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Merlin's Computer
Repair
Laptop Buyers Guide
Informing you on whats good versus to avoid.
Computer Parts
There are 4 - 5 Core computer parts that make up a laptop machine along with some optional features.
• CPU
• System Memory/ RAM
• Storage/ NVMe/ SSD
• GPU (Accelerated Graphics)
• Battery
Things that dont matter as much, and are personal preference.
• Screen
• Keyboard
• Ports
• Brand/ OEM
Computer Parts
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) matters the most for your laptop. This can make or break your laptop using experience.
There's 4 common tiers of performance Intel & AMD have similar numbers that translate to meaning somewhat same performance. Intel normally has stronger single core performance, AMD is weighted more on Multi core performance.
i3 is entry level performance with great efficiency these machines can last quite awhile on battery.
i5 is better than what is offered by the i3. You will get the best balance offered for everything you do. It could sip a bit more power from the battery in demanding tasks but you will be able to get through what you need to do.
i7 is leaps and bounds way better than a i3 or i5 within the same generation. The i7 is known for brute force horsepower with that comes with the con where your expectation on lasting a long time on battery normally is gonna be challenging I would recommend to always carry your power adapter on you. there known for not always lasting all that too long on battery. If you care about not being tethered to the wall the i5 can be a good recommendation.
i9 is the highest level of performance you can expect from your machine within that same generation. This is commonly reserved for gaming laptops. Your expectations of using it while not connected to the wall is going to be challenging. There normally paired with a NVIDIA GPU so that's a secondary power sipping component from your battery.
Extra Information on CPU's
Intel Celeron/ Pentium Silver/ Pentium Gold/ N-series are Intel's lowest end worse than an i3 in terms of performance. Its Intel's trash silicon offerings.
Computer Parts
The System Memory or RAM also is commonly confused with Storage. System Memory/ RAM is only used for the Operating system & running applications on your machine.
8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB is what you will commonly find on the market. With the introduction of DDR5 you will see 24GB, 48GB, 96GB options.
For Windows 11 to run at its best, the recommendation is to be using 8GB. This is the standard since 2025. Microsoft's brink of adding Microsoft Co-Pilot into everything and adding the ever increasing bloat to the operating system has made using a computer with less then 8GB back when Windows 10 was around ever more increasingly difficult.
When you increase the amount of System Memory to your system you can expect the system to be capable of using more system resources before slowing down.
In the dawn of 2026 and beyond you have to do your research on each model or ask someone to do it for you. There's an ever increasing chance that when you buy a machine the system memory could be soldered down to the motherboard making the task of upgrading or replacing the system impossible to the user changing them out. Soldered down memory can be a major issue in the long term when the individual chips are needing to be replaced. Requiring the full motherboard to be completely replaced just for a simple issue with the system memory.
Apple is Notorious for soldering down there system memory and storage!
Soldered Down Memory isn't all bad. It has its benefits of providing lower latency. Anything that's closer to the CPU Package has an uplift in performance. It brings a hurdle to repair but overall it also brings with it that that means when your buying a machine that you have to buy the machine with what you will need for the future not just right now.
This is an extreme example of Apple pairing the memory to the CPU on the CPU package dye.
Laptop Vs Desktop
• Desktops are always going to be upgrade-able you will always be able to change out the CPU, RAM, Motherboard, Storage & more at a later date.
• Laptop performance is normally going to be about 50% of a Desktop CPU. Laptops have to work within a specific power budget designed from the factory. meaning a Laptop CPU is normally going to use 15Watts to 45Watts for there power usage.
• A desktop's processor is gonna be more like 65Watts to pushing into 150W for the highest end processors.
• Laptop GPU's are also not equal to desktop GPU's at all either. Laptop manufactures are gonna have a power limit between the Laptops CPU and GPU of maybe 130Watts to 250Watts that's shared it depends on your laptop you have or are planning to get. Some brands will make a laptop there the CPU could be stronger than the GPU core, or they will try to make the GPU a bit more on the stronger side and let the main CPU not be as powerful.
Storage
Storage on laptops has come a long way in terms of speed and longevity. We today have NVMe (Non-volatile memory express) drives that are in the shape of a stick of gum that are able to achieve 7,000mb's which is quite a lot. It wasn't always like that.
NVMe (Non-volatile memory express) drives are cutting edge! they absolutely are the future. There better than what you will see from a laptop that was made from 2016 that's limited to SATA speeds.
For Intel:
2013/ 2015 - Laptops are so commonly using Hard Disk Drives
2016 - SATA Only
2017 - M.2 SATA Starts NVME is also beginning as well
2018 - NVMe begins around 3,500 mb/s Gen 3 Speeds
2019 - NVMe Laptops are still on Gen 3, Gen 4 on desktops.
2020 - You can start to find Gen 4 and 3 Laptops for NVMe
2022 - Gen 4 is your average 5,000 to 7,000 mb/s drive in a laptop, Gen5 is on desktops.
Desktop Custom Non OEM's can handle and Implement the faster NVMe speeds, with each new Gen 3 then Gen 4 and so on. These drives are able to create heat that needs to be tamed or they thermal throttle themselves down to a safer operating temperature.
When you buy an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) laptop brand new HP, Acer, Lenovo, ASUS, Dell and so on. They tend to include an NVMe that's gonna be efficient for how the NVMe is installed in the chassis. Its typically gonna be that a Gen 3 drive isn't normally gonna have any kind of thermal pad installed to dissipate the heat made by the NVMe so when Gen 4 drives came around the OEM's tend to start needing to think about how they can keep the drive thermals in control to where the drive isn't gonna provide a bad experience. So the companies that make the NVMe drives turn to optimizing the drives so that read speeds are higher then the write speeds. This is really only the territory that comes with buying a laptop from an OEM you can always remove the main drive to then later install your higher quality drive that you prefer to use. The drive you choose to use could cause to generate more heat but at least you can see if it works out better for you.
NVMe Drives are a great technology, they have 3 core components that matter.
• NAND Package (SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC)
• Storage Controller
• DRAM Cache
Not every NVMe has a DRAM cache on the PCB that the NVMe is manufactured with. This 1 component is an expensive part of the NVMe they are also the fastest with this part included.
Non DRAM NVMe drives are not bad but they operate in the fashion where part of your systems memory is used called a HMB (Host Memory Buffer) so theres a so called look up table for where the data is stored on the NAND Package and so that in turn is what makes the difference in a drive that might cost 140 versus 259 but cost's for NVMe drives and System Memory are at such a premium beyond 2025 the prices aren't going to be as low as they where for too long unless something dramatically changes in the market for the better. Samsung makes the best highest quality NVMe drives they always go for a premium than your average NVMe you would expect to buy.
Some notable HMB (Host Memory Buffer) Drives would be:
• Kingston NV3
• Crucial P310
• WD Blue SN5000
Some notable DRAM NVMe Drives would be:
• All Samsung NVMe Drives
• SK Hynix Platinum P41
• Crucial T500
• WD Black SN850X
This button will lead you to a master list of all DRAM vs HMB NVMe Drives on the market.
Laptop GPU's
Laptops that include a dedicated graphics card on board is always very nice. there never gonna come close to what an actual desktop graphic card is going to be able to achieve but its there when you need it but it can also be the crux that feels like when your using your machine on battery your using your laptop out on the 7 seas and your at the mercy of what ever task your doing and you could sink your ship by it feeling like your ship is letting on taking water and sinking until your connected to a wall outlet again keeping you tethered to the wall.
With you having a Nvida GPU installed in your laptop you will be able to handle video editing on a laptop without any issues at all normally, its gonna make your experience feel nice and you could achieve handling doing 4K editing but your experience could vary and just might end up being a 1080p mobile editing machine overall. If you have issues with 4K videos.
When you have a dedicated GPU in your laptop you're asking a lot to where a lot of the times when OEM's are making these machines battery is very constrained especially for space.
Laptop Batteries
Laptop batteries as well have come a long way in terms of what they can do where there single task is to make your machine portable and last as long as humanly possible.
Batteries can be drained faster by when your doing 3D work, when your demanding the most out of your processor and its having to put a load on every single core on your processor cores to complete the task or even run that task until you find the nearest outlet at a McDonalds or Starbucks coffee place.
You can if your machine supports charging over USB or thunderbolt could be powered by an external power bank to make your machine to last a bit longer to use another power source that's even portable. Machines that charge over the Type-C interface are typically going to function with being something that's going to operate around 100Watts - 120Watts or less. There is an extreme case for the premium laptops that exist you could be able to charge your laptop up with 240Watt charging which is quite fascinating.
Macbooks are notably able to deliver the most computing power weather your connected to the wall or not. Apple is able to do this due to the Apple silicon they have made and its no where as demanding as what a Microsoft Windows X86 machine is drawing to operate.
Windows machines always operate best when there plugged into external power. If you're on battery it always sometimes feels like there's a throttle on the machine you're using depending on the task your preforming. Your average usage of sticking to the browser isn't going to be an issue ever.
Ever since the edition of Intel 12th Generation and beyond there was an absolute shift in how the processor operates with there being Performance cores & Efficiency cores. So the goal with including a 2 types of cores that means you gotta realize Intel has now changed the landscape when it comes to the laptop processor.
Lets look at the "i7-1260P Processor" by Intel
• 12 Cores and 16 Threads
Intel is actually masking a 4 Core Processor as a "12 core" bigger number it must mean its better? there only including 4 Performance cores and they slapped on 8 Efficiency Cores. There designed to be smaller, power-saving CPU cores designed for background tasks, multi-threaded productivity, and maximizing performance-per-watt.
Threads are the overall thread count is calculated by taking twice the number of P-cores plus the number of E-cores. 1 Core has whats called "hyper threading" and that translates into meaning a single physical core split is idle or waiting moments to run two software threads at the same time. Its most useful when doing heavy multitasking, video editing, and rendering. It splits each physical CPU core into two logical cores to keep the processor busy when waiting on data.
Laptop Screens
Screens on laptops have come a long way as well from what they used to be. because of what has been achieved with what has been done with how the operation of smart phones flooding the market that's made the process of dealing with slimming down the screens its made there be better brightness and contrast ratio and more in terms of the vibrancy of the screen being something people are and have been caring about more and more over time.
Everything really comes down to:
• Color Accuracy
• Brightness
• Contrast
• Touchscreen Vs Non-Touchscreen
• Does it fold back on itself like with the 2-in-1/ X360 Machines?
• Size
• Glossy Vs Matte with Anti Glare
• Refresh Rate
There's a lot of options on the market too.
Keyboards
Keyboards are for all laptops to 90% of the time going to to be a butterfly membrane typing experience. If you're a gamer then there's been advancements to bring more of a mechanical feel to the keyboard that would be marketed on the branding of the laptop that being sold to the customer.
Apple for about 4 to 5 years had tried to do something no one had asked for which was trying to slim down the design of the overall machine so they thought it would be wise to try and change the whole design and Mechanism to the keyboard and pretty much within about 6 months of owning the machine if you weren't the cleanest person with your typing it meant small particles if they got into the keys made it quite annoying to type and made keys not work right and Apple got loads of complains about it for sure. It was so bad that they decided to go back to the way they used to make the keyboards for there machines with the launch of the Apple silicon machines in 2020 is when they made that change.
Everything really comes down to:
• Backlit Vs Non Backlit
• Is there RGB colors for the Backlit Keys
• No Numberpad vs Numberpad
Port Selection
Ports on laptops can be a make or break situation for when it comes to how much can you plug in to your machine.
AMD laptop's for a long time aren't able to have or use the Intel thunderbolt protocol at all (Apple & Intel have the license to use it). The only thing that can begin to be comparable would be the use of USB 4.0 in the Type-C Port shape.
Thunderbolt is really nice because it allows for the use of daisy chaining devices together, it allows you to charge your device, transfer data at a really fast rate, allow you to hook up at least two to three 4K displays with that single connection point, then for bonus points you can have the ability have Type-A USB 3.2 (10Gbps) ports from a hub for simple connections you might need too. Thunderbolt does a lot with just a single cable.
Practically every laptop these days has HDMI out for simplicity of hooking up one extra external display.
Ports on laptops with how USB works is always a bit of a science experiment as well. So what can happen with USB is that when your using more then just one port your bandwidth on lets say a USB flash drive transfer can have it's speed cut in half if you're trying to do more than one transfer at a time.
Apple absolutely rewrote the book with there Apple silicon devices so each port on lets say even a Mac Mini M1 everything from the Ethernet port to the USB Type-A Ports, Thunderbolt connections have each of there ports set up so they each have there own controller and lane to speak to the CPU of the ARM chip which makes the use of dealing with transferring large amounts of data be a seamless experience.
Windows Microsoft machines haven't been able to experience that level yet. The most amount of Type-C Thunderbolt ports you will see is 2. Apple has been able to do 2 to 6 Thunderbolt ports on there devices, this is for when your buying the Apple Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra where the front ports on the highest end configuration is turned into being Thunderbolt 5 ports.
Brand/ OEM
Thinking about when it comes to a laptop to choose like lets say a brand/ or OEM that's best. There's no one answer is more about what do you the individual care about more about your individual needs.
Every Brand HP, Dell, Acer & Etc all have different product segments. Each brand can have there own quirks or solutions to things that makes them special.
Picking out a Laptop is more related to picking out the correct choice of car if you where to make a metaphor or correlation between the two.
I have dealt with a customer saying:
"I dont like HP or Lenovo..." or saying "I only like Dell machines..."
Here's how I would break this down. All New Windows Machines come with Windows 11. Next the build quality can be all different between machines and brands an models.
Every brand has different tiers of quality/ or levels of features that makes them distinctive. Here's an example of Dell
• Dell Precision (Workstation)
• Dell Latitude (Business)
• Dell XPS (Premium)
• Dell /Alienware G Series (Gaming)
• Dell Inspiron (Consumer, Budget)
Workstation Machines Laptop or Desktop is normally where your making money with your machine. your doing CAD (Computer Aided Design) or 3D Modeling, its Thoroughly tested for using tools like Autodesk Max, Maya industry tools of design.
Latitude Business Machines there not gonna have nvidia graphics for doing intensive graphics at all. They use the same central processing unit from the workstations with Intel Vpro with the Precision in the Latitude, some times they can also share parts as well too. You can always expect the keyboards or the machines to be more repairable then there consumer machines most of the time that's highly considered with the business workstation machines they prioritize that.
Dell Inspiron is there average consumer model of laptop the keyboard palmrest replacement is more annoying than there business line up. Every machine for laptops the keyboard is riveted down or hot plastic welded to the top case. Your not gonna see Intel Vpro, or Nvidia graphics history in an entry level model of theres