Best laptop under £500?

Spartan

I want to buy a laptop for £500 or under - basically I want the best possible for that price. I am not a gamer, so spangly gaming tech isn't really necessary. Mainly I surf t'internet, listen to music (although I know laptops aren't great for sound quality), a bit of photo editing and use Office for work things - basic stuff. I'd like a solid performer with a biggish screen for watching iPlayer etc.

This is the best I have come up with so far - does anyone know of a better? (Either this laptop at a cheaper price or a better laptop altogether!?)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-17-3-inch-notebook-Pentium-2-13Ghz/dp/B004M2J9BS/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I22EQ948QBOXAQ&colid=2XU3QFFRDX0QU

I can get Nectar points using Amazon, not sure of any other way to get a discount or cashback...

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated

GlynD

You know they're all very much of a muchness and all are protected under warranty and UK terms of sale legislation. If it were me, I'd go for the one with the biggest and fastest hard drive. That way it won't seem slow to use compared to a PC. See if you can cajole extra memory out of the seller as well or at least persuade them to fit it for you if you buy it - it's not that expensive. (of course you might be adept enough to fit that yourself) 4GB is really the minimum memory you want these days.

Spartan

Well that Samsung R730 has 4GB RAM and 500 GB HDD (I'm copying and pasting - I don't really know a great deal about what these sizes mean). So far as I have found this is about the biggest I'm going to get for £500, but I still keep looking to see if I can squeeze any extra features / freebies / cashback etc... out of my money!

Would hate to buy something then discover I missed a great deal somewhere...

AirCooledHeaven

Hi, I just bought one of these and I'm very pleased with it, delivered next day and very good aftersales service. What particularly attracted me to it was the dedicated ATI graphics controller, rather than the usual integrated graphics. Then if you want piece of mind you can buy an acer extended 3 year warranty for 50 quid


http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_Aspire_5741G_971095.html

grumpycrab

Spartan wrote: »

I want to buy a laptop for £500 or under - basically I want the best possible for that price...

2 things to look for in a laptop I suggest.

1. processor. You cannot (easily) upgrade this so you should get the best for your budget.
The Samsung listed has a poor processor for you budget ie
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+P6100+%40+2.00GHz
Shows its performance benchmark is 1524.

Your requirements are quite simple but you should be looking for one of the newer processors e.g. i3-380M which will provide this benchmark
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3+380M+%40+2.53GHz
Or, better, an i3-2310M -> http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-2310M+%40+2.10GHz

2. The second thing to look for is the warranty. Generally laptops don't have a great reliability record so look for something with a 2 year free warranty or chose a make where the warranty can be cheaply extended.

Here's a good starter -> http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/lenovo-edge-15-i3-4gb-500gb-3yr-onsite-warranty-479-99-379-99-after-cashback-sav/923628
Great price and warranty but claiming the cashback (from Lenovo) may be a bit of a pain.

Spartan

grumpycrab wrote: »

Here's a good starter -> http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/lenovo-edge-15-i3-4gb-500gb-3yr-onsite-warranty-479-99-379-99-after-cashback-sav/923628
Great price and warranty but claiming the cashback (from Lenovo) may be a bit of a pain.

Wow - that one looks great! And thanks for the heads-up re processor. It's stuff like that that I just don't know anything about...