The 5 Best Laptops for Developers in 2021
The best laptops for developers you can buy today.
Whether you have just started a coding course or you are spending 8-hours a day on pc making your living, investing in a stable and reliable workhorse could tremendously impact your productivity and skill level in a positive way.
While the market is flooded with pc models and brands, choosing your future laptop might feel like a daunting task. There are too many variables to take into consideration, from the CPU and GPU speed, RAM, screen size, and quality, battery life, keyboard quality, screen quality and so on. All these factors highly depend on the type of work you do. A web developer has a much different list of requirements from a game developer, but there is an area where these different requests meet, and generally satisfy all these different groups of developers.
The year 2021 started, and we are yet to see the fresh releases of laptops, but the most recent releases are still a very valid buy today. The list of 5 laptops we created is based on general reviews and quality-price ratio, so it will very likely be updated and expanded, so keep an eye on this post and let us know in the comments what is your ideal laptop.
1. Apple MacBook Air with M1 Chip
Apple MacBook Air with M1 chip is a little endurance beast. Equipped with the latest in-house-made SoC called M1, is giving plenty of power while preserving the battery life. On paper is an 8-core CPU, 7-core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, now all that perfectly aligned with the OS gives it up to 18-hours of battery life. The only downside is you have only 2 USB-C ports.
2. Apple MacBook Pro 13" with M1 Chip
The 13-inch MacBook Pro got also an upgrade to the same M1 chip as MacBook Air we previously mentioned, so technically they would share the same performances except there are some differences that enable the Pro version to handle more work, like the 8-core GPU and active cooling which allows the notebook to sustain high performance for longer periods. Its bigger size also gives it a bigger battery for up to 20-hours on a full charge. Besides the performance and battery life, it futures also a touch bar and 2 USB-C ports.
3. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8
The 8th generation of Lenovo's legendary laptop ThinkPad X1 continues to improve what already was considered a pretty solid product. The list of features is long and attractive for power users. Built to feel robust and lightweight at the same time, weighing just 2.4 lbs (1kg) and considering the screen size of 14-inches, that makes it highly portable. Configurable with 4 versions on Intel CPUs, but the base model is featuring i5-10210U and 16GB of RAM, thus giving you up to 19.5 hours of battery life. In addition to a wide range of ports available which you won'find in Macs, it is featuring an excellent keyboard and screen quality,
4. HP Envy
HP Envy is probably one of the best value laptops on the market right now. Providing great performances and an excellent keyboard, it comes packed with many features that you'll find in higher-end laptops. The base version comes with a 10th Generation Intel Core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. Weighing just 2.88lbs (1.3kg) and the 13.3-inch Full HD display makes it ultra-portable for everyday duties. The battery life is also pretty great, with up to 15 hours of usage you can be sure you won't run out of juice on a workday.
5. Dell XPS 13 9310
Dell's best offering laptop is really worth what it says. Stellar performances are provided by the latest Intel Core i7 11th Generation, 16GB of RAM, and Intel Iris Xe Graphics. Amazing 13-inch anti-reflective 500-Nit edge-to-edge touch display, all-day battery life, fast charging.. all these features are just a fraction of the list to make it a serious player in this highly competitive league of laptops.
Author
Bojan Vidanovic is a computer programmer and tech geek. Love making internet products, blogging, learning, reading, calisthenics and fitness enthusiast.