Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
Look for non-Intel solutions. There is <i>absolutely</i> zero reason to adopt Intel CPUs until Intel has proven that they can ship CPUs that do not contain expensive-to-fix security bugs year after year after year (you&#x27;re on a laptop, every CPU cycle counts to keep heat down and battery life longer).<p>Several companies make Zen 3 APU (Ryzen 5000 series models)-based laptops that have good keyboards, good screens, and the usual other features.<p>The only thing you&#x27;ll have to give up is &quot;head-set jack&quot;, which you really mean to be a 3.5mm TRRS jack. Just use a USB-C dongle here; the rest is fine: laptops have entirely USB-C ports nowadays, with USB-C used for Power Delivery to charge.<p>Also, I&#x27;m not sure how you&#x27;ll achieve a touchscreen that doesn&#x27;t glare: due to the use case, they have to be Gorilla Glass to survive being touched by human hands. If you want a matte screen, you give up touching, and there are no good coatings to actually reduce glare on a shiny glass screen.<p>As for Wifi and Bluetooth, no laptop really performs badly anymore, everybody buys the same 2 solutions, Broadcom or Qualcomm&#x27;s. Intel still makes a Wifi chipset, and it used to be good, but it kind of sucks in the 802.11AC and AX eras, and you only see it used in Intel AMT corporate laptops (or a shared platform being sold also for consumers) that necessitate the use.<p>The only laptop I&#x27;d absolutely say don&#x27;t buy is anything with Apple&#x27;s name on it. Basically, fails almost all of your requirements, while being one of the most expensive examples. Truly sad as well, I like the M1 CPU, and I wish Apple would antitrust&#x27;ed to spit PA Semi back, but the entire build around that M1 is pretty trash.<p>Something like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B08YD1JLJF&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B08YD1JLJF&#x2F;</a> is probably the least expensive option that doesn&#x27;t footgun you. $6xx, good 14&quot; 1080p screen, 8GB of ram (16GB variants exist), enough SSD on a decent M.2 NVME, an 802.11AX+BT5 chip, good enough keyboard and trackpad, works in Linux, is only stingy on the ports by having 3 (so get a cheap hub if you want to plug in something more than USB PD brick to charge + 3.5mm TRRS dongle + external storage at the same time), supports Modern Standby (deep clock-halt S1, instead of needing to transit in and out of S3; works best on Zen 2&#x2F;3, iffy on Intel series 9&#x2F;10&#x2F;11; Intel is planning on fixing for 12; but also can use S3 just in case you need a laptop to sleep for 24hr+ and retain significant charge), and <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> have a dedicated GPU (which is a win, the APU&#x27;s GPU is strong as hell, even can do mid-tier gaming without cooking the laptop).