Had to pick between a cheap laptop with great battery and a pricier one that's faster

I needed a new everyday laptop a couple weeks ago and was stuck between two options. One was a budget model that claimed 12 hours of battery life but reviews said it lagged if you had more than a few tabs open. The other cost about $200 more, had half the battery life, but ran smooth even with my usual mess of browser windows. I went with the cheaper one because I work from coffee shops a lot and don't plug in. First week was fine, but then I tried watching a video while having Excel and Slack open and the whole thing stuttered like crazy. Kinda regretting it now. Anyone else made this tradeoff and found a laptop that actually does both okay?

2 comments

2 Comments

dylan_rodriguez5h ago

Gotta say, that's a rough tradeoff. In my experience, the "good battery, bad performance" ones always seem fine at first until you actually push them a bit. I'd look into the M1 MacBook Air from a couple years ago if you can find one used, it somehow handles both battery and multitasking better than most in that price range. Take that with a grain of salt though, I'm biased since mine's been solid for two years now.

abbyd365h ago

12 hours is a marketing number anyway (they always test with the screen dimmed and nothing running). I'm not saying you made the wrong call but watching a video stutter for ten seconds isn't exactly the end of the world. You could probably fix most of that by just closing some tabs or running a quick cleanup on your startup apps. People act like a little lag is a crisis but I've dealt with way worse laptops and still got my work done.