You may have already checked out our WFH: Value Laptops article and discovered some great bang for your buck. But those were all in the under $1000 price range, and maybe you need a little more oomph. In this article, we're going to be detailing some laptops that will give you numerous capabilities in a laptop form factor.
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Graphics Heavy - $2700
The Razer Blade 15 2019 is one of the most powerful laptops commercially available right now. The audience it caters to is those who want to do serious gaming on the side, or have jobs involving graphical interfaces, such as a video editor. The Blade 15 comes with an RTX 2080 Max-Q, a chip that normally powers extreme gaming desktops - to put that in perspective, this is the Max-Q (slightly less powerful) version of the chip that powers our Robust PC build. In terms of specs, the Blade 15 utilizes an insane 240hz screen for watching movies or gaming, has 512gb of SSD, 16gb of dual-channel RAM, a 9th generation Intel i7 6-core processor, and a 15.6" 1080p touch screen. If you're willing to invest a lot in a laptop, it should be partially future-proofed, and the Razer Blade 15 is similar to the new Macbooks in that it has two thunderbolt 3 ports, but also a headphone jack, USB 3.0, HDMI, and mini display ports. Razer is also one of the only brands on par with Apple in build quality; their laptops are, too, milled out of a single block of aluminum using the same CNC process.
Down-to-Earth - $1500
The laptop we're going for here has everything you need, at a price that's not too high. The Lenovo Thinkpad T480s has no graphics card, because that's not necessary for most work tasks, but does have all the specs to run multiple applications at once with no sweat. Included is an eight generation Intel i7 quad-core CPU overclockable up to 4.20ghz, an enchanting 24gb of DDR4 RAM, and 1 terabyte of SSD storage. Although the build quality is not incredible (plastic exterior) and there are no USB-C ports, the Thinkpad T480s is still a great option for anyone. It can handle light gaming and video editing. Bonus: it has a fingerprint reader!
Sleek and Powerful - $2400
If you want the sleekest, most upper-class laptops, there's only one company to look to: Apple (and maybe Razer). Their newest 16" Macbook Pro is a very powerful machine in a sleek metal case. We're going with their base model, which includes a 9th generation 6-core Intel i7 Processor (up to 4.5ghz), 16gb of DDR4 RAM, an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M, and a nice 512gb of SSD. This makes it quite a powerful computer, considering the Radeon Pro 5300M is essentially the equivalent of the GTX 1650 SUPER. Luckily, Apple also did away with the horrid butterfly keyboard and added in some of their own specialties; the touch bar, fingerprint reader, a beautiful finish, 2K screen, and excellent reliability. This laptop is definitely not as strong as the Razer Blade for gaming, but could still hold its weight in lighter titles such as Fortnite, and it's safe to say it will shred through work tasks with ease.
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