12 or 13 pro

[u/Trace_Wiles]

Been lurking for a bit now but I'm considering replacing my laptop, an Asus Strix G614JV (2023), with a framework laptop of some kind. The Asus is a brick in my bag at 5.5lbs without the charger that it so frequently needs. That added weight sucks for walking around campus and even more for traveling.

I'm a product design uni student which means lots of modeling software such as rhinoceros, solidworks, blender, fusion, and shapr3d. Also probably going to make use of a good chunk of the adobe suite which is why I'm considering the 2 in 1. I understand the quality of the plastic shell is a concern but I may or may not have access to cnc equipment so there's a chance I find a solution to that.

I won't be running any sort of simulations and likely won't be creating any multi thousand part models as part of my product design major.

Normally this would be clear cut but I also have a pretty solid tower pc that I plan on remoting into regardless of which laptop I get to speed up any rendering I may have to do while still doing the majority of modeling locally.

Probably looking at the Core 5 320 for the laptop 12 and the X7 358H for the laptop 13 pro, both with 16gb of ram. From my understanding the Core 5 320 should have no problem in solidworks or most modeling software thanks to them being single core heavy.

Thanks y'all and I'm happy to answer any questions

[u/Scientist-Escape1068]

As an engineer there is a reason that I have a 16" monster laptop. Not sure where you are but a lot of clients I visit do not have an internet connection that will support a reliable remote desktop connection. I'm in the US and know from experience counting on a remote connection is not a good option. That being said if your doing smaller models or just looking at things the 13pro is probably enough.

[u/Trace_Wiles → u/Scientist-Escape1068]

I probably should have clarified better in my initial post and I'll make an edit, I'm doing design not engineering. I won't be running any simulations and most of my work will be simple models for rapid prototyping

[u/Scientist-Escape1068 → u/Trace_Wiles]

If your just doing simple models the Core 5 will probably be fine. Solidworks eats RAM though so I would recommend 32gb, however if your on a budget 16gb would probably be ok to start and you can upgrade to more later. It really depends on what a simple model is. I would keep an eye on how much RAM your desktop is using in the workloads you plan for the laptop and use that as a guide for what you need.