Is now a good time to buy a laptop?

[Sterrewiggelary]

My old Optimus laptop I bought back in May 2016 finally died tonight; it’s lived a good life and surpassed the minimum 4 years I expected of it, and replacing it has been on the cards for a while now. That said, I wasn’t expecting its death to be so abrupt and haven't had a chance to really think about what I want. I can live without a personal laptop for a short while as I have another laptop for work that I can use, but it’s technically not my laptop.

I was thinking about buying either a 15.6" Optimus XI or a 15.6" Optimus Pro laptop and spending around £1150. I know that CES is around the corner, and I was wondering if there was any value in me putting off buying a new laptop just yet. I imagine there will be a lag in any changes to what’s offered by PC Specialist, but are prices likely to fluctuate?

What I don’t want to do is spend a lot of money on a new laptop, only for PC Specialist to offer newer components at similar prices shortly after I’ve bought my new laptop. Or for the same components to be offered at much lower prices. My main constraint is how much I can spend, and I want to buy the best laptop I can afford.

Thanks in advance!

 

[AgentCooper]

I guess it’s going to depend on your uses for the laptop. If you’re a gamer, new laptop graphics cards are due for announcement in the near future, would that affect your decision? Give us a bit more background about what you’d be doing with it and you’ll get a few informed opinions 🙂👍

 

[SpyderTracks]

I would say huge no no.

We're at the tail end of the life of the 2000 series notebooks.

3000 series GPU chassis should be announced at CES in January with release in feb or march, and I have high hopes.

I also think we'll see some new 1440p display options (although I've been saying that for over a year now )

I would say now is a really bad time to buy.

 

[Bhuna50]

At the moment as well, with the chassis changes coming, the Optimus range is only Intel CPUs - no AMD choice.

Not sure what you had before, but the main consensus is AMD Ryzen over Intel at the moment.

Looking at the 15" laptops, looks like its only the Nova - desktop replacement laptop that has the AMD desktop CPU - all others seem to be Intel choice only by looks of it.

 

[AgentCooper]

I also think we'll see some new 1440p display options (although I've been saying that for over a year now )

Ah, the patented @SpyderTracks fabled 1440p laptop screen. Rarer than rocking horse dung bathed in dragon’s tears.

I’ll loan you this gif so you can use it on me when it actually happens 😜

(For the record, I know next to nothing about laptops so fully expect that to come back and haunt me in the very near future...)

 

[Sterrewiggelary]

Thanks all for the insanely quick replies.

I mostly use my laptop for gaming and data crunching/analytics - but there has been much less of the latter recently.

It seems I was maybe right to be somewhat apprehensive. I think I'll try and wait a few months - maybe even put a bit more money aside.
I'm sure I'll survive with just my work laptop for a while!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Ah, the patented @SpyderTracks fabled 1440p laptop screen. Rarer than rocking horse dung bathed in dragon’s tears.

The recent 1440p 144Hz screen upgrade on the Vyper makes me more convinced it will happen!

 

[AgentCooper]

Thanks all for the insanely quick replies.

I mostly use my laptop for gaming and data crunching/analytics - but there has been much less of the latter recently.

It seems I was maybe right to be somewhat apprehensive. I think I'll try and wait a few months - maybe even put a bit more money aside.
I'm sure I'll survive with just my work laptop for a while!

Sounds good, sit on your money pile for a bit longer and let it grow 🙂

If you need some purchasing advice when the time is right, jump back on and there’s a knowledgeable few laptop enthusiasts here who’ll be happy to help you choose your dream machine 👍

 

[barlew]

The more interesting question here is what is global supply going to be like for these new gen laptops when they are released?
There shouldn't be the dramas we have seen with scalpers but i have concerns about the ongoing effects of COVID on manufacturing.

 

[Fuzzball]

My old Optimus laptop I bought back in May 2016 finally died tonight; it’s lived a good life and surpassed the minimum 4 years I expected of it, and replacing it has been on the cards for a while now. That said, I wasn’t expecting its death to be so abrupt and haven't had a chance to really think about what I want. I can live without a personal laptop for a short while as I have another laptop for work that I can use, but it’s technically not my laptop.

I was thinking about buying either a 15.6" Optimus XI or a 15.6" Optimus Pro laptop and spending around £1150. I know that CES is around the corner, and I was wondering if there was any value in me putting off buying a new laptop just yet. I imagine there will be a lag in any changes to what’s offered by PC Specialist, but are prices likely to fluctuate?

What I don’t want to do is spend a lot of money on a new laptop, only for PC Specialist to offer newer components at similar prices shortly after I’ve bought my new laptop. Or for the same components to be offered at much lower prices. My main constraint is how much I can spend, and I want to buy the best laptop I can afford.

Thanks in advance!

You're in the same situation as me. Spooky coincidence!

I bought a PCS gaming laptop back in July 2016 and just last Saturday it has decided to completely die. Won't switch on at all. Computer fixing people I use can't save it.

I've been looking to upgrade for a little while, but have been waiting to hear about laptop versions of the RTX 3000 series. I really hope they're announced at CES and come out soon.

 

[AlanTang332]

I was in pursuit of a legion 5 until a few hours ago when amd announced the next generation of ryzen 5000s and nvidia have the rtx 3000s comming next month. I'm guessing supply will remain an issue and a more realistic time frame is within late summer for a wider range of choices and for cpu/gpu 2nd batch revisions.

I'm still using an old vortex machine from 2011 with a i7 2670m cpu. I've had to replace a failed GTX 560m along with fans and screen. I've got a bunch of steam games accumulated that I've not played and are now old but I'm curious to see what I've missed in all these years.

 

[Durakus]

So, now that we've seen some extremely powerful Laptops coming up from CES, I hope OP did decide to wait. Some of the laptops shown are looking quite good.

 

[FerrariVie]

So, now that we've seen some extremely powerful Laptops coming up from CES, I hope OP did decide to wait. Some of the laptops shown are looking quite good

Even though they didn't give a precise time of when those are going to be available, right? First semester is what I heard, but not a precise date. Even though I've seen some new laptops showing up for pre-order on PCS's website, but no DTRs available unfortunately.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Even though they didn't give a precise time of when those are going to be available, right? First semester is what I heard, but not a precise date. Even though I've seen some new laptops showing up for pre-order on PCS's website, but no DTRs available unfortunately.

No DTR’s yet, but good summary of upcoming chassis currently available for pre order and from looking at one chassis, release date is end of february currently:

15.6" RTX 3000 series laptops at PCS.

Just a quick comparison for people to see whats available PCSPECIALIST - 15 inch Laptops for Gaming, Custom Laptops : It should be noted that you should not take these as gospel when making your decision and prices are as per when I did this (13/1 9am ish). This was put together reasonably...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

 

[Sterrewiggelary]

In case anyone cares, I went ahead and pre-ordered a 15.6" Elimina Pro:

Chassis & Display
Elimina Pro Series: 15.6" Matte QHD 165Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1440)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10870H (2.2GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 665p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2000MB/sR | 1925MB/sW)

Waiting was a good idea. Hopefully it arrives before April!

 

[FerrariVie]

In case anyone cares, I went ahead and pre-ordered a 15.6" Elimina Pro:

Chassis & Display
Elimina Pro Series: 15.6" Matte QHD 165Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1440)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10870H (2.2GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 665p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2000MB/sR | 1925MB/sW)

Waiting was a good idea. Hopefully it arrives before April!

Anxious to see the benchmarks of those new mobile GPUs

 

[Bhuna50]

In case anyone cares, I went ahead and pre-ordered a 15.6" Elimina Pro:

Chassis & Display
Elimina Pro Series: 15.6" Matte QHD 165Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1440)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10870H (2.2GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 665p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2000MB/sR | 1925MB/sW)

Waiting was a good idea. Hopefully it arrives before April!

Good choice - just one comment - the Intel 665 drives have had reports of low durability (number of times read/write) - so you may want to see if there is much difference changing it to a PCS one or consider the Samsung if you can afford to.

 

[Xavien]

Good choice - just one comment - the Intel 665 drives have had reports of low durability (number of times read/write) - so you may want to see if there is much difference changing it to a PCS one or consider the Samsung if you can afford to.

I was going to go for an intel drive myself, but was put off by the low durability mentioned by someone else so i went with a PCS SSD as well. I havent got mine yet as ive not long submitted it but im sure its the right choice.