I've owned a bunch of expensive ultrabooks, like $2500 samsung .. whatever it was with an aircraft aluminum frame and dell xps 13zs all with some form of intel low power laptop chip.
They were all horrible to use. They constantly throttled to the point that I eventually ripped the dell open and repasted everything inside of it including de-lidding the cpu. I had to refoil and do a bunch of other stuff you wouldn't have to do on a desktop to repaste it was honestly nerve wracking and I've done all sorts of custom desktop pc water loop pasting stuff. Point being that it was an awful thing to have to do but the xps ran SO bad I did it. I gave the dell to my mom and I think I gave that samsung away too, I def don't have it anymore. And then I was done with intel ulv procs.
That dell xps 13z was the prettiest, nicest form factor laptop I've used and it SUCKED and it was so sad.
2 months ago I bought an ally and I was absolutely terrified that it would run the same as those.
It runs GREAT. It feels almost like using my amd ryzen 7700x, obviously not the same power but it's snappy and I don't mind using it as a laptop in bed at all. They did a great job. I have mine with a case on it that has a laptop keyboard/trackpad and it holds the screen up in bed, and I just use a travel mouse with it. I do wish the screen was larger though, so I wonder if I'd be happier with the Legion.
I almost bought Lenovo Legion Go but decided against the first iteration. I think they should not have marketed the device for gaming.
On the bright side, phoronix said the detachable controller drivers are (about to be?) merged into one of the latest kernels. That's pretty remarkable.
> I think they should not have marketed the device for gaming.
What do you mean by this? Like you think it's better as a productivity or media consumption device? I never use my Ally for watching anything because the screens so small and I have an ipad, I kind of figured I'd use it more if I got the legion instead.
I have plenty other computers that are better suited for the type of gaming I do.
I imagined using the device, with its stand, on my tummy. Mostly reading but also hosting stuff. It's about 650 grams without the controllers, so not ideal, but better than my 1.4 kg laptop. Better than a phone.
Minisforum is about to release a high end Ryzen 8000 14 inch tablet real soon. Still a kilo, though.
As far as I'm aware, laptop CPUs haven't been packaged with an integrated heat spreader at any time since the ultrabook category was defined, so I have no idea what you are describing here.
I don't remember exactly what I did but I had to pry apart a bunch of copper heatspreader tubes and things like that, and I have a circle of copper heat spreader material and other weird stuff I haven't needed on other computers, I may not have delidded it but it was a very harrowing job. I was actually, as far as I know according to reddit and wherever I was reading dell xps forum stuff the first person to take it apart and do it. I wrote a tutorial about it I THINK on reddit. IIRC I had to remove the entire main board from the chassis and stuff.
edit: Oh, I found a 2022 post about here on HN. I guess I didn't de-lid it. I took pictures of everything for the tutorial but no idea where that'd be, reddits search for dell 13z is worthless. Wow I didn't have that laptop very long. I absolutely hated using it, I wouldn't even use it in bed, and I DID get it replaced at one point hoping it was a bad laptop.
This is giving me terrible flashbacks I even broke a few things, there were hidden screws holding board down you had to remove from the underside somehow or break everything when you lifted the board up. I had NO idea they were there and everything was super fragile.
They were all horrible to use. They constantly throttled to the point that I eventually ripped the dell open and repasted everything inside of it including de-lidding the cpu. I had to refoil and do a bunch of other stuff you wouldn't have to do on a desktop to repaste it was honestly nerve wracking and I've done all sorts of custom desktop pc water loop pasting stuff. Point being that it was an awful thing to have to do but the xps ran SO bad I did it. I gave the dell to my mom and I think I gave that samsung away too, I def don't have it anymore. And then I was done with intel ulv procs.
That dell xps 13z was the prettiest, nicest form factor laptop I've used and it SUCKED and it was so sad.
2 months ago I bought an ally and I was absolutely terrified that it would run the same as those.
It runs GREAT. It feels almost like using my amd ryzen 7700x, obviously not the same power but it's snappy and I don't mind using it as a laptop in bed at all. They did a great job. I have mine with a case on it that has a laptop keyboard/trackpad and it holds the screen up in bed, and I just use a travel mouse with it. I do wish the screen was larger though, so I wonder if I'd be happier with the Legion.