Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?

[chase faine]

Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?

I'm heading off for college in August as a Computer Science major but my budget is pretty tight here. As of right now, Lenovo has memorial day sale ontop of student discount so I can get the ThinkPad 13 for about $700 with 1080p display, i5 7200 CPU, 8gb ram, and 128gb SSD. The Zenbook is also $700 with the exact same specs but with a 256gb SSD. Also the ThinkPad is made of ABS while the Zenbook is made of aluminum. Even considering the material, I think the ThinkPad would last me a lot longer and hopefully through all 4 years of school. Also note both laptops have around 9 hour battery life.
Which one should I choose?

 

[inanition02]

I'd keep shopping around.

Here's a Lenovo Ideapad 15.6 with an i7 7500, 12GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD for $700 - http/www.microcenter.com/product/475059/Ideapad_510_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Silver

Acer 13" 2-in-1 (touchscreen) with a 7200, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $600 -
http/www.microcenter.com/product/475717/Spin_5_SP513-51-53FC_133_2-in-1_Laptop_Computer_-_Obsidian_Black


And that was just a couple minutes of looking.

 

[chase faine]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from chase faine : "Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?"

Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?
I'm heading off for college in August as a Computer Science major but my budget is pretty tight here. As of right now, Lenovo has memorial day sale ontop of student discount so I can get the ThinkPad 13 for about $700 with 1080p display, i5 7200 CPU, 8gb ram, and 128gb SSD. The Zenbook is also $700 with the exact same specs but with a 256gb SSD. Also the ThinkPad is made of ABS while the Zenbook is made of aluminum. Even considering the material, I think the ThinkPad would last me a lot longer and hopefully through all 4 years of school. Also note both laptops have around 9 hour battery life. Which one should I choose?
Another note, 15 inch is too big and 14 inch slightly larger than I would like. 13 inch is perfect.

 

[inanition02]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from chase faine : "Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?"

Lenovo ThinkPad 13 or ASUS Zenbook UX330UA?
I'm heading off for college in August as a Computer Science major but my budget is pretty tight here. As of right now, Lenovo has memorial day sale ontop of student discount so I can get the ThinkPad 13 for about $700 with 1080p display, i5 7200 CPU, 8gb ram, and 128gb SSD. The Zenbook is also $700 with the exact same specs but with a 256gb SSD. Also the ThinkPad is made of ABS while the Zenbook is made of aluminum. Even considering the material, I think the ThinkPad would last me a lot longer and hopefully through all 4 years of school. Also note both laptops have around 9 hour battery life. Which one should I choose?
Another note, 15 inch is too big and 14 inch slightly larger than I would like. 13 inch is perfect.

As a computer science graduate, picking a 13" laptop for portability is great, but get yourself a good external monitor as well - for one, developing on a single monitor isn't a great experience and two, 13" with that pixel density makes all that text pretty small. Most developers I know lug around a bigger screen laptop for that reason.

Also, when thinking battery life, consider that running a compiler (or an IDE) is much more CPU heavy than web browsing or office type usage - you won't get that life when running development environments.

And that brings me to my last point, specs. Don't skimp on storage space, IDEs are big (full install of Visual Studio is like 40-50GB) and visual assets for web apps are big too. And a strong proc is a must - I have a Lenovo Flex with a 7200 i5 that I have Visual Studio on, but for certain things (especially running mobile device emulators), I still prefer to Remote Desktop to my desktop with a full i7 (non mobile version) and 16GB of RAM.