What to look for for engineering laptop

Kbat11700
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:19:42 +0000

I’m going to be a freshman fall 2019 at Cornell in the College of Engineering. Leaning towards mechanical engineering but I’m largely undecided at the moment on major.

What should I look for in a computer? I think i want a 13 inch for portability but it seems easier to get good specs in a 15". Is a 15" clumsy?

I’m pretty sure that i7 and 16gb ram is what I want, but how important is a dedicated graphics card? It’s hard to get in a 13"

Ideally my budget is $1500 but I would be willing to stretch it as far as about $2200 if I felt it was necessary.

The Huawei mate book X pro is my current top choice, but I have also been looking at the Dell XPS 15, XPS 13, Inspiron 13 2 in 1 7000, MacBook pro, and a few others.

I’m a little lost to be honest. So what is important to look for, and what are some recommendations?