My old laptop body is falling apart around the power connector (thanks again, Acer!) and I'm approaching the critical point where I'm pretty sure I will either short the entire motherboard or lose the connector altogether. I also want an upgrade and this time I figured I'd pay for it. So I started doing research and this is where I'm at.

Wants: 15 inch, i7 8550U or better (hence the last gen cutoff), at least 1 thunderbolt, 16 GB ram, 1TB storage or easy access so I can upgrade it myself, battery life 6+ hours when coding (and compiling regularly). Price point is ideally less than €2000, but I'm willing to go as high as €2700 if the laptop is worth it.

Nice to haves: touch, good to excellent RGB coverage, weight less than 1.5kg

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XPS 15 2-in-1 looks nice on paper, but is off the table due to apparent thermal throttling and coil whine issues.

The long-rumored HP x360 Spectre 2-in-1 with RX Vega graphics was supposed to launch on March 16, but so far I've seen absolutely nothing related to it. Previous models have consistently had the same issues as the XPS, though and HP's quality control appears to be horrendous to boot.

The LG Gram 15 would actually be GREAT (with one possible caveat), but of course it's limited strictly to the US market. Oh, and it's out of stock, because of course it is.

Lenovo's X1 Yoga and X1 Carbon both look fantastic, but I can only find one i5 model of the Carbon in the EU. The high end Yoga is readily available in the US. The P52s looks pretty decent as well and is available, but I can't find any reviews for it. Like - none. Which seems to suggest it's a localization issue.

The Surface Book 2 looks nice, I guess. Just one thing, though: the price tag.

Oh, and Apple is off the table. Because Apple.

As for Acer - I've had 3 Acers now and they've all literally fallen apart (the screen came off, left 5 cm column of pixels stopped working, the body started falling apart around the power connector - in that order). Each lasted pretty much exactly 2 years. 

tldr;

What is going on here? Why is the US getting all the goodies and there seems to be no way to (officially) buy any of this stuff in the EU, AU or presumably elsewhere (I've no idea about the Asian market). I would actually be fine with an incremental release, but I can't even find the older models of the Gram for sale in the EU and there seems to be zero indication as to when any of the above-mentioned models might become available around here. Like - daheck... So yeah - is there something obvious that I'm missing or has this always been the case?

Here are a few less related technical questions in case anyone feels like chiming into the conversation:

- is 4k on a 15 inch worth anything at all productivity-wise or does is it there to just demolish battery life?
- is something as trivial as a cooling pad effective against thermal throttling?
- why is quality control so horribly bad in what purport to be high end laptops/ultrabooks? The Lenovo link above has four 5/5 stars and two 1/5 stars, because for 20% of the people, you know, the device's screen came apart in a couple of days. Searching for problems with the XPS or the Spectre turns up a similar ratio.

Have you checked https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/ ?

I have gotten one for about a year now and have had absolutely zero problems. It's basically a desktop replacement (albeit 17") that sits mostly on a cooling pad (reserved for Summer, if needed, but it's been off so far). Cannot really talk about battery life, although with every extra turned off, I'm pretty sure I can get a decent amount of hours for coding.

Also, you can get the extend 2 years warranty for full replacement if you so do wish.

38 minutes ago, swiftcoder said:

The quality control isn't anywhere near that bad. The manufacturers would be out of business long ago if they actually had a catastrophic failure rate of 1 in 5 machines.

You are instead falling victim to the phenomenon that most of the people who bother to leave product reviews on the internet are those who hate the product with a burning passion.

Don't trust random people on the internet, use trusted review publications who have skin in the game in the form of putting their reputation on the line.

I agree that the Lenovo example isn't strictly generalizable, but the root problem is there.

Reviews rarely cover even the most basic flaws that Joe Average may encounter when it comes to the mass market, not preview examples, which are likely to be hand-picked to begin with. Coil whine is a handy example - this isn't something I've read from reviews. It's one of those things you probably don't even know to look for prior to purchase. It doesn't help that not all laptops even from the same skew are made equal so one specimen might have it bad while another might be free of it. Compound this across generations of the same model though, and yeah, I would say it's a pretty gross QC issue, or worse yet - sheer negligence.

The bottom line is - for this kind of money one shouldn't feel like they're playing the lottery.