My Next Daily Driver?

hkdbhkdb
8 min read

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON APRIL 25TH, 2020 ON MEDIUM

For almost 2 years, I have happily switched from 10+ years of using various Macbooks as my daily driver to a 6th Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon (X1C6) running Ubuntu mostly because Jony Ive screwed me with the butterfly keyboard. A few things that I love about the X1C6 to this day that makes it still one of the best contenders as my daily driver are:

  • Camera Cover (ThinkShutter)

  • Thunderbolt but I rarely make use of it

  • 2x available USB-C ports (1x for power and 1x for data/display)

  • The 3 mouse buttons

  • Carbon Fiber material making the ruggedness and weight of the device superior

However, over time, I have grown out of some of its hardware:

  • CPU (8th Gen i7)

  • RAM (max 16GB)

  • NVMe (500GB)

  • The super crappy speakers that was supposedly fixed on the 7th gen model

So I started hunting for an upgrade.

Before I go into which machines I evaluated, I will share some of the applications that I use and mostly keep open on a daily basis under the Gnome Desktop Environment to provide some context:

Given the above, here are some of my must-have requirements in a daily driver:

  • A decent CPU (probably a 10th gen i7 at least)

  • More RAM!!! 16GB is really just not enough!

  • HardDrive space… at least 1TB

  • Long lasting battery… something that has been a pain point for running Linux

  • Preferably under 2.5 lbs. I am avoiding shoulder problems at all cost as I travel quite a bit and I literally bring my laptop with me everywhere I go

You would think my requirements sound simple enough right? Well, boy, was I wrong!

With that said, here are the candidates that I looked into in hopes of finding something that fits the bill:

13"/14" Macbook Pro (2020 — whenever that’s going to be released…. :P)

8th Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon

Dell XPS 13 (2020)

Librem 13

Razer Blade Stealth 13

System76 Lemur Pro

If you follow any of these products closely, you already know that most of them really don’t meet my requirements. I also left out the Acer TravelMate P6, HP Spectre x360 and the ASUS Zenbooks cause they either just didn’t really visually appeal to me or was simply too far away from my requirements but I still wanted to give them a mention as they might be good options for other people. Finally, I left out TUXEDO InfinityBook S 14 v5 as well because it’s a machine that’s almost identical to the Lemur Pro in terms of specs except for built-in wireless AX, the heavier weight (2.43 lbs), and almost the same price tag. Perhaps the most important reason why I left out the InfinityBook is that it too, didn’t meet my visual requirements. With that said, let’s go through the details of each candidate below.

2020 13"/14" Macbook Pro

Aside from the fact that I would have to wait too long before it arrives, after having spent the past 2 years reconnecting back with Ubuntu on the laptop, I am starting to feel like I can’t go back to macOS. As I have mentioned in a few other posts in the past, Desktop Linux has come a long ways and it has just become what works best for what I do. I also don’t assume that I would get anything more than 32GB of RAM from the new Macbook Pro if that’s even available in the end. Plus, having your laptop run on a completely different OS as your desktops (Ubuntu, Arch, and Bodhi) is definitely not as convenient when it comes to syncing configurations and what not. I am also not really ok with a laptop that’s possibly going to only come with 1x USB-C port and nothing else.

8th Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon

Still soldered 16GB of RAM max? Really??? I love the X1 Carbon for all those things I have mentioned in the beginning of this post but this is totally a deal breaker. Rather than buying a new one, I would most certainly get more utility out of just upgrading my current X1C6’s harddrive and replacing the slowly deteriorating battery. Speaker-wise, I have sort of been lugging around my B&O Beoplay A1 anyway which most laptops can’t beat.

2020 Dell XPS 13

There’s a lot to love about this laptop. The nice Carbon Fiber finish on the keyboard panel, vibrant display even though it’s a bit small, confirmed to have a 32GB RAM option, and its close partnership with Canonical makes it a great machine to run Ubuntu. However, the fact that it ONLY has USB-C ports and that it’s on the heavy side out of all the listed “Ultrabooks” here, it’s a bit of a deal breaker for me. For someone that travels a lot and do presentations with the HDMI port at almost every meeting, I just couldn’t get myself to turn to Dell.

Librem 13

This is often coined as the Snowden laptop. As some of you might know, I am a total privacy and security geek but I also advocate a good balance which means, I am only willing to give up so much power in exchange for extra privacy and security features. This is a beautiful laptop though and the coolest part about it are the hardware kill switches for the camera and microphone. However, while it does have a 32GB RAM option, it’s a total downgrade in terms of CPU, Wifi, Display, and Weight. So sorry Purism. I love this company and all the great work that they do but this is not going to be it for my next daily driver.

Razor Blade Stealth 13

Aside from its breath taking looks, the coolest thing about this machine is that it’s pretty much the only “Ultrabook” that comes packed with a GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti. The display and resolution are also amazing. However, the max 16GB RAM, max 512GB storage option, uncertainty of Linux compatibility, and product weight are all deal breakers for someone like me though. Of course, I am sure for the Windows gamer, this is probably one of the best choices out there.

System76 Lemur Pro

Boy… where do I start? System76 is a company I have been following for a while. I guess you can consider me a closet fan of theirs. What they stand for, who they are, and what they are working towards are unbelievably aligned with my interests and believes. In fact, I always thought it would be awesome if I could find a way to collaborate with them one day. They then in 2020 upped their game even more and really hit a home run on me with the Lemur Pro.

Enough about the company though and let’s get to the laptop itself. Without risking me writing a huge essay about this, I am going to start by listing the pros and cons out here in bullet points:

Pros:

  • 2.2 lbs

  • CoreBoot — OpenSource Firmware

  • 10th Gen i7

  • up to 40GB RAM

  • up to 4TB NVMe storage

  • up to 14 hours of battery life per charge with a monster 73 Wh battery

  • Charge battery via USB-C

  • Built-in HDMI port

  • Built for Linux!

Cons:

  • Only 1x USB-C port

  • No camera cover/shutter

  • No mouse buttons

  • Not Wifi6 but hey, at least it’s AC instead of N (Librem 13) and how many places do you really go to that has a Wifi6 router and more than a gigabit fiber optics pipe?

UPDATE (June 15th, 2020):

At some point, System76 updated their website and Wifi6 is now an upgrade option.

  • 1080p FHD which is not an upgrade from my X1C6

  • No touch screen? Though I ended up not using the touch screen function of my X1C6 that much anyways…

From the above, on paper, you can clearly see that this machine is totally the winner. Most importantly, at those specs, the price tag still remains competitive! While there are some cons as listed above, none of them seemed like a deal breaker for me so-far. Furthermore, I have been recently more and more intrigued by PopOS after having done a bit of homework on its latest development and saw the below interview which makes a System76 laptop that much more enticing (ie. the familiar foundation of Ubuntu with deep customization to optimize the use of custom built hardware and exciting additional features that sounds aligned with my liking):

Warning: It can be a little dry for some people…

So I have gone ahead and ordered one for myself. It hasn’t arrived yet but I can’t wait to give this product that seems so amazing on paper a try. I will certainly report back with my thoughts once I have had a chance to spend some quality time with the actual machine.

UPDATE (May 15th, 2020):

Full Review of the Lemur Pro after having spent a week with the machine.

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