Looking for a Longterm Design/Gaming Laptop ($2000-$2700, USA)

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

  • Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US:

$2000-$2700 USA

  • Are you open to refurbs/used?

Not ideally. Would want warranty coverage.

  • How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?

Performance, then build quality. Battery life is nice, but I expect to usually have a charger with me.

  • How important is weight and thinness to you?

Heavier is fine, thinnesses is nice but optional.

  • Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.

15” or 16”

  • Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.

CAD/Revit/Rhino/GIS/Bluebeam Revu, Rendering, photo/video editing, some moderate gaming (Future proofing for running multiple high end architectural design software while having a bunch of chrome tabs open is the most important.)

  • If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?

I would like to be able to play something like Baldur’s Gate 3 on low-medium settings. I don’t expect to ever play high end competitive games so fps isn’t priority.

  • Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?

Long term reliable build quality is top, expectation of customer service and available repairable parts is desired. I want an OLED display. I want 100% sRGB. I would like 64gb ram (perhaps overkill for my use case?). I would like 1-2TB ssd storage. I would like components to be upgradable. Trackpad is unimportant because I almost exclusively use a mouse. Lots of input ports: ideally with a USB-A, headphone Jack, sd card.

  • Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.

I would ideally like to use this laptop for the next decade+. In this search I originally looked at an ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16, but was turned off by uneven performance reviews, and the apparently dismal customer service. I looked at Lenovo and am currently between a Thinkpad P1 or P16 (which seems to have great specs for much cheaper than Asus, and the famous durability. My biggest issue is the apparently bad gaming and the wattage throttling to the graphics card). I looked at the Legion 7i which is better for graphics, but seems more limited for out of the box ram and ssd, also worse build quality. I’m open up to other suggestions.

Full disclaimer that I’m a computer novice, so apologies if I said anything incorrect