Build quality for Dell is down over the past few years
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Hijacking top comment to report that: This is true across the industry for (most) OEMs
The Secret is to buy "Enterprise level"
Check out the LATITUDE line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude
Those are enterprise fleet laptops ... the ones they have to support for 5-10 years.
You know which line they don't discontinue parts for? You know which line has repair manuals and driver updates available? wanna take a wild guess which line is usually more modular and powerful at the expense of being less sleek looking and thin?
And the best part is that you can usually buy them fairly cheap if you find them used.
I prefer Dell Latitude to HP Elitebook, Thinkpads are OK too but they've gone down in quality a lot since they got bought by Lenovo
TL;DR = Buy an enterprise level laptop, consumer line laptops are all trash,
Replying to my own comment to give yall one more tidbit.
The latitude product nomenclature is still standard
- 2 first digits of the model number are the "class" the higher the laptop the more high end
- last 2 digits of the model number are the generation (we are current in 60)
So for example the Latitude 9460 is the very high end laptop that came out at the beginning of this year while the 3540 was the entry level economy latitude that came out in 2023
Lenovo has been making thinkpads for 20 years. The complaint that their quality is still less than how laptops were manufactured 2 decades ago feels rather dated.
Top tip, buy a used enterprise laptop. You can get one hell of a deal when big companies throw their entire lineup out after a few years and flood the market. Some have a few scuffs here and there, but others are mint after sitting plugged to a dock for the last three years in a row.
Might need a new battery though, so research how easy it's to swap and calculate that in the cost just in case.
The Latitudes are balls in the worst way. Including the new "Pro" models. I've had i7 and i9 Latitudes that are slower than my i5 XPS 13, and yeah that thing sucks too but at least it sucks predictably.
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Ha, I thought a 1Hz display was a typo until I read the article - that's the minimum display update, not the maximum: for situations when nothing's changing on the screen to save battery life.
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I'll never buy an xps again. Last one needed pretty much everything replacing, and within 3 years dell stopped manufacturing the battery!!
$2k on a laptop that's a brick within 3 years?
Framework 13 all the way
I cancelled my framework 16 order because of their "big tent" policy meaning they give funding to Hyperland and Omarchy, I will not give my money to people who fund racists
Eh, I get it, but you can't win every battle.
I have a 16 and a 13. I bought them both before that thread.
I am not expecting my single cancellation to make the slightest difference to their policy, they already made it clear that they are quite happy funding racists when multiple people have challenged them over it, and with one of their larger pots of cash they give out as well.
What I am getting out of is knowing I am not (indirectly) funding racists myself, rather than knowingly funding racists. I do not see it any different from buying products from Musk, if you did it ages ago then fine, but after, thats something else entirely.
I get it, but also if I stopped buying everything from every racist / racist supporter, I would have no real options for laptops generally speaking.
Michael Dell is a complete and total Trump supporter. Should I buy an XPS?
Tim Cook designed and delivered a custom award to Trump. Knowing this, should I buy an Apple?
I understand wanting to vote with your dollars but in practice there are few or no ethical options for many things that you can buy.
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I'm a little miffed with framework actually.
I had a order with them that they chose to cancel because they just randomly charged the account one day months after I had pre-ordered something, and there wasn't enough money in the account because I didn't know when they were going to charge for it. They didn't contact me or anything, they just cancelled the order. Thanks guys.
Edit: Deleted an extra word
I never ordered a Framework before but I'm planning to do this year. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? Last time I visited their site it was written that you pay a reserve price at the time of order, then they charge your card later with the remainig price before they ship it.
Right but who has like three grand just sitting in a checking account, that shit in a savings account because I'm not Bill Gates and I need every penny I can get from the interest? If they're not going to tell you at the time that you pre-order when they're going to bill you, then they need to contact you ahead of time or that's going to keep happening.
I mean, I have that in my account. But I'm also paranoid about bounced checks and don't see the appeal of getting a nickel a month in exchange for worrying about something suddenly eating my float and causing bounced checks.
The interest rate on the savings account tied to my checking is not great...
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These fuckers have no USB-A ports but has a headphone jack?
Buy a Framework, I have 4 slots that can be everything from USB-A to C to RJ45 to card readers when I need it, and I can charge the thing from any port.
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The correct way, really
I miss my clitmouse XD
what the fuck is a 1 HZ display option
It says in the article: Energy saving and for static images
it does WHAT
it Hertzes
Ouch my bones!
Guessing: when the image is not being updated (you're reading an article and not scrolling, you're looking at a photo, etc), the display will change the referral refresh rate to 1 frame per second, which will drastically reduce power consumption.
That's how it works on other devices that have this feature, at least.
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It dynamically regulates the refresh rate down to 1hz to save energy, it's like an LTPO panel on a phone
1 Hz display option
Btw, is there something like Adaptive Sync for display servers? Although most devices' drivers only allow for 30 or 20 Hz minimum, automatic change from energy saving (reading static text) to high refresh (scrolling text, playing video) would be neat.
And while we're on it: recalculating all 4 million pixels just because you moved the cursor is kinda a clutch, no? Not to mention 30+ times in the second just because.
Back when I owned an XPS, one of the driver options was 'compressed screen updates', which only updated the part that had changed. As far as I could tell, made no difference to battery life whatsoever - turning down the screen brightness even a notch did much more.
Daily driver laptop for nearly ten years, and the part that finally failed was the CPU fan, which wasn't easy to obtain replacement parts for, so treated myself to a new laptop entirely. Mind you, the power connection was a PoS, would have been as well keeping that on an annual reorder for how often it failed. Pretty good laptop otherwise.
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I was confused when I read that part of the title, I thought they accidentally typed it instead of 120. A 1hz display for all functions would be a hilarious thing to play with for a minute or two.
Not the capacitive touch bar!
Just shows how well the rebranding was thought through.
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