The Great 'Cheapest Decent Laptop' Hunt

kgldsun

I too am looking to buy a new laptop and want a decent one. My budget is £400(ish). I am drawn to HP and more recently the G70 120EM. Not sure really why, other than reading reviews etc. I am wondering though if I am going in too deep as I do not play games or do anything spectacular on a laptop. I do though want speed, large photo storage, able to open few windows at once and reliable good customer support. Any offers of advice much appreciated, and thanks.

Pitchshifter

£400 is peanuts for a laptop computer. I've only ever heard bad things about HP computers, choose something else. Acer make good value laptops. Look at Acer Direct. £400 is the "value" range BTW.

If anyone does actually want a really decent gaming laptop Novatech has a great range, with one for £1300 that has a nVidia Geforce 260GTX 1GB and for £1700 one with a 280GTX.

This is is the sort of performance one needs to be able to play upto date games.

Here's the Novatech gaming laptop link for anyone who is interested:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/ranges.html?t=nb&c=gaming

mmtomlin

Pitchshifter wrote: »

£400 is peanuts for a laptop computer. I've only ever heard bad things about HP computers, choose something else. Acer make good value laptops. Look at Acer Direct. £400 is the "value" range BTW.

If anyone does actually want a really decent gaming laptop Novatech has a great range, with one for £1300 that has a nVidia Geforce 260GTX 1GB and for £1700 one with a 280GTX.

This is is the sort of performance one needs to be able to play upto date games.

Rubbish! you can get some sub-£500 laptops that will play the latest games, you just have to keep your eyes peeled

If you're interested in buying a laptop for gaming, you just need a halfway decent processor and a good graphics card.

(I would post the link but im a new user) go onto notebookcheck.net, click on "faqs/tips/technics" on the left hand side and then on "Computer Games on Laptop Graphic Cards".
On the left of this page is a list of different laptop graphics cards, and all you have to do is scan across the page to see how well it plays different games (green is good, red is bad), simple.

RAM is cheap as chips (no pun intended) nowadays too and can give a pretty big performance gain for a low price, just make sure you buy the right stuff!

Pitchshifter

Depends what games you want to play, I've done my research and my previous post is not "rubbish", thank you very much. I'm a gamer and have built many computers over the years.

The reason why I said "This is is the sort of performance one needs to be able to play upto date games." is because I was considering getting a laptop to play GTA4 on. This game is a total nightmare to run on high quality settings and as such you need high end hardware. The Mobile version of the 280 GTX offers similar performance to to a midrange desktop GPU like 8800 GTS or 9800GT (according to notebookcheck). I have a 8800GTS in my desktop PC and GTA runs on medium settings, so in order to play it on a laptop I would need at least the same performance.

There's a difference between the game only just being able to run and running smoothly with high detail settings.

I'm fully aware that you can buy a £499 laptop with a Radeon HD3650 512MB graphics card, which is fanstastic value for money and one which I posted earlier. Unfortunately although you will be able to play most games on this, you will have to lower the details on the some of latest games.

Getting a current gen card like a 280GTX in a laptop for under £2k is
great value when compared to bigger name brands like Alienware, Dell, Sony, etc.
If you really love playing PC games in all their glory, gaming on a laptop is much more expensive than the equivalent desktop computer, but the prices are getting more reasonable.

Edit: You're right Notebookcheck is an excellent resource, here's the link:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

boobbby

Pitchshifter wrote: »

Depends what games you want to play, I've done my research and my previous post is not "rubbish", thank you very much. I'm a gamer and have built many computers over the years.

The reason why I said "This is is the sort of performance one needs to be able to play upto date games." is because I was considering getting a laptop to play GTA4 on. This game is a total nightmare to run on high quality settings and as such you need high end hardware. The Mobile version of the 280 GTX offers similar performance to to a midrange desktop GPU like 8800 GTS or 9800GT (according to notebookcheck). I have a 8800GTS in my desktop PC and GTA runs on medium settings, so in order to play it on a laptop I would need at least the same performance.

There's a difference between the game only just being able to run and running smoothly with high detail settings.

I'm fully aware that you can buy a £499 laptop with a Radeon HD3650 512MB graphics card, which is fanstastic value for money and one which I posted earlier. Unfortunately although you will be able to play most games on this, you will have to lower the details on the some of latest games.

Getting a current gen card like a 280GTX in a laptop for under £2k is
great value when compared to bigger name brands like Alienware, Dell, Sony, etc.
If you really love playing PC games in all their glory, gaming on a laptop is much more expensive than the equivalent desktop computer, but the prices are getting more reasonable.

Edit: You're right Notebookcheck is an excellent resource, here's the link:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

THe person you first tried to help does not want the laptop for gaming !!

Pitchshifter

I KNOW!! But maybe someone else might be interested.

old_codger1

Frankly, if they're really that much into gaming they'd be better off not wasting their money on a laptop which can play them and spending the money, (£1700 did you say???), on buying a decent laptop for normal stuff and a desktop for gaming because it'll be a lot cheaper overall... plus they'll have two computers

You can get a decent PC for gaming for way less than a thousand pounds and a decent laptop for £350-500.

Pitchshifter

How many more people are going to come here and say the bleedin obvious.

I should have known better, I don't spose many people reading this board would be in the market for such things as high end gaming notebooks. OH LOOK WHAT A MASSIVE GENERALISATION.

It's a small niche market but someone may need, want and be prepared to pay for a high performance gaming laptop computer which they can use on the go. If they were looking for such an item then all I was doing was informing of a place to get one which is great value, thereby SAVING someone lots of MONEY.

JDPower

Pitchshifter wrote: »

I should have known better, I don't spose many people reading this board would be in the market for such things as high end gaming notebooks. OH LOOK WHAT A MASSIVE GENERALISATION.

It's a small niche market but someone may need, want and be prepared to pay for a high performance gaming laptop computer which they can use on the go. If they were looking for such an item then all I was doing was informing of a place to get one which is great value, thereby SAVING someone lots of MONEY.

But this thread is for cheapest decent laptop, not cheapest high performance laptop. So it's not exactly a generalisation to say most people reading this thread won't be in the market for a high end laptop.

Not having a dig, just pointing out that your advice may be a little misplaced on this thread.

Pitchshifter

The point is to find the cheapest decent laptop whatever range that maybe and for whatever use you may have, that is my only point.

"Decent laptop" is open to wide interpretaion.

Anyway I found some information and I just wanted to share it, that was all.