Buying my daugher a new school laptop, I told her the same laptop will be used for her entire Sr. High + College = 6 years High chance we will choose a MacBook Air (we will get free Beats headphones by end of the month thanks to Apple's Back to School - although not a big deal since she already has 2, wired and BT, plus she uses her AirPods 110% of the time), so freebies are nice, but not a deciding factor. Thanks to the ongoing issues with the Air (Logic Board recall and Keyboard issue), I'm having 2nd thoughts. Can you recommend any Windows device that I can show her as an alternative? Initial devices I'm looking at: Dell XPS 13 (9370) - all I love everything, checks a lot of my boxes Surface Pro 6 - released Oct 2018 (I find it too old), i5, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD, keyboard, pen = SG$2,185.00 (more than SG100 that the Air), plus no USB-C? Surface Laptop 2 - again 2018 = SG$ 2,046.00, no USB-C (again)? Any other suggestions? I'm also looking at asking her to use my 2018 Touchbar Pro until the new Air comes out (with the rumored new keyboard) or may be the new MacBook Pro Escape. My only question is... What if a new Air/ Pro Escape is not released this year...
i don't know if you're paranoid using Huawei products but I highly recommend the Huawei Matebook X Pro. I've upgraded from a Macbook Pro 2010, and i've been using it for more than 6 months now and i have no problems so far. https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-x-pro/
^Get the Surface Pro for the 2-in-1 utility, portability, and Windows 10 performance. Or the Surface Laptop 2.
Played with all 3 Surfaces this afternoon... Still can't believe that only the Surface Go has a USB-C port.
In my opinion i'd vote for the XPS I'd suggest a Mac Mini(or any other "desktop") for school purposes...a dedicated space for learning does yield more benefits, than the "portability need".
I'm using the Dell XPS 13 (9370), the 512GB, touchscreen variant for 10 months now, and it has served me well and has yet to fail me, so I'll vouch for it. Surface pro is also good as my co-workers use it and has no complains.
I’ll still go for a Macbook Air since I’m assuming your daughter is also using an iPhone cause she has an airpods. The convenience of being in the Apple ecosystem simply trumps all the other benefits of a windows machine. But if I were to choose a windows laptop. I’ll go with the XPS.
I saw her smile when we saw the Razer Blade Stealth yesterday... hahaha Another option is to let her use my MacBok Pro until a new 2019 Air comes out...
not as slim as the macbook air but this is a very practical option (windows10): https://shopee.ph/Dell-Inspiron-14-...deon-520-14-in-HD-Win10-i.89683872.2103422726 i got the unit in shopee since i just needed the laptop as a movie player and some occasional web browsing. this was 33k but i believe there's a ryzen version (since reference is MBA) which should be around 26k only. when i got the unit, i brought it over to a local shop to add 8GB of ram. incidentally, the included 4gb was not soldered to the motherboard so i basically have an option to even go up to 16gb (from the now 12gb). what surprised me though was that the unit had an available m.2 port that allowed me to instantly add a 500gb SSD; told the store to boot windows from the SSD instead (making this the fastest booting laptop that i have right now) while maintaining the 1TB SATA as additional storage. paid around 7k for everything added. for around 40k, i got an i5 processor, 12gb ram, 1TB sata + 500GB SSD. sulit na sulit. should be good for another 5yrs of general use.
Switching to Windows may be your biggest concern. Why not an iPad Pro with keyboard? Most students only need Google Docs / MS Office anyway - unless they are in engineering. Or an older model Macbook Air which may still be available as Apple Refurbished.
Biggest concern is the Butterfly keyboard (which I personally love) and the current reliability issues of the Air (logic board). All MacBooks presently use the butterfly keyboard. So if I buy one by end of this month... The only option I have will be running windows. I'm seriously considering Plan C... Let her use my MacBook Pro (2018) while waiting for a 2019 Air (I really hope rumors are true) or just get a Pro with Touchbar. One thing I realized with the Apple vs Windows... You can go to a coffee shop and use a very old Macbook (one was even with a glowing Apple logo and SD card slot) and it's still a Mac Anything else will just look like an office laptop.
looks like the new Air (2019) is only getting the "True Tone" display 256GB Air has the same price as the 128GB entry level Pro (I understand the Pro has a better processor) Price is reduced + the free headphones... *** I found the best alternative to the Air... Thanks for all the inputs.
