I’m amazed no-one’s asked this before.

A modern laptop that won’t meet those requirements doesn’t exist (well, aside from price, there’s plenty of more expensive ones). Buy a named brand. Check out the Dell outlet.

I like Lenovo, robust and decent spec for the money. At that budget you are probably looking at i3 with 4gb ram and 125gb solid state drive or a 1000gb disc drive. I’d probably go for the solid state as it’ll be quicker and generally nicer to use but that may not be enough storage if you want to fill it with films and photos. Hybrid drive might be an option. As for other bits look for a card reader, USB3, hdmi – all pretty standard but annoying if they aren’t there. Here’s a few: https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/core-i3-laptops Or second hand if you want higher spec

As above, any brand name in your price range but I buy lenovos a lot now and am happy with them. I avoid hp as they seem to spend all of their time talking to other hp devices and it takes me too long to clean off the crapware. i3 and ssd would be lovely but if you have a lot of photos then 128gb won’t cut it 🙁

Is windows 10 really awful?

Nope, it’s fine. 🙂

I bought an i3 Acer, 8gb ram 1000gb hard drive with a wireless keyboard and mouse over a year ago, £280 PC World.
Lid feels a little flimsy (I hate laptops though), but no complaints.
128gb is tiny for a pic/flick heavy family, and separate drives are a pain in the arse.

ETA: ignore the peripherals, they were obtained by lots of shouting.

As others have said … anything modern.
I’m not sure I’d pay more for a SSD unless I had reason to need the speed/extended battery.

We got a deal for Curry’s (based on price) for the OH in Jan sales… does what it is meant to which is basically your list.

As it happens I’m typing this on a 8 core monster desktop/tower… but that is used for work and I work in computer modelling where it matters (plus this was a hand-me-down from a mate)…. If I was doing video editing or heavy photo processing I’d use this rig… but basic office/internet etc. makes no odds. It’s just this is connected to the TV… In 10 mins I’ll be on my work laptop which is lower spec than most you’d buy today… with the video output back on this TV…

See my thread on refurbed HP Elitebooks from last week.

£120 for a business grade laptop with i5 processor, 4gb RAM, 320gb HD, Windows 7 Pro (and you can still get the W10 free update if you bend the truth a bit!). Metal chassis, lid and hinges, and feels totally bombproof.

I’ve ordered a 240gb SSD, and fitted another 4gb of RAM that I had spare. So under £200 all in for something that is far, far better than anything you’ll get for under £400-500 bought new.

To be fair £300 is right at the bottom of the market for laptops, you can’t expect miracles.

It’s like buying an apollo bike and moaning that it’s not as good as your mate’s santa cruz.

John Lewis, no quibble guarantee, would be a good place to start.

And as said £300 is bottom of the pile territory.

2 or 3 year guarantee.

I was thinking of spending this, or less, on a Windows laptop for some work-related stuff and was very tempted to buy a reconditioned one from http://www.tier1online.com/ In the end I didn’t “pull the trigger”, but I may do eventually …

I paid £380 for my Lenovo at PC World. 5000 series, i3 processor, 4GB of RAM, usual 1TB hdd. Processor and RAM are made up for with a decent quality 1080 screen. In future I’ll put in an SSD and upgrade the RAM to the max 12GB but for now its absolutely fine doing what I need it to . Some of the Lenovo apps are dead but easily removed, to be honest you could can the lot and not notice (but do like the night mode that filters out the blue light, very easy on the eyes)

HP Pavillion

Plenty of RAM and a good processor.

It is even equipped with an Intel Iris so can handle low-end gaming.