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

close2u

Thanks @darthed1981 @digitalscream @crunchman ;it's all good info ...

Important ... the 1080p is something I read ... elsewhere in the forum iirc. I don't know if I 'need' it or how a slightly lower / higher resolution would hamper / benefit.

crunchman

close2u said:

Thanks guys, it's all good info ...

Important ... the 1080p is something I read ... elsewhere in the forum iirc. I don't know if I 'need' it or how a slightly lower / higher resolution would hamper / benefit.

On a 15" screen it's probably not essential.  It would probably give very small fonts and icons.  You can increase the size of the icons and fonts but then you don't get as much on screen so there isn't as much benefit.

1080p seems to be the standard resolution on 22" to 25" monitors, but you would want higher resolution on a bigger screen.  My 27" is 1440p.  If you are getting to 32" you probably want 4k UHD.

I wouldn't buy from them, but get down to your local PC World and check out some laptops with different resolutions and see how much difference it makes to you.  The higher resolutions will be on higher end machines, and be better in other ways as well, so it may not strictly be like for like though.

digitalscream

If you want to use a DAW, I'd say 1080p is the minimum. Trying to edit stuff on a 1366x768 screen is just going to result in frustration - you simply can't get enough useful information in view for lack of pixels. I had to do it once, and gave up after an hour of constantly scrolling all over the place.

crunchman

One thought.  Do you have space for a separate monitor?

Other option to get screen space is to go for something with a smaller screen (which would be cheaper), and then connect up to an external monitor when you need more screen space.  If you do that, make sure any graphics output is capable of handling the resolution of your monitor.

close2u

crunchman said:

One thought.  Do you have space for a separate monitor?

Yes.
 When using as daw along with interface, the room I have in mind has a large desk and my existing pic. I could hook up to that monitor ... if compatible (it is a dell Vostro 400 setup) or get a standalone for the purpose if that is a good method of working.
  I'm interested in pursuing any better / best option and open to suggestion.

Danny1969

A few points to mention : 

Almost no one makes a good laptop anymore, mainly because we are now used to buying them too cheap. There's are some good ones's, mainly corporate machines because there's more money in that. All the high street laptops are pretty poor, even Lenovo .... who after a good start have gone down the same route as everyone else ... selling cheaper machines built from shit plastics and cheap PCB's

Although any laptop with a standard 2.5" SATA harddrive is up-gradable in terms of harddrive, a lot of models from HP, Lenovo and many others no long have an easy access door to access the drive.... on a lot of machines you have to remove the entire base or palm which is easy enough if you know what your doing but not a good idea if you don't. 

Don't be too hung up on screens, the same LVDS on the board will happily drive a higher res screen and the screen is one of the cheaper parts at roughly £40. In many cases changing the screen is quicker than changing the harddrive 

I still fix hundreds of laptops a year and with all those machines I see I wouldn't recommend any of them, except maybe some of the Dell Latitude E series and some HP Probooks. Unfortunately not only can't you recommend a Brand these days you can't even pin it down to a model range as for some reason Dell and HP  include cheap home use machines under the Latitude  \ Probook names etc

Avoid all AMD based laptops
Avoid anything from Asus, Meridian, Novatech, Packard Bell ...... if any of these do make a decent machine I've never seen it

close2u

Thanks @Danny1969 ... although you do realise you've now made things harder ha ha ...
I hate the idea of cheap components and built in obsolescence ... I want solid, sturdy and built to last.
 Hence I have had my Dell pc about 12+ years and my laptop about 9.

close2u

Slight tangential thought here ...

 Would there be any mileage whatever in using the physical shell etc of my old Vostro 400 (1x DVD drive, 1x DVDRW, 8x USB 2 ports, no micro sd slot though) and getting a computer tech to 'build' me a revamped machine with all New up to date circuitry, memory, ram etc?

is it even possible?

I know it's not a laptop but it might make me re-think slightly if my budget can't quite get what I want in a laptop.

crunchman

close2u said:

Slight tangential thought here ...

 Would there be any mileage whatever in using the physical shell etc of my old Vostro 400 (1x DVD drive, 1x DVDRW, 8x USB 2 ports, no micro sd slot though) and getting a computer tech to 'build' me a revamped machine with all New up to date circuitry, memory, ram etc?

is it even possible?

I know it's not a laptop but it might make me re-think slightly if my budget can't quite get what I want in a laptop.

Definitely worth a look.

Building a desktop is actually very easy.  If you aren't sure how, I am sure there are videos on YouTube showing you.  Not sure it would be worth paying someone else to do it though.

If you buy new, you can get a budget motherboard for £50 or £60 - which would have USB 3 ports as well.  8GB of DDR4 RAM is in the region of £70.  A 250GB SSD starts from around £75.  You would be looking at around £200 plus the cost of a processor.

The other alternative with a desktop is to get a smaller SSD for the OS, and use a conventional hard drive for storage.  You could actually keep the hard drive from your vostro for that.

Desktop processors are faster than laptop ones so you could easily get away with an i3 if you want.  The desktop i3s do have hyperthreading unlike the laptop ones.  With 2 physical cores plus hyperthreading the desktop i3 is essentially what you get with an i5 laptop processor - but at a much faster clock speed.  Passmark benchmark scores aren't everything as it depends on use, but the i3-7100 which is the cheapest 7th generation desktop i3 (around £110) actually comes in with a higher score than some of the laptop i7s from the same generation e.g. the i7-7600U.  If you went for a higher end desktop processor, then you would be faster still. Desktop i5s have 4 physical cores rather than 2 like the laptop i5s - as well as much higher clock speeds.  They start from around £160.

If you go on Ebay you can often find motherboard/memory/CPU combos (new or second hand).  I'm blocked from Ebay at work so I can't link to them at the moment.

If you buy second hand on Ebay you can save money.  You will often find some of the enthusiasts selling off a fast motherboard/CPU/memory combo that is one or two years old to upgrade to the latest i7.  The danger of that is that some of these guys might have been overclocking them and got them too hot. If you do buy off Ebay I'd buy a combo with motherboard/cpu/memory together rather than separate parts.  If it doesn't work then you can send it back.  If you buy the parts separately and it won't boot, then do you send back the motherboard, the CPU or the memory?

The other thing to be careful of is that sometimes Dell have cases that are bespoke to the motherboard.  I upgraded an ancient Dell of similar vintage to yours last year, but the case didn't have a standard motherboard backplate - it was bespoke to the Dell motherboard.  I ended up having to get another case.  You can get cheap ones for around £25 with a power supply but I wouldn't use that for any expensive components though.

You might need to budget for a copy of Windows as well, which will probably cost you more than it will cost an OEM supplier.

If you want to have a go yourself then it's a good option, but by the time you pay someone else, you would be better off looking for a deal on a new one, or looking at a refurb desktop.

close2u

@Crunchman Building my own ... not sure that I'm up for that tbh. Good info though.

close2u

Bumping an old thread of necessity ...

So I didn't buy a laptop back then ... BUT ...

I am definitely 100% going to buy one and I need to do so soon.
So, using similar parameters as in my OP:

Refurb (thinking of bang for the buck)
Budget upto about £400
SSD
Connectivitiy - USB / ethernet / wifi
Windows 10
at least 8gb RAM
Intel U series processor ... i5 or i7 (but a later generation of those)
DVDRW drive

I will more than likely buy from Amazon as I have some credit there - but will go elsewhere if the deal is unbeatable.
They have a choice of mainly Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, Lenovo ThinkPad in the refurb section.

My main uncertainty is about :
which generation of i5 or i7 to not go below
and
what numbers like this mean ... 3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz ... 4200U 1.6GHZ ...  i5 CPU @ 2.40GHz  etc


Thanks

crunchman

The first character of the 4 digit number basically gives you the generation so 3320 is third generation, 4200 is 4th generation.

The 2.60GHz is the clock frequency.  2.6 GHz means that it has 2.6 billion cycles per second.  2.4 GHz means that it has 2.4 billion cycles per second.

Generally the higher clock speed will mean a faster processor, but it does depend on the number of cores.  For most things, a 2.4GHz processor with 4 cores will be faster than a 2.6GHz processor with 2 cores.

If you want to compare CPUs, this might help:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

If you find the processor you are looking at, you can click on it and it will give you details like how many cores it has.  It does give you an overall score for the speed of the processor.  The other figure that might be worth looking at is the Typical TDP as that is a measure of how much power it will use.  If that's high it will chew up battery quite quickly.

close2u

crunchman said:

The first character of the 4 digit number basically gives you the generation so 3320 is third generation, 4200 is 4th generation.

Great info, thanks ... so obvious unless you don't know.
So which generation is the minimum to go down to? I read somewhere that they're up to about 7th or 8th now.

crunchman said:

  For most things, a 2.4GHz processor with 4 cores will be faster than a 2.6GHz processor with 2 cores.

If you want to compare CPUs, this might help:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

More good info.
So it's a combination thing?
I'm not after a gaming machine by any means so 'average' or 'normal' will suffice on that front.
But I shall look for the 'cores'.

Thanks.

close2u

I may have had a (very nice surprise) boost of cash for this purchase ... so with a budget more in the £500-600 region, do the recommendations change?

Cheers

JAYJO

 I Don't know anything about laptops but i bought the Acer Aspire E1-572 off Amazon about 4 years ago. I use it for music,films and daw. Had no issues with it. currently running windows 10. cost me about £400 maybe a bit less.

close2u

Does anyone have any more thoughts on the £500-600 range? I am in a position where I must decide soon and I'm sure that whatever I buy will be massively better than my knackered old thing ... there are about a dozen or so likely looking candidates - refurb - on Amazon. Will they all be good for me? Are there better places to buy? Here's a search result with £500-650 as the top limit ... https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_36_0?rnid=9708204031&srs=8362590031&rh=n:340831031,n:!340832031,n:429886031,p_36:9708208031,p_n_feature_browse-bin:1481781031,p_n_feature_eleven_browse-bin:7472680031,p_n_style_browse-bin:182753031|182752031,p_n_pattern_browse-bin:213554031|213555031&sort=price-desc-rank&qid=1522354747&bbn=429886031&low-price=500&high-price=650

wave100

My tuppence worth is not to get a laptop with a low voltage processor like the Core i5 4210y in the machine I am typing this on - it has proven impossible to get working reliably for music purposes. In fact in fact I was so scunnered I went out and bought a second hand Macbook Pro (late 2012) Retina (old enough that it still had proper USB ports) and it has been flawless for music. Unfortunately I think the low voltage processor is part of the Ultrabook specification.

If you are buying from Amazon you should be able to return it if it doesn't work, so make sure you test the bejesus out of it when you get it! 

From your list I would imagine the HP Zbook is a solid enough machine as it claims to be a workstation, but I'm sure there are loads of reviews of that particular model on the internet. The other consideration is whether you want a touchscreen or not - personally I like them, I keep prodding the screens of laptops which don't have them!

close2u

ignore ... no longer needed

close2u

ignore ... no longer needed

close2u

Oh yeah ... when I buy this I'll be ditching my old laptop & PC ... so I'm thinking I will still want to have a DVDRW.

Are they being phased out?
Is that realistic?