Need help finding / selecting a laptop for (edit) budget now £500-600 (refurb?)

close2u

I seek a laptop and need some good buying advice from those with tech knowledge.

Both my desktop and laptop are ancient (in tech terms) and dead or dying.  My tech savvy (which was very limited at it's best) is many years out of date in knowing what is what in terms of tech spec.

Analogy ...

Back in the day, if choosing a car, there was basically Ford, Vauxhall, some other well known but not as common, a few import makes, some niche or minority or specialised makes. You could have a small, medium or large size (think Fiesta, Escort, Cortina, Granada) with s, m, l engines. That was about as complicated as it got.

Now, imagine someone transported through time from then to now ... with dozens and dozens of makes, untold sizes and styles ... city-urban-suv-mpv-4x4-CC-hatch-people-carrier-saloon-cross-utility-petrol-diesel-electric-hybrid-etc-etc-etc.

I feel like that person. Totally overwhelmed by the variety of makes, models, specs. I simply can't get a handle on it.

If I said I wanted a reasonable size reliable car for normal every day use that isn't too expensive to buy or maintain someone might direct me to a Toyota Auris or Ford Focus or a Hyundai i30 etc.

If I also said I'm happy to buy a used but good condition model to increase my bang-for-the-buck ...

That's where I'm at in my laptop hunt ...

A narrowed down list of possible makes, models and even retailers would help me so much.  I may need a bit of patience for one to come along ... but at least I would have a better chance of seeing it when it did come along.

I would like a laptop and am happy to buy refurbished to gain a higher spec for my budget.

Budget about £350-400.

It is mainly for home use but also in conjunction with an audio interface to record (which is another purchase I have to get my head around).

I read somewhere to seek:

SSD (for low noise)

Both USB 2 (for interface compatibility) and USB 3

Windows 10

8gb RAM

Intel U series processor ... i5 or i7

1080 (minimum) monitor

I'm not a gamer nor a 'heavy-demand' user.
just basic home use that I also want to use with an audio interface.

What else do I need to know / to consider?

Thanks.

digitalscream

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro or standard, either works. The standard one has a 1080p screen, the Pro version has 3200x1800 resolution. Should come in exactly in the budget range you've set there, and the processors vary (my Pro has an i7 2.1GHz, which is plenty of grunt).

darthed1981

close2u said:

I feel like that person. Totally overwhelmed by the variety of makes, models, specs. I simply can't get a handle on it.

The market is a bit of an ass, there are hundreds of models, but under the bonnet they use a lot of the same parts.

The supermarket's buying power means you get insane deals in there sometimes, I've seen Dells for superb prices, Lenovo are fine HP are fine, even Acer are fine.

USB3 should always be backwards compatible with USB2, so I wouldn't worry about looking for both, it's unlikely you will find one with less than USB3 now.  Some of the newest models are starting to have sockets for the new reversible USB Type C plugs, but there will still be the old style ports as well.

crunchman

You are in a bit of an awkward place budget wise.  Anything with an SSD for £350 is only likely to have a 128GB drive so you are going to be very limited on storage - especially if you want to use it for recording.  Audio files can be large.

SSD will make the machine a lot quicker so it may be the route to go anyway but you will probably need external or cloud storage of some kind.

At this point in time, until large SSD drives get cheaper, I think you are better off either getting a cheap one for under £300 with a conventional drive, or spending a bit more upmarket to get an SSD with a decent capacity.

close2u

digitalscream said:

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro or standard

Thanks, that's the sort of narrowing down I need.

close2u

darthed1981 said:

I've seen Dells for superb prices ... HP are fine, even Acer are fine.

USB3 should always be backwards compatible with USB2, so I wouldn't worry ...

Some of the newest models are starting to have sockets for the new reversible USB Type C plugs, but there will still be the old style ports as well.

Re: supermarkets
New or refurb?
Dedicated online outlets?

Re: makes
Can you recommend any particular models of Dell, HP, Acer as a quick narrow down?

Re : USB 
So a usb2 AI would work via usb3? 
I presume type C is a different physical size & shape? So USB 2 & 3 will soon be obsolete connectivity types?

close2u

crunchman said:

You are in a bit of an awkward place budget wise.  


At this point in time, until large SSD drives get cheaper, I think you are better off either getting a cheap one for under £300 with a conventional drive, or spending a bit more upmarket to get an SSD with a decent capacity.

Mmh. Awkward. 
How much more would say 250gb or 500gb cost? Would that be even more than equivalent on external?

What could you recommend:
1) sub £300 according to your cheap solution?
2) a more expensive (£400? £450?) laptop?

holnrew

close2u said:

darthed1981 said:

I've seen Dells for superb prices ... HP are fine, even Acer are fine.

USB3 should always be backwards compatible with USB2, so I wouldn't worry ...

Some of the newest models are starting to have sockets for the new reversible USB Type C plugs, but there will still be the old style ports as well.

Re: supermarkets
New or refurb?
Dedicated online outlets?

Re: makes
Can you recommend any particular models of Dell, HP, Acer as a quick narrow down?

Re : USB 
So a usb2 AI would work via usb3? 
I presume type C is a different physical size & shape? So USB 2 & 3 will soon be obsolete connectivity types?

Type C is just a connector type, although it's usually used for USB 3. The socket you're used to is a type A which is used for both USB 2 and 3

darthed1981

close2u said:

darthed1981 said:

I've seen Dells for superb prices ... HP are fine, even Acer are fine.

USB3 should always be backwards compatible with USB2, so I wouldn't worry ...

Some of the newest models are starting to have sockets for the new reversible USB Type C plugs, but there will still be the old style ports as well.

Re: supermarkets
New or refurb?
Dedicated online outlets?

Re: makes
Can you recommend any particular models of Dell, HP, Acer as a quick narrow down?

Re : USB 
So a usb2 AI would work via usb3? 
I presume type C is a different physical size & shape? So USB 2 & 3 will soon be obsolete connectivity types?

New, you will find new well specced models in your price range for your budget.

I'll be honest, as someone who buys laptops professionally i care little for makes and models, only about spec.  Most of the major ones make great product.  Id have a fondle of them in store, the aesthetics can be quite subjective.

As others have said USB C is just a new connector, as long as your stuff works ok on Windows 10 even if the old A connector does out you will still be able to use an adapter.  Your old usb2 kit will plug straight into most of the slots on a new laptop and just work.

close2u

darthed1981 said: New, you will find new well specced models ... 

... as someone who buys laptops professionally i care little for makes and models, only about spec.  

Most of the major ones make great product. 

New is ok but if I can get more and be a little extra future-proof I am happy to buy refurb.


I used a few sites ... mainly Amazon ... and narrowed down one spec item at a time ... ssd, W10, 4 or 8 agh ram, i5 or i7 etc.
i didn't get many left after filtering ... just some models 5+ years old which I have been advised not to consider. Is there a better way to search by spec? Or is it my budget that is restricting my results?


The majors being those you listed (dell, up, Lenovo, acer)?

 Thanks all so far. Please keep it coming. Especially if I expanded my budget to say £400-450 for higher spec refurb or pushed it down to under £300 for a decent 'stop-gap'.

crunchman

close2u said:

crunchman said:

You are in a bit of an awkward place budget wise.  


At this point in time, until large SSD drives get cheaper, I think you are better off either getting a cheap one for under £300 with a conventional drive, or spending a bit more upmarket to get an SSD with a decent capacity.

Mmh. Awkward. 
How much more would say 250gb or 500gb cost? Would that be even more than equivalent on external?

What could you recommend:
1) sub £300 according to your cheap solution?
2) a more expensive (£400? £450?) laptop?

It does depend on exactly what you want to do.

If you want to download films and lots of music then you will need a much bigger drive so for the moment you would be better off going for a conventional HDD.

On the other hand, if the only large files you will be working with are ones that you use for recording then a 250GB would be fine.

The other option is to get one with a small SSD and use the extra budget to buy a NAS rather than a laptop with a bigger drive.  You would probably still want to record to a local drive for speed reasons, but just have your working session locally, and have the NAS as your main storage.  It would get tight on 128GB drive though even if you work that way.  If you start downloading plugins and samples for recording they can take up a good amount of space.

You also need to watch out for things like this:
http://www.cheaplaptopcompany.co.uk/laptops/refurbished-lenovo-x220-8gb-250gbssd

On the face of it, that looks like a good deal and ticks all your boxes under £400, except that it's a second generation i5 processor.  They are up to 7th generation now.  Ideally you want a more recent i5 or i7, but if that's outside of budget I'd prefer a 6th or 7th generation i3 to a 2nd gen i5.  Depending on exactly which processor in the range you are looking at, a 2nd gen i5 might still be marginally faster for some tasks (passmark score was about 3% higher on the ones I looked at), but the newer processors should be a lot better on battery life.

If you buy new, looking on sites like Scan and Ebuyer, a recent i5 with 8GB and a 250GB SSD is in the £600 region.  That's for a 14" or 15" screen.  You could get cheaper with a smaller screen, but if you want it for recording, you don't want to be using a DAW with a puny screen.

A refurb would be cheaper but you do need to watch out for old technology like that one above.

digitalscream

@crunchman - the problem with that Lenovo is the screen resolution, it's only 1366x768.

close2u

Really useful, thanks @crunchman 
 

Download films? No.
Music? some.

What is NAS? I have an external HDD but it is nearly full now.

Plugins & samples ... erm, not sure, maybe a long way in to the future when the multi track recording bug bites and time allows ... for now simple guitar / vocal tracks. 

The laptop you linked exemplifies my difficulties. 

Why does a bigger screen screen help with daw? In comparison to my wife's iPad (which we also want to use with interface) they're already bigger. My dead laptop had 15" iirc.

crunchman

digitalscream said:

@crunchman - the problem with that Lenovo is the screen resolution, it's only 1366x768.

That probably goes hand in hand with the processor that's 5 generations ago.

When I said watch out for, maybe I should have said beware of.

digitalscream

close2u said:

Why does a bigger screen screen help with daw? In comparison to my wife's iPad (which we also want to use with interface) they're already bigger. My dead laptop had 15" iirc.

Well, there are two issues - resolution and size. Personally, I find it hard to work on anything smaller than a 13.3" laptop (whether it's my programming day job, or DAW stuff) because I want a minimum of 1920x1080 or even 2048x1152 (which I can run my Lenovo at, because the 3200x1800 native resolution means the pixels are so small you can't see the jaggies) and the screen elements are too small to deal with.

close2u

digitalscream said:

@crunchman - the problem with that Lenovo is the screen resolution, it's only 1366x768.

I take your word for it ... that is not good. But the numbers don't mean anything to me .... wow, I'm such an old & out-of-touch has-been!

darthed1981

digitalscream said:

@crunchman - the problem with that Lenovo is the screen resolution, it's only 1366x768.

That is pretty standard for a 15.6" laptop, a Full HD one would be a higher end option.

You really need display scaling and one of the more annoying features of this on Windows 10 is that it can't scale two screens differently.  Therefore if (like me at work right now) you use your laptop screen alongside a 22" external Full HD monitor, you either have teeny icons on your laptop or big icons on your external!

To the OP:  consider which spec items you really need, as everyone has a different opinion: -

SSD (for low noise) - these tend to be small and expensive, modern HDDs are very quiet, you can with moderate technical chops replace later as well.  You will get a 2TB HDD for less than a 250GB SSD generally, that's a big difference.  No single other component makes such a big difference to perceived speed however.

Both USB 2 (for interface compatibility) and USB 3 - USB 3 is fine, laptops have at least 3 ports usually, an external hub to add more later is cheap as chips

Windows 10 On new laptops whether you want it or not!  If you buy reconditioned don't get landed with Win 7 or Win 8 now the free upgrades are over.

8gb RAM If you can get it then great, but you will be unlikely to use it all, if you have to settle for 4GB you can upgrade it later very easily on most models.

Intel U series processor ... i5 or i7 - I doubt you would need an i7, its a bit better if you can get it but you dont need it.  You could probably do just fine with an i3, but look for i5.

1080 (minimum) monitor - on a 15.6" laptop this is a higher-end feature, its at least as much about how you use your workspace as anything else, resolutions higher than 1080 are still pretty high-end price-wise.

crunchman

The screen on a DAW can get very busy.  Here's a screenshot of reaper.



That doesn't have any controls for plugins up either.

You might not have that many channels, and you might not use a lot of plugins, but I still wouldn't want to go less than 14".

I used to use a 15" Macbook Pro and that was ok.  I've gone back to PC now but that's desktop with a 27" monitor and I much prefer the extra screen space.

close2u

@crunchman  27" monitor!!! That's nearly as big as our tv

digitalscream

@darthed1981 - 1080p resolution was one of his core requirements

As for the rest of it...

SSDs - an absolute requirement these days as far as I'm concerned because the speed benefits vastly outweigh the capacity constraints, especially with USB 3.0 allowing external storage at near-native speeds for very little in terms of cost.

RAM - almost all thin/light laptops have the RAM soldered to the board, so no upgrades here. Of course, thin/light wasn't a requirement, but it's worth bearing in mind. Mind you, all but the cheapest and crappest laptops from the last four years or so have a minimum of 8GB, so I don't think this is so much of an issue.

CPU - i3 CPUs are pretty weak, and while all of the Intel laptop CPUs are dual-core-only, the i5 and i7 have Hyperthreading which makes a massive difference in DAW workloads where concurrency is more important than single-threaded performance.

As I said...the Lenovo Yoga 2 (and 3) laptops satisfy all of the requirements within the budget if bought second-hand. They only have 1 x USB 3.0 and 1 x USB 2.0, but I use the 2.0 port for the audio interface (to avoid compatibility issues) and a 3.0 hub for external storage, mouse and everything else.

This one, for example:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Orange-Lenovo-Yoga-2-Pro-13-3-128gb-i7-8gb-touchscreen-360-degrees-ultrabook-/222616696382?hash=item33d4fd363e:g:NBAAAOSwUIhZYQAh

For what it's worth...I tend to use the main laptop screen for the tracks in Reaper, a screen on the left for plugins and (with a USB 3.0 DisplayLink adapter) a screen on the right for the mixer window. I like a lot of screen space

darthed1981

I posted what I thought based on budget @digitalscream and I didn't think the spec was quite religious from the way it was phrased.

YMMV of course, I'm pretty much decided on spending less time on here in any case.