Another laptop refresh season comes. Buying a laptop with so many requirements within a limited budget is never an easy task and I had a hard time selecting laptop this time too. Many hard requirements are Limited budget: $2500. Ubuntu 24.04 should run without “major” issues. Opensource drivers tend to have bugs that impact the stability of the system. As this laptop will be my main daily working laptop, stability in major components such as wifi, display, internal webcam, external monitors are hard requirements here.

Background My old desktop becomes sluggish as I deploy multiple test environment on it. As I also use various desktop applications for my daily works on the same desktop machine, sometimes resource insufficiency freeze the all the applications, interfering my work flows. I am always a fan of small low-energy NUC devices so I take this chance to buy a new NUC device solve my resource issue. Before buying new device, I had some considerations for a NUC.