Hardware

This page is dedicated to the hardware I use, if you are interested in the software I use click here. I currently have three laptops and I’ll go into some detail in a moment, but all of which use exactly the same software.

Lenovo IdeaPad 11

This was the first laptop I bought after many years of pretty much exclusively using an Android tablet. I wanted to have more privacy and get away from using Google services. I also wanted to emulate a few games.

About the laptop, it is a very inexpensive model and it came with a dual core AMD 3020e processor. I didn’t hold out much hope of it being any good… The screen was washed out and seriously blue, simply put - garbage. For the ten minutes or so I used Windows to download an ISO and burn it to a USB stick it was seriously sluggish! As it only has around 3.3G of ram as some of its advertised 4G memory is allocated to the iGPU.

Once I installed Linux, the sluggishness was cured. Even when using a heavier desktop environment like Gnome, everything was really quite snappy!

A note on emulation, this device is perfectly capable to run software emulating older consoles such as the SNES or Gameboy Advance. It can even run Gamecube games, albeit with one caveat… This laptop is passively cooled, i.e. it has no fan to cool it! I could only really play a Gamecube game for around 30 minutes or so before the processor would thermal throttle, and gameplay would become a stuttery mess.

Another note, the screen can at least be improved thanks to gamma correction either using xrandr (which I use now) or xgamma (which I used initially.) It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it is now perfectly usable without inducing eye strain or a headache. The screen also has a low of just 1366x768, but it is only an 11" screen.

I’m still surprised how well this laptop handles most of the things I throw it, especially when it is running Linux.

I really couldn’t recommend this device if you were planning to stick to using Windows - it just doesn’t really have the horse power to run it well. If you already use Linux or want to put the time in to learn how to use Linux, I do think this is a good device especially once you fix the screen’s gamma.

Lenovo ThinkPad E14

This is the laptop I upgraded to after using my IdeaPad for around a year. It is infintely superior.

It’s actively cooled, meaning it does indeed have a fan, allowing you to play a game indefinitely and it’s great for the kinds of games I like to emulate. For most day to day tasks the device is cool enough that the fans never really kick in. Of course it can gets noisier when doing something intensive such as rendering a video. But all in all it is a very quiet device.

The screen is also miles ahead of the IdeaPad, it is 14" and has a more respectable resolution of 1920x1080 - more than enough for me. I do however like to tweak the gamma ever so slighty on this screen - it’s perhaps just a touch to green for my eyes. Even without tweaking the gamma, it’s already night and day compared to the IdeaPad, and was only really an issue of personal preference.

I would definitely recommend this device, but if you’re not bothered about having a track point, you can definitely get a similarly specced machine for much cheaper.

My model has the following specs: - AMD 5500u - 16G of Ram - 1TB NVMe Hard Drive

There isn’t really too much else to say, overall I have been very happy using this laptop!

Dell 5425

This laptop is mainly just a backup for my ThinkPad, despite having a slightly better processor (AMD 5825u.)

I can’t say that I have noticed that much of a boost in performance compared to my ThinkPad. Maybe that’s because it currently only has a single stick of 8G ram? I plan on adding another stick of ram soon. As it stands now, it can handle all the same tasks as my ThinkPad and that’s all it really needs to do - so I’m pleased with it!

Much like the ThinkPad it is mostly silent when performing basic day to day tasks, of course the fan ramp up when doing something intensive. However my particular machine is not entirely silent, unfortunately I gots me a case of the coil whines. Fortunately enough though it is extremely mild. With some ambient noise in the background you would never even know it had coil whine. When you’re in a quiet room you can hear it occasionally, but then again I do have bat like hearing… things like this tend to really bother me, however after a week of anguish I can’t say that it still bothers me. I somehow managed to learn how to use the laptop with out my right ear pressed up close to the touchpad (that’s where the whine sounded like it was coming from, I do realise a touchpad can’t actually whine because the internet said it was a transformer or something.) But who would have thought such a simple solution could alleviate the issue? Not only that but my neck pain curiously vanished as well.

This device has a really nice screen. It is a 16:10 aspect ratio meaning it is slightly taller than your traditional widescreen (16:9.) I did notice when adjusting the brightness it doesn’t have as many points of brightness to adjust to compared to both the Thinkpad and IdeaPad. I assume this is because the Dell is rated at only 250 nits of brightness compared to the 300 nits of the ThinkPad. I am not sure how bright the IdeaPad’s screen is. Despite this the screen is plenty bright enough for me - it’s not like a spend exteneded periods outside in the searing sunshine… well not with my laptop at least! Again I did adjust the gamma slightly to fit my preference - it too was just a touch too green for my taste.

Despite the issue of the coil whine, I would still recommend this laptop. For the price I got it, I can personally overlook this issue. Of course your mileage may vary and it is something too keep an eye on if you already bought this laptop or you are thinking of getting one.

One Last Anecdote

I did recently purchase a Lenovo T14 with the AMD 6850u processor. I originally wanted it as a backup for my ThinkPad E14 - I don’t entirely know why I thought a more expensive model would make for a great back up but anyway… Let me tell you that tale.

When I first powered it on, I could kind of hear something but figured it was my imagination. I was wrong. Later that evening when things were more or less silent. I powered up my new device and boy did that thing have coil whine. It sounded like it had a hornets nest in there! Suffice it to say I was extremely disappointed. I was quite literally petrified to use the thing in case it was going to explode in my face.

The next day I decided to try using the laptop again, because I wanted to see what the performance of the 680M iGPU was like for emulation. I thought maybe it would improve the performance of the Citra emulator - more cores + more GPU = more power. Well… it basically performed much like the 5500u. I saw no real performance boost, so I guess Citra needs more development or better optimisation? But given the fact this would probably be one of my most intensive workloads outside of rendering the occasional video I decided the power of the AMD 6000 series is just overkill for my needs. Sure if I used Windows and played games on Steam, or used Steam on Linux I’m sure I could play some modern games with reasonable settings on the 680M. However the issue with that is - I have zero interest in using Steam.

With that brief encounter the laptop was put safely back in it’s box and sent packing all the way back to Lenovo.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that this laptop came with it’s own orchestral ensemble playing Rimsky Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee on a loop from power on to shut down, I really don’t think I would have even noticed the slight coil whine of the Dell laptop.