Along with gamers, engineers pose one of the toughest design challenges for laptop makers. Engineering applications crave memory, graphics horsepower, and large screens — all hurdles in designing stylish, lightweight laptops. The result is a necessary tradeoff between performance and convenience. While not every engineer will make the same compromises, there are a few laptops that stand out for use by engineers, depending on their specific needs.
So what is the best laptop for an engineer? Here are a two great options, one of which will get the job done for you.
Lenovo ThinkPad W540
For those used to lugging a typical portable workstation “brick” the new Lenovo ThinkPad W540 may be a breath of fresh air. While not lightweight compared to a business laptop, at just under 5.5 pounds and just over an inch thick, it is not much larger than a MacBook Pro. Under the hood it can be configured with a variety of 4th generation (Haswell) Core i7 processors — ranging up to the 4930MX capable of 3GHz (3.9GHz Turbo). It can also be stuffed full with up to 32GB of RAM and a 2880×1620 high resolution display. As befits a laptop designed for heavy-duty graphics, it features an Nvidia Quadro K1100 or K2100 discrete GPU.Sager NP9570
Often the words “portable” and “mobile” are used interchangeably. Not with the Sager NP9560. This beast of a machine is essentially a portable desktop, but not what you’d call a mobile computing device. Not as well-known as the big brand names, Sager has a reputation for creating machines with amazing performance. For those who want maximum power, the Sager NP9570 is an amazing laptop. Available with CPUs up to an Intel Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition CPU (typically a desktop processor), running at 3.60GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) this laptop’s raw performance is its defining characteristic.
The 1080p display isn’t as sexy as the ultra-high-resolution versions available on other machines, but it has an unmatched three hard drive bays, a tons of ports, 7.1 channel sound, and the choice of two powerhouse 4GB or 5GB Nvidia GeForce 770M or 680M video cards with SLI. This selections makes it the top graphics performer in anything short of a full-on desktop.
The downside of this machine, not surprisingly, is the size and weight. At 12 pounds, it is a beast in more ways than one. Part of the weight is the 17-inch display that covers 90% of the NTSC color gamut, but the high-powered, near-desktop components drive most of the rest.
