My (11 year old) laptop that i use to connect wahoox to my KICKR to and various other devices is grinding to a halt. About to start shopping, obviously will be trying to keep the £ down a bit, but given that i only seem to upgrade every decade, i can be a bit flexible. The old one can be a bit temperamental with all the bluetooths so had to buy plug in speakers and use ANT+
Any advice on what i should not skimp on in terms of memory, storage and graphics for wahoox (and occasional forays into the other place) gratefully received.
Am in Samsung eco system for other devices, so poss lookong at Galaxy Book4 or Book4 Pro, but also not wedded to it…
@Hannah 11 years is a long time as respects computers. Have you thought about a tablet instead of a laptop? I run both SYSTM and Zwift on an iPad and both work great.
Thought about that but I do need a laptop for other stuff anyway, and I’m not bothered about having a dedicated device for the pain cave. Def, only want to buy one device. (Windows/Android pref, I have never owned apple anything)
Not sure how it may be in your part of the world, but here in the US, I’ve had a good experience a few years ago with a Microsoft Surface laptop. Usually some relatively inexpensive options available that easily exceed the minimum requirements.
Surface is probably good now, but I had a bad experience with one some years ago. The keyboard quit working a month after the 1 yr warranty expired. I took it to a Microsoft store and after reinstalling the operating system and trying everything, they weren’t able to get it to work. It was the tablet not the keyboard, so I started using a separate USB or BT keyboard with it. Then a year or two later, the batteries started expanding cause the screen to first discolor than detach. A bit scary. I’ve been running a Samsung laptop and it’s been trouble free for 3+ years.
Do you connect devices to wahoox on it? Does it handle them well? (Besides kickr, i also have garmin HRM & cadence sensor & speaker - though usualy have to go analogue with that)
If you’re asking about the Samsung I have, yes. I use both BT and ANT+. For ANT+ I use a dongle on a 1m extension that dangles below the trainer desk. Usually, I have the trainer, cadence sensor and HRM connected via ANT+ to SYSTM or, Trainerroad, Zwift, etc… At times I’ve had my trainer connected for control and separate power meter for power. FWIW: When I first started using Wahoo, I found there was some latency in trainer control using ANT+ so switched to BT, which works well. The trainer ANT+ latency was only with SYSTM and not with ZWIFT, Trainerroad, etc.
With SYSTM, I often use the miniplayer and watch other videos via Youtube or some streaming service. At times I’ll also separately stream music using BT earbuds for listening.
Here’s the basic specs: Intel(R) Core™ i7-10510U CPU @ 1.80GHz 2.30 GHz|
Installed RAM 12.0 GB.
I believe laptops from back in the early 2010s are very long lasting compared the ones of late mainly because the battery pack can be detached from the laptop itself. My current laptop, an ACER Swift 3 is about 5 years old and I have gotten the battery changed thrice since and the most recent one was entirely due to my own fault of leaving the laptop to charge overnight a couple of times causing the battery to expand.
Personally, I think something to look out for in terms of specs would also be the memory installed and whether or not you can actually add additional memory if needed. Mine only came with a 4GB onboard RAM.
The other thing I considered was the screen size and by extension the weight of the laptop itself too. I prefer the 14-inch laptops due mainly due to lower weight since I have carried a 15.6-inch laptop around when I was still studying. I am not sure about the situation in the UK, but over here in Malaysia, the 14-inch laptops are really expensive and most of them only come with on-board memory which is quite a bummer.
My laptop’s basic specs are just:
I think an Intel i5 processor or an AMD Ryzen 5 processor would be sufficient but in terms of RAM, the bare minimum should be 8Gb.
Not sure how much difference would it make to have a dedicated graphics card though.
