is not the smallest it can go. is 150% or lower too small?
lowest is 100%. 175% is huge
It depends on the resolution you use. If you have a 4k screen in a 14 inch notebook then 175% is fine and 100% waay to small.
The lower the resolution, the lower the scaling you need.
People use anything other than 100%?
@@nelsonz you've never seen 4k on a notebook have you?
@@bigice7184 lol he can't have. 4K at 100% is just straight up masochism even on a 15.6. Still though, I wouldn't have done 175%. I prefer to custom enter 140% on a 4K display.
You have an excellent channel. This is the third of your videos I've watched in a row. I subscribed after the first. Keep it up! You are perfectly detailed, easy to follow, fair and honest. You are currently my favorite laptop reviewer. Regards from South Africa 🇿🇦
Thank you
I’m gonna learn c# to make a game on unity and hopefully sell it!
after that you should go to unity document look for the code or find some youtuber to watch like brackey because c# is just a programming language, not unity engine
Do it! Unity is the best!
edboss Have fun and good luck!
Théo Nottez thank you!!
Munkhbileg N thank you!!
2:00 I code on a 14'' screen because I've got a minimap and I already know where the code is without actually seeing as much at the same time.
2:20 more like your wrist will thank you in the long run.
4:00 nothing matches up to thinkpad keyboards.
8:00 why not docker? vmware?
Watch this at 2x speed, thank me later. Why don't you talk like that normally, lol?
1.75 worked better for me
When you say “more like your wrist will thank you in the long run”, what do you mean by that?
@@adityaupalkar007 carpal tunnel and strain stress damage are more frequent when writting on a bad keyboard.
It’s quite astonishing that none of the Precision 5530 and Lennovo P1 which are quite fanous in different companies, are not in the list.
US customary units hurt me :(( Metric system rules!
Edit: Good video though :D
Awesome video man, Subscribed!!
Me: cool, but... it needs a big honking gpu and rgb lights
I say go for the heavier laptop with heavier charging adapters. That's the only exercise some of ya'll get, is carrying your gear around.
13" MacBook Pro 2019 with the highest specs, but I am doing soft programming.
Better to have the power and not need it than need the power and not have it
To set up gdb on MAC is drag !! I have to learn LLDB MacBook is drag!!
15" Lenovo T510 Thinkpad, with the highest specs, but I'm doing soft porn.
@@XxUnraveledGamerxX I have a 7700HQ and I haven't found the power all that useful, only in Blender, Autocad and when launching a heavy IDE like Android Studio or IntelliJ
The worst advice for programmers - small fonts and lots of code visible at once. Don't do this. Use native screen resolution, increase font size and line height to have more relaxed rhythm, use light color scheme with good enough contrast and lower your screen brightness. You'll not only get an extra hour or two of battery life but you'll feel much less strain on your eyes and will be able to achieve greater focus on what you do. If you need to jump between different portions of your code, all IDEs have shortcuts to jump back and forth between symbol definitions and usages, between last edits etc.
One programmer to another, THANK YOU SIR!
No probs Leo. Glad I could help!
For the save keep it up man
ThinkPad for life🤙🤙
Thank you. finally someone made this video
Thank you so much! This is a highly informative video.
Hey Josh! You'll probably never see this comment but I just want to say that I learn so much in your videos - it helps that you have actual programming experience to understand the real tech needs of programmers in the field. Watching other tech TH-camrs like MKBHD, LinuxTechTips, Hardware Canucks and others are great, but you're the only one I really value in terms of figuring out which computer to look for and which specifications to focus on. Love your content, keep up the great work!
Thanks mate. Glad I could help by bringing a different perspective. I try to read all the comments btw!
Good video but the problem if you buy a 4k screen i'ts expensive and bad battery life.
It can be more expensive if positioned as a premium device. As for battery life - it's shorter but often development is not done on battery.
@@riklaunim Personally a WQHD IPS is the perfect match.
@@75dhib Yes, especially when then diagonal is small. Maybe 1440p at 17,4"? And also more square aspect ratios are returning so there may be a use for that as well (although IDEs adapted vertical side menus for common wide and ultrawide ratios etc.)
@@riklaunim When you have a 17 inch 4k is the better choice but in general 4k panel are glossy...
This is the video that was the most helpful to me when deciding what laptop to buy. Very Informative. THANK YOU