Daughter is going into 3rd year at Uni, currently has a Toshiba Vista laptop which has served her well but is pretty slow and fancies a new laptop for Christmas.
As previously advised , son wrecked his Lenovo so he will get the Toshiba as a hand me down which will do his needs.
Any recommendations for makes / sellers of laptops in the up to £350 ish price bracket? Last couple I have bought I think with were DABS or Ebuyer although these were both Lenovos with cashback deals. However after seeing state of sons laptop and how flimsy it was I may well give Lenovo a miss (though daughter is a million times more careful and laptop pretty much stays on her desk the whole time.
What would be best processor in that price bracket? Used to think i5 was great until I then read that there were better and worse i5's ! Too confusing for me!
Any thoughts?
|
>> Any thoughts?
Firstly don't get strung up by what I5 to have or not. For a laptop an I3 is good enough.
Secondly, 350 quid new laptops are now all more or less throw them away after three years jobbies. Lenovo in that price range are now just as bad as Dells.
So given they are all shoddily built the only advice i have is don't go for a Sony.
If you want a good 350 quid laptop get another Tosh, but you will have to settle for an AMD CPU at that price.
|
Going by the Which? reports:-
Taking the top 5 makes for reliability and customer satisfaction and applying a maximum spend of £400, the first 5 models are:-
Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite £360
Samsung Chromebook 2XE503C12 (11 inch) £199
Medion Akoya 56211T (MD 98453) £379
Asus X55 1CA-SX024H £275
Asus Vivobook X200CA £260
|
>> Going by the Which? reports:-
>>
>> Taking the top 5 makes for reliability and customer satisfaction and applying a maximum spend
>> of £400, the first 5 models are:-
>>
>> Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite £360
>> Samsung Chromebook 2XE503C12 (11 inch) £199
>> Medion Akoya 56211T (MD 98453) £379
>> Asus X55 1CA-SX024H £275
>> Asus Vivobook X200CA £260
I wouldn't take any notice of Which! Their readership knowns nothing about computers, as their adds keep telling us.
|
I wouldn't take any notice of Which! Their readership knowns nothing about computers, as their adds keep telling us.
Seconded. They often come up with spurious reasons to demote something and recommend something else.
Last edited by: Slidingpillar on Sat 4 Oct 14 at 13:39
|
>> If you want a good 350 quid laptop get another Tosh, but you will have
>> to settle for an AMD CPU at that price.
There's an i3 for £400 on ebuyer, 8GB + 1TB spec looks ok, and you get £50 off that if you trade in your old Tosh (assuming you can't/don't want to get more than that for it selling privately).
www.ebuyer.com/662400-toshiba-satellite-pro-r50-b-122-laptop-pssg0e-008001en
|
>> There's an i3 for £400 on ebuyer, 8GB + 1TB spec looks ok, and you
>> get £50 off that if you trade in your old Tosh (assuming you can't/don't want
>> to get more than that for it selling privately).
>> www.ebuyer.com/662400-toshiba-satellite-pro-r50-b-122-laptop-pssg0e-008001en
I think the OP said old Tosh would be handed on to son who'd broken an earlier lappy.
|
I believe in buying trailing edge technology.... the Laptop that came out 12 months ago and has been superceded 2 x in that period.
Older boxes may have had issues which were fixed in the last 6 months of it's 12 month life. Maybe the processor is not the fastest but other issues such as over heating, dodgy hing/electrical connection have been fixed. As a bonus on clearance they are say £100 or more off the newer model.
Applies to cars as well - last year's model, the one that does not have the go faster stripe, new chrome badges etc etc etc
|
>> I think the OP said old Tosh would be handed on to son who'd broken
>> an earlier lappy.
Ah yes - sorry, missed that.
|
Cheers for input so far - another few questions:
Windows 8 seems to be on most new machines - I believe you can "put this back" to Win 7 - any pros and cons of doing so? Some complaints have heard about Win 8 is its so different but for a 20 year old used to touch screens , icons etc would it be OK?
Touch screens on a laptop - pros and cons???
Finally, a niece who is also at uni apparently just uses her ipad for 90% of her work and then downloads it to her laptop for final formatting and tidying up. Assume she must use a Bluetooth keyboard or something as I wouldn't fancy typing essays on a touchscreen. Is this a realistic option?
(Difference between daughter and niece is daughter has a desk in her room at home where she sits and does her uni work whereas niece is in digs and doesn't have the same set up)
|
>> Some complaints
>> have heard about Win 8 is its so different but for a 20 year old
>> used to touch screens , icons etc would it be OK?
I'm 50 later this year and wasn't looking forward to transitioning to a Windows 8 work laptop, but it's been pretty painless. Just click on the 'desktop' icon at start-up and it all looks familiar; there are differences but I got used to them quite quickly.
>> Touch screens on a laptop - pros and cons???
Toddlers with wandering hands sitting next to you on the train can be a pain :)
Don't use the touch screen day to day for work; if you're using apps designed pre-8 then you can just ignore it. Used it for the Windows 8 Xbox music service (sort of Spotify) and seemed to work ok for that, and doing stuff like moving around in google maps can be easier by touch.
(Still waiting for IT to give the go-ahead for 8.1 so don't know how different that is.)
|
Almost any machine you buy currently will have Windows 8.1 on it, which is somewhat less annoying then 8.0. Don't think you'll get the option of reverting to Win7 on a domestic machine, usually a bulk purchase corporate option. There's always the option of installing ClassicShell or similar if you want to make it look/operate like Win7.
Can't think of a pro for a touchscreen on a laptop. cons - smeary screen and lots of extra arm movement.
|
|
Touch screens are for phones and up to 7inch pads you can hold in one hand while you poke it with the other. Anything else is ridiculous ergonomics.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 6 Oct 14 at 12:32
|
Samsung are withdrawing from the European Computer market.
Clearance stock?
There maybe some bargains about in the near future.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29350022
|
My daughter has just discovered that she can get a student discount on various websites inc 20% at PCworld and 35% off direct with HP.
Obviously I need to look into this a bit more to see the criteria etc but in theory it means this one
store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=ECC_BUNDLE_4729970&opt=&sel=PCNB
at £459 would be £300.
Looks alright??
|
HP were our corporate supplier at work. Didn't exactly cover themselves in glory though it was sometimes difficult to apportion blame between hardware contract the network infrastructure supplier or the helpdesk/techie supplier....
At least two colleagues had three different laptops within 18 months.
Mrs B had a retail one briefly. Wasted a lot of my time configuring it, creating recovery discs etc. only for it to develop an intermittent going on permanent failure to boot.
Refund obtained.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 7 Oct 14 at 16:08
|
All depends on what the laptop will be used for. If you're talking in terms of writing up on an iPad and final formatting on a laptop, I'm assuming its mostly word processing, internet and email use.
Anything with a current model processor and 4GB of RAM should be OK. I'd prefer get windows 8.1 to 8.0 if possible. Otherwise, when buying for SWMBO I looked for an external video port so I could connect a screen and a USB port to connect a printer/memory stick/external keyboard and mouse...
...and as light weight as I could get to make it easier to carry about for when she's going cabin-bag-only with Mr. O'Leary.
Your standard Dell/HP/Lenovo £350 laptop is typically 2kg all packed up. That gets tiring to lug to/from college, the train home on the weekend, etc pretty quickly.
This did the job at sensible money from Argos: www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-X201E-Subnotebook.87453.0.html
|
Re ASUS, I have one (Sonicmaster) and it has some shortcomings. Keyboard is too insensitive and typing is a pain - even my daughter who is an accompished keyboard operator finds it misses characters unless you press hard. It's touchscreen capability is temperamental, way less accomplished than an iPad. I can't direclty compare it to others in the same price bracket so maybe they are all as bad.
On the plus side the sound quality is good for a laptop and the build quality feels good.
In a previous life I had a corporate quality Lenovo and it was excellent but no idea if they are any good at consumer machines. Finally if CD/DVD drive matters to you then check if the machine has it. I thought anything described as a laptop would come with one fitted but that is not the case. Maybe just shows how out of touch I am!
|
I have a Lenovo B560 i3 laptop which cost £420 from Dabs in early 2011 (offer price). It's been carted around in or on cars, planes, buses etc many times and is as good as the day I bought it. The first class carrying case I bought at the same time was £10.20.
All the Lenovos I've come across since, including a £299.99 basic job I bought for a friend, have been of similar build quality, so I wouldn't take too much notice of belittling comments about a company which is now the biggest producer of laptops in the world. They were also responsible for producing the IBM laptops before buying out the brand from IBM.
|
>> I have a Lenovo B560 i3 laptop which cost £420 from Dabs in early 2011
>> (offer price). It's been carted around in or on cars, planes, buses etc many times
>> and is as good as the day I bought it. The first class carrying case
>> I bought at the same time was £10.20.
>>
>> All the Lenovos I've come across since, including a £299.99 basic job I bought for
>> a friend, have been of similar build quality, so I wouldn't take too much notice
>> of belittling comments about a company which is now the biggest producer of laptops in
>> the world. They were also responsible for producing the IBM laptops before buying out the
>> brand from IBM.
Stuart, they are now crap. Booby G can show you one with broken hinges,and he doesn't want another because its crap. I can show you three other last three I recommended with broken hinges. The build quality is rubbish. I know I used to specify and test corporate purchases. They were starting to get crap when they were building them for IBM.
And the reference to IBM is now 9 thats NINE years out of date, Its not relevant.
Not belittling comments but from people who know.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 8 Oct 14 at 17:19
|
|
I'd read elsewhere that Lenovo, or at least their consumer offerings, had gone downhill recently. Judging my Samsung's w/d from Europe and Sony's divesting of its laptop brand I'd guess it's difficult/impossible to build a robust product at price customrs will pay
|
Yeah as Zero says, my son has a Lenovo that is basically now trashed - one hinge went and then the other has gone.
Laptop is pretty much useless now as there is nothing for whats left of the hinges to even try and botch a repair. Mounts were put into very thin plastic that just wasn't up to job.
But whether they are any worse or better than other laptops I can't really comment on (though my daughter's older Toshiba is still very solid feeling)
|
Miss B has a Toshiba Sattelit bought about four years ago in recommendation of someone here. IIRC it was remaindered/ret/refurb stock from PC World. Absolutely solid through upper sixth and Uni.
Still going strong now she's doing a Masters but I suspect she'll defect to Apple soon as her OH will be providing advice next time she needs a new ome.
|
|
I've got one of those toshiba satellite laptops as well. Very good, not had to have it repaired professionally. a couple of the buttons have gone on the keyboard but that's it. I think I've had it about 6 or 7 years. I think it was £300 in a sale.
|
|
Quick question to those knowledgable about laptops. What are fujitsu/siemens laptops thought of? We've got them at work and a few desktops. Not such what model though, seem ok so far.
|
>> What are fujitsu/siemens laptops thought of?
Fujitsu bought the Siemens half of the joint company a few years back - it was a Europe only venture. So they became Fujitsu only in Europe. And in more recent times Fujitsu pulled out of consumer markets and only sell to corporate accounts.
The Fujitsu kit I've used seems well made. Money aside I'd prefer an Apple Macbook Pro. But some of the high end Fujitsu laptops are very good quality. In my opinion. But you'll not find any of these in PC World or John Lewis.
|
>But whether they are any worse or better than other laptops I can't really comment on..
Lenovo's T Series are still pretty well screwed together but you pay for it (£700+). I have a work-issue T410 that gets knocked about a bit and has had no problems other than dust needing to be blown off the CPU fan. You can buy re-furb units with 12 month warranty for less than £300.
My own Samsung Series 5 and Mrs K's Toshiba Satellite are flimsier construction, you don't want to open the displays by lifting on one corner too many times for example. Doing so puts strain on the hinges and you can feel the display flexing. Neither have given any trouble though.
Consumer grade Wintel laptops are built down to a price point for a particular CPU/RAM/Disk/Video combination and the easiest way to meet that price point profitably is squeezing construction costs. If you recognise that fact and treat them with suitable mechanical sympathy they'll carry on for years.
Last edited by: Kevin on Wed 8 Oct 14 at 20:50
|
|
I can only go by my own experience with Lenovos. Perhaps because I buy things with my own money I probably tend to look after them better? All I know is that those I've recommended them to have all been very happy with their purchases.
|
I took the views of posters on here into account a couple of years ago when I bought my Lenovo and I've been very happy with it too.
If the OP's son was mine he would have to resort to pen and paper for a while before he got another laptop, whatever his needs were!
I don't expect anyone to agree with that view but it had to be said;)
Pat
|
Sorry if I am too late replying for this, but I supply a lot of laptops and also give a lot of recommendations. If a customer has £300 to spend, the only recommendation I will make is a Lenovo T410. £300 gets you a second generation i5, 4 or 8GB RAM and a laptop that is far better built than any of the cheap new crap.
New sub £300 laptops have so many design flaws they are just throw away items. They often also suffer from having a virus called Windows 8.
I use an old P8600 Lenovo Thinkpad X200, I paid very little for it and with 4GB and Windows 7 it is actually faster than a lot of new laptops, because it doesn't have a load of design flaws built into it.
|
New laptop - Zero
