1y ago

Laptop with long runtime

I'm looking to buy a new laptop. I recently switched to Linux (Fedora) and would like to stay with it (Not necessarily Fedora though).

My most important requirement is that it has a great runtime. I honestly don't want to deal with under-volting or anything like that. A "runs out of the box" approach would be best.

13-14", no dGPU, AMD/Intel.

edit: I realized that great runtime is very different for everyone. I wouldn't consider 5-7 hours great. More like absolute minimum is 8. Better is 10-12. This sounds very unlikely though, apart from MacBooks with ARM CPU. Any recommendations?

55 comments

https://system76.com/laptops/lemur
14 hours of battery life. Linux out of the box and even has coreboot if you care about that sort of thing.
- Does anyone have one of these that could confirm if that’s realistic? I’ve seen many laptops with similar specs and claims that come out to significantly lower battery life unless you do nothing but stare at an empty desktop.
  
  Wired has a good review on it:
  Where the Lemur Pro really shines is battery life. System76 claims 14 hours, and I managed 11 hours in our battery drain test (looping a 1080p video). In real-world use, I frequently eked out over 13 hours. That’s off the charts better than any other Linux laptop I’ve tested recently.
  https://www.wired.com/review/system-76-lemur-pro-laptop/
  If you aren't interested in MacBooks, this imo is one of the best alternatives--especially if battery life is a high priority.
  
  Yeah… unless they’re doing some serious optimization for that particular laptop, 14-hours seems like a best-case-scenario kind of thing.

Framework. They even have a factory seconds store, if you don't need a perfect screen.

There are some sweet used laptops with great runtime in the Lenovo ThinkPad series.
Not new though...
Edit: maybe new if you have the budget ofc
- The T480 and T580 are some of the last ones they made with swapable batteries. Everything works out of the box in Linux except the fingerprint scanner which needs some additional configuration.
  I have a T480 with an integrated GPU and the largest battery. It runs for a long time on a charge and there are lots of spare parts available.
  
  Just curious, the 72WH battery? What’s a “long time?” I use the standard slim battery on my T480 and was only getting 3-4 hours on Pop (both brand new batteries). And forget about standby. It would regularly lose 20-30% overnight if not completely shut down. Wanted to make it work, but that alone made me boot back into Windows for the laptop.
- Why buy Lenovo even there are a bunch of vendors making Linux-first laptops these days? When you buy Lenovo you're supporting Microsoft and a bunch of other shady companies (firmware vendors, etc).
  
  Cause lenovo actually sell their laptop here. I do wish framework would expand out soon but seems quite unlikely for a few more years.
  
  I've gotten both of my thinkpads used, so none of that money went to Lenovo or Microsoft. The laptops that come with Linux are expensive and are rarely available used.

My daily driver is still a Dell XPS 13, 10th gen Intel i7, 16gb RAM and 500gb (nvm) SSD. I bought it referbed. I'm running Fedora 38 (Workstation) currently. Everything works but the fingerprint sensor (which I don't care about). It runs for hours as long as I'm doing "normal" stuff like browsing and writing. It runs so long that I get tired before it does. The only time the runtime suffers is if I'm cranking the cores (encoding, compiling, etc). No voodoo required, it just runs this way out of the box. Even the onboard firmware gets updated by fwupd.
The only oddity (to me) is that it's USB-C only (no A ports) so I carry a small dock if I need to plugin a normal USB device or network cable, but that's rare for me.
- Someone else also recommended a XPS. I'm totally fine with just USB-C. How fast do you get tired? If it's after 9 hours and the laptop runs for 12, that would be awesome :)
  
  I haven't had nine hours uninterrupted time in quite a while, but I've done six to seven with plenty left in the tank. I've kinda stopped measuring it because of that.

i have the same requirements as you. i bought framework 13.
i'm still in the confuguration phase, for now it has a decent battery run of ~6/8h of installing stuff. i'm configuring nixos.
- you have TLP configured?
  
  yes but default config, i still need to look into it
- I looked into them. And it sounded a lot of the users are not happy about the build quality compared to Thinkpads or Latitudes. How is your experience? Did you go with Intel or AMD?
  
  Build quality? You mean replaceable parts vs glue making things feel more solid? Have I had this conversation with you before?
  
  i just got a ThinkPad for work, it's spectacular. but if you need to replace something....
  the framework is solid, and allows to replace anything. i think the tradeoff is very fair.
  
  Build quality on Frameworks is dramatically better than most ThinkPads. They've made a lot of improvements to battery life since the first generation (I got mine in the second batch), so it might have decent battery life now. They've always been more efficient on Linux than on Windows.
- Which CPU are you using? I've got the 11th gen i5 and battery life is just miserable, especially in standby.
  
  i5-1340p
  there is a kernel parameter to add to make standby better: mem_sleep_default=deep.
  if you are on nixos you can import the framework hardware module from "nixos-hardware". it also includes other fixes

Basically any laptop with AMD U series apu with big enough battery will suffice, just set up properly TLP programm after installation

Needs to be Linux? Xps. Unix? MacBook of choice.
- XPS make great Linux machines, but I find their batteries have a noticable drop after a year or so.
  My next machine is going to be a FrameWork, so that I can easily replace the battery.
- XPS no longer does S3 sleep, only hybrid sleep. :(
  
  Most vendors have dropped S3 sleep, since Windows 8+ doesn't use it. S0ix-way or the highway.
- I doubt anyone will want to use System V
  
  https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
- I was about to say the same. I usually run Dell XPS or Macs. The good thing about Macs is that the sleep modes and stuff all work really really well. The XPSs are solid, and the hardware support in Linux is pretty good.
  A notable third entry recent entry for me is framework. Customizable, upgradable and not too expensive (when compared to the other two), it’s a great option.
- Do you have a XPS? How's the runtime? Are you happy with it in terms of Linux support?

Got a old Dell Latitude 7490 runs for 5-7 hrs, quite cheap. Running Ubuntu with everything except the fingerprint reader working.
- That is nor really a great runtime for me. I get that it's different for everyone, though. I edited my original post.
  
  Maybe look at getting a Mac M2? I've got one for work and the battery life is insane 😎

What do you mean by "has a great runtime?"
- That's a good reply. Reading the other replies, I realized that great runtime is very different for everyone. I wouldn't consider 5-7 hours great. More like absolute minimum 8. Better is 10-12. This sounds very unlikely though, apart from MacBooks with ARM CPU.
  
  Oh you mean battery life?

I've had good luck with refurbished Dell laptops. My primary laptop is a refurbished Dell Latitude 11" 3120. Bought it for ~$250 at beginning of this year and currently have Fedora on it. It's not very powerful. I use it primarily to browse the web, watch movies/tv, and vnc/ssh to my other systems. Can last about 5-6 hours streaming video from jellyfin at 50% brightness, other stuff barely uses any power and can stretch out to 9-10 hours if I set display brightness even lower.
I've always bought Windows laptops then put linux on them so I'm used to verifying that tools such as TLP are installed, configured, enabled, and working. There is too much variety with laptops for all of them to be handled automatically unfortunately so I always verify it. If a laptop came with Linux pre-installed then it might be good to go ootb but I'd still verify.
- Interesting. 9-10 hours sounds nice! Do you think never ones would have even better runtime? Have you used TLPUI? Maybe with a GUI I could get my self to play around with TLP...

One rule of thumb I discovered when doing research about a year ago is that AMD chips are generally way better than Intel chips when it comes to power consumption.

Not the most comfortable but if you get one with usb-c pd charging, there are quite a few powerbanks even with 100+ watt now.

Lenovo x13s Arm setup with Linux is coming along and can hit those runtimes. Will be slower, but good enough for daily work

Next time I look for a small laptop to have handy one thing I'm going to be sure to prioritise is: how much battery does it use while suspended? I'd really like to not need to have it switch to hibernate after 30m of sleep or w/e and ideally just plug it in overnight like a phone.
- And that it CAN suspend fully.

Do you mean battery life?

Apple. Can run bare metal Linux now
- Yeah but how is the experience? While I'm not a fan of MacOS the polish and integration with the hardware is excellent. Hmm... I may need to see if I can dual boot this machine and check it out myself.
  
  Haven't tried myself but looking at a Mac for next time. Seems to be great experience and hardware integration somewhat up to speed. GPU issue is tackled a while back. https://asahilinux.org/ https://macdailynews.com/2022/04/26/asahi-linux-on-an-apple-m1-mac-mini-is-unbelievably-fast/ the fedora version was launched a few months back so I assume there is a lot to do. But active development and usable

And I'm out here ecstatic for getting 4 hours on my laptop 😂

bought a (used) t470 a few months ago, been happy with it - especially for the price.

No idea, but research to framework, pine64 and system76

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