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Best laptops for programmer under 800 Dollars

By Alberto Montalesi
Published in Article
October 14, 2019
2 min read
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Disclaimer: I am not a reviewer nor a tester, this are my opinions based on the reviews that I’ve read online Disclaimer part 2: Amazon links are affiliate links, if you do not agree with that, you can copy the laptop name and search for it directly on Amazon.

As a programmer, my need for a laptop are quite straightforward:

  • good battery
  • decent screen
  • good keyboard + touch pad
  • good amount of memory

I work with JavaScript so, as a full stack developer, I don’t need strong GPU, huge storage or a touch screen. This list takes into account the needs of similar developers, if you are a game developer I guess your needs will be a bit different than mine so you might find this list not very useful.

In this article I will show you what I think are the best laptops for programmers under 800 dollars. At the end of the article you can find a summary of all the laptops in this list.

If your budget is higher, don’t worry! I’ll soon release a list of laptop between 800 and 1500 dollar.

Asus Vivobook S15 - 700/800 USD

Asus Vivobook S15

Read a full review here

The 2019 version just came out and uses Asus new ScreenPad 2.0 which transforms your touch pad in a 5 inches touch screen that you can use. The link I’ve put is for the 2018 version with a normal touch pad.

What I like:

  • Beautiful design that makes it look more premium than the price tag
  • Good performance

What I don’t like:

  • Poor color coverage of the display. Not such a big deal if you use your laptop only for programming and not multimedia use.
test

Huawei Matebook D14 - 700 USD

Huawei Matebook D14

Read a full review here or here

What I like:

  • Nice, simple design
  • Great keyboard

What I don’t like:

  • Bad touch pad
  • Average battery life
  • Smaller display, 14 inches compared to 15.6 of other laptop in this list

Acer Swift 3 - 770 USD

Acer Swift 3

Read a full review here or here.

What I like:

  • Intel Core i7, 16GB ram
  • Great keyboard and touch pad

What I don’t like:

  • Good but not amazing battery life

Lenovo Ideapad 530s - 700 USD

Lenovo Ideapad 530s

Read a full review here.

What I like:

  • Good performance
  • Nice Design

What I don’t like:

  • Average display

If you are not really concerned about carrying around a 2+ kgs laptop and would prefer to save more money by compromising on design or you would like to have a more performant GPU, these are some of my pics.

Acer Aspire E15 - 600 USD

Acer Aspire E15

Read a full review here

What I like:

  • Insane battery life at over 10 hours
  • Solid performance with i5 8th gen, 256GB SSD and 8GB ram
  • Great price at only 600 USD

What I don’t like:

  • Design is not the best

Dell G5 - 700/800 USD

Dell G5

Read a full review here

What I like:

  • It has an Intel H CPU instead of a low power U
  • Dedicated GPU if you also want to game
  • Good battery life

What I don’t like:

  • Bulky and Heavy

Summary

Note: the link to Amazon will redirect you to your local amazon store, where available. The products in your local store may not have the same specifications, I tried to find the same where possible but sometimes they were not available so read carefully the spec list in amazon!

ModelAsus Vivobook S15Huawei Matebook DAcer Swift 3Lenovo Ideapad 530sAcer Aspire E15Dell G5
Screen size (in)15.61415.615.615.615.6
CPUIntel Core i7-8565uAMD R5Intel Core i7-8550UAMD R5 2500UIntel Core i5-8250UIntel Core i5 8300H
RAM (GB)88161688
Storage SSD (GB)256 + 1TB HDD256512256128 + 1TB HDD
GPUMX150AMD Radeon Vega 8Intel UHD Graphics 620AMD Radeon Vega 8MX150NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Battery life (in hrs)~8~4/5~8~7/8~10~8
Weight (in kgs)1.51.51.71.72.52.7
Price799699770699599790
Link to AmazonAmazonAmazonAmazonAmazonAmazonAmazon

Thank you very much for reading, if you enjoyed this article, please share it with friends and colleagues and if there is a topic you would like me to cover, reach out to me on twitter at @montalesi. Follow me on DevTo or on Twitter for more.

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