I’m looking to buy a new laptop. I recently switched to Linux (Fedora) and would like to stay with it (Not necessarily Fedora though).

My most important requirement is that it has a great runtime. I honestly don’t want to deal with under-volting or anything like that. A “runs out of the box” approach would be best.

13-14", no dGPU, AMD/Intel.

edit: I realized that great runtime is very different for everyone. I wouldn’t consider 5-7 hours great. More like absolute minimum is 8. Better is 10-12. This sounds very unlikely though, apart from MacBooks with ARM CPU. Any recommendations?

  • Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com
    121·
    11 months ago

    There are some sweet used laptops with great runtime in the Lenovo ThinkPad series.

    Not new though…

    Edit: maybe new if you have the budget ofc

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      The T480 and T580 are some of the last ones they made with swapable batteries. Everything works out of the box in Linux except the fingerprint scanner which needs some additional configuration.

      I have a T480 with an integrated GPU and the largest battery. It runs for a long time on a charge and there are lots of spare parts available.

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
      4·
      11 months ago

      Does anyone have one of these that could confirm if that’s realistic? I’ve seen many laptops with similar specs and claims that come out to significantly lower battery life unless you do nothing but stare at an empty desktop.

      • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
        6·
        11 months ago

        Wired has a good review on it:

        Where the Lemur Pro really shines is battery life. System76 claims 14 hours, and I managed 11 hours in our battery drain test (looping a 1080p video). In real-world use, I frequently eked out over 13 hours. That’s off the charts better than any other Linux laptop I’ve tested recently.

        https://www.wired.com/review/system-76-lemur-pro-laptop/

        If you aren’t interested in MacBooks, this imo is one of the best alternatives–especially if battery life is a high priority.

  • Synestine@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    My daily driver is still a Dell XPS 13, 10th gen Intel i7, 16gb RAM and 500gb (nvm) SSD. I bought it referbed. I’m running Fedora 38 (Workstation) currently. Everything works but the fingerprint sensor (which I don’t care about). It runs for hours as long as I’m doing “normal” stuff like browsing and writing. It runs so long that I get tired before it does. The only time the runtime suffers is if I’m cranking the cores (encoding, compiling, etc). No voodoo required, it just runs this way out of the box. Even the onboard firmware gets updated by fwupd.

    The only oddity (to me) is that it’s USB-C only (no A ports) so I carry a small dock if I need to plugin a normal USB device or network cable, but that’s rare for me.

    • not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      Someone else also recommended a XPS. I’m totally fine with just USB-C. How fast do you get tired? If it’s after 9 hours and the laptop runs for 12, that would be awesome :)

      • Synestine@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I haven’t had nine hours uninterrupted time in quite a while, but I’ve done six to seven with plenty left in the tank. I’ve kinda stopped measuring it because of that.

  • bruhduh@lemmy.world
    5·
    11 months ago

    Basically any laptop with AMD U series apu with big enough battery will suffice, just set up properly TLP programm after installation

  • Discover5164@lemm.ee
    61·
    11 months ago

    i have the same requirements as you. i bought framework 13.

    i’m still in the confuguration phase, for now it has a decent battery run of ~6/8h of installing stuff. i’m configuring nixos.

    • not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      31·
      11 months ago

      I looked into them. And it sounded a lot of the users are not happy about the build quality compared to Thinkpads or Latitudes. How is your experience? Did you go with Intel or AMD?

      • the_q@lemmy.world
        41·
        11 months ago

        Build quality? You mean replaceable parts vs glue making things feel more solid? Have I had this conversation with you before?

      • Discover5164@lemm.ee
        2·
        11 months ago

        i just got a ThinkPad for work, it’s spectacular. but if you need to replace something…

        the framework is solid, and allows to replace anything. i think the tradeoff is very fair.

      • BaldProphet@kbin.social
        11·
        11 months ago

        Build quality on Frameworks is dramatically better than most ThinkPads. They’ve made a lot of improvements to battery life since the first generation (I got mine in the second batch), so it might have decent battery life now. They’ve always been more efficient on Linux than on Windows.

    • datendefekt@lemmy.ml
      1·
      11 months ago

      Which CPU are you using? I’ve got the 11th gen i5 and battery life is just miserable, especially in standby.

      • Discover5164@lemm.ee
        2·
        11 months ago

        i5-1340p

        there is a kernel parameter to add to make standby better: mem_sleep_default=deep.

        if you are on nixos you can import the framework hardware module from “nixos-hardware”. it also includes other fixes

  • haagch@lemmy.world
    3·
    11 months ago

    Not the most comfortable but if you get one with usb-c pd charging, there are quite a few powerbanks even with 100+ watt now.

  • TechAdmin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    I’ve had good luck with refurbished Dell laptops. My primary laptop is a refurbished Dell Latitude 11" 3120. Bought it for ~$250 at beginning of this year and currently have Fedora on it. It’s not very powerful. I use it primarily to browse the web, watch movies/tv, and vnc/ssh to my other systems. Can last about 5-6 hours streaming video from jellyfin at 50% brightness, other stuff barely uses any power and can stretch out to 9-10 hours if I set display brightness even lower.

    I’ve always bought Windows laptops then put linux on them so I’m used to verifying that tools such as TLP are installed, configured, enabled, and working. There is too much variety with laptops for all of them to be handled automatically unfortunately so I always verify it. If a laptop came with Linux pre-installed then it might be good to go ootb but I’d still verify.

    • not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Interesting. 9-10 hours sounds nice! Do you think never ones would have even better runtime? Have you used TLPUI? Maybe with a GUI I could get my self to play around with TLP…

    • not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      That’s a good reply. Reading the other replies, I realized that great runtime is very different for everyone. I wouldn’t consider 5-7 hours great. More like absolute minimum 8. Better is 10-12. This sounds very unlikely though, apart from MacBooks with ARM CPU.

  • BuoyantCitrus@lemmy.ca
    2·
    11 months ago

    Next time I look for a small laptop to have handy one thing I’m going to be sure to prioritise is: how much battery does it use while suspended? I’d really like to not need to have it switch to hibernate after 30m of sleep or w/e and ideally just plug it in overnight like a phone.

  • oneguynick@lemmy.world
    2·
    11 months ago

    Lenovo x13s Arm setup with Linux is coming along and can hit those runtimes. Will be slower, but good enough for daily work

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    One rule of thumb I discovered when doing research about a year ago is that AMD chips are generally way better than Intel chips when it comes to power consumption.

  • penquin@lemm.ee
    21·
    11 months ago

    And I’m out here ecstatic for getting 4 hours on my laptop 😂