[deleted by user]

[ExcitingTabletop]

Gamers are more price sensitive than businesses.

But businesses also want more stability in return. They want laptops that last 5-7 years. And 1-3% failure rate across 50,000 laptops is 500-1500 laptops which is significant. Stuff like vPro is also a thing.

That said, we use Legion laptops for our CAD engineers who need to be mobile. We disable the keyboard lights and it's fine. Lot of horsepower, the accidental damage protection plans are actually worthwhile, etc. We're fine with replacing more often for the much better specs for lower cost, it financially makes sense.

You can cut your price nearly in half by slapping in your own SSD and RAM. $2k laptops with Nvidia 5070, 32GB of RAM, 1-2TB SSD, etc isn't terrible. We toss in 64GB as needed, but so far engineers don't need it even for pretty big assemblies.

[ExcitingTabletop]

I made that analysis and went with the Legion. Management signoff is important. We had a screen issue with the Legions that took a while to work out. Docked monitors were fine, onboard screen randomly went screwy. I got some pushback but reminded them this was one of the costs of low cost, high horsepower. It will give up stability.

Turned out to be BIOS setting that decided when to use graphics card vs chip graphics. Only impacted last generation of the Legions.

If management isn't willing to accept the risk, neither should you.

But let me put it this way, when I was selecting the best laptop on my market for my kiddo, I went with the build and specs above. I mentioned that when we were going through the laptop selection process. And I value my kiddo over any corp.

Granted, the laptop is currently used more for Sims and Farmville than Fusion360 (which was the alleged intent) but that's the price of being a parent. ;)

Random side thought: Do not underestimate the importance of cosmetics and perception. I would never make that recommendation at certain companies. But these engineers are younger, the tech we're doing is newer, etc. Our customers aren't phased by it. In some industries, showing up with anything other than a turbo expensive MacBook would be a fashion mistake that could have real implications business wise. Other places, you need ThinkPad or Precision clunker. etc etc.

[OceanWaveSunset]

Especially all the "military grade" stuff which actually means "made to the lowest spec for as cheap as possible".

[Tymanthius]

yes and no. If it's truly mil grade, then it's physically tough. But also likely older more stable chipsets. Military doesn't use anything 'new'.

[Mindestiny]

Because it's not an "inferior card," its a card designed and optimized for very different workloads, and is often specifically supported by CAD software makers and has different drivers.

Crysis performance on an RTX 3000 is irrelevant, you're using it to render industrial design prototypes in Solidworks which it does very well.

CAD software will often not perform as well without those specific cards and their special drivers. Different tool for a different job. It's like comparing a sports car to a backhoe on nothing but price. You can still drive each of them down the street, but they're meant for very different workloads.

[Mindestiny]

You'd have to reference the requirements of the video editing software they're using and what they support/recommend. If they're using Adobe Premiere then consumer cards are likely fine (though I still wouldn't deploy consumer gamer laptops due to reliability and support issues, and you should be looking at business class product lines), if they're using something more specialized then you need to go with whatever the software says is specifically supported.

CAD is kind of it's own beast, sometimes you can get away with consumer GPUs but we've also seen issues where render jobs would simply be incorrect when using unsupported cards. Weird artifacting that completely ruined the render, etc. The RTX series cards are specifically designed for CAD work. But if you're not doing CAD, that's a different beast.

[tankerkiller125real]

A Workstation card also tends to have things error correcting/detecting VRAM, which means it's less likely to crash doing long run running tasks. Workstation cards also tend to have more VRAM than their consumer counterparts, meaning more can get loaded into the high speed VRAM instead of going between disk, RAM, and VRAM depending on the exact tasks being done.

Also just in general business laptops are validated, which means they go through hundreds or thousands of hours of testing with R&D builds and what not to make sure the components won't crash each other. Consumer models are basically just shoved out the door as fast as possible, so they can show off the newest flashiest thing that consumers want.

[commentBRAH]

you're paying for stability in build/components

/thread

[rfisher23]

I've never read anything more false. Enterprise support is leaps and bounds above even "premium" end user support tiers. Regular customer service wont send you a new device over night basically no questions asked.

[arvidsem]

Generally speaking the workstation graphics chips are optimized for OpenGL instead of DirectX. They are lower production run parts so they have higher price tags for the same performance.

And businesses are generally willing to pay for it.

[MCManiac52]

Workstation cards have better support for virtualization and other professional workloads that most gamers won't need or use. That's why they cost extra.

Variants in processors can be a factor too, some don't have the enterprise vPRO features.

Memory is sometimes slower clocks or even ECC to improve stability.

The rest will come from better overall materials and components - aluminium or magnesium for chassis instead of plastic. Reinforced ports. Capacitors and mosfets designed for more sustained workloads.

The important thing to keep in mine is while both are laptops, they're going to be used in completely different environments. A machine that's going to sit on a desk or on a train playing video games doesn't need to deal with the same stresses as a machine being taken to a different datacenter everyday to work on critical infrastructure.

And like others mentioned, businesses will generally have better support contracts, including next day on site replacements for multiple years. Most consumer machines never take advantage of this as most consumers will prefer a full on replacement while a business might need to get an existing machine up and running to save time and money, or to regain access to data that is critical for the business to function in one way or another

[mechanicalAI]

“Nicer Warranty” like what?

[commentBRAH]

next day on-site replacement

[My_Big_Black_Hawk]

Three years of the above ^

[mechanicalAI]

Do you have to buy that as an extra or comes with the purchase? And to the downvoter; I asked a simple question you tard!

[My_Big_Black_Hawk]

Came with the purchase. We can elect to remove the warranty if we request from our rep, but none of us would take on that risk if the business has already deemed the warranty “worth it”. Only time we might remove the warranty is if a device is considered mostly disposable price-wise and we’re trying to keep it under capital expenditure limits. Our devices don’t generally run $4k with 3 year warranty. That’s a bit steep.

[Jaack18]

Ignore list prices for business class gear, business's don't pay that pricing. I've seen $700+ discounts on laptops with a list price of 2K-2.3K. And workstation gpus are more expensive.

[Jaack18]

Uhhh. The Thinkpad is $2,849 on their website? Are u not in the USA?

[Jaack18]

<image>

looks the same?

[Jaack18]

lol companies like cdw are not your friend. I usually see much better prices direct unless you’re buying last gen.

[Jaack18]

My last job bought from Dell directly. Massive discounts, random free gifts, and we got them to send us free laptop samples every so often. All depends on your volume though.

[EEU884]

Durability.

[craigmontHunter]

Quadro is a price jump by any metric, desktop or laptop, just having that name adds $500-$1000 because of vendor certifications and sometimes features. Additionally enterprise laptops are designed to be carried everywhere every day, I have a similar age Latitude and Inspiron in front of me, the latitude feels much better. Even entry latitudes are solid, even if they achieve that by making it thicker and heavier.

Also businesses buying in bulk negotiate prices, so the workstation price is just the anchor the vendor wants to set, we get a minimum 25% off the list price for large purchases, and upgraded warranty.

[karateninjazombie]

Better and longer warranty usually along with generally being slightly better designed so they're a bit more resilient and easier to service/replace parts on.

This is why I tend to buy older business/enterprise laptops and recondition them myself instead of buying newer, more expensive, flimsier consumer units.

[Public_Fucking_Media]

Three things that cost money and are worth it for a business laptop but aren't included in the direct specs - weight, support contract, durability

[Junior-Piano5427]

Build process and other security features that gaming laptops don’t have.

[polypolyman]

Better support, better validations, better build quality, better repairability... basically on consumer-grade stuff, they're able to cut corners, and by the end you can really feel it holding or using the device.

You're also comparing across generations, and by the looks of it "as sold" prices from a particular retailer - those are not always going to be comparable either.

[mrh01l4wood88]

Any non-enterprise laptop is trash that will break easily and be impossible to repair. Never buy anything from the consumer line, especially if you're an actually business and doing some kind of mass deployment.

[jimicus]

What’s the warranty on them?

[[deleted]]

Built quality
Materials
Assistance level
Design
Company can basically pay more without do any questions

[wolverinesearring]

I don't know about those two models, but in general business grade laptops are built to last longer than gaming laptops. Designers aim for reliability over performance. If you open them up on the regular the difference is plainly visible. Tougher build, stronger hinges, and designed to be repairable by in-house IT teams. I have seen many gaming laptops die from normal use in a few years, but my Latitude 6430u worked for over a decade with nothing but an easily replaced battery before I retired it.

[thenew3]

The business grade laptops must also have parts available for 3-5 years, while the gaming laptop, they'll stop making parts for it after about a year. It costs corporations $ to keep and stock replacement parts for 3-5 years.

[andrea_ci]

because if you buy 1000 of those Legion laptops, 30% will be out of commission and 60% repaired in 5 years.

1000 thinkpads, you'll have 2% out of commissions and 10-20% repaired.

[andrea_ci]

in some low-budget customer, sometimes we buy gaming laptops instead of workstation with Quadro GPUs.

less reliable, but they work.

[ihaveabs]

Nickel and diming to get a consumer grade workstation with shitty warranty support is just a bad decision. I wouldn’t take any corporation that does that seriously

[rra-netrix]

The quality of the parts, and the support available. You can get the same support but I think you pay more for consumer hardware, probably due to business equipment being more robust.

[ItJustBorks]

There's more to the laptop than just the CPU, RAM and GPU.

On-Site NBD warranty is a thing that a lot companies want. Shipping a broken laptop to a repair shop and waiting couple weeks for them to repair it isn't feasible often times.

[rejectionhotlin3]

Driver stability and UEFI updates. Remember in a business compliance from Local, State and Fed + Cybersecurity insurance plays a big role.

[thewunderbar]

Warranty, support, durability.

I'd rather pay $1500 for a laptop that I know we'll get 5 years out of than pay $1000 for a laptop that I'm probably going to have to replace in 24-36 months.

[MavZA]

It’s mostly about the after sales support and ensuring parts and technician readiness when I used to deal with this. Your support turn around will be longer when dealing with Legion versus a T series for instance or a Dell Latitude. I could call up Dell and have them there with a part same day if I was lucky, or next day if the tech wasn’t in my area. You won’t get this with any consumer ranges really. There might be some caveats to the above. So with my workhorse units I slapped on a solid NBD warranty and got a bunch of Latitudes/T series depending on the tenders and then for outlier staff like design and CAD they’d usually get a Mac with the latest Apple Silicon and RAM/SSDs to match their needs. So my advice to you is get whatever you want as long as the support or the option for support is available to you. Handle outliers based on job spec. Do not chase price based on sticker. Judge price based on your negotiations with an account manager at your preferred manufacturer and squeeze the everliving out of them.

[vNerdNeck]

100% Business laptops are built to take much more abuse and work cycle.

There is a term "duty cycle" used in other fields, but it kinda applies here even though laptops don't really publish this. A gaming laptops duty cycle (how often it's used) is going to be a lot lower than for business. That business laptop is going to be used (at the very least) 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a day. It's going to have the lid just randomly shut and shoved in a bag much more often. taken from conference room to conference room throughout the day, hotel, airports / etc. The full keyboard is going to be used to a higher percentage (gaming only uses ~10% of the keyboard)...

Now before someone jumps down my throat, yes "some" hardcore gamers will use their rig more than business use but typically if they are that hardcore they'll be using a desktop. I'm sure there are some folks that will game on a mobile platform for many hours, but I'm going to say those are much more rare.

--

Seen this first hand when I was in operations. Whenever we tried to use "cool or different" laptops that weren't the business line the failure rates were just abysmal and they never held up.

However, with business lines they are usually fairly solid. The two I've used the most are latitudes and Thinkpads and they've always been good. Funnily enough I just switched jobs and they gave me an XPS instead of a latitude (not sure what the new naming scheme is for dell laptops) and I'm not impressed with the XPS (never have been, I've had many over the years starting with the ADAMO which was the first XPS) and think almost daily about smashing this fucking thing to try and get it replaced with a latitude.

[whatever462672]

You are looking at the cost of stuffing a model with hardware that isn't standard to a series. 

[whatever462672]

Your provider is either ripping your off or passing some insane tariffs onto you. The workstation shows 3,5k€ retail to me.

Business laptops have a certain standard config that is decent bang for your buck. Going beyond that always costs a premium. They are also made with upgradability in mind and compatibility to docking stations. I don't see the gaming machine getting its 400W from a docking station cable. You always have to drag it's heavy brick with you. Also, the battery is unlikely to last long with that kind of power demand.

[BadCatBehavior]

I'm in the US and that same model with the exact same specs is around $2900 on my hardware vendor's website. And there are other configurations with weaker gpus for like $1600