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What are the best laptops for a Math student around $1200?

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Feb 9, 2018

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Here’s the Deal

5 Options Considered

5 Options Considered	Price	Storage	Ports
88 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon	$1789	512GB/1TB SSD	2x USB-C Thunderbolt 3, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, microSD card, Native RJ45 dongle port
87 Dell XPS 13	$999	128GB/256GB/1TB SSD	2xUSB3 & 1xDisplayPort
87 Apple MacBook Pro	$1,299	256GB/512GB SSD	2/4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports, Headphone jack
-- Acer Aspire S13 S5-371T-78TA	$719.99	256GB SSD	2xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB Type-C, SD Card Reader
-- HP Envy 13-ab016nr	$899.99	256GB SSD	3 x USB 3.0 (1 x HP USB Boost), 1 x HDMI, 1 x headphone/microphone combo, 1 x multi-format SD card reader

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

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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 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

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

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

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 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 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

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

Specs

Storage:512GB/1TB SSD

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

RAM:8GB/16GB LPDDR3 1866Mhz

GPU:Intel HD 620 Graphics

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Dell XPS 13

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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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Con

Not a great choice for people who use their laptops to game as well

The Dell's integrated graphics are very poor for gaming and you won't be able to play graphics intensive games on it at all. A latest-generation AAA game will run at about 20 FPS with lowest settings. While a less graphics-intensive game such as Dota 2 for example will run at 30 FPS with lowest settings. 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 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 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 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

Specs

Storage:128GB/256GB/1TB SSD

Ports:2xUSB3 & 1xDisplayPort

CPU:8th-generation Intel quad-core i5-8250U or i7-8550U processor

See All Specs >

Apple MacBook Pro

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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 Con

Questionable engineering decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terrible Linux support

The 2016 hardware has zero Linux compatibility due to new standards used by Apple. Until drivers are released for Linux, which there has been no news of, the 2016 Macbooks cannot be used for Linux at all. 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 Con

RAM is soldered in

A crippling, unmitigated rip-off which prevents you from upgrading the internal RAM. 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

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

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 just work out of the box. The people who like to customize things and tinker with their systems will also find it pretty easy to do so, considering the fact that macOS is a Unix and allows varying degrees of control to users. 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 Apple prevents you from easily repairing or upgrading a MacBook Pro. See More

Top Pro

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

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

Good stability

Top Con

The keyboard is unique in how it feels 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

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

Top Con

It's missing the ESC key, which is a hassle for VI users

There is no physical function or escape keys as they have been replaced by a touch screen, so 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

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

Very expensive

Compared to other ultrabooks such as the Dell XPS 13, the Macbook Pro is very expensive. For the latest (as of July 2017) Macbook Pro and Dell XPS 13 with sual-core i5 Processor, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD, the prices are $1.1k for the Dell XPS 13 and $1.5k for the Macbook Pro. 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 8GB to 16GB 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

The default OS spies on you

Apple spies on its users, and helps others spy on them too. OSX needs to be wiped from the laptop and be replaced with Linux or another acceptable OS before it can be used. There have also been cases of security issues being reported and not fixed for quite some time. An example is a security issue in iTunes which was left unfixed for three years while it was being used by the government to collect data. These security issues may or may not be intentional, but other data collection is. See More

Top Pro

OSX/macOS and most software apps have great HiDPI support

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 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 Pro

The default macOS is very 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

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 Pro

Good battery life

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

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 and weighs 4.02 pounds. It's thinner than Macbook Air even. See More

Specs

Storage:256GB/512GB SSD

Ports:2/4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports, Headphone jack

CPU:2.0/2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5

See All Specs >

Acer Aspire S13 S5-371T-78TA

Top Pro

Good performance for casual use

The Aspire S13 is a decent laptop for most day-to-day activities for students or normal users. The 8GB of RAM and i7 CPU work amazingly well for web browsing, watching videos or working with files and documents. See More

Top Con

The thick plastic bezel around the display is a bit off-putting

The display is surrounded by a thick plastic bezel which should have been avoided as it makes the laptop seem cheaper and less attractive than it should be. See More

Top Pro

Good build quality

Most of the chassis is covered by a textured nano-imprint cover which adds a very "premium" feel to it and is great to the touch. The keyboard and wrist area are made of aluminium, which looks great when the laptop is opened. See More

Top Con

The touchpad has accuracy issues

This laptop's touchpad works fine with two-finger scrolling but has issues when navigating around the desktop. There's some slight stuttering with the cursor and it's easy to accidentally select text if your palm brushes the touchpad by accident. See More

Top Pro

Has a top-notch display

This laptop's display outshines most of the competition, from various lab tests it managed to score 106.8% sRGB color gamut. Which is better than the average for this display size (83%). The display is quite bright as well. At 327 nits you can clearly see what's on the screen even under direct sunlight. See More

Top Con

Slight sound distortion on high volume

There is some slight sound distortion when volume is over 90%. Below that level everything sounds perfect. See More

Top Pro

Has both touch and non-touch display options

The Aspire S13 can be ordered with either type of display. They are both 1080p but the non-touch version is a bit brighter. See More

Top Pro

Great design

The Aspire S13 comes in two colors, obsidian-black and white. Both of them have a nano-imprint cover, which gives the laptop a nice and slick aesthetic. See More

Specs

Storage:256GB SSD

Ports:2xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB Type-C, SD Card Reader

CPU:Intel Core i7-7500U

Screen size:13inch

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HP Envy 13-ab016nr

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Top Pro

Extremely portable

The HP Envy 13 is one of the thinnest laptops on the market at just 12.9mm thick. This detail, coupled with the fact that it weighs just above 1.3kg make the Envy 13 one of the lightest and most portable laptops on the market. See More

Top Con

Poor battery life

The Envy 13 has a relatively poor battery life. You may get about 9 hours out of it if you use it for general web browsing and some productivity work, but anything more than that (watching videos, light gaming) and you will start noticing that the battery life is considerably lower. See More

Top Pro

Good performance for the price

The HP Envy 13 offers good performance for its price. It can handle up to 16 Chrome tabs open simultaneously without even a bit of lag. Daily mainstream activities such as web browsing, editing files and even development work can be done on this laptop without any particular issues. See More

Top Con

The touchpad may be unreliable

Sometimes while dragging the cursor to select text, the touchpad will not interpret the input correctly and may start zooming in or zooming out. See More

Top Pro

People who usually use their laptop on a desk will feel very comfortable with this

The Envy 13 has a hinge on the back which gives the laptop a slight extra boost in keyboard height. This puts the keyboard at a much more comfortable typing position and reduces RSI and finger-fatigue from extensive periods of typing. See More

Top Con

No touchscreen version

HP does not provide a touchscreen version of this laptop. See More

Specs

Storage:256GB SSD

Ports:3 x USB 3.0 (1 x HP USB Boost), 1 x HDMI, 1 x headphone/microphone combo, 1 x multi-format SD card reader

CPU: 7th Generation Intel Core i5-7200U

See All Specs >

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

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