1. Better to pay a $200 markup than a $400 markup right?
2. the markup is often warranted. There's a vast difference between "business" laptops and "consumer" laptops. I can't speak for dell's precision line, but lenovo's thinkpads are leagues better (build quality, support, etc) than the consumer crap you get at best buy.
The thing that bothers me so badly is that if they just took all the resources they put into RGB-everything development and “gamer” branding and put that into tactile improvements, better trackpads, more solid hinges, less chassis flex…I bet there’s a big market for gamers who want the function over the form. It doesn’t have to be a beige box either, I just want something like a Dell XPS with TotL GPU + CPU. For some reason, that also necessarily comes with ugly chintzy obnoxious hardware design. I feel like PC HW mfgs are so out of touch with what people actually want. Look at the NVidia RTX 3080/90 FE cards and how they’re actually classy and solid, without a giant fan shroud and 6 additional cheap loud LED fans. It’s not like they had any problem selling every single one they made, just sad that it lives inside the case.
Razer is one kinda-exception that I can think of, where they have fairly solid laptops that can be more minimal, but the build quality is still not quite up to mobile workstation standards.
TL;DR I wish I could get a MBP with TOTL hardware instead of having even the highest-end config still shoot for thin-and-light.
Lenovo kind of does this with their Legion laptop brand.
Those are sold for the "gamer"/"enthusiast" markets, so they don't have the premium support you get with pro ones (Though you can get an upgradee where they dispatch someone to your house for repairs. I think it costs something like 80€ (~100$) in France ?), nor the premium features (Not sure you could track the laptop if stolen, no ECC support...)
But on the other hand, they are clearly thought more as "hybrids" than other gamer laptops:
- The UEFI lets you decide if you want to enable/disable the intel chipset (Useful when you want to be sure everything goes to the GPU/want to use things that don't work well with NVidia's Optimus)
- Lightweight and easy to put in a bag. Not one of those 5 inches thick laptops that weight 5 kilograms
- The look is made not to scream "gamer laptop !".
- Wide configuration range for a single chassis.
Also not that expensive, even for consumer-grade standard. Got one with i7-9750h/RTX2060/16GB/512GB NVMe for 1100€/1350$ one year ago.
2. the markup is often warranted. There's a vast difference between "business" laptops and "consumer" laptops. I can't speak for dell's precision line, but lenovo's thinkpads are leagues better (build quality, support, etc) than the consumer crap you get at best buy.