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Affordable laptop recommendations: budget £350-£450

"12% Off Select Products Only, With Code, eg Lenovo Thinkpad X250, A Refurb (12.5", i5 5300U 2.3GHz, 8GB/180GB SSD, Win 10) £140.80 @ ITZOO"
from HUKD
12% Off Select Products Only, With Code, eg Lenovo Thinkpad X250, A Refurb (12.5", i5 5300U 2.3GHz, 8GB/180GB SSD, Win 10) £140.80 @ ITZOO - hotukdeals

Cheap Refurbished Laptops & Tablets The UK's best priced laptop deals.

Quite a few Thinkpads at 'Grade A refurbished'
inidividual item descriptions seem to mention specific issues with the machine you'd be buying - worn palm rest, mark on screen etc. so read the descriptions


Does anyone here know the X250?
I was looking at them on ebay oddly when I saw this - quite a bit lighter than their similarly priced T450's - which is important for my spine!
 
izz said:
Off-topic a tad, apologies, but what does the hive mind think of this ? Refurbished HP Envy 13-ah0003na Core i7-8550U 16GB 512GB MX150 13.3 Inch Touchscreen Windows 10 Laptop - Laptops Direct ?

I played with an 8GB version in Currys and liked it a lot - they're available new but for like, pounds more.
Click to expand...

It is a good price - cheaper than the 8gb version (new)!

Rating on TrustPilot Laptops Direct is rated "Great" with 4.2 / 5 on Trustpilot

You can extend the warranty to 12 months for £30
 
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Not a laptop, but we don't have a thread for desktop bargains...

I got an HP Elite 8300 refurbished from Amazon for £113. Its got an i5 3470, 500gb hdd, 8gb ram and a Windows 10 license. You can pay a bit more get one with a 256 SSD, but I've already got one. Anyway chucked the SSD in and took the RAM up to 16gb and its proper flying machine.

Apparently it will take a 1050 ti low profile card and become a fairly modern gaming machine, but as that's a bit more then PC itself, it may have to wait till next year.
 
I'm trying to steer my OH into buying a laptop. She's up for it in principle, but is a total convert to the twin monitor desktop setup. It's just having a PC is so critical to her that I think there should be some backup. Needs to be as powerful as we can afford for her spreadsheets, but also budget, so obviously refurbished makes more sense.

Not ready to buy yet, more just getting a feel, but what else is worth considering besides old Think pads?
 
Happy to be overruled by those that know more than I but I think most laptops will per able to wrangle most Excel spreadsheets.
Perhaps second hand thinkpad and a nice docking station - then she can use it with the monitors as well very easily, if required. Would have thought a RAM upgrade would always help more than processor speed.

At work I am using an (admittedly shittily made) new Thinkpad X280 i5 with only 8gb Plugged into a decent monitor + keyboard and mouse (PS the screen res is dreadful when using it stand-alone)
It only starts to struggle when i push it with summits + array formula against +200,000 line data tables etc, say a 20+ MB file size
 
Anju said:
A bit over £450 but is this worth considering? Looking for a laptop for 18 year old daughter for art/design course and maybe some gaming.

Any alternative suggestions also very welcome.

Thanks.

Medion Akoya P6645 Core i5-8265U 8GB 256GB SSD 15.6 Inch GeForce MX 150 Windows 10 Home Laptop - Laptops Direct
Click to expand...

I'd be wary of the make, but specs look good for general use.

Unless you spend loads though laptops are terrible for gaming, a compact desktop would win on value and power any day.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
I'd be wary of the make, but specs look good for general use.

Unless you spend loads though laptops are terrible for gaming, a compact desktop would win on value and power any day.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I haven't shopped for a computer for about 8 years and there's a lot to catch up on. I thought that might be the case with gaming but wondering if the graphics card is worthwhile or if it's better to get a higher spec cpu and no graphics card.

Apparently the brand is part of Lenovo and it comes with 3 year warranty.
 
Anju said:
Thanks, I haven't shopped for a computer for about 8 years and there's a lot to catch up on. I thought that might be the case with gaming but wondering if the graphics card is worthwhile or if it's better to get a higher spec cpu and no graphics card.

Apparently the brand is part of Lenovo and it comes with 3 year warranty.
Click to expand...

A quick bit of reading suggests that it will certainly be up to some light gaming, so would certainly do harm if that's your budget and it should be a fairly nippy machine for general use.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
A quick bit of reading suggests that it will certainly be up to some light gaming, so would certainly do harm if that's your budget and it should be a fairly nippy machine for general use.
Click to expand...

Thanks taking some time to check it out. Very much appreciated.
 
£70 seems fair for the extra battery life and improved graphics performance you'd get from the newer one.
 
Any recommendations for a Windows laptop (Chromebook won't do apparently) with a c. 11" screen at the very bottom end of the budget given above or possibly a bit cheaper (ideally our budget is 300 but apart from Chromebook that looks difficult). Would be nice if it wasn't too sluggish but wont be needed for anything much heavier than Netflix and Internet browsing. Or any ideas of where and when to look for deals in the post-Xmas sales?
 
maomao said:
Any recommendations for a Windows laptop (Chromebook won't do apparently) with a c. 11" screen at the very bottom end of the budget given above or possibly a bit cheaper (ideally our budget is 300 but apart from Chromebook that looks difficult). Would be nice if it wasn't too sluggish but won't be needed for anything much heavier than Netflix and Internet browsing. Or any ideas of where and when to look for deals in the post-Xmas sales?
Click to expand...


There will be plenty of offers on now - I'd stay away from HP Stream if I were you. We had one and it was pants. I'd stay away from anything with an N5000 processor tbh - struggled like hell with everything and the Stream was pretty much useless after6 months due to Windows 10 updates.

Anyway - Lenovo has a sale on: Christmas Sale & Deals 2019| Tech Gift Ideas | Lenovo UK quite a few under £300

Usual outlets will too as I am sure you're aware
 
Oh - consider the difference between Windows 10S and W10 Home too.

S mode is a cut down version - don't know the full details/limitations - but that seems to affect pricing at the lower end.
 
Throbbing Angel said:
There will be plenty of offers on now - I'd stay away from HP Stream if I were you. We had one and it was pants. I'd stay away from anything with an N5000 processor tbh - struggled like hell with everything and the Stream was pretty much useless after6 months due to Windows 10 updates.

Anyway - Lenovo has a sale on: Christmas Sale & Deals 2019| Tech Gift Ideas | Lenovo UK quite a few under £300

Usual outlets will too as I am sure you're aware
Click to expand...
I had seventy quid in John Lewis vouchers lying about unused and they had fifty quid off this:

https://www.johnlewis.com/hp-14s-dq...-128gb-ssd-14-full-hd-natural-silver/p4239403

So worked out a tenner over budget and am confident it's powerful enough to run W10. It didn't have the small screen size she wanted but she doesn't have to lug this one into town twice a week so will be okay.

Thanks for advice though.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
It appears so. You can run third party apps, but they have had to submit them to Microsoft and Google havnt bothered.

Happy to stand corrected, not a Windows PC so can't check the store.
Click to expand...
It seems you can switch out of S mode permanently for free. I'll sort it once the Mrs has set it up.
 
Is this any good? Need a new laptop, mainly for work, my current one is a Lenovo ideapad, refurb from Argos, but it's fucked, it takes ages to do anything. Anyway I understand thinkpads are workhorses, is this one a decent one for price?

Has to be windows before anybody suggests Chromebooks or Linux etc
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Depends if you're going to be using it on battery a lot. The 6th gen (Skylake) chips are a lot better on the juice. They also stay clocked up a bit better on the battery. It's one of those weird things with the limited power budget of mobile platforms - desktop Skylake is, at best, 15% faster than Haswell (4th gen) and that's about what you'd get plugged into the wall. But on battery it can be considerably more as it can keep its turbo mode engaged for longer.
 
Proper Tidy said:
Any thoughts on this? Should I be looking for a recon with a later generation or does it not matter?
Click to expand...

What are you using it for. I'd have thought for standard office work type stuff it will be plenty fast enough. I think most kit with a half decent CPU, plenty of RAM and an SSD probably is. So buy buying a second hand machine your probably getting better quality all round more then a speed advantage of a cheap but well specced new laptop.
 
Thanks both. Yeah will be using it on battery quite often, probably only for an hour or two at a time though. Just work stuff but that means various bits of software not just Microsoft office stuff, some web based but some not. I dont really know completely cos I'm starting a new job which I have to have my own laptop for and dunno yet what software they will expect me to use.

Defo going for a recon and quite fancy a thinkpad, might look for a 5th gen or later
 
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