My Portable Computer Setup

— Edited

The Situation

When I started studying I would take my Notebook with me to take notes and such, but it was quite heavy, noisy and the battery didn't last long enough so I needed a new setup.

My Requirements

  1. The battery has to last a full day (>6 hours)
  2. It has to be quiet
  3. It has to be able to run Obsidian, and Chrome with ~30 open Tabs
  4. It must cost less than 500€
  5. It should be portable and hassle free

The Options

That already narrowed down my options to: A light Notebook with a power efficient CPU, a Chromebook or an Android Tablet.

Light Notebooks

After looking around the Internet and an electronics store I was left quite dissatisfied, many Notebooks featured Intel Pentium/Celeron 2 or 4-core processors with a 2-3 GHz base clock, an alright battery life but they were really scratching at my 500€ limit.

Chromebooks

They are a hybrid between a tablet and notebook. They often feature mobile processors which are generally better than Intel's. They also have a linux based OS which I assume has much better performance and way less bloat. From what I've read on the internet you can also use it as a normal Linux PC with some restrictions. They are quite common on second hand markets wich gives them an appealing price point, but many models are just outright bad.

Tablet

The tablet market isn't very competitive and I was only able to find acceptable devices from Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Lenovo. Apple's tablets are very premium and expensive while Huawei's and Lenovo's are rather cheap. Samsung lies somewhere in between. The main benefits of tablets are their energy efficiency and touchscreen. But as they run android you are limited in which software you can use. Also I'm not sure if all have a desktop mode.

My Setup

  • Samsung Tab S4 with pen - Second Hand, 200€
  • Foldable Case Cover with pen holder - Amazon, 20€
  • Tecknet X315 wireless keyboard - Amazon, 20€
  • USB Hub - Amazon, 10€
  • Logitech wireless mouse - Amazon, 15€

Total: 265€

Conclusion

After using this setup for more than half a year I can confidently say that it's a solid choice. One thing that I have noticed that I barley use the mouse, using keyboard controls, the touchscreen or the pen works great for almost all tasks. I haven't had any issues with battery life but I usually have my screen quite dim. One thing that annoyed me a few times is the old version of DeX that the Tab S4 has.