Again and again…
Never buy a windows laptop before checking it with LatencyMon.
I had an incredible disaster buying online.
I solved with a MacBookPro but I understand who doesn’t want to join the dark side of the force…
I’m glad you’ve solved your problems by having faith in this kind of force you speak of.
Maybe I’ll discover this faith the day I have problems like yours. 
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I vouch for the dark side… They’ve always given me awesome results…
PC’s sometimes gave me grief so I never went back
This! (Or buy from somewhere you are sure you can do a return without question)
Personally I gave up on a laptop and went the small rack mounted PC route.
Might be good to set up a thread where people post what laptops they find are working well and their LatencyMon results - I’m sure it would be a useful resource for many.
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Whatever you decide upon, a very simple and very importantly effective tactic for any laptop to prevent thermal throttling or OS power restrictions is to put as much physical air space as you can rig underneath it.
They all come with little feet that create the optimal airflow gap underneath on a flat surface (NEVER remove those, BTW). If you can somehow have holes in that hard (never soft) glass-flat surface the laptop is on, you will be automatically enhancing the airflow. Run with that principle for your rigging.
This advice comes from many years ago taking many remote tech support calls, probably hundreds of them in category of complaining of laptop fan ‘running like a jet engine’ before the laptop blue screened and shut down.
“Where are you using this laptop?”
“On my bed” - INVARIABLY.
This extreme should appear obvious but the principle can be easily leveraged for better airflow and it doesn’t take much effort. The good news is the reason new chips are always engineered into laptops before desktop versions is the absolute control over thermal situation locked into a laptop design. It knows how to keep itself cool—just don’t get in its way, and you can do this simple thing (ensure more airflow underneath) to help that enormously.
A little goes a long way, and normal operating temperature is quite warm, so even keeping it a couple of degrees cooler will help enormously.
You asked for thoughts there’s mine.
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I’m not sure brand really matters even though I do have my personal preferences. The issue with Windows on battery is Windows will reduce performance in order to preserve battery life. If you find your laptop isn’t performing up to par on battery, change your power settings where battery has the same settings as on power. You will find that your battery won’t last long. But that can be resolved by purchasing additional batteries, having them all charged, and changing batteries between sets.
Running on a generator, the battery will protect the laptop from surges. So, you wouldn’t have to actually rely on battery power.
I fell for the thinking that a gaming computer would be a great choice for real time computing. I was mistaken. And, don’t fall for the “MAX SPEED” claims. Look at the actual cycles on the CPU. And, there is a significant difference between i9 and i7 and i5. And be sure you kill all of Microsoft’s real time “defender” and “update” processes as well as any that might be provided by the hardware vendor.
Interesting, when I got my most recent computer, I wanted something comparable to Gen 12 i9 in the laptop I bought about 1 year before.
My research seemed to indicate that the Gen 13 i7 was (close but) slightly more powerful than my Gen12 i9. (And about 1/3 less expensive.)
More powerful in what context? I have applications where hard drive performance can make or break an application but processor speed is fairly inconsequential. With i9 over i7, you may be able to leave all of those background processes running due to the additional cores not affecting the ones used by your real time application. But if you only have one app running and it doesn’t use all of the cores, i7 with a faster cycle time would out perform the i9. Then there is IO performance on top of that. One laptop has many bottlenecks and which ones affect you are determined by the what applications you expect to run - simultaneously.
How do the Generations effect this? For example Gen 13i7 vs Gen 12i9?
Generation (AKA Gen) is Intels current way of notating “version”. A new version may or may not have performance improvements. Sometimes they just correct hardwire bugs in the processor. Anyone coding a BIOS needs to be able to determine the version (generation) in order to determine if they need to work around hardwire issues in the processor - Assembly code stuff.
I’ve had worse luck with Windows laptops. Due to the drivers in how they handle power and battery, they can perform poorly on latencymon even though they are “fast” on paper.
I recently bought a miniPC, the $400 Beelink SER5 Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 7 5800H. It handles running way more VSTs than the laptops I’ve tried. I purchased a small 14" USBC touchscreen that sends power and signal over one small cable. I’ve been very happy with this setup, it actually has as much CPU power as my desktop gaming PC. The downside is the fan can run loud under heavy load. On loud stages though you’d never hear it.
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Today i finally took the plunge and ordered a XMG Core 16 (L23) with 32GB RAM / 2x 1TB SSD
After thinking back and forth during the last week, i guess it might be the most reliable configuration, even it’s not the cheapest.
But having everything together in one case (keyboard, touchpad, display) and having exactly the components i want, plus the “official statement” that it’s well suitable for live audio usage… i guess it’s not completely crazy to pay around 1800€ for it.
Also it is assembled in Germany! So i hope that in case of any issues (which hopefully will never rise), it will be be easier to get things solved.
Thanks to everyone who helped me with their advice and statements! 
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Think XMG Core is a great choice. My next mobile DAW workstation is going to be an XMG Apex, which is XMGs other officially-low-latency-optimized build. I really dig that one of the notebook manufacturers finally cares about latency
For those who are looking for something with touchscreen and Surfacebook-like, but with more Power, check out the Asus ROG Z13 (dont confuse with Thinkpad Z13). Its a 13" convertible with really decent specs. Running the 2022 version with an i7-12700H. Quite happy with it so far!
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I spent 2.5k on an HP laptop last year. It was glitchy and the audio popped and crackled - luckily I was able to return it. Then I bought a MacBook Pro and I’ve not had an issue since. If you can go Mac, I would recommend it, but they are expensive - a significant investment for sure. That said, I run all my gigs off battery, with the MacBook powering my MIDI keyboard, audio interface, and USB foot switch patch changer - and it never misses a beat. One thing to remember, if you do buy a PC laptop online, you usually have 14 days to test it, with the option to return for a refund. Hopefully you’ll have a better experience than I did with Windows.
Today the laptop arrived…
now i’ll have to install everything new. First i thought about using the “good old” WIN 10, but in the end i decided to stay up to date and use WIN 11. We’ll see how well it works. 
I will inform you when all is up and running again.
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Because the laptop I use is not solely meant for live audio (maybe not the best practice, but till this far, I can manage), I make it a habit to go with the flow (Windows 11 for now):
- It keeps the grey cells in shape…
- … and my flexibility
- Not too many worries about being able to apply MS patches
The main adjustment I made was placing the start button on the left, instead of somewhere in the middle. I like to have that button in a predictable position.
Have fun!
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As an IT guy, with a one man business offering support to people in their homes, like those good old family doctors, I must admit I hadn’t noticed that possibility
So; Thx for making me aware of it! Might come in handy when visiting customers who get a little bit confused by the new Start button placement.
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WOAH… almost there! 
After i spent almost the whole weekend with installing and configuring WIN11, deactivating licenses on the (very) old system, downloading hundreds of GB on the new system (updating everything to the latest versions) and then re-activating all the licenses… i guess i might be able to do a first test-run today to see if it works, how well it works and to check what i’ve still forgotten to install…
Folks, i can tell you, this task has been a huge amount of work which led me through every area of heaven and (mostly) hell of software design - nothing i would like to do every week.
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Yesterday i had the first band rehearsal with my new laptop… and of course i forgot to save something quite essential over to the new PC… the rig manager configuration! 
But even without that, most of the rackspaces and widget bindings i tend to use worked like they should, so i could play through the set without bigger issues.
The laptop itself worked flawlessly - no hickups, hangs, noises, whatsoever.
The internal CPU-meter of GP was rarely over 20%. Nice!
My ASIO settings for the Focusrite Scarlett Solo (3rd gen) are 44.1kHz / Buffersize 128
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English language spelling weirdness pro-tip: “hiccup” not “hickup”
Also “fish” ought to be spelled “ghoti” but isn’t. We don’t understand why either.
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