What's a good laptop?

The best laptop, like the best desktop will be the one where you pick every part to meet your specific needs. You can do that here starting with a base build and adding or dropping selected components as you see fit.

https/lpc-digital.com/product/sager-np9873-clevo-p870dm3/

17.3" 3K QHD (2560x1440) AUO 120Hz 5ms Matte G-SYNC™ Technology Display
nVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 1070 GPU with 8GB GDDR5 NVIDIA PASCAL™
6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6700K Unlocked (8M Cache, up to 4.20 GHz)!
16GB Dual Channel DDR4 2400MHz (PC4 19200) Memory (2 x 8GB)
Samsung® 850 EVO™ M.2 250GB SSD - (Primary Drive C)
1 TB HGST 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
Intel® Dual Band Ultra Wireless-AC 8260 M.2 AC + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo

Free shipping and all the other standard goodies

Price: $2,529.00
Cash Price: $2,453.13 (pay by check ... no cc)


https/lpc-digital.com/product/sager-np9873-special-clevo-p870dm3/


17.3" 3K QHD (2560x1440) AUO 120Hz 5ms Matte G-SYNC™ Technology Display
NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 1080 GPU with 8GB GDDR5X NVIDIA PASCAL™
6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6700K Unlocked (8M Cache, up to 4.20 GHz)!
IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU - SPECIAL!
16GB Dual Channel DDR4 2400MHz (PC4 19200) Memory (2 x 8GB)
SanDisk X400 256GB M.2 SSD - (Primary Drive C) - SPECIAL!
1 TB HGST 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
Intel® Dual Band Ultra Wireless-AC 8260 M.2 AC + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo

Price: $2,794.00
Cash Price: $2,710.18

Those are the cheapest prices they can **advertise** Read the FAQ, then make the call.
https/lpc-digital.com/faq/

Of course there are less expensive options but i targeted either side of your budget We have not bought any laptops for our office (Engineering firm ... used as CAD workstations) or personal usage from any other source in about 10 years. The guy who takes the orders is the guy who handles your calls as long as you own it. No high school kids w/ half day training.

http/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-and-reseller-info.91510/

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

Established in 1983, as an ODM (Original Design Manufacturer), they sell barebones ranging from laptop to portable computing solutions for both AMD and Intel processors. Clevo is one of the world's most preferred ODM partners and markets their products in more than 50 countries, and have established service centers in the USA, Germany, Britain, China, and Taiwan.

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Might as well address what is usually the most common response...

"I never heard of Clevo !"

I bet you never heard of whomever made almost every laptop you have ever heard of. Cause the brands we are all familiar with, other than MSI, don't actually "make" a laptop. They just OEM them from Taiwan manufacturers.

The vast majority of laptops on the market are manufactured by a small handful of Taiwan-based Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), although their production bases are located mostly in mainland China.

Major relationships include:

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP, Dell and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics sells to HP

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Very often you will see folks arguing about which brand is better and it's often going to be a case of both units being made in the same place using most of the same parts.