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It is the best selling laptop on Amazon, but why? Price? Performance? Build? Well.. given the best seller is just $169 I think you can guess.
Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1605888-why-is-everyone-buying-this-laptop/
Buy an HP 14" Laptop (14-dq0040nr): https://geni.us/iNrhj
Buy a Lenovo Ideapad 1: https://geni.us/t35WzWY
Buy a MacBook Air M3: https://geni.us/W0f9
Buy an ASUS ROG Strix G16: https://geni.us/G5val
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CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:10 Sponsor (UPDF)
1:36 The first most popular option
2:17 Keyboard and trackpad
2:49 Display quality
3:17 Performance and limitations
4:11 The second most popular option
5:24 Performance (Celeron strikes back)
6:19 The third most popular option
7:30 Performance and build quality
8:46 Why Apple dominates this price range
10:04 HP laptop internals and repairability
11:35 Battery life
11:51 Conclusion
12:22 Sponsor (Rocket Money)
13:31 Credits
Get UPDF with a Special Offer to edit, convert, AI chat, and OCR pdf: https://bit.ly/3XTkdLz
It is the best selling laptop on Amazon, but why? Price? Performance? Build? Well.. given the best seller is just $169 I think you can guess.
Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1605888-why-is-everyone-buying-this-laptop/
Buy an HP 14" Laptop (14-dq0040nr): https://geni.us/iNrhj
Buy a Lenovo Ideapad 1: https://geni.us/t35WzWY
Buy a MacBook Air M3: https://geni.us/W0f9
Buy an ASUS ROG Strix G16: https://geni.us/G5val
► GET OUR MERCH: https://lttstore.com
► GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ON FLOATPLANE: https://lmg.gg/lttfloatplane
► GET A VPN: http://www.piavpn.com/linus
► SPONSORS, AFFILIATES, AND PARTNERS: https://lmg.gg/partners
Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:10 Sponsor (UPDF)
1:36 The first most popular option
2:17 Keyboard and trackpad
2:49 Display quality
3:17 Performance and limitations
4:11 The second most popular option
5:24 Performance (Celeron strikes back)
6:19 The third most popular option
7:30 Performance and build quality
8:46 Why Apple dominates this price range
10:04 HP laptop internals and repairability
11:35 Battery life
11:51 Conclusion
12:22 Sponsor (Rocket Money)
13:31 Credits
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00There are so many things to consider when choosing a laptop.
00:03Performance and battery life, the brightness and clarity of the screen, the durability and the feel of the materials.
00:10Though, if Amazon's bestsellers list is anything to go by, the main thing people care about is the price.
00:17Meet the top-selling laptop, the HP 14
00:22Laptop.
00:23A $169 machine that is so forgettably mediocre that HP couldn't even be arsed to give it a real name.
00:30So with that in mind, why the sh**?
00:34Why the f**k is everybody buying this thing?
00:37Well, maybe because it's not that bad. With a 4.1 star rating,
00:41maybe buyers know that the 14 laptop will at best be suitably adequate.
00:47So to more thoroughly answer our question and find out what it is that you guys care about,
00:51we also picked up the second and
00:55third most popular laptops on Amazon.
00:58Can we trust the wisdom of the crowd, or should they have watched a bit more LTT before hitting buy now?
01:05What you definitely should buy now is whatever comes after this segue. To our sponsor.
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01:21It's already priced super competitively, but you can get 38% off using our link today.
01:36Right out of the gate, my impressions for the HP 14 laptop were not terrible.
01:42Which is a big surprise, because every other time we've looked at a sub $200 laptop, it has been comically bad.
01:49I mean, yeah, the chassis is plastic and it feels the part,
01:53but it looks decent enough with a white color scheme and a brushed texture on the palm rest, and to HP's credit, the rigidity is
02:02okay.
02:03It's a little flexible, but it's no worse than laptops
02:07we've seen that are three or four times the price, and it even has better I.O. than many of those laptops.
02:14And the good news keeps coming. The keyboard on the 14 is
02:19shockingly usable. I mean, it bounces like a trampoline if you push on it,
02:23but not in a way that actually impacted use much. It took me just
02:28seconds to get up to full speed, and if I'm being honest,
02:31I think I would choose this over the trendier Zero Lattice keyboard on the much more expensive Dell XPS.
02:38The trackpad also has excellent tracking and click feel, but there are times where size
02:44matters more than how you use it, and this is one of them. The screen also isn't great,
02:51but at least it's in ways that align with my expectations for a $169 laptop. It's only
02:58768p, which leaves text noticeably blocky, and you can adjust the contrast ratio by simply tilting the screen,
03:06but if all you plan to do is write in Google Docs and watch YouTube videos, it really isn't too bad for that.
03:12In fact, this video was largely written on the HP 14 laptop.
03:16Where things fall apart, though, is performance.
03:19We've got 4 gigabytes of RAM at a time when 8 really isn't enough anymore.
03:25We get 64 gigs of very slow eMMC storage to go with our
03:30even worse than that, dual core Intel Celeron N4020.
03:35Now, if that model number doesn't mean anything to you, I don't blame you. That's on purpose,
03:40so you won't realize that this thing was built using technology from
03:442016. Wanna open a folder?
03:47Hope you're ready to wait. Wanna watch a video?
03:50You get to wait for that, too.
03:52There were times in our testing where we could write out an entire sentence before the first letters would start appearing on the screen.
03:59Not always, but catch it during a background Windows update or something like that, and it really is that slow.
04:07And forget about any sort of gaming. So with that in mind,
04:10what happens if you pony up for the second most purchased laptop on Amazon? The Lenovo IdeaPad 1.
04:16Well, right out of the gate, the $280 IdeaPad fixes some of the key failings of the HP.
04:23You get 12 gigabytes of RAM and enough storage for more than half of one modern video game, and
04:30while the description of the TN display might border on false advertising, at least it's 1080p now,
04:37which helps a lot with text readability. Like with the HP,
04:40we actually get a very decent assortment of ports, and as a cherry on top,
04:44we even get Wi-Fi 6, which, um,
04:48unfortunately is where the nice things I can say about this hot pile of ass end.
04:54Unlike the HP, the typing experience suffers
04:57badly from the flex in the all-plastic chassis, and while the trackpad itself is quite decent,
05:03big enough to be usable with adequate tracking and click feel, the second you put your palm on the palm rest,
05:09you know, the place for resting your palm,
05:12the trackpad gets noticeably more difficult to click, turning the IdeaPad 1 into this constant irritating reminder
05:19that you didn't choose a better laptop. You know what the worst part is? It isn't even noticeably faster than the HP.
05:27Yep, in episode 5, the Celeron strikes back. We get another dual-core 2.8 gigahertz
05:34Abacus emulator. Now, this one's a bit more modern at four years young, but in practice, it doesn't really matter.
05:40It's so slow that even the extra RAM can't improve the experience. Here, look at this.
05:45I'm gonna show you how to max out this processor. You start by opening Task Manager.
05:52Eventually. Okay, let's go to the performance tab, and ta-da!
05:59Okay, in fairness, it's only at 20% right now,
06:02but to exceed that, we merely need to open an Explorer window, or to generate another spike,
06:08just right-click to open a context menu. To really drive home how slow this thing is, we need something to compare it to.
06:15How about the third most purchased laptop on Amazon? The MacBook Air 13-inch M3 with 16 gigs of RAM.
06:24I immediately love this thing by comparison. Watch. Finder?
06:29No available Windows. Well, yes, I know, it's macOS.
06:35Here we are side-by-side.
06:39Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, web browser, web browser, okay?
06:47Ta-da!
06:49Any time now, buddy. Any time now, buddy. Okay, in fairness, this didn't actually have to load a page, but
06:56yeah, I think you get the point. Even if it didn't fit perfectly in our off-site laptop bag,
07:03lttstore.com,
07:04using this after those other machines is like
07:08drawing your first breath of fresh air after smelling nothing but farts for the last six minutes.
07:13I mean, sure, the Air might not have a cooling fan for its wimpy 10-watt processor,
07:18but thanks to the magic of Apple Silicon, it completely destroys our other two options on the track, like
07:24buy an amount that is not even funny, and not even proportional to how much more it costs. I am talking about a
07:32703% increase in speedometer versus the HP.
07:3611 times the speed in Cinebench,
07:39Jetstream, and WebExpert 4 are more enormous leads for Apple, and you might be thinking, sure, Linus, I get the point,
07:45I get the point, but no, you don't! Look at this result for MotionMark. The MacBook Air, which,
07:52I remind you, is not a particularly fast machine, posts a score that is 55 times faster than the Celeron!
08:00Incredible! Now, we paid
08:03$850 for this, which is a lot more than these other machines, but at that price,
08:08it is just an awesome all-around experience. You get Apple-tier material quality, so
08:15exceptional, with the aluminum chassis exhibiting basically no flex, even when you're pushing hard or twisting it.
08:21The screen hit 500 nits in our testing, while being color accurate enough to not only consume content,
08:27but even create it, and the keyboard would stand out as pretty great,
08:32if it wasn't next to a giant force touch trackpad that is one of the absolute best on the market.
08:38I mean, look, I don't need to continue praising the MacBook Air. We've already made multiple videos about it,
08:43so instead, I want to talk about something else.
08:46I want to talk about why Apple stands out so much here, next to the competition.
08:52Looking down the rest of the best-sellers list, there wasn't a single Windows machine that came even close to the
08:58$850 price of the MacBook, until we got all the way down to number 32, the Asus G16.
09:05And that might not seem like a huge problem,
09:07but I think it does a lot to explain the perception that many people have, that Macs are just plain better than PCs.
09:15Like, seriously, I know so many people in my life that will swear up and down that MacBooks are just faster,
09:21and better quality than Windows laptops.
09:24But this often comes from people who spend two to four times as much on their MacBooks.
09:29Of course, though, we have to give Apple some of the credit here. By simply refusing outright to sell you a laptop
09:36that will be shite, they protect the perception of their brand in a way that companies like Dell, HP,
09:43Lenovo, and Asus could all learn from. And they're especially doing this now that all Macs ship with at least
09:5016 gigs of RAM. Because that's the thing, right? Your brand is judged not only on your flagship performance,
09:56but also on your entry-level.
09:58Let's come back to the best-selling laptop on Amazon, which isn't this one, and see if it has some more redeeming qualities.
10:05Maybe it's super repairable? Framework investment disclosure.
10:09Not really.
10:10Oh.
10:10There are eight screws.
10:12Noooooooo!
10:14We have to take off the feet to... wait, I don't...
10:17The screw's only on this side?
10:21This side doesn't have a screw?
10:22They're not even symmetrical.
10:25And then what about the back?
10:26Is it both sides or is it one side?
10:28Or what are we talking about here?
10:30Both sides.
10:31Oh no, all the way up to the, oh what?
10:33So there's one on this side and two on that side?
10:37Yep.
10:38It's very logical.
10:40There's also, is this three different screws?
10:43Yes.
10:44What the heck?
10:45Who knows?
10:46Once we get inside it, we'll be really impressed.
10:49Not a ton going on here.
10:50They don't have soldered memory or wifi.
10:53So that's something.
10:55Where the devil is the SSD though?
10:56Oh, wait.
10:58Shut up.
11:02It's soldered EMMC with no M.2 slot?
11:07And look at this.
11:08They even got a spot where a two and a half inch drive
11:11probably went at some point,
11:13but there's nowhere to put one of those either.
11:17No, did you see where the SSD could go?
11:20Oh, right here.
11:21Yeah, right there.
11:22Wait, but they have the,
11:24they have the solder pads for it.
11:26Yeah.
11:28I mean, at least we were able to get six hours
11:31of battery life out of the 41 watt hour battery.
11:34That's way behind the MacBook,
11:37but it's a lot better than the Lenovo.
11:39Oh no, there's also a spot for, oh yeah, look at that.
11:44There's a spot for a cooler,
11:45but instead of actually having a fin stack,
11:48it's just got this like piece of stamped sheet aluminum.
11:51With all of that said, I don't hate the HP.
11:55If your goal is just to get a laptop for your kids
11:58so that they can do homework or watch videos
12:00in the back seat,
12:01it's gonna get the job done for just $170.
12:04But if you're gonna spend more for something better,
12:07I would absolutely skip over the Lenovo
12:09and get something with at least a Core i3
12:11or a Ryzen 3 processor.
12:13I know it's gonna cost a bit more money,
12:15but please, please, if possible,
12:18don't get one of these Celeron chips.
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13:30If you guys enjoyed this video,
13:32why don't you check out the one
13:33that I'm working on right now,
13:34which is switching to Apple.
13:38Wait, is the Amazon bestseller one
13:39better than what I bought?
13:40Yeah.
13:41Wait, what?
13:42I paid more than that.
13:43Wow, you got scammed.
13:44Didn't I?
13:45I paid $1,000, didn't I?
13:46Cad.
13:47Oh, Canadian.
13:48Oh, okay, nevermind.