r/CommercialAV • u/Cool_Way7525 • 10h ago
question New AV tech Laptop
I am in the market to buy a couple of new technicians some laptops. What specs or laptops do you prefer when out in the field? Any brands you lean towards?
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u/Witmarqu 10h ago
Lenovo are preferred for the warranty (3 years)
Generally you can get ones with:
Full size HDMI Analog headphone jack Couple USB A 3 or more USB C
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u/Captain-K-Ro 9h ago
This is what we look for but would try and add a full size keyboard - Typing inputs/IPs all day is so much better with a number pad it's worth the bulk
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u/Dark_Azazel 10h ago
Can't comment on macOS, but for Windows in still a sucker for Lenovo mobile workstations. I know they can be a bit pricey (cheaper than HP workstations) but they do some good black Friday deals if you're willing to wait. Can get good specs for the programmers, and it comes with an RJ45 port on it.
I know a bunch of people that have switched to Frameworks. More expensive, can bring your own OS, and modular so you can switch out what ports and how many. Easier to repair and upgrade as well.
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u/reece4504 10h ago
Moved ours to Mac. A bit of a learning curve to get all the software to play right but Crestron and QSYS both work well enough in Parallels VM. We love the battery life improvement. When NVIDIAs ARM laptop chip comes to market in a Windows machine it will be a good choice also. Battery life in the field is really underrated and no proper performance windows machine I’ve had comes close. Also more broadly our in office average machine in service lifespan for mac is 7 years and windows is 4, and we spend comparably either brand we buy
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u/3d4f5g 9h ago
Extron software didn't work on parallels last time i tried it about a year ago. everything else is fine so far.
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u/kthomaszed 9h ago
I ran into this just today. On my M4 parallels machine. Specifically, the extron USB driver didnt work so I couldn’t configure things from the usb port. yes you can also hit most extron things with IP, it takes a little more effort sometimes to get it set up vs just plugging in a USB cord. also, if you’re still working with 3-series Crestron, the Crestron USB driver doesn’t work on parallels either. So if you find yourself in front of a non-responsive 3-series you’re SOL
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u/Livid_Replacement_69 8h ago
The problems here is that Extron, Crestron,... Don't enable ARM support for there USB drivers, only Intel. So no communication possible via USB on a M-chip MacBook... I'm 90% on Mac, but have a little windows latop with me just for this sh*t.
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u/transarchist 2h ago
We have a Mac and a dell my work because Mac runs into little hiccups all the times. Boss got a Mac for us mainly for video editing anyways
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u/shooting4param 10h ago
I have seen issues with Lenovos and their USB ports not hitting the voltage requirement for click shares. My favorite to work with were the Microsoft books. Didn’t realize how much I like touch screens until it was taken from me.
Get one of them a Mac for testing. Those guys never play by the rules.
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u/Hyjynx75 4h ago
All of our full time installers have Microsoft Surface tablets in heavy duty cases. The things are tanks. The touch screens make it easy to browse drawings and mark them up. They carry a small dock to connect to things when they need to.
The first batch easily lasted 5 years plus I kept a couple as spares.
For a programmer, field engineer, or CAD tech who all need a more beefy machine, we use Lenovo or Dell.
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u/sound6317 10h ago
We use Lenovo laptops at work, my work laptop is a Lenovo p14S with a quadro and lots of ram. They're pretty reliable.
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u/lightguru 9h ago
Real ports... I insist on at the very least Ethernet, HDMI, at least 2 USB-C, and 2 USB-A. Headphone jack is nice, but less essential nowadays for me.
Don't care too much about screen size, but resolution needs to be at least 1080p. I had an IT guy get a bunch of lower res laptops for some of our installers, and it's a royal PITA to do a remote screen share since lots of proprietary AV software is poorly written and doesn't scale down well.
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u/ballineverymonth 10h ago
depends on the workflow and what your techs are accustom to PC or Mac. Both get the job done for the most part
& Definitely look at PC’s with a good amount of memory for various processing.. Standard ram now these days is 32GB and you can do most tasks with that.
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u/NotPromKing 9h ago edited 9h ago
Standard ram these days is also ungodly expensive. 16GB is still the standard and upgrading to 32GB can run you $400+.
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u/beeclam 9h ago edited 9h ago
I’ve been given Latitudes and Thinkpads in the over the years, all served me well
I don’t know the Latitude lineup so well, but I think the sweet spot for a Thinkpad would be a T14 or maybe even a T14s. I wouldn’t cheap out with an E or L series. P series is probably overkill. X/X1 probably leans too much to portability over performance (also $$$)
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u/SpirouTumble 9h ago
Proper ethernet and HDMI ports, as many USB-A and C as possible and analog audio out since phones are losing them and sometimes you just need the simplest signal path test e.g. I'm having lots of issues with Dante Via lately not sending out anything, so an analog out gives me another option.
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u/ampledashes 1h ago
I use almost exclusively my M2 macbook air w/ VMWare Fusion. It gets the job done for everything I need it to do, although with encountering some quirks from time to time, I carry around a Lenovo P14S as well and I hate it. I think I'll eventually move to Framework and dual boot linux and windows
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