Best Laptops for Programmers 2020

hi I'm Josh and what you probably know about me is that I buy and review a lot of laptops but what you may not know is that I have two degrees in computer science specifically programming I have programmed professionally for over 15 years at a variety of companies including cutting-edge startups and major corporations such as IBM I've coded small systems through to massively concurrent cloud-based systems I have received so many requests for this guide well this is it my ultimate guide of exactly what you should be looking for in a laptop for a software developer and of course just watch it if you are generally interested I'll be demystified a bunch of software development things you see in TV shows and movies the way I'm going to do this guide is to first talk about what programmers should look for when picking a laptop including what they should be careful of then I'm going to wrap up by suggesting several laptops that are ideal at a variety of price points this guide is going to be super thorough and enough for the vast majority of software developers but software development can be extremely specialized you may have very specific needs that require certain hardware for example you need a laptop with ridiculous amounts of RAM because you plan to develop advanced Monte Carlo simulations on large data sets which for performance purposes you need to keep in memory you will certainly know if you require such specialized Hardware if you don't know you likely don't need it before we hop into this guide take a moment to click that subscribe button the thumbs up and the notification bell videos like this take a long time to make and although I enjoy helping you out it definitely shows your appreciation for the effort that goes into them are you ready let's go firstly the most important things for a coding laptop are a great display and a comfortable keyboard as you will be staring at tiny code all day and typing for hours on end for the display you want a crystal clear bright display that shows the most amount of code possible without needing to squint you'll often see coders working with external monitors turned vertically as a coder you frequently debug issues which means you jump from one of code to another to fix a problem you want to avoid scrolling and clicking as much as possible to do this as time is money so the more amount of code you see on the screen the better look for a high-resolution display like a retina or a 4k panel the higher fidelity of these panels will make it easier to see code in small fonts and allow you to see more on the same size display also pay close attention to the aspect ratio displays with aspect ratios like 3 by 2 in the surface lineup or even those with 16 by 10 like apples range will allow you to see more code than the standard 16 by 9 that most Netflix viewers or content traders prefer also an interesting note Apple's Mac OS and it's included fonts by default allows you to comfortably see more lines of code than on a similar sized screen on windows take a look at this comparison my macbook pro 16 which has 8.5 inches of vertical screen height after setting it to more space in the display settings shows 86 lines of code my arrow 17 inch screen also has 8.5 inches of vertical screen height after setting it to 175 percent display scaling in Windows to show the most amount of code it shows only 64 lines of code my surface book 2 15 with 8.3 inches of vertical screen height after setting it also to 175 percent scaling shows only 73 lines of code this confirms my hypothesis that out of the box with pre-installed fonts the displays on Mac OS are better for coding than Windows on similar size displays the keyboard is extremely important you want it to be very comfortable for long sessions of typing this means deep travel I'd look for something with a minimum 1.3 millimeters of key travel even the new MacBook Pro 16 only have one millimeter of travel which isn't as comfortable as I'd like that being said whether you like a keyboard is very subjective go to a store to try out the keyboard open a text document and try typing up a couple of paragraphs be very careful of unusual keyboard layouts like that of razors these keyboards may result in a lot of frustration when trying to get work done fast also programmers use integrated development environments like IntelliJ here or PHP stop these frequently use the escape and function keys for important tasks most laptops now set the function keys to their secondary function like volume up and down you may want to try to find a laptop where you can switch the function keys back also called function locking for example the Lenovo ThinkPad line allows you to do this you may want to avoid Apple's touch bar equipped laptops as using the function keys on these is an uncomfortable experience but you can generally remap the keys from function to other key combinations so this isn't the end of the world lastly ensure the keyboard is backlit if you plan to use it at night an amazing trackpad is a nice to have for most coders it's very common though for coders to carry an extremely accurate Mouse around with them coders need to make the most of their time and if a top Mouse the forms better than even the best trackpad it's better to bring a mouse that being said if you don't want to carry a mouse ensure you get a laptop with a top trackpad like one from the surface or MacBook Pro range if you are a software dev and you're purchasing a laptop rather than a desktop there is probably a portability reason for it like you are a student coder using the laptop in the library or a gig economy worker coding in a coffee store or you're working in an open-plan corporate environment you want a laptop that is going to be portable lightweight with strong battery life coders are frequently on the go the lighter weight the laptop the better anything greater than 4.5 pounds is going to feel heavy in your backpack also I'd strongly advise you to look for a laptop that charges via USB see these charges are far lighter weight than charges used in gaming laptops plus they are cheaper so you can buy couple to have at work and home which means you may not have to carry the charger with you one thing that may not be as much of an issue for coders as it is for other users is fan noise coders frequently work in loud environments with headphones on so think about where you're going to be working as to whether fan noise needs to be a factor for preventing you from buying a laptop under webcams coders generally use these as software development is normally very collaborative you will likely be working with a team of software developers and other partners you will probably be doing frequent video conferences having a webcam that stares up your nose or is extremely low quality will not be nice for other team members keep an eye out for this when shopping CPU power you want to have enough CPU power but not too much let me explain too much CPU power may result in your keyboard deck getting too warm to the touch and becoming uncomfortable or the fans on your laptop being obnoxiously loud out but you don't want too little CPU power that you are waiting too long for code to run as you want to avoid context switching context which is where you are thinking through a complex coding problem but because it takes too long for your laptop to run a test of the code you switch to another application like browsing the web while you wait then when you remember that the test was complete you have to refresh your memory on the specifics of what you were testing this can really slow down your productivity also keep in mind programming normally requires more burst CPU power rather than sustained like video editing a CPU like the i-79 750 H with a low base clock but a high burst is the perfect balance I'm not going to cover GPU performance here as it's more of a specialized case let's talk about operating systems you may hear coda say that they write a run Linux on Mac OS / Windows if you don't know what this is all about other than just a personal preference let me do mystify it the reason I run Fedora Linux on one of my laptops is that the software I'm creating will eventually be deployed on to remote servers often sitting in the cloud like AWS Amazon Web Services it won't spend its life running on my laptop these remote services often run Linux in my case a version of Linux based on RedHat called cent OS to ensure the code runs as expected it helps to run the same or a very similar operating system on the laptop you are developing the code on as different operating systems work in different ways it's easier to have the same operating system on your laptop as the servers you are coding for that means you don't have to constantly think I need to do something like install software this way on one machine verse another way on my servers if you want to run Linux on your machine search the web to ensure your machine is compared with that variant of Linux if you can't find information on your particular machine and you live in a location where you have access to free returns by the laptop try Linux and if it doesn't work return it if you are planning to develop native apps for iOS or iPad then you want a mac book as xcode the language for developing these only runs on Mac OS Ram you are going to want a minimum of a gig of ram but I'd recommend 16 think about it like this a normal user runs a bunch of programs on their machine an 8 gig of ram is fine with little slowdown a coda though is going to run all of those normal programs plus many additional ones for example they will run an integrated development environment like the one I have here look how much RAM it is using they will then run the applications they are developing itself which also uses additional RAM the moral of the story is this coders need more RAM than normal users please note that yes modern operating systems do make excellent use of less round by compressing data in memory and using fast SSDs to swap to but it's still better to avoid this and just go for 16 gig of ram or higher storage for most coders 512 gigs should be fine if you know what kind of work you'll be doing try to find out what data you'll be working with test out it can be very big and you want to ensure you can fit it in your laptop's drive or you'll have to carry an external drive everywhere you want a code which can be annoying anything else that I haven't discussed here I personally don't believe is key for a programmer ok let's get into the laptops and recommend and please note no laptop is perfect the MacBook Pro 16 meets almost a hundred percent of the needs discussed in this guide other than the keyboard which is a slight mess the keyboard is a little uncomfortable with travel being a bit short but if you can afford it get it it's my number one pick time for second the lenovo x1 extreme gen to better keeper than the macbook pro and lighter in weight but the screen is a 16 by 9 layout smaller than the MacBook Pros and as mentioned Windows generally shows or less lines of code so that's a negative plus the MacBook Pros battery is bigger that being said it's still a quality powerful computer with a good 4k screen also tying for second surface book 215 better keyboard than the MacBook Pro similar wait it has the 3 by 2 aspect ratio of the screen so you'll see a decent amount of code the CPU is behind the screen so the keyboard deck will not get hot when under load which makes it a super comfortable laptop to use that being said the laptop has been around for two years and the processing power of this laptop is not as strong as I'd like it's still though is good enough for most development tasks third the Aero 17 great screen comfortable keyboard powerful components very small and light for a 17 inch laptop this is a good coding laptop if you only need a little bit of portability I wouldn't recommend this though if you are traveling with a laptop each day it doesn't support USB C charging so you'll have to carry a heavy power brick fourth the Dell XPS 15 this laptop is pretty good but to be honest its chassis hasn't been updated in many years it's a bit heavy and bulky for what it is by today's standards although it is very well made fifth the HP Spectre x-360 15-inch decent amount of power very comfortable keyboard ok screen although it's a little dimmer than its competitors it's also heavier than some of the other laptops I mentioned sixth the Lenovo C 940 probably the most portable laptop I've recommended get the 4k version as it will be easier to see code the only negative here is the performance isn't phenomenal Lenovo tends to throttle the CPU to keep the heat and fan noise in check which isn't a bad thing so if you are doing lightweight coding this is a good option 7 the lenovo x1 carbon great keyboard with a 14 inch screen spring for the 4k model as again you'll be able to make out more Kodama battery life though isn't great notice that I haven't recommended any 13-inch laptops I personally think 13-inch screens are too small for coders to use as their primary device with one exception my teeth pick the macbook pro 13 as mentioned apple screens show more code for the same sized screen these machines are also pretty powerful for what they are the major downside though is the butterfly keyboard now if you can't afford any of the above laptops the first thing I is looking for a prior year's model of one of these or an open box or outlet model if you can't find one then you'll have to sacrifice something I would consider sacrificing the 4k screen and going for a 1080 screen many laptops now have excellent 1080 screen options like the ones on the lenovo x1 carbon range if you can handle looking at small code on that kind of monitor you will be able to purchase the 1080 variants of some of the laptops I mentioned much cheaper for example the Dell XPS 15 with a nine 300-page model CPU with the 1080 screen is still a surprisingly capable computer and substantially cheaper than the 4k version with the six core CPU anyway that's all for today folks I hope you enjoyed this video and found it informative if you did do me Asad and hit that subscribe button the thumbs up and the notification bell if you have comments or questions leave them down below or join the discord chat heck this video was made because viewers asked for it so I definitely am reading your comments till next time I'll catch you later

Channel: Just Josh

Views: 1,079,934

Rating: 4.8139963 out of 5

Keywords: Software Development Laptop, Programming Laptop, Engineering Laptop, Laptop Review, Best Software Development Laptop, Best Programming Laptop, Windows vs Mac, Apple Macbook Pro 16, Dell XPS, HP Spectre x360, Lenovo X1 Carbon, Lenovo Extreme Gen 2, Surface Book 2, Macbook Pro 13, Aero 17

Id: WutBn_mm0c8

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020