What are the best PC laptops for advanced Excel operations and macros?

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Nov 21, 2019

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2 Options Considered

Best PC laptops for advanced Excel operations and macros	Price	Weight	RAM
-- Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon	$1789	2.49 lbs / 1.13 kg	8GB/16GB LPDDR3 1866Mhz
-- Dell XPS 13	$999	2.7 lbs	8 GB/16GB

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score 3 · Answer 1

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

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 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

Weight:2.49 lbs / 1.13 kg

RAM:8GB/16GB LPDDR3 1866Mhz

Storage:512GB/1TB SSD

GPU:Intel HD 620 Graphics

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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 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

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

RapidCharge technology

Charges the batter to 80% in 60 min. See More

Top Pro

Fingerprint Reader

Includes biometric reader for authentication purposes. See More

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 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

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

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Dell XPS 13

Top Pro

Non-glossy

The build is non-glossy, so no fingerprint markings all over the thing. See More

Top Con

Phone support is very slow

Customers have reported waiting for up to 15 minutes to get connected to someone who will be able to help solve their issue. See More

Specs

Weight:2.7 lbs

RAM:8 GB/16GB

Storage:128GB/256GB/1TB SSD

GPU:Intel UHD Graphics 620

See All Specs

Top Pro

Great online customer service

Dell's customer service is one of the best in the industry. Especially the online customer service website. There you will find frequently asked questions which usually solve 90% of issues, if that's not enough, there's a live chat with a customer service representative, who are usually very helpful and very understanding about every issue that may arise. See More

Top Con

No upgrades

Ram is soldered on the board. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of RAM for all programming needs

Building software typically takes more resources than running the final product. Having a lot of RAM helps building big complex applications faster. See More

Top Con

13" is too small for many kinds of development

At these sizes, it is inches which start to matter, not only pixels. See More

Top Pro

Decent speakers

The Dell XPS 13 has above average speakers for a laptop, they get very loud but at max volume tend to distort the music a little too much. See More

Top Con

The touchscreen reflects light making it hard to see unless the lighting on the display is properly set

The screen for the touch-screen model is glossy instead of matte (non-touch screen). For what is a Linux notebook this does not make a lot of sense since most Linux users are the more tech savy who program. A glossy screen is more for multimedia, something Linux is not really known for excelling in. See More

Top Pro

Toggleable and customizable keyboard backlighting

Users can turn on or off the backlighting of the keyboard as well as adjust the brightness. See More

Top Con

The battery wears out quickly

After some use, the battery continues to fall at an alarming rate, to only 5-6 hours after a couple of months. See More

Top Pro

Great keyboard

The keyboard is high quality, feels great to type on and isn't too mushy or too shallow. Even though there's nothing very special about the keyboard, it's as good of a keyboard as you could want. See More

Top Con

Spongy keyboard

The keyboard feels a bit spongy and does not have a lot of travel to the keys. When bottoming out there is no feel of completion. See More

Top Pro

Latest generation hardware

The XPS 13 was recently updated with all the latest generation hardware which means that it won't become outdated any time soon. See More

Top Con

Webcam located in an odd place

Due to the narrow bezel of the infinity display, Dell moved the webcam to the bottom left corner. This results in an odd viewing angle and the webcam getting blocked while typing. See More

Top Pro

Uses an SSD for faster operations on disk

Using an SSD greatly increases performance for every I/O operation, especially compared to laptops that use an HDD. The laptop will boot faster, programs that need to read and write to disk will run faster and scripts will compile much faster than on an HDD. See More

Top Con

The battery does not last as long as advertised

The laptop never performs to the promised 11-15 hours, average usage is around 7-8 hours. See More

Top Pro

One of the best Windows trackpads available

The Dell's trackpad is one of the best Windows trackpads available. It has smooth and precise tracking and even supports three-finger gestures similar to the Macbook's. See More

Top Con

Trackpad hardware (touch/feel/operation) is noticeably worse if coming from MacBook/MBP

Part of this is the hardware, and part seems to be the drivers. It's very unforgiving when accidentally brushing the trackpad with a different finger. Certain actions like double-clicks (tapping with two fingers) and scrolling (with two fingers) doesn't work reliably. This is true with other windows based laptops too. Not an issue if you spend a lot of time in a terminal/shell. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and portable

It's weight is only 2.7 lbs, making it very portable. See More

Top Pro

Stunning display

Before buying you can choose between the 4K UHD- or full HD-resolution touch displays or a full HD non-touch one. However, Linux compatibility for super high resolution displays can be spotty at times, so you might be better off sticking with the full HD if you plan on running Linux. Display quality is very good as far as viewing angles, brightness and color reproduction go. It also has a very small bevel so the screen goes more or less edge-to-edge. It also has an output of 400 nit, putting it in the "really bright" category as far as displays go. As for color reproduction, XPS 13's display produces an impressive 107.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut. See More

Top Pro

Great build quality

The body has a slick and elegant design. It's a mix of aluminum, carbon fiber and magnesium which hardly ever flexes even when held with one hand. See More

Top Pro

Great Linux support

You can configure the XPS 13 to come with Linux out of the box. Even if you pick the Windows version, the XPS 13 has Linux drivers for all of its features and most users have reported that the whole process of installing a Linux distribution on a Dell XPS 13 is very simple. See More

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What are the best PC laptops for advanced Excel operations and macros?

2 Options Considered

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

My Recommendation for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

My Recommendation for Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Excellent typing experience

Missing an Ethernet port

Excellent display

Extended dual battery adds weight

Very portable

RapidCharge technology

Fingerprint Reader

Great speakers

Great build quality

Great battery life

Dell XPS 13

My Recommendation for Dell XPS 13

My Recommendation for Dell XPS 13

Non-glossy

Phone support is very slow

Great online customer service

No upgrades

Plenty of RAM for all programming needs

13" is too small for many kinds of development

Decent speakers

The touchscreen reflects light making it hard to see unless the lighting on the display is properly set

Toggleable and customizable keyboard backlighting

The battery wears out quickly

Great keyboard

Spongy keyboard

Latest generation hardware

Webcam located in an odd place

Uses an SSD for faster operations on disk

The battery does not last as long as advertised

One of the best Windows trackpads available

Trackpad hardware (touch/feel/operation) is noticeably worse if coming from MacBook/MBP

Lightweight and portable

Stunning display

Great build quality

Great Linux support

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