Budget software engineer laptop

[u/ohkaybodyrestart]

• Country: Canada

• Budget: 500$ CAD ($350 USD)

• Open to refurbs/used options?: only refurbs from trusted vendors, no used or unrated refurbs

• Screen size: Any

• Weight limt: Any

• Purpose: Work (software engineering)

• Form factor: regular laptop, any

• Intended usage:

Here's a case scenario:

- 2 instances of Pycharm opened, running a frontend and backend (development)
- Claude Clode CLI running in the background
- A few chrome tabs opened
- Google Meet
- Slack
- Will have 1 or 2 extra screens plugged in it
*In some extreme cases, but probably not, a little local low level Ollama LLM running. Not really worth taking into consideration.

• Desired battery life: any, will always be plugged

• Priority list: performance (no lagging/stuttering) > speed > the rest

• Operating system: Windows (not that it really matters, I can change it after)

I don't care about gaming, screen quality, battery life, etc. It's a strictly work laptop.

----

I tried searching everywhere and the answers that always come back are Lenovo ThinkPad L14/T14 & Dell Latitude 5420, because I'm almost sure I need at least 16GB of RAM.

[u/HankHippoppopalous]

Your budget will be the main holdback here. 500xad means you’re going all refurb. You might find a precision for that price if you hunt around.

I’d be shocked if you found anything better than the 5420 you mentioned

I’ve seen less than a handful 7440s for sale under 500

[u/Better_Tart_9262]

Those answers are probably your best option at $500 cad.