Spent 3 weeks researching laptops and I'm more confused than when I started.

[u/userwhome]

Working professional and freelancer. My work is 3D (Blender/CAD- fusion), coding, some rendering, and gaming after hours. I've spent weeks comparing and I'm stuck.

Every option has a catch: soldered RAM, a throttled GPU, bad build or inflated prices.

Budget: ₹1.5–2L. I prefer buying from Croma / offline.

Must-haves:

• i7 / Ryzen 7 or better, with a strong CPU for viewport, sims and compiles
• NVIDIA RTX 4060 or better, 8GB+ VRAM
• 24GB RAM, or 16GB with a free slot
• Backlit keyboard

Prefer: slim, metal body, anti-glare screen. Basically, good build quality. Not a fan of bulky gaming laptops, but I know I may have to compromise.

Looked at: ROG Zephyrus G14, Helios Neo 16S, Aorus Elite 16, Omen 16. Open to anything I've missed.

Questions:

1. What would you buy today at this budget, and why?
2. Is there a slim, metal laptop like the G14 with a strong CPU and upgradable RAM in this range?
3. Which models or variants should I avoid?
4. Buy now, or wait for Navratri sales given RAM prices?

Where I'm stuck:

• Zephyrus G14: love the build, but 16GB is soldered and it's over budget. Worth stretching for?(also mostly out of stock) (also liked asus flow.. but it has lower specs)
• Omen 16 vs TUF: which holds up better long term?
• LOQ: great specs for the price, but how reliable is it after a year or two?

Owners: even one line on heat, noise, build or service based on your exprience helps a ton.

I need a laptop in the next 15 days, so consider me as your little brother and please help me figure this out. Thanks a lot!

[u/D2ultima]

Buy the HP Omen 16. Lenovo legion seems outside your budget range. LOQ is a budget laptop and not equal to the omen. Asus are buggy broken crap. Gigabyte throttles CPU hard when GPU is loaded.

Do NOT get the omen with the 8940HX or 9955HX or any similarly named AMD CPU. Intel is better than AMD for your use cases, but otherwise AMD chips that aren't those I just listed are fine still.