What are the best Ultrabooks with backlit keyboard, 16gb of RAM, and 512gb storage?

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Oct 25, 2018

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Here’s the Deal

3 Options Considered

Best Ultrabooks with backlit keyboard, 16gb of RAM, and 512gb storage	Price	RAM	Weight
-- Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon	$1789	8GB/16GB LPDDR3 1866Mhz	2.49 lbs / 1.13 kg
-- Apple MacBook Pro	$1,299	8/16GB	3.02lbs
-- Razer Blade Stealth	-	64GB DDR3L dual-channel	-

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score 1 · Answer 1

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Top Pro

Great speakers

The X1 Carbon has bottom-mounted speakers which provide excellent audio output. The sound is loud enough to fill a large room and there's clear separation of sound coming from the speakers, making them great for any sorts of recreational activity involving audio be it listening to music, watching movies or playing videogames. See More

Top Con

Missing an Ethernet port

The X1 Carbon is missing an Ethernet port, so people who prefer having that option as well are forced to use Wifi only. See More

Specs

RAM:8GB/16GB LPDDR3 1866Mhz

Weight:2.49 lbs / 1.13 kg

GPU:Intel HD 620 Graphics

Ports:2x USB-C Thunderbolt 3, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, microSD card, Native RJ45 dongle port

See All Specs

Top Pro

Built-in support for Amazon Alexa

The 2018 model of the X1 Carbon has far-field microphones built-in to work with Amazon Alexa. This will allow you to give commands to Alexa from across the room. See More

Top Con

Extended dual battery adds weight

6-cell extended battery adds 0.4 pounds to take this ultrabook's weight far above that of the ultrabook standard (<3 pounds). See More

Top Pro

Great battery life

The battery supports over 10 hours of light activity like web browsing, watching videos and editing documents. This can be doubled to 20 hours by swapping in the extended, 6-cell battery, which can be hot swapped without turning off the laptop since it also has an internal 4-cell battery. See More

Top Con

No SD card reader

Top Pro

Excellent display

The X1 Carbon comes in two different versions. With a 1080p or a 1440p display, with the latter being $70 more. Both displays are excellent. The image is sharp and the colors are very noticeable. Although, understandably, the 1440p display has images that are a bit sharper than its 1080p counterpart. According to colorimeter tests, both versions of the display can produce 104 and 103 percent of the sRGB color gamut, respectively. That's very impressive when compared to the average for 14" displays (83%). The 1080p screen is noticeably brighter than the 1440p screen (292nits vs 257nits) and the colors generally start fading only at about 45 degrees viewing angle. See More

Top Pro

Excellent typing experience

Like most Thinkpads, the X1 Carbon has an excellent keyboard as well. The keys have about 1.8mm of travel and provide great tactile feedback. Their gently curved keys also make it very easy to target without looking at them. The keyboard also has optional backlighting which can be turned on or off with a simple key press. See More

Top Pro

Very portable

At around 2lbs this is a very light laptop. Especially when you compare it to other Thinkpads. It's light enough to carry in one hand and when it's carried in a backpack it's easy to forget that you are carrying a laptop because of how light it is. See More

Top Pro

Great build quality

The Carbon X1 is a very light and durable laptop. It has the characteristic raven-black finishing of other Thinkpads on top of a carbon-fiber reinforced chassis. The carbon fiber increases the overall durability of the laptop, making it a great fit for people who travel a lot since it can withstand a lot of physical damages. See More

See All

score 1 · Answer 2

Apple MacBook Pro

Top Pro

Very portable

The latest MacBook Pro has a trimmed down design compared to predecessors. It's 0.61 inches (15.5 mm) thick and weighs 4.02 pounds. It's even thinner than MacBook Air. See More

Top Con

Screen anti-reflective coating issues

Specs

Ports:2/4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports, Headphone jack

See All Specs

Top Pro

Availability of Xcode

Xcode is an program with which iOS applications are made. Xcode is exclusively available for Macs. You can download it in the Mac App Store. See More

Top Con

No Ethernet or FireWire ports

An adapter is required to transfer data over FireWire or connect to the Internet using an Ethernet cable. See More

Top Pro

USB C Thunderbolt 3

On MacBook Pro, the ports support Thunderbolt data transfer at up to 40Gbps and USB data-transfer at up to 10 Gbps (USB 3.1 Gen 2). See More

Top Con

Requires the use of proprietary firmware

The source code of the firmware isn't available for users to audit or modify. See More

Top Pro

Radeon graphics, which enables basic gamedev

Radeon is not exactly ideal for gamedev, but is certainly a viable option (unlike some of the competition with onboard Intel). See More

Top Con

Limited ports

The old adage form follows function seems to have been reversed. The laptop is elegant and thin, but missing PORTS and RAM. Once you add dongles or hubs it becomes unwieldy. Sure USB C may be the way of the future, but not right now. And again, if you are using VMs in your development, RAM is king and Apple took the decision to keep the laptop thin and max RAM (soldered in) at 16 Gb. The SSD is proprietary and welded in, again, you buy the 256Gb model and decide you want 1TB you are either SSD on USB C or trading in for a hideously more expensive model. See More

Top Pro

The OS is exceptionally easy to use

Macbooks are famous for working out of the box. The default operating system (macOS) is also exceptionally easy to use even for people who have never used it before. Most people will not need to customize or change anything since all the apps work perfectly as it is. The people who like to customize things and tinker with their systems will also find it pretty easy to do, considering the fact that macOS is a Unix and allows varying degrees of control to users. See More

Top Con

Glossy screen

Apple has deleted the matte-screen option from its lineup, an unfortunate decision that reduces the usability of the computers and means you get less work done. You won't realize how much time you spend moving your head around to get reflections off whatever you're trying to see until you switch to a matte screen. Those "deep blacks" and "rich colors" that you were supposed to get from a glossy screen are not present since they're buried behind a sheen of reflection under all lighting conditions. See More

Top Pro

Both the hardware and software are designed in-house

Both the operating system and the hardware are designed by Apple and are made to be as compatible as possible from the get-go. Any drawback that the hardware might have compared to competitors, is made up by the great compatibility between the hardware and OS. Furthermore, because Apple controls the hardware that goes inside their laptops, they can be sure that every OS release will be fully compatible even with their older hardware, ensuring software compatibility for many years after the laptop is released. See More

Top Con

RAM maxes at 16GB

Most pundits thought that a 32GB upgrade was in the offing for the 2016 refresh, but no still 16GB. See More

Top Pro

Great keyboard

The 2017 Macbook uses the second generation of the "butterfly" keyboards first introduced in 2015. They feel different to use than most laptop keyboards as they are very shallow, but most people report really enjoying the keyboard after getting used to it. See More

Top Con

No real Delete key

Apple's particular ignorance about this is just baffling, and they've had a lot of opportunity to fix it. But their laptops (and small Bluetooth keyboards) still have no Delete key. They only have a Backspace key that's mislabeled "delete." This is annoying for every use, but particularly for programmers; we tend to delete things from the middle of lines and refactor code. The best keyboard-remapping utility (KeyRemap4MacBook, now called Karabiner) was disabled by an OS update a couple of versions ago and had to be rewritten entirely. It's still not fully functional, but can be used to convert another key (I use F12) into Delete. But Apple could have addressed this problem (which other vendors never suffered from) by simply making the now-defunct Eject key into Delete. They inexplicably didn't. See More

Top Pro

One of the best SSDs that can be found on a laptop

With read speeds at 3.1Gbps and write speeds at around 4.7Gbps, the SSD used in the MacBook Pro is the best in the market by far. This doesn't just mean opening/saving files is quicker, but it also has a pretty huge impact on general application performance. See More

Top Con

Hard to repair or upgrade the hardware

The battery and other components are glued in, and the battery blocks access to other parts. The battery will wear out eventually, and the fact that it's glued in means that you cannot easily repair or upgrade a MacBook Pro. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of RAM for multitasking

The MacBook Pro has up to 16 GB of RAM. That much RAM is perfect for running IDEs, emulators, and virtual machines. See More

Top Con

The keyboard has a unique feel and some people may need some time to get used to it

The keyboard on the MacBook is unique and some people may not like the way the keys feel to press or not having physical function keys. See More

Top Pro

OSX/macOS and most software apps have great HiDPI support

Top Con

Keyboard issues

The membrane can wear out rather quickly, which causes keys to become more and more unresponsive. See More

Top Pro

New OSX updates run on older models for quite a long time

Even older MacBooks are updated for a very long duration. Your MacBook won't get deprecated for quite a while. See More

Top Con

It's missing the ESC key

There is no physical function or escape keys as they have been replaced by a touchscreen, so for example, if you're a big Vim user and don't want to change your habits, the MacBook might be a poor choice. See More

Top Pro

Good stability

Mac OS is very stable. It can run for multiple days without even needing a reboot, and the system is very crash proof. See More

Top Con

No official Linux support

Apple doesn't support Linux. As for unofficial support by Linux community: as of 2017, Linux still has limited compatibility with 2016 Mac hardware (in particular, WiFi is working in a limited fashion, and audio and suspend/resume don't work at all). For details on "how to install Linux on a 2016+ Mac" click here. See More

Top Pro

Good customer support

Apple offers support over the phone worldwide, provides support in Apple retail stores and authorized resellers and has community forums where users can help users. See More

Top Con

You can't upgrade the internal RAM

RAM is soldered in, so you can't upgrade it. See More

Top Pro

One of the best trackpads around

The Macbooks are renowned for having the best trackpad out of any laptop. It has full gesture support, you can configure in the software how much pressure you want before it physically clicks and the finger tracking is perfect. See More

Top Con

You need dongles or a dock to connect USB-A devices

There are no USB-A ports, so you'll need a dongle or a dock to use things like webcams. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

The MacBook Pro offers great performance both for day-to-day stuff and more niche graphic-related activities. The latest model also has had an update in hardware specs where both the CPU and GPU have been upgraded to their respective latest generations. The 16GB to 32GB help with performance as well and the SSD speeds are unmatched in the laptop market which also helps with general performance. See More

Top Con

It's expensive

Compared to other ultrabooks such as the Dell XPS 13, the MacBook Pro is very expensive. For the latest (as of Dec 2017) MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 13 with dual-core i5 Processor, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD, the prices are $1.2k for the Dell XPS 13 and $1.5k for the MacBook Pro. See More

Top Pro

Amazing build quality

The MacBook Pro has an all-aluminum body that looks great and is sturdy enough that worries of accidentally damaging are mostly alleviated. It has a robust lid, well-spaced back-lit keyboard with speakers on each side of the keyboard and an excellent button-less trackpad. See More

Top Pro

Can run up to 3 external monitors and output 4K

With 2 Thunderbolt (DisplayPort) plugs and 1 HDMI, MBP can run up to 3 external monitors and output 4K over HDMI. See More

Top Pro

Good battery life

The battery drains in about 9 hours of typical use. See More

Top Pro

The default macOS is relatively developer friendly since it's a Unix

OSX is based on XNU (Darwin) kernel, it's certified Unix and arguably a lot more developer friendly than Windows. Development for Unix is native on OS X. There's a large selection of great development tools available for OSX. The operating system itself comes bundled with a powerful terminal emulator, called Terminal. Additionally, Apple provides tools, like Xcode, an IDE that contains a comprehensive collection of tools for developing OSX and iOS software, for free. See More

Top Pro

Fantastic display

The MacBook Pro has a sharp, color accurate 2560 x 1600 IPS display. It's bright at 500 nits, has great viewing angles (viewable at up to 178 degrees) and capable of displaying 87.3% of sRGB color gamut. See More

See All

score 1 · Answer 3

Razer Blade Stealth

Top Pro

Very portable and lightweight

Travel friendly as it's a 13" (2018 model) See More

Top Con

No Ethernet port

Need to use dongle for Ethernet port (USB-C to RJ45) See More

Specs

RAM:64GB DDR3L dual-channel

Processor:i7-8565U

Graphics:NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (4GB)

SSD:2TB

Top Pro

Amazing Screen - option to upgrade upto 4K touchscreen

Very Good for content creators. See More

Top Con

RAM is soldered onboard

Cannot upgrade RAM or replace for high performance or repair reasons. See More

See All

What are the best Ultrabooks with backlit keyboard, 16gb of RAM, and 512gb storage?

3 Options Considered

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

My Recommendation for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

My Recommendation for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Great speakers

Missing an Ethernet port

Built-in support for Amazon Alexa

Extended dual battery adds weight

Great battery life

No SD card reader

Excellent display

Excellent typing experience

Very portable

Great build quality

Apple MacBook Pro

My Recommendation for Apple MacBook Pro

My Recommendation for Apple MacBook Pro

Very portable

Screen anti-reflective coating issues

Availability of Xcode

No Ethernet or FireWire ports

USB C Thunderbolt 3

Requires the use of proprietary firmware

Radeon graphics, which enables basic gamedev

Limited ports

The OS is exceptionally easy to use

Glossy screen

Both the hardware and software are designed in-house

RAM maxes at 16GB

Great keyboard

No real Delete key

One of the best SSDs that can be found on a laptop

Hard to repair or upgrade the hardware

Plenty of RAM for multitasking

The keyboard has a unique feel and some people may need some time to get used to it

OSX/macOS and most software apps have great HiDPI support

Keyboard issues

New OSX updates run on older models for quite a long time

It's missing the ESC key

Good stability

No official Linux support

Good customer support

You can't upgrade the internal RAM

One of the best trackpads around

You need dongles or a dock to connect USB-A devices

Great performance

It's expensive

Amazing build quality

Can run up to 3 external monitors and output 4K

Good battery life

The default macOS is relatively developer friendly since it's a Unix

Fantastic display

Razer Blade Stealth

My Recommendation for Razer Blade Stealth

My Recommendation for Razer Blade Stealth

Very portable and lightweight

No Ethernet port

Amazing Screen - option to upgrade upto 4K touchscreen

RAM is soldered onboard

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