Hi,
Last laptop has lasted 14 years. Its time for a new one.
Budget about £600. Used for teams, a bit of light excell and bookkeeping, pugging in to an old lazerjet printer, old usb based guitar effect pedals, bit of video editing from a go pro, bit of music editing but nothing super powered.
Are any of these any good? I apreciate not many laptops will survive 14 years without getting dropped or just being unable to run newer software.
The last link is a Medion Akoya. never heard of them, Intel Core i5 32GB RAM 1TB SSD 15.6 Inch, Best specifications but I've never heard of them, could that be a problem?
Current laptop is a Samsung, Are they still good or did I just get very lucky?
Will a core i7 last longer than a core i5? Will it make any difference in the near term?
Thanks for any help
As for the rest,
You don't need a current-gen i7 for your use case. You barely need much more than an etch-a-sketch.
AMD (Ryzen) based systems are generally better bang-for-your-buck than their Intel brethren.
I've yet to meet a consumer-grade HP which wasn't garbage.
I bought a new laptop a couple of months ago for my partner's birthday. I got a Lenovo. Bundles change, it was almost this:
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=21MVCTO1WWGB4
Switch the Memory for a single 16GB SODIMM (not the 2x8GB ones) and Storage for one of the TLC drives, 512GB seems like a sweet spot. £623, and you can save £50 if you're confident in installing W11 yourself. Is your old laptop licence attached to a Microsoft account?
Oh, and,
I apreciate not many laptops will survive 14 years without getting dropped or just being unable to run newer software.
One of the laptops next to me is 14 years old (manufacture date 11/11). It's still going strong. It's a Lenovo.
Oh, and, and,
Whatever you choose, you'll probably need some sort of converter for your legacy hardware.
jesus ****ing christ... an i7? lol, do you even need a laptop?
Those two things should never be used in the same sentence.
If you really need to be mobile, consider screen size an the weight of the thing, that's your primary concern.
Is a 13 inch screen ok, or do you want a 16" ?
For convinience, and portability, and battery life, I'd strongly suggest the former. preferably with an OLED screen.
If I had to buy something from laptops direct right now, like actually ****ing forced to, put a gun to my head, I'd buy this:
Why? because it's a decent spec and it had an OLED scren, and OLED screens are the tits.
+1 for a Lenovo IdeaPad. I'm typing on one now (IdeaPad Pro). Go for AMD over Intel if possible (better integrated graphics, lower power draw) although that Intel one posted above is a steal. Minimum 16gb RAM for Windows 11, 512gb SSD is enough.
Some (most? all?) IdeaPads have RAM soldered directly onto the mainboard, slots are sacrificed for 'slim.' As one of the OP's requirements is future-proofing, that's a no from me.
Thanks!
Work has given me a tiny 14 inch screen one in the past, I'd rather have a larger screen for spreadsheets.
The lap top gets lugged In to the garage for fork rebuilds, and occasionally out thr house. I have though about a desk top, but would rather have a laptop.
So this one
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=83K5CTO1WWGB1
Has a 16 inch screen, core i5, 16gb, 1 tb hard drive.
16 GB DDR5-4800MT/s (8 GB Soldered + 8 GB SODIMM)
Is the soldered ram likely to mean much in the future?
I get these for my work.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-Vivobook-X1505VA-i7-13620H-Windows/dp/B0DM6GFTYP
the screen is lovely, and they seem quicker than the equivalent lenovo (which I always used to get)
IME:
Hp can be a bit iffy,
Acer can be a bit off the mark too.
Lenovo are decent enough, but ASUS have been consistently good performers.
we've 15 Vivobooks, and 8 lenovo's, and a mix of Acer, Hp, microsoft and samsung laptops
I wouldn't touch a budget samsung or budget surface laptop, they've all had problems setting up.
I've had decent experience of laptops with the new snapdragon processor, seems pretty swift.
No idea about which manufacturer is best - people seem to have very specific ideas here but I've found Asus to be rubbish and Surface to be great so reckon they are all basically the same and its the luck of the draw!
What I would do on your spec is pay the extra £20 for better Wifi (7 v 6) and a bigger battery. Also if you need 365, £69 seems as cheap as you'll ever get it (legally) for a year subscription.
When I bought my daughters laptop last month for Uni (HP), I also paid an extra £90 to take the warranty to three years as I've had a couple of bad experiences with laptops failing in 2 years.
The lap top gets lugged In to the garage for fork rebuilds, and occasionally out thr house. I have though about a desk top, but would rather have a laptop.
So whyTF are you looking at 'slim' models where you pay a premium for a compromise spec?
Lenovo Ideapads feel nice but they lack robustness of X and T-series of the old. My son dropped his Ideapad and frame was bent from impact way smaller than I have seen premium models to survive repeatedly.
We managed to fix the Ideapad but are looking at used pro models now.
So whyTF are you looking at 'slim' models where you pay a premium for a compromise spec?
I didn't realize there was a fatter, heavier cheaper alternative!
Could anyone point me in the direction of something like this but cheaper than £550 with a 16 inch screen, core i5, 16gb, 1 tb hard drive?
I’ve just bought a laptop from Dell Outlet. The laptop is a reconditioned machine that was produced in May this year. It is unblemished and has three years warranty. Really pleased with the cost saving over buying a “new” machine.
Work has given me a tiny 14 inch screen one in the past, I'd rather have a larger screen for spreadsheets.
I've just looked at the 16" variant of the 14" I suggested and they are both exactly the same screen resolution (and the slimline you mentioned is the same also). If it's "for spreadsheets" you could get the same result by moving your face closer to the screen.
If you want more screen real estate, I'd be considering an external monitor.
Could anyone point me in the direction of something like this but cheaper than £550 with a 16 inch screen, core i5, 16gb, 1 tb hard drive?
I doubt it. Your specs are creeping up whilst your budget is going down.
I think you're going to have to make a compromise somewhere (and "budget" is one such compromise). Medion were always dogshit on a number of levels to a point where seeing their name on something needing repairing instantly gave me the fear, but it seems they've been bought out by Lenovo so maybe that's changed since I last had to deal with one. After too many bad experiences I wouldn't buy a consumer-grade HP product. The Lenovo slim thing has soldered RAM which will limit upgrade options (do you see yourself needing to go beyond 16GB in the next 14 years?), it's "only" a Core 3, but is seemingly heavily discounted.
The truth of the matter is, anything people have mentioned here will do the jobs you're describing. The worst one on this page will still tear the arms off the one you're using currently. Give it a few weeks and all the ones you're looking at now will have changed price because there will be new shinies arriving, and you'll be kicking yourself for paying more / missing out on the newer one. Spoiler alert: this is constantly shifting, you should just buy the best you can afford when you can afford it. If I were you I'd read through this entire thread again so you can hit the ground running when it's Black Friday in a month's time.
Look at refurbished Lenovo thinkpads
I think you are over thinking the hard drive too. With cloud storage and a cheap back up HDD in an enclosure, you just don't need that much space.
At work we use HP Probook and Lenovo models after years of crappy plastic built cases. They are really good, rarely a problem and the stronger build shows. My work machine is 6 years old, used daily, lugged around the country, dented after someone dropped it from a train luggage rack, and just works...and works...and works
Just root around on eBay for a used Thinkpad. I'm happily on a 2019 X1 Carbon - replacement battery cost £30 and took 5 mins to install, and it runs Windows 11 / Office etc with no issues. It's only an 8th Gen i7, but has 16GB RAM and 1TB of SSD storage, along with Windows Hello / 4G modem / 4K screen.
Less than £250.
I think you are over thinking the hard drive too. With cloud storage and a cheap back up HDD in an enclosure, you just don't need that much space.
I almost said the same, but "video editing" could mean a lot of different things and if the difference between 500GB and 1TB is like £20 then why not.
For reference, this frankendesktop which hasn't been wiped/rebuilt in probably ten years, is using less than 200GB (if we discount my Steam library). Granted, my data is on a separate drive, but that's mostly a media library.
I've just got one of these when my Dell XPS 17 died.
It doesn't seem any better or worse than the Dell, but cost £1300 less (I could have got the same one cheaper with I5 and 512GB)
Requirements were 17", touchscreen, separate number keys and something Currys had in stock
I went with one of these in the end. It's still on its way.
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=83HYCTO1WWGB1
For a change it's gone up in price significantly after I've bought it.
£650 and I upgraded the CPU to an AMD Ryzen 7, the ram to 32gb and the storage to 1tb. I've gone with the recommendation for the oled screen.
My current laptop crashed twice, hung twice in 2h doing some simple spreadsheets last night.
For the video editing its just wee 2min jobs from a go pro, nothing much. But at the end of the year I put them all together into an hour long video.
So I'm hoping it will last for ages.
I couldn't find anything similar in a bigger laptop format. I did look at desktops, but decided to stick with a laptop format.
Thanks for all the help. I very much hope it will be like driving some super car to and from the shops at 30mph. And not in for expensive fix after fix because I don't use it properly 🙂
Will a core i7 last longer than a core i5? Will it make any difference in the near term?
No, it won't last longer. It's still a laptop CPU with limited cooling. If you need a grunty CPU, better to buy a proper desktop machine.
I went with one of these in the end.
Just had a look at the listing. £50 to upgrade the SSD from 512gb to 1TB!
£50!!
Can someone send that link to Apple please?
Just had a look at the listing. £50 to upgrade the SSD from 512gb to 1TB!
£50!!
£30.
It's £50 to upgrade to the 1TB TLC drive. (Oversimplifying: T- means triple, Q- is quad, smaller is better.)
On the laptop v desktop discussion that often comes up - the reason I go laptop even though my main laptop never goes anywhere is that I work with two screens and laptop plus big screen is optimal setup for me. Obvs others will have different preferences.
I've just bought a new Lenovo gaming laptop for both work and (relatively moderate) gaming. Pretty impressed and with student/academic discount plus black Friday I got over 1/3 off. Just need an academic/student email address.
The other family laptop is a 6 year old Asus, pretty mid productivity spec when we bought it. Still works fine