An effective AI research laptop in 2026 is essentially a compact, thermally‑managed GPU workstation: a recent high‑core‑count CPU, 32–64 GB RAM, a modern NVIDIA RTX dGPU with at least 12 GB VRAM, fast NVMe SSD (1–2 TB), and robust cooling, ideally in a chassis that still travels well. In practice, that means choosing something close…