What are the Best Laptops for Solidworks 2023? Guide

Best Laptop for Solidworks 2023: 12 Machines Reviewed

Having gone through the system requirements for the best laptop for Solidworks 2023, let’s look at the 12 best laptops you can get for this purpose. We are going to break them down into 3 categories; 4 for low-end, 4 for mid-range, and 4 for high-end.

If you are on a budget, you should consider low-end or mid-range options. Students and beginners should consider these options. However, if your budget can accommodate it, you can go for the high-end options. If you’re ready, let’s get to it.

For the record, we are only going to review laptops from HP, Dell, MSI, and Lenovo. These are the major manufacturers of the kind of laptops we are reviewing.    

4 High-End Machines – Best Laptop for Solidworks 2023

Lenovo ThinkPad P17 Workstation Laptop – Best Value (High-End Category)

This is a solid and rugged workstation laptop with premium hardware that every serious Solidworks user like you should seriously consider. Lenovo has always held up its reputation as a manufacturer of workstations and business laptops for both serious business executives and enthusiast professionals.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P17 Premium Workstation Laptop doesn’t disappoint in any way, as it is crammed with top-of-the-line hardware every CAD professional will love. The rugged and sturdy chassis is well built, featuring a full layout keyboard, a beautiful 17.3″ Full HD IPS screen with Anti-Glare, and of course, the familiar Thinkpad etching on the lid and beside the keyboard and the trademark red trackpad.

The P17 is ISV certified for various CAD applications such as ArcGIS, AutoCAD, Creo, Decision Space, McKesson, Revit, SolidWorks, 3dsMax, and more, so you can as well use it to run these apps.

For starters, it is equipped with a 10th Generation Intel Core i7-10750H Processor featuring a clock speed of up to 5GHz with Turbo Boost and 12MB SmartCache. This processor is more than enough to handle your modeling and rendering tasks, especially because it is officially certified by Solidworks.

On the graphics front, there is the NVIDIA Quadro Quadro T2000 Graphics card with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM, a workstation-class graphics card designed just for CAD applications like Solidworks, and will allow you to view models in Real View with decent performance.

This card offers decent graphics performance when handling large models in Solidworks. In addition, if you plan to do some VR by the side, then rest assured because this Quadro is VR-Ready.

The P17 also sports a bright (300 nits of brightness) and large 17.3″ FHD display, which produces vivid colors. The panel is also anti-glare coated and has an IPS display, which allows for better viewing from virtually any angle.

For memory, there is more than enough with 128GB of fast DDR4 RAM which allows you to multitask effectively while handling complex model assemblies.

In the storage department, the P17 accommodates a 4TB NVMe SSD. As you already know, NVMe drives offer blisteringly fast data transfer speeds. Your workflow will fly, as you don’t have to keep waiting for that file transfer to end. You don’t need additional storage with this configuration. Really.

And, oh, lest we forget. The keyboard is a spill-resistant, precision backlit keyboard. However, there’s no numeric pad. In addition, you have a 6-cell, 90Wh Lithium-polymer battery which can last anywhere between 9-14 hours in typical usage scenarios.

Finally, you’ve got Windows 10 Professional (Win 10 Pro) pre-installed when you purchase, and, to cap it all off, there’re lots of connectivity options including a 4-in-1 card reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC), Bluetooth 5.1, USB Type C Thunderbolt 3, USB 3 and 3.1, HDMI, DisplayPort, and integrated mic/headphone jack. The integrated IR camera for Windows Hello is quite handy for biometric facial recognition.

There’s also Gigabit Ethernet, and Wi-Fi featuring the latest Intel WiFi 6 (802.11ax). In addition, there is also an HD 720p Webcam with ThinkShutter, and Fingerprint Security System.

All these are housed in a chassis weighing 7.1 lb which we consider quite heavy.

HP ZBook Power G7 Workstation Laptop

HP’s flagship workstation laptop is a badass heavy lifter for applications such as Solidworks. This laptop is engineered for extreme performance to meet extraordinary demands. With the ZBook Power G7 Workstation Laptop, you can create and edit multiple Solidworks assemblies, manipulate complex data, and render your work beautifully.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an equally fascinating machine that captured our hearts. Oh yes, it did! From its beautiful silver finish chassis to its impressive 15” screen, we surely love this machine, and you should too! This machine is by popular opinion one of the best laptops for CAD.

So what’s under the hood? For starters, it’s powered by the 6-core Intel i7-10750H processor with a 2.6GHz base frequency and 5GHz Turbo. In addition to this, we find a handsome 64GB of fast DDR4 RAM for handling all those large assemblies.

The graphics is handled by the NVIDIA Quadro P620 with 4GB of graphics memory. This is a workstation-grade graphics card that enables your simulations in Solidworks. However, we expected to see at least an RTX GPU on this machine, given its price tag.

You have a beautiful 15” display with IPS Technology and a screen resolution of 1920×1080 Full HD to display crisp and sharp images. The display features eDP anti-glare technology, outputting one billion colors on the HD laptop display.

There’s also a built-in color calibration system for better color output, and anti-glare with an ambient light sensor which makes it easier to work in any lighting setting, automatically adjusting to the surrounding ambient light.

For storage, we have a humongous 8TB PCIe NVMe SSD drive. This is ample enough for running your OS and storing your files. For connectivity, the ZBook Power G7 has an array of options, including 1x Type C Thunderbolt 3, 3x USB 3.1, RJ-45 network interface, Gigabit Ethernet featuring Wi-Fi 6 AX201 Wifi, HDMI, Bluetooth 5.0, Smart Card Reader, and a Headphone/Microphone Combo Jack. There’s also a 720p HD Webcam.

It is also equipped with a six-cell 83Whr for power supply. However, we noticed a lack of a DisplayPort. For security, there’s also a Fingerprint Reader. The keyboard is a beautiful backlit keyboard.

The battery life of the machine is not bad, clocking up to 9 hours in continuous usage scenarios. This is impressive by workstation standards. It’s a pleasant surprise given the power-hungry nature of these kinds of laptops. However, when you switch to rendering, the battery life drops significantly, which is expected, of course.

Finally, the whole package weighs in at a little over 4 pounds. With a better airflow design, the ZBook Power G7 has 20% better thermals, which ensures it stays cool and quiet even under intense multi-application workloads like Solidworks 2023 demands.

The laptop comes with Windows 10 Pro-64-bit pre-installed, and Microsoft 365 Personal 1 Year Subscription for 1 User. The included Dockztorm USB Hub is great for attaching it to your desktop.

We think the G7 is an impressive machine, with stylish looks and high-end hardware to boot. If you are comfortable with it, click through the link below.

MSI WE76 Mobile Workstation Laptop– Best Design (High-End Category)

MSI’s flagship workstation laptop is a beast of a machine. Get ready to be wowed by its sleek looks, of which its slim form factor is a strong point. The WS66 is in a class of its own. Let’s look at the specs.

The beastly processor powering this machine is an Intel Core i9-11980HK chip, an overclockable CPU that performs excellently in tests, though in battery mode the performance drops because of the lower TDP OF 45 Watts. This CPU tears through workloads normally at a TDP of around 70-84 Watts.

With the 34MB total SmartCache which facilitates fast data transfers, this chip scores high on performance, especially Solidworks rendering and computation. Apart from this, it is VR-Ready. The i9 11980HK runs at a base clock speed of 2.6GHz and ramps up to 5GHz with Turbo Boost.

However, you can’t expect a chip with this much power requirement to run cool. MSI did a decent job with heat dissipation, as the laptop remains relatively cool during regular use, although there’s an area at the bottom’s rear left side under load where we can measure more than 55°C. Also note that this processor is VR-Ready, if you are going to be running VR apps, that is.

Then you’ve got graphics powered by an NVIDIA RTX A5000 with 16GB GDDR6 graphics memory. This mean next-gen workstation-class GPU is engineered for running applications like Solidworks, and it sure does offer compelling performance, especially with ray-tracing workloads. it can take on your heavy model assemblies without lag. It’s that powerful. It’s got 6,144 CUDA cores at your disposal. Besides, it’s also got 256 NVIDIA Tensor Cores and 64 Nvidia RT Cores for heavy ray-tracing computation workloads.

For storage, we’ve got a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD for insane data transfer speeds. With this, you’ve got yourself a speedy machine per data transfer.

The display is a beautiful 17” IPS display at full HD (1920×1080) with a thin bezel at the sides except at the bottom of the display, 72% NTSC color gamut, and 100% AdobeRGB coverage. However, it doesn’t have touch capabilities.

The RAM is an installed capacity of 64GB, more than enough for the demanding workloads that we’ve come to expect this machine to handle.

Other features we love include the beautiful keyboard with a single white backlight with Anti-Ghost Key and Silver Lining for working in the dark. Connectivity options include Thunderbolt 4, Intel WiFi 6E, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, speakers, and a 720p webcam among others. There’s also a fingerprint reader for added security.

On the software side, there’s good old Windows 10 Professional and MSI Center Pro software that allows you to adjust performance settings for the ISV application you intend to run such as SolidWorks, CATIA, AutoCAD, ANSYS, and more. This is a handy utility for better workflow.

Battery life? This machine is equipped with a 100WHr battery and clocked up to 6 hours in standard tests. By standards, this is not bad at all, especially with the array of high-end hardware it has.

On heavy loads, such as rendering, the battery can manage up to 80 minutes of continuous use. The in-built NVIDIA Optimus ensures better power management by switching the graphics in AC and battery modes. It is a bit heavy, at just around 6.4lbs.

We found this mean workstation laptop sexy and a high performer, with its high specifications. You won’t get it wrong with this machine. Honestly. One serious issue we found out was the rather noisy fans during periods of heavy usage such as rendering.

Want to check it out? Use the link below.