A while back, I picked up a ThinkPad E490s. It's the cheap ThinkPad version, but, with three exceptions, I've been very happy with it. Those three exceptions are that the WiFi often takes a long time to connect coming out of sleep, the keyboard backlighting turns off when you shut the lid (and you have to manually turn it back on when you wake it), and there's no removable battery. I think the right response to the third is that you can get an external USB-C powerbank now instead. Fair.

Actually the USB-C connection is kinda flakey sometimes, flashing the screen if my power supply jostles at all.

Other than that, it's great. RAM was still upgradeable, so I did, and I upgraded the single hard drive slot, an m.2, to a larger drive. The best part is that it comes with a nice ThinkPad keyboard with TrackPoint versus the way I BYOK with the ThinkPad Bluetooth keyboard with other laptops. I'm afraid I'm addicted to the TrackPoint at this, um, juncture.

If you remember, the last time I thought about buying a new working laptop, I decide the best buy was a gaming laptop, a decision I didn't regret much. The battery was bad. The screen wasn't great. The keyboard was questionable. But I had a MacBook Pro processor in a portable device with more RAM and storage space for less than half the MacBook's price.

And if I hadn't already bought this ThinkPad, I'd be doing it again. This LaptopMag.com post of the current deal at Best Buy confirms what I thought I was learning while looking for the next great laptop deal: The Asus TUF A15 is insanely good at $799.

Just for fun, here's the CPU comparison graph for...

  1. The Dell gaming desktop I was considering for about $755 (with an upgraded power supply -- the idea being I could update the CPU and GPU in a year or so) 
  2. The Asus TUF A15, and 
  3. My old Lenovo Y700

And then here's the GPU comparison chart of the same three.


Wow, that's a step up. It's such a step up I'm not sure that last one is right. I still get playable frame rates in WoW, for instance, not that it's a challenging game. But less than 10% of what you'd get from the GPU in an $800 laptop today? Wow.

I realize that's apples to oranges to pears, but you can get a feel for what I'm looking at, and why a new box would be attractive. The question and answer section of the Best Buy Asus A15 listing for $799 suggests/says that this version is a Best Buy special (even though it's the same model number used for laptops with different specs), here a very bad thing, with a smaller battery than any other Asus A15 and maybe less RAM (8 gigs either way). Plus the keyboard looks like crap, and I hate 10 key numpads on laptops. Either give the normal keys more space or make the laptop smaller. Don't need it.

But the RAM is upgradeable, and I've lived with a bad battery before. Man, that's a nice step up. Too bad I put $780 into this E490s a year ago, or I'd probably bite.

Lesson: Don't play games on your old gaming laptops or you'll want a new one.

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