How to Choose a Laptop for Development Work
Which specifications actually affect day-to-day development, and which are marketing noise.
Development workloads stress hardware differently from gaming or video editing. Here is what actually matters.
Memory comes first
RAM is the most common real bottleneck.
- 16 GB — workable for web development with a moderate toolchain
- 32 GB — comfortable; handles containers, a database, and an IDE at once
- 64 GB — worth it for heavy virtualisation or large monorepos
Running out of RAM causes swapping, which is dramatically slower than any CPU difference you might be weighing up. If the budget forces a choice between more RAM and a faster processor, take the RAM.
Check whether memory is socketed or soldered. Soldered RAM cannot be upgraded later, so buy for the machine's whole life, not today.
CPU: cores versus single-thread speed
Compilation parallelises well, so core count helps. But a great deal of daily work — type checking, bundlers, language servers — is single-threaded.
Eight strong cores generally beat sixteen weak ones for interactive work. Ignore raw clock speed across different architectures; it is not comparable.
Storage
1 TB NVMe is the practical baseline. Node modules, container images, and build caches consume space faster than people expect.
Sustained write speed matters more than the headline sequential number, which is usually measured against a burst cache.
Display
You will read text on this for years.
- Resolution: 1440p or higher at 14"+
- Matte finish if you work in variable lighting
- Colour accuracy only matters if you do design work
What to ignore
- Dedicated GPU — irrelevant unless you do ML or graphics work
- Gaming branding — heavier, worse battery, no development benefit