Laptop shopping - need advice

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M.W.

M.W.

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It's finally time for me to get myself a new laptop. I know a wee bit about computers, but would really love some advice from some of you tech heavy guys/gals.

I won't be gaming on it much, it'll mainly be used for work, browsing, videos, photos, just everyday normal stuff.

Obviously I want something that's super fast. My current laptop takes forever to boot up and is just slow in general.

My budget is $500. I've been looking around for a few days now but haven't been able to really narrow it down. So, GAF, any suggestions on what laptop I should consider?
 
Marcellus Wallace said:
It's finally time for me to get myself a new laptop. I know a wee bit about computers, but would really love some advice from some of you tech heavy guys/gals.

I won't be gaming on it much, it'll mainly be used for work, browsing, videos, photos, just everyday normal stuff.

Obviously I want something that's super fast. My current laptop takes forever to boot up and is just slow in general.

My budget is $500. I've been looking around for a few days now but haven't been able to really narrow it down. So, GAF, any suggestions on what laptop I should consider?
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Put an SSD in your laptop can make it great again™!

Seriously, you should consider that option.
 
You won't be gaming on it much? or at all? Big difference there.

I suggest an HP laptop such as HP Pavilion.

They're pretty good for day to day things. Nothing crazy.
 
Want something super fast. Has budget of $500

Want something super fast. Only doing office shit on it.

Honestly almost any laptop with an i3-4xxx or higher, 8GB ram and an SSD will be fine. Bonus points for a 1080p screen but at might be trickier at your price point. Likewise it might be difficult to find an SSD as standard at that price so consider adding one yourself and adjusting the budget to allow for it.

What's your current laptop? CPU, ram, HDD?
 
buy a cheap ssd to make your current laptop usable again and save up for a macbook air/pro.

windows laptops, especially at that price, are really night and day compared to even a lower-end mac, especially for the everyday stuff
 
Don't go HP. The price is tempting sometimes, but I've had two in a row (one just stopped working) and haven't been happy. Shit battery. Awful trackpad. I'm probably going Mac this year.

With the budget, have you considered a chromebook?
 
My recommendation was going to be the Dell XPS 13 (8GB Ram, i5) but then I saw you have a budget of $500. The cheapest XPS is $800 and the ideal one to get is $1000. It is a pretty amazing device though. I own one and it is so fast to boot up I find it amazing. I cannot even have a sip of coffee before it is on. Legit 10 hour battery (shorter if you watch a lot of video), and it is super light. It even tackles some 2014ish games with issues. Recently tried Xcom Enemy Within and it runs very well on it.

If you cannot make the money work to get that, then maybe something like a Toshiba Chromebook 2? It come in under your budget and is a decent low cost machine. I have only a small bit of personally experience with one though. It gets most of the basics done without stutters though - which is an issue I had with many similar machines.
 
I would caution against cheaping out too much on a laptop.

That's what I did recently and my screen flickers, mousepad goes haywire, and it's loaded to the brim with bloatware.
 
SeanC said:
Don't go HP. The price is tempting sometimes, but I've had two in a row (one just stopped working) and haven't been happy. Shit battery. Awful trackpad. I'm probably going Mac this year.

With the budget, have you considered a chromebook?
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This is what I was going to suggest. The Dell 13" Chromebook will give you appreciably better performance than 90-95% of what you're doing than most other $500 computers, but that 5-10% of things it doesn't support might be a non-started.
 
You're not really going to get a good laptop for $500. Dell XPS is an amazing line... especially the 15" model though the 13" is fine as well.

You should shoot for at least $1000 for a laptop if you want it to last more than a few years.
 
Sarye said:
You're not really going to get a good laptop for $500. Dell XPS is an amazing line... especially the 15" model though the 13" is fine as well.

You should shoot for at least $1000 for a laptop if you want it to last more than a few years.
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That seems OTT. You could get a nice ultrabook with a broadwell or haswell i5, 1080p touchscreen and SSD for maybe $700-800? Sure $500 would be a challenge, but suggesting laptops for twice his budget isn't really helpful

You could manage just fine with a generic i5-6500 based laptop and put your own SSD in it. Probably be a 1366x768 screen but that's probably what you have now so you'll at least be familiar with it. Can always hook up to a monitor for more resolution
 
Chromebook, my friend. You can get one that will do everything you listed in the OP and still have money left in the bank.
 
mrklaw said:
Depending on the price you could live with a HDD for a while, and save towards an SSD which will give you another boost in performance
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Honestly though, unless it's already falling apart, even his current laptop would still be a pretty fast if he plugged in an SSD and upgraded to 8GB RAM. Most anything Sandy Bridge and up is still a good performer today.
Look around for good deals on the Samsung 850 EVO, Sandisk Ultra II or Mushkin Reactor drives.
 
Chromebook heavily depends on what is required for 'work', and as someone mentioned earlier, does 'not gaming much' mean not gaming at all.
 
Kyuur said:
Chromebook heavily depends on what is required for 'work', and as someone mentioned earlier, does 'not gaming much' mean not gaming at all.
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Yeah, plus you can't run the vast library of x86 apps and you have to be tethered to an internet connection 99% of the time. Plus I believe Chrome OS and Android are eventually getting merged anyway so it's a terrible investment at this point.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Honestly though, unless it's already falling apart, even his current laptop would still be a pretty fast if he plugged in an SSD and upgraded to 8GB RAM. Most anything Sandy Bridge and up is still a good performer today.
Look around for good deals on the Samsung 850 EVO, Sandisk Ultra II or Mushkin Reactor drives.
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If it was really one of the low end ones in the link he posted, then not so much. I5-2320m was mid range.

OP, can't you post the actual info from your computer on what you have? In Windows just go to Settings/system/about and post what it says
 
Where is the guy who recommends a macbook even when the op say he doesn't have that much money to throw and sometimes even mentions that he doesn't want one?
 
Sarye said:
You're not really going to get a good laptop for $500. Dell XPS is an amazing line... especially the 15" model though the 13" is fine as well.

You should shoot for at least $1000 for a laptop if you want it to last more than a few years.
Click to expand...
I have the 15" it's amazing. Would recommend.
 
mrklaw said:
If it was really one of the low end ones in the link he posted, then not so much. I5-2320m was mid range.

OP, can't you post the actual info from your computer on what you have? In Windows just go to Settings/system/about and post what it says
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Yeah if it's the Celeron or Pentium then he could definitely use an upgrade.
I did a bit of digging and found this, very very good specs for the price. That GeForce 940M will at least allow medium settings on most current games, and it already has 8GB RAM and a 1080p display.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...31&cm_re=core_i5-5200u-_-34-315-131-_-Product
 
This. You'll just need a little more cash, but it's by far the best option in your price range.

8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p, nice construction, etc.
Top notch everything, except for the CPU, but you don't need a god-tier CPU for the tasks you mentioned.
 
Current Surface 3 (non Pro) is on sale. You'd need to come up with an extra $100 for the keyboard cover, but it would be fine for your usage.
 
NotBacon said:
This. You'll just need a little more cash, but it's by far the best option in your price range.

8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1080p, nice construction, etc.
Top notch everything, except for the CPU, but you don't need a god-tier CPU for the tasks you mentioned.
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Since he said he doesn't really care about portability and might do a bit of gaming, I'd say the Acer I posted is a much better option. He can also always put in an SSD down the line. The i5-5200u will run circles around that Core M.
 
Plopping an SSD into your current machine is not a bad idea by any stretch, OP.

Is it still on Win7? I saw a pretty massive impreovement to responsiveness in my 5 year old laptop by switching it over to Win10 back in December.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Since he said he doesn't really care about portability and might do a bit of gaming, I'd say the Acer I posted is a much better option. He can also always put in an SSD down the line. The i5-5200u will run circles around that Core M.
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Core-M is more than fine for everyday tasks.

I just read the OP where he said 'I won't be gaming much', which makes the Asus with the SSD a better option. But if he is going to game quite a bit, then yes he'll need something like that Acer.
 
NotBacon said:
Core-M is more than fine for everyday tasks.

I just read the OP where he said 'I won't be gaming much', which makes the Asus with the SSD a better option. But if he is going to game quite a bit, then yes he'll need something like that Acer.
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The i5 and 940M will also help with things like photo and video editing - Photoshop and the like can take advantage of CUDA or OpenCL I believe. Plus it's a larger 15.6 inch screen.
 
At that budged I'd consider getting '2014, "used" business grade laptops like Lenovo Thinkpad T440, Dell Latitude E6440 or EliteBook 840.
I put used in quotation marks because they're often sold as practically new, barely even touched from leasing returns or just from surplus purchases at some companies.
Also they often come with next business day, on site warranties which are tied to the machine rather than to the user so you're purchasing the warranty along with a used laptop. So definitely get one with an active warranty.
Also look be sure to get one with a healthy battery.
When purchasing off ebay specifically look for this info or let the ppl. run a battery test & check the machine no. for warranty when buying them off of craigslist.

These laptops mostly have Intel's *M cpus rather than the newer, but weaker (though less power consuming) *U cpus. So you may prefer that if portability is not key.

Generally, when buying these biz grade laptops, you have the following advantages / disadvantages:

+ Easy access to most of the innards (which is sadly not the norm any more). You can even exchange shit like the keyboard or touch pad without voiding the warranty.
+ Docking stations. Docking stations are the shit.
+ Sturdiness and some water resistance
- But that makes them rather bulky & heavy
+ A ton of users online who own the exact same laptops
+ A ton of spare parts online because they're produced in large values and use standardized parts. This sometimes enables you to mod shit, like so
- These laptops often come with average to bad displays since they're rather meant to be used indoors at the docking station (hence: display mods like the one above)
 
I'm gonna revive this thread for a bit because I'm also looking for a new laptop, but I'm not very tech-savvy. From what my friends have told me, the Acer that DonMigs recommended has very good specs for the price. However, I also found this laptop and I wanna know what the difference between the two is basically, besides the video card. I've never owned a computer that could run anything more than The Sims 2 so a laptop where I can do some decent gaming is a pretty nice bonus but I suppose not a necessity.
 
Astral said:
I'm gonna revive this thread for a bit because I'm also looking for a new laptop, but I'm not very tech-savvy. From what my friends have told me, the Acer that DonMigs recommended has very good specs for the price. However, I also found this laptop and I wanna know what the difference between the two is basically, besides the video card. I've never owned a computer that could run anything more than The Sims 2 so a laptop where I can do some decent gaming is a pretty nice bonus but I suppose not a necessity.
Click to expand...
As much as I want to support AMD, that laptop is gonna be significantly weaker in terms of both the graphics and processor (it's an APU, so the GPU and CPU cores are combined into one chip) . Battery life will be a bit worse too.
I just checked Geekbench and the Core i5-5200U is actually about twice as fast as that A10-7300.
 
Echoing those that have said to avoid HP. Maybe their premium laptops are good but speaking from personal experience, they're quite poor at that price.

edit: Whoops, I see the thread has moved onto other things.
 
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