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Affordable laptop recommendations: budget £350-£450

CyberRose said:
Anyone got any views on this?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-l750-201-15-6-laptop-red-11884715-pdt.html

6GB RAM, i3 (2.53GHz) processor, 750GB hard drive

£429.99
Click to expand...
Not very good at all. That's a previous generation i3 - soon to be 2 generations old - which is a huge step down on the integrated graphics. I struggle to see how it justifies its cost, being more expensive than many laptops with current generation CPUs. You could point out the 6GB of RAM, but RAM is dirt cheap - I picked up an extra 4GB to add to the 2GB already in my wife's laptop for £17. Screen is nothing special, ports are nothing special. HDD is on the larger side, but do you need 750GB? It doesn't even come with Win7 Pro, just Home Premium.

It looks like something that was once a top of the line, cutting edge device. But it's not discounted anywhere near enough to account for its age. You can get something with similar specs (last gen CPU, only 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD) for £338. While the Toshi is more stylish, I don't think it's £100 moreso. £350 and you get a current generation CPU.

http://www.ebuyer.com/322115-asus-x54h-laptop-x54h-sx168v
(only 2 USB ports, but makes up for it with one being USB3.0)

£370 gets you a Toshiba (if brand names mean something to you) with a current gen CPU, 6GB RAM and 500GB.
http://www.ebuyer.com/276388-toshiba-satellite-pro-c660-255-laptop-psc1me-00q00ken
 
Chz said:
Not very good at all. That's a previous generation i3 - soon to be 2 generations old - which is a huge step down on the integrated graphics. I struggle to see how it justifies its cost, being more expensive than many laptops with current generation CPUs. You could point out the 6GB of RAM, but RAM is dirt cheap - I picked up an extra 4GB to add to the 2GB already in my wife's laptop for £17. Screen is nothing special, ports are nothing special. HDD is on the larger side, but do you need 750GB? It doesn't even come with Win7 Pro, just Home Premium.

It looks like something that was once a top of the line, cutting edge device. But it's not discounted anywhere near enough to account for its age. You can get something with similar specs (last gen CPU, only 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD) for £338. While the Toshi is more stylish, I don't think it's £100 moreso. £350 and you get a current generation CPU.

http://www.ebuyer.com/322115-asus-x54h-laptop-x54h-sx168v
(only 2 USB ports, but makes up for it with one being USB3.0)

£370 gets you a Toshiba (if brand names mean something to you) with a current gen CPU, 6GB RAM and 500GB.
http://www.ebuyer.com/276388-toshiba-satellite-pro-c660-255-laptop-psc1me-00q00ken
Click to expand...
Cheers for the advice! Would never have considered (or known about) chip generations, only look at GHz. So I should be looking for the Sandy Bridge generation chips? You say this is due to be replaced soon too though? Yea 750gb hard drive is more than I'd ever need
 
Unless you're a serious user, the raw GHz don't matter so much these days. In the current generation, even a lowly Pentium (it's below the i3) has enough CPU oomph for most people. It's the other features of a CPU generation and its chipset that you need to be aware of. For instance, the current Sandy Bridge chips represent the first time ever that Intel's integrated graphics aren't total pants. (AMD's are better, in fact, but their CPU prowess lags significantly. Which would be okay if they sipped power, but they don't do that either) If you're using the integrated GPU, this is vastly more important than an extra 500MHz. Ivy Bridge, due out in another 2 months, is another large leap in graphics and a large jump in battery life. But cpu speed not so much.

Worth waiting? It depends on your budget. Right now, there are a lot of very good deals as they try and clear stock in anticipation of Ivy Bridge. While the new ones will be better, they're not the quantum leap the current ones were.

Waiting for the Next Best Thing in computers is a mug's game. You can hold out forever.:)

As a tip, previous gen chips are i3-xxxM or i3-xxx. Sandy Bridge is i3-xxxx.
 
Looks quite good for the price, unless you need a high-res screen. You can cheap out by £20 or so, but the cheaper ones look quite a bit nastier. And I'd be willing to pay £20 more for something that's not hideous.
 
Global Stoner said:
This Samsung is a similar spec to the Tosh. Less ram and smaller hard disks, but has hdmi and the reviews seem more favourable.
Click to expand...

I've just had a Samsung 300V5A delivered and first impressions are very good.

Looks and feels good quality. Very nippy response in use. Not too much crapware installed. Sound is clear, if not earth-shatteringly loud (but better than most cheaper laptops I've
come across). I particularly like a few little touches, like the headphone socket at the side (rather than getting in the way at the front) and the matte screen finish, rather the glossy screens that I hate with a passion!

HD streaming on netflix looks great. Can't wait to get it home and hook it up via the HDMI to the telly.
 
Hello. I was hoping that there was a thread like this on Urban. If this thread was not here I'd be posting on the First World problems thread -I want a new laptop but I don't know which one to buy? Anyway.

I'll be doing my work from my laptop. I'll need office tools, nothing really demanding. It needs to be happy to come along with me and fit in a bicycle pannier - so it needs to be sturdy. My budget is bigger than the title of the thread. It needs to run Windows, but as I'm looking for something well built would it be better to get a Mac - perhaps a MacBook Air?

My current laptop is a bit of a brick. It takes ages to start up. I'd want my laptop to be ready when I open the top. I would not want to put up with any nonsense where it fucks around with it's hard drive before being ready to do stuff. I'll probably use the Mac bit when at home to play iPlayer through my TV and that kind of stuff.

Finally, if you have a cat does it usually come to sit on your lap and generally get in the way when you open your laptop?
 
I've got £350 to spend on a new lap top (must have 15" + screen) - what d'ya reckon? The ole COMPAQ Pressario's about 5/6 years old & is getting long in the tooth, but still performing, so i'm leaning towards another. Open to other suggestions though :)
 
I'm on my second acer and they've been nothing but great value for me so far. I've always had smaller ones that that though, with either 12 or 14 inch screens.
 
My present laptop is showing its age, so I've decided on an Acer Aspire 5750G.

Intel Core i5-2450M 2.5GHz
6GB DDR3 RAM
500GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 610M - 1 GB VRAM

Battery life not brilliant, but not an issue for my use.
At £419.99 pretty good value.
 
I have one of these, (a netbook) and I love it:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...ops-and-netbooks/toshiba-nb550d-939235/review

Toshiba%252BNB550D-1001.png
 
Okay chaps. I too, need a laptop. I'll be loading it with ms office, but apart from that, the thing will overwhelmingly be used for streaming iplayer and playing back other films and tv.
That said, i'm not too bothered by having a massive screen, smaller would be better up to a point: i used to have a 10" netbook and that was too small for typing (plus the screen resolution was crap and the speakers lasted about five minutes).

Grinder has just bought a new acer, which has number keys to the right of the 'return' button, like a traditional keyboard - something i've never come across before on a laptop and find incredibly annoying.
 
spanglechick said:
Okay chaps. I too, need a laptop. I'll be loading it with ms office, but apart from that, the thing will overwhelmingly be used for streaming iplayer and playing back other films and tv.
That said, i'm not too bothered by having a massive screen, smaller would be better up to a point: i used to have a 10" netbook and that was too small for typing (plus the screen resolution was crap and the speakers lasted about five minutes).

Grinder has just bought a new acer, which has number keys to the right of the 'return' button, like a traditional keyboard - something i've never come across before on a laptop and find incredibly annoying.
Click to expand...
If I may just throw in a wild card because I'm in a similar situation and think I'll be buying one of the Asus Android Transformer tablet/laptop thingies rather than another laptop.

I need it for much the same things as you (with a bit of web coding and image editing plus writing stuff) and after trying out the Transformer I was sold. The thing has a massive (14+hr) battery life, is super fast, has a great screen and once you get used to a touch screen on a laptop it's hard to go back. They start at £399 and there's a new high def one coming out very shortly (so the current top of the range one will drop in price). iPlayer works fine on it and TVCatchUp effectively lets you use the thing as a TV set. It's ace!

Here's a review: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/asus-transformer-prime-1045764/review
Anyway, it may not be for you, but I thought I'd throw it in the mix. :)
 
spanglechick said:
Okay chaps. I too, need a laptop. I'll be loading it with ms office, but apart from that, the thing will overwhelmingly be used for streaming iplayer and playing back other films and tv.
That said, i'm not too bothered by having a massive screen, smaller would be better up to a point: i used to have a 10" netbook and that was too small for typing (plus the screen resolution was crap and the speakers lasted about five minutes).
Click to expand...
What's your budget?
spanglechick said:
Grinder has just bought a new acer, which has number keys to the right of the 'return' button, like a traditional keyboard - something i've never come across before on a laptop and find incredibly annoying.
Click to expand...
Lenovo keyboards don't have a numberpad.
 
editor said:
If I may just throw in a wild card because I'm in a similar situation and think I'll be buying one of the Asus Android Transformer tablet/laptop thingies rather than another laptop.

I need it for much the same things as you (with a bit of web coding and image editing plus writing stuff) and after trying out the Transformer I was sold. The thing has a massive (14+hr) battery life, is super fast, has a great screen and once you get used to a touch screen on a laptop it's hard to go back. They start at £399 and there's a new high def one coming out very shortly (so the current top of the range one will drop in price). iPlayer works fine on it and TVCatchUp effectively lets you use the thing as a TV set. It's ace!

Here's a review: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/asus-transformer-prime-1045764/review
Anyway, it may not be for you, but I thought I'd throw it in the mix. :)
Click to expand...
i was tempted - but i was under the impression it can't run ms office, which is a deal-breaker, because i need completely seamless transfer between work and home machines.
 
oh god - so tempted by the transformer - was just saying to grinder yesterday that i was hoping to avoid buying a laptop until tablets had advanced enough to basically just be the transformer with MS office... gah...
 
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