You asked for a Laptop costing under £2400.
You told me that you needed a high performance laptop for high performance/speed in productivity. You also added the following additional information: Interested in CAD, would prefer Quadro GPU but will consider game-related GPU if much cheaper.
As I was looking for a suitable laptop for you, it became very clear that the Quadro workstation GPUs (T- series and A- series) were very, very expensive for the performance you were getting. So I have recommended three laptops – the first is the best Quadro-equipped laptop I could find at your price point, the second was the cheapest T600 I could find.
The third was the wildcard. It is a much better equipped laptop, with the same CPU but much better in terms of RAM, storage and GPU. You can expect an RTX 3080 (8GB RAM) GPU to perform at least twice as fast as the A2000 (4GB RAM) and four times as fast as the T600 (also 4GB RAM) in terms of rendering tasks.
If you are buying just for yourself, I strongly recommend choice 3 over choices 1 and 2. If you are buying in large quantities for a business however, you might prefer the Quadro equipped laptops for their driver support in terms of CAD software. Bear in mind that you’re paying quite the premium for support that hopefully, you’ll never have to use.
Final point – if you can reach over £2400, there are a few laptops with stronger CPUs available. As a lot of CAD work is CPU bound, this might suit your usage case better.
I searched a range of different shops for something that would suit your needs. I have chosen the three options below as the best ones to suit your requirements. However, we all have our own tastes (and of course, prices can change), so I have also included search links for each shop at the bottom of this page in case you’d like to browse further.
I always choose three options – the best performing option within your budget (i.e. best suited to meet your needs for the longest possible time), the cheapest option that still meets your needs effectively and a mid-range option which is a compromise between the two. If you are able to, I would usually recommend the first option as it is likely to be powerful enough to meet your needs for the longest before it needs replacing. However, I specify three choices so that you can pick the one that best suits your circumstances.
Prices correct as of 19th Jan 2022
1. Best overall performance: Lenovo ThinkPad P15v …
£2208.99
Key features:
CPU: Intel Core i7-11800H
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB
Graphics: NVIDIA RTX A2000 4GB GDDR6
This choice represents the best overall performance I could get from your budget that uses a workstation GPU. I chose it primarily based on its CPU and GPU, both of which are very good.
2. Cheapest option: Dell Precision 3561 C…
£1903.98
Key features:
CPU: Intel Core i7 11800H 2.3GHz
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 256GB
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro T600 4GB
This choice represents the cheapest device I could find that still meets your needs. I chose it primarily based on its all round performance.
3. Best of both worlds option: Gigabyte AORUS 15P YD…
£2200.00
Key features:
CPU: Intel Core i7 11800H 2.3GHz
RAM: 32GB
Storage: 1024GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
This choice represents the Wildcard choice. It should perform much better than either of choices 1 or 2, but it is not a workstation GPU. I chose it primarily based on its CPU, RAM and GPU, all of which are excellent.
Why did I choose these for you?
It is important that you understand what the components of a laptop do so that you can make an informed choice. Here is my very basic explanation for each:
- CPU: The brain of your laptop. A better one makes your laptop faster.
- RAM: Your laptop’s short term memory – more of this means it can cope well with doing more things at once.
- Storage: How much space your laptop has to store files, photos, apps etc. More storage means you can store more stuff.
- Graphics: Your laptop has a graphics processor (GPU) responsible for how things appear on the screen. A better GPU will mean your device will cope better with more complicated graphics, such as in 3D games.
If you would like to browse the shops I searched for yourself, here are some links that will take you directly to the search results you require:
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links – that means if you go on to buy after clicking one of them, I may receive a small payment. This is how I am able to provide this service for free. It does not affect the price you pay, nor does it affect the recommendations I make – I will always recommend the best I can find to fit your usage, regardless of what shop it is from or any affiliation.
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