Compare laptop and monoblock | Determine the best option

The best choice for the home is, of course, a full-fledged sta­tion­ary per­son­al com­put­er. With the sys­tem unit and all that. Thanks to this form fac­tor, you can upgrade, imple­ment high-qual­i­ty cool­ing of com­po­nents, and also save quite a lot. “Sis­tem­nik” is much cheap­er than a lap­top with the same com­po­nents.

How­ev­er, self-assem­bly of the “sys­tem unit” will require cer­tain tech­ni­cal knowl­edge. All com­po­nents must be com­bined with each oth­er — and not only “phys­i­cal­ly”, but also at the tech­no­log­i­cal lev­el. Oth­er­wise, you can spend a kilo of mon­ey and get a slow, “bug­gy” device at best.

For peo­ple who do not have tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, but at the same time want to install a com­put­er at home, ready-made assem­blies are suit­able. For exam­ple, lap­tops and monoblocks.

And in this mate­r­i­al we will ana­lyze what is bet­ter to choose for the home — a lap­top or a monoblock.

Notebook

The orig­i­nal pur­pose of lap­tops was to be mobile com­put­ers. And to achieve max­i­mum porta­bil­i­ty, man­u­fac­tur­ers could afford to sac­ri­fice per­for­mance or bud­get.

For exam­ple, even now, top-end ultra­books with a price of about 1.5–20$ dol­lars are com­plete­ly inca­pable of per­form­ing real­ly com­plex tasks (games, ren­der­ing, some kind of Auto­CAD). But at the same time, they weigh less than a kilo­gram and eas­i­ly fit into a bag or inside pock­et of a jack­et.

Nev­er­the­less, the form fac­tor of the lap­top has shown its con­ve­nience even in cas­es where the com­put­er is always on the table and does not leave the house. Due to the fact that all com­po­nents are packed in one device, max­i­mum space sav­ings are achieved. No need to look for a place on the table for a key­board, mon­i­tor, mouse, try to clear the cor­ner below the sys­tem unit and drag wires. Enough free space and a sin­gle out­let.

But this is also the main draw­back of lap­tops. Due to their com­pact­ness, they leave almost no free­dom of use.

So, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an upgrade is most often lim­it­ed only to replac­ing the hard dri­ve and RAM. You can’t install a third-par­ty proces­sor, video card, or even a Wi-Fi mod­ule — either the sock­et won’t allow it, or the cir­cuit­ry, or the pow­er sup­ply. And in mod­ern ultra­books, even the RAM and per­ma­nent mem­o­ry are sol­dered on the moth­er­board, so that the upgrade becomes basi­cal­ly impos­si­ble.

Also, lap­tops are small. The vast major­i­ty of mod­els have a screen diag­o­nal — and phys­i­cal size — 15.6 inch­es. 17.3‑inch lap­tops are extreme­ly rare and most­ly in the gam­ing seg­ment. In addi­tion, 14-inch mod­els are now increas­ing­ly com­mon.

In prin­ci­ple, even these 14–15.6 inch­es will be enough for com­fort­able work with the Inter­net, social net­works, e‑mail, and so on. If a lap­top is pur­chased for study, they will also be enough. In the end, what dif­fer­ence does it make on how many inch­es to dis­play an essay on the reign of Peter I … How­ev­er, for watch­ing movies, TV shows, as well as com­put­er games, these 15.6 inch­es are not enough — you want an immer­sive atmos­phere, a cin­e­ma effect, and the screen is tiny.

And final­ly, the lap­top needs care. You will need to blow out the key­board and ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem of the device, oth­er­wise they will quick­ly become clogged with dust and become unus­able.

But the porta­bil­i­ty of a lap­top is an impor­tant plus even for home use. You can take it to the bed or the kitchen — which, of course, is not rec­om­mend­ed. In small apart­ments with min­i­mal­ist fur­nish­ings, you can close it, put it in a clos­et — and now anoth­er table is freed. With infre­quent use, the lap­top, in prin­ci­ple, does not have to be placed on the table, peri­od­ic place­ment on the lap, bed­side table or any oth­er sur­face will suf­fice.

Lap­tops will be very use­ful for stu­dents — both school­child­ren and stu­dents. In which case, this mobile com­put­er can always be tak­en with you and tak­en to your favorite uni­ver­si­ty or school in order to urgent­ly remake the title page under the changed name of the orga­ni­za­tion.

In gen­er­al, lap­tops are char­ac­ter­ized as fol­lows:

1. Com­plete­ly mobile. You can car­ry around the apart­ment as you want, put where you want. For short-term use, the com­put­er does not even need an out­let;

2. Very sen­si­tive to con­di­tions of use. They require reg­u­lar clean­ing and care­ful main­te­nance. If you spill any liq­uid on the key­board, you will have to change the lap­top;

3. Lim­it­ed upgrade sup­port. In most cas­es, only the hard dri­ve and RAM can be replaced. In mod­ern ultra­books, these com­po­nents are com­plete­ly sol­dered to the moth­er­board, so you won’t be able to change them;

4. They have a small screen. The stan­dard is 15.6 inch­es. 17.3‑inch mod­els are very rare;

5. A wide range of. They dif­fer in both tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and form fac­tor.

The form fac­tor is worth not­ing sep­a­rate­ly. Mod­ern lap­tops are grad­u­al­ly mov­ing away from the “key­board under the screen” stan­dard. They are increas­ing­ly becom­ing hybrid — equipped with a touch screen that eas­i­ly rotates around the bot­tom pan­el. Or the key­board is com­plete­ly dis­abled.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers often go for exper­i­ments. For exam­ple, Leno­vo Yoga Book is equipped with a ful­ly touch key­board. And some top Asus lap­tops have a sec­ond screen on the bot­tom pan­el — either instead of the touch­pad, or above the key­board. In gen­er­al, man­u­fac­tur­ers are try­ing to rein­vent the lap­top form fac­tor.

And if you plan to use your lap­top main­ly to chat with friends in the evenings on some social net­work, watch videos and oth­er fun­ny pic­tures, then maybe it would be jus­ti­fied to take a hybrid lap­top that turns into a tablet? It makes it eas­i­er to lie in bed with him.

So, let’s sum up.

Monoblock

Monoblocks were once a fair­ly pop­u­lar form fac­tor for com­put­ers. They, like lap­tops, col­lect­ed all the nec­es­sary com­po­nents in one device. And as a result, the monoblock took up very lit­tle space on the desk­top — and you don’t have to car­ry wires every­where.

How­ev­er, then monoblocks began to grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear from the mar­ket — and as a result, now they are rep­re­sent­ed by lit­er­al­ly a few dozen mod­els. Of course, among them there are also top-end devices — for exam­ple, Apple iMac or Microsoft Sur­face Stu­dio. How­ev­er, monoblocks are prac­ti­cal­ly not found in the mid­dle and low­er price seg­ments, and if they are, then they are most­ly of the “office” type.

The secret of the “unpop­u­lar­i­ty” of monoblocks lies in the tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems of this form fac­tor. They get hot and very hot. The high tem­per­a­ture of the inter­nal com­po­nents — the proces­sor, video card, hard dri­ve — is “spurred on” by the heat­ing of the dis­play matrix. And as a result, you either need to install a huge cool­ing sys­tem, or reduce per­for­mance, or come up with expen­sive heat dis­si­pa­tion mech­a­nisms (like Apple and Microsoft).

Of course, the vast major­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ers have cho­sen the path of least resis­tance — to reduce pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. As a result, almost all mod­ern monoblocks are focused on the office seg­ment and offer rather dull tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics. Of course, there are also high-pow­er devices like the same Apple iMac, Microsoft Sur­face Stu­dio or even HP Envy, but the price for them starts from 120‑1500$.

But in the price seg­ment “up 1000$” “office” monoblocks reign supreme. Some­times — with a touch screen. Some­times — with a video card on which you can run not only Minesweep­er, but also some­thing more demand­ing. Some­times — with an Intel Core i5 or even Core i7 proces­sor. How­ev­er, it is rather dif­fi­cult to find an ade­quate mod­el that would meet all house­hold needs and at the same time cost not like an air­plane.

From lap­tops, monoblocks inher­it­ed anoth­er “dis­ease” — they are prac­ti­cal­ly not sub­ject to upgrade. Of course, even Apple iMacs sup­port the expan­sion of RAM by installing addi­tion­al dice, but in most cas­es the upgrade options are lim­it­ed to just that. It is impos­si­ble to change the proces­sor or video card — they are hid­den deep under the case, and an attempt to get to them imme­di­ate­ly voids the war­ran­ty. Often the hard dri­ve is hid­den, so that it will not be pos­si­ble to replace it.

In gen­er­al, the main advan­tage of all-in-ones is that they are ready to work out of the box and take up very lit­tle desk­top space — even less than lap­tops. You can also men­tion the large screen — this is impor­tant for home use, and for office use. And the advan­tages of monoblocks are lim­it­ed to this.

In gen­er­al, monoblocks are char­ac­ter­ized as fol­lows:

1. Not mobile. They dif­fer from tra­di­tion­al sta­tion­ary PCs only in that there is no need to pull wires from under the table to the mon­i­tor — all the nec­es­sary com­po­nents are hid­den in the dis­play;

2. Not par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to con­di­tions of use. Over­heat­ing is not observed (includ­ing due to the fact that the com­put­er is already con­stant­ly work­ing at a high tem­per­a­ture), it is enough to clean from dust every six months or a year. Unless, of course, there are no pets;

3. Very lim­it­ed upgrade sup­port. In most cas­es, only the RAM can be replaced;

4. They have a large screen. Stan­dard is 24 inch­es. How­ev­er, there are also 27-inch mod­els, and solu­tions with a curved dis­play;

5. Rel­a­tive­ly small range.

Most monoblocks are designed for office use. There are prac­ti­cal­ly no gam­ing or mul­ti­me­dia devices among them.

If you still decide to buy a monoblock, men­tal­ly pre­pare for a mea­ger choice. Start from the desired char­ac­ter­is­tics, not the man­u­fac­tur­er or design, as con­fu­sion and vac­il­la­tion reign in this seg­ment. A 23.7‑inch Asus with a sixth gen­er­a­tion Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 930M and 8 GB of RAM costs 145 thou­sand rubles, and the same size HP Pavil­ion with an eighth gen­er­a­tion Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and 32 GB of RAM — already 109 thou­sand rubles.

So, let’s sum up.

On the oth­er hand, due to their design fea­tures, all-in-ones have less neg­a­tive impact on pos­ture than lap­tops and cause less back and neck fatigue. When touch typ­ing, the user’s head is up, not down. So monoblocks are sim­ply less harm­ful to health, which is very impor­tant when buy­ing a com­put­er for a child.

What is better to buy home — a laptop or a monoblock?

In prin­ci­ple, the only ques­tion is whether it is planned to car­ry the device back and forth around the apart­ment or with you. If so, then it’s a lap­top. If not, then a monoblock. And for a child, it’s even bet­ter to buy a monoblock, since it will help min­i­mize the neg­a­tive con­se­quences for pos­ture.

But the dif­fer­ence between devices is not lim­it­ed to this.

Char­ac­ter­is­tic	Note­book	Monoblock
Porta­bil­i­ty and mobil­i­ty	Takes up a lot of space on the table, can be car­ried	Takes up rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle space on the table, but you can not car­ry it with you
Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to con­di­tions of use	Sen­si­tive to mois­ture, rec­om­mend­ed for place­ment on flat, smooth sur­faces, requires reg­u­lar clean­ing of the cool­ing sys­tem	It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to shed mois­ture on it. In prin­ci­ple, not too sen­si­tive to con­di­tions of use
Upgrade	In most mod­els — only RAM and hard dri­ve	Like­wise. In most mod­els — only RAM and hard dri­ve
Stan­dard screen size	15.6 inch­es	23.8 inch­es
Vari­ety of line­up	A huge num­ber, dif­fer not only in char­ac­ter­is­tics, but also in form fac­tor	Rel­a­tive­ly poor

In gen­er­al, a monoblock (unless, of course, we are talk­ing about the Apple iMac, Microsoft Sur­face Stu­dio or HP Envy) is a device for the office or unde­mand­ing home users who plan to buy a com­put­er for study­ing, using the Inter­net and watch­ing movies.