Since my Lenovo Miix 3 is already on its last legs, I had been spending hours at night scouring online marketplaces for a replacement laptop. Last Friday has proven to me that I shouldn’t delay this further because I went to the interview with a humongous laptop with me that I had to unplug from the back of my table and I wrestled with the peripherals that I had to disconnect so I can be mobile. When my Miix was still serviceable, it was just grab and go.

One of the laptops I was checking out was Lenovo Chromebook, mainly for its portability and battery life.

But the specs are really low-end and old, I doubted whether I would be productive given the lack of computing power.

Then I checked out Chuwi Aerobook because I am shallow since its form factor is imitating Macbook Air. However, the processors are old generation, that’s how they kept it somewhat affordable.

I figured I could get more decent specs for almost the same price. So I found Machenike, a Chinese brand of gaming laptop. The specs and price hit the sweet spot.

The only thing that made me hesitate is that it ships from China and the probability that some fuck ups will happen is very, very high. It’s too much of a risk. Another concern is the warranty. Although Lazada says it has local warranty, there is something dodgy about a vendor that says there is local warranty but does not publish where the local office is located. What if there are dead pixels? What if the keyboards are problematic? I could not find any other reviews about its reliability aside from those written on Lazada so that’s another red flag for me.

I searched for tablets bigger than 10″ since the one I’m going to replace is a Lenovo Windows tablet anyway, but most of them either have very old processors or keyboards are going to be an issue since some of them do not come with keyboards (unlike Lenovo Miix3). Chuwi tablets looked like they could be alternatives to Microsoft Surface hybrid tablets but again, I’m going to pay for old processors for the same price as a full laptop.

I was about to give up and succumb to ordering the Machenike laptop when I found the Lenovo Ideapad 3

This seems to be the best deal: Core i3 10th generation for less than PHP 25,000, even if you add RAM. Before pulling the trigger, I decided to go to Greenhills today to check out if I can buy it for the same price as those sold on Lazada. Because I have low EQ when it comes to important purchases, I am willing to shell out a little more instead of risking it getting lost or damaged by the courier.

Lo and behold, I was able to buy one from PCX in Greenhills for the same price, also with free mouse and bag. However, I settled for 128 GB ROM and paid cash so the price would stay under 25k.

It looks unsexy (kinda like the old IBM Thinkpads) and the body is all plastic (vs Chuwi Aerobook, which has a metal body like Macbook Air) but its battery life is around 6 hrs, around the same as or longer than that of Chuwi Aerobook or Ubook. Its innards are pretty standard, 8GB DDR4 2666 RAM, 128 GB SSD (can be expanded to make it hybrid) and everything else (screen, sounds,microhpne, etc) is not much of an issue for me since I will just use this for writing and editing on the go. It’s relatively lighter than the Acer gaming laptop that I hijacked from J that I’m using now as permanent desktop computer. It only weighs 1.6 kg, which is manageable and it won’t destroy my leather laptop bag that was just purchased right before the pandemic hit. I’ll just probably use the free laptop bag when I travel until I replace it with a better one that is roomy enough for a laptop and clothes that I can just chuck in the overhead bin of a plane because there are trips that only warrant a handcarry luggage. Just like the last overseas trip I had, which was like ages ago–Jakarta in July 2019, which was just under 48 hrs.

Overall I’m quite satisfied with the laptop’s performance. It can handle multitasking (messaging apps, multiple tabs of firefox, spotify, outlook, etc.) I cannot imagine running everything on only Celeron. The 10th gen Core i3 will be serviceable for at least 3 years; I’ll just add RAM or convert this into a Linux machine if this thing slows down. Even the Chuwi uses 6th gen Core i5 processors and they sell them at almost the same price as this Lenovo that I have. No wonder their laptops only get less than 5 hrs of battery life.

Anyway, face to face interviews are slowly picking up. This new laptop would soon be in service.