Why not wait for Lunar Lake? This should be the APU to go for if all you need is a low power GPU which does enough.

Otherwise just get a gaming laptop. Bought my son an Acer Predator Helios 16 (I think is last gen) for RM3299 (plus another RM120 tng after registering). 13500HX 8GB RAM RTX4050 500GB NVME. Still havent upgrade the ram yet.

If really such low usage, try your luck at HP/Acer event. Sometimes they offered a few unit of laptop with Intel N100 for around RM1k. 4 e-core low power, can play youtube latest format AV1, and also equipped with 8 or 16gb ram.

Im using mini pc equipped with N100 at office. More than enough for most work.

I think depends on your usage. If normal apps like office, web browsing or even photo/video editing, should be fine... but for industrial app that rely on older 16/32bit app, I think safer to stick back with X86. Even Intel is planning to remove 32bit support soon... but I doubt it will go ahead unless the rest of the world is ready to move on.

Then why you did not get it checked? Could be minor issue like power adapter KO.

Even Macbook that cost a lot is not bulletproof. My sister bought one and it has the dreaded flexgate display ribbon issue. Sometimes got display sometimes dont and she rarely used it.

Personally I have only bought Acer gaming laptop since it was affordable and these things are worth literally nothing after 3-4 years. Maybe a couple hundreds and it will be 3-4 gen behind. I generally dont understand the need to buy a super expensive one and have it last 8 or 10 years. There would be 0 support after 5 years or so and even a simple candy crush gaming on chrome browser could crash the laptop if there were some major changes to the code and you dont have any display drivers update which would fix that.

I think you should buy a mini pc or tablet instead if all you do is watch video and pictures. You will be surprised at how cheap these mini pc are and just hook them up to your tv. Bring them on your trip and connect to the hotel tv hdmi. These N97/N100 mini pc is a steal for their price. You could get them below RM700, similar performance to Intel 6th gen but with newer GPU that would support newer video decoding such as AV1 and HEVC.

Depends.

If you dont like to tinker with desktop, then buying a laptop make sense. I kinda hate the pricing for desktop nowadays that I ended up buying a gaming laptop for my son instead. Unless you wanna game at 1440p, most gaming laptop have no problem at 1080p nowadays.

There is nothing special about dual channel. Just think of it as two lane road. When you install 1 stick, it will only use 1 lane... 2 stick then 2 lanes are used.

I thought only hp famous for this soldered ram shit

Are you playing games with power adapter plugged in? Gaming laptop cant even perform at 50% without the power brick.

Depends on your laptop. Gaming laptop mostly have easy access by unscrewing the bottom cover whereas normal laptop usually has to pry here and there to open the bottom cover.