Need advice on buying a laptop - under £800

neverloggedin

Looking for a good laptop which will last me for some years. I will be gaming as well so would be very preferable if it has a great graphics card. I will be playing the latest games, maybe not the most graphically demanding but decent latest games at low-med settings (The better the graphics card...the better!)

I also multi-task a lot i.e. watch a movie, open lots of tabs etc. so need a good processor

I don't mind if its a bit heavy, not more than 4kg though please. As a student, I will be carrying it around but 80% of the time it will be on my desk at home.

No Macbook, as I intend to stay with Windows.

Thanks,
Your help would be appreciated

M00se_2

have a look at https://www.novatech.co.uk good kit, well priced

dsavvy83

Oh do you have any idea of how many laptops there are out there?

Just to let you know, Macbooks will run both OSX and Windows XP + software and you can switch between the two. With a pc laptop you cannot run OSX software.

First of all are you aware of the processors and the latest graphics cards on there?
i3, i5 and i7, for gaming but depending on what type of gaming you do i would recommend i5 or i7 processor,
as a starter i would will show you this laptop http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_N55_Core_i7_Window_7_Laptop__N55SL-S2019V/version.asp don't worry laptopsdirect are a good company, they use to be my competition.

But the graphics card in this laptop will give you decent performance for most modern games.

So i would suggest you do research around these types of specs, don't worry about the ram and hard drive space, that can be easily upgraded at a lot less cost than you think, what you really need to look at is the Processor speed and graphics card as those cannot be upgraded in a laptop.

Asus is a very good brand in most computers you will find asus parts, Samsung make nice laptops too, I use to sell those and the build quality was very good and they also make most of their own components. I tend to stay away from HP and Toshiba now because i think they are a bit too expensive for what they are and HP's customer service is terrible i hated dealing with them.

But don't forget to go down your local independant computer shop as they tend to have models which the major retailers wont have and play around with them, try and see how long it takes to load programs how many can it handle before it starts to lose perfomance? and there are lots of good tricks to get the most out of your laptop. But first find one that you would be happy using as it will probably be with you for a few years.

neverloggedin

Thanks for the replies. I am looking for an i5/i7 processor. Does a better processor improve graphic performance?

What about Dell? Are they any good? As Dell XPS 15 doesn't look bad with those specs.

So far I have noted some decent laptops with my asking price with good specs :

Asus N55
Dell XPS 15
HP Envy 15

If there are any other good 15" laptops, please say Which of the three do you think is the best?

m5rcc

Asus N55SF - Quad-core power, fast Nvidia graphics and Bang & Olufsen speakers, and all for a very good price

Lifeforms

I bought the Dell XPS 15 (slighly adjusted iirc) and I'm more than happy about it. Plays Skyrim quite well, which is pretty much why I bought it
Doing other stuff, like browsing, running vid editing software etc hasn't thrown any problems up, but that isn't really multiple programs etc.
For the gaming side I can say it's fine though.
Would recommend you getting an SSD alongside a normal HDD to improve those loading times!

I did mine on a few offers, free postage, free upgrade of memory (iirc) and £50 cash back from quidco. But total price was £700 for an i7 2nd Gen, 6gb memory, 2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M Graphics Card, and 500gb HDD.

Though I wish I'd gone and had the SSD as well after.

paul_and_shark

Lifeforms wrote: »

I bought the Dell XPS 15 (slighly adjusted iirc) and I'm more than happy about it. Plays Skyrim quite well, which is pretty much why I bought it
Doing other stuff, like browsing, running vid editing software etc hasn't thrown any problems up, but that isn't really multiple programs etc.
For the gaming side I can say it's fine though.
Would recommend you getting an SSD alongside a normal HDD to improve those loading times!

I did mine on a few offers, free postage, free upgrade of memory (iirc) and £50 cash back from quidco. But total price was £700 for an i7 2nd Gen, 6gb memory, 2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M Graphics Card, and 500gb HDD.

Though I wish I'd gone and had the SSD as well after.

Sorry for the daft question, but what do you mean by SSD as well, as i am currently looking at the Dell XPS15 at the moment as well

m5rcc

paul_and_shark wrote: »

Sorry for the daft question, but what do you mean by SSD as well, as i am currently looking at the Dell XPS15 at the moment as well

Presumably have both an SSD and a normal SATA HD.

paul_and_shark

m5rcc wrote: »

Presumably have both an SSD and a normal SATA HD.

SSD ?

I was asking what it is............ what does SSD mean

TadleyBaggie

Solid State Disk, i.e. a device that acts as a disk drive but contains no moving parts, generally much faster than a traditional disk drive.

Lifeforms

The SSD, as said before, is Solid State Disc. It runs much faster than a normal sata/ide HDD. It is quiet, quicker, less susceptible to shock, less heat producing.

BUT

It has its own drawbacks. Essentially it has limited write cycles, after which it may become unreliable. And it is really quite expensive per GB compared with a standard HDD.

To overcome the downsides, whilst still benefiting from the upsides a lot of people tend to use them in conjunction with an normal HDD.

OS and games (sometimes) etc are installed on the SSD, whilst anything that writes often (anything you save on your computer essentially) is done on the HDD. Prolonging the SSD life, and benefiting from it both.

Naturally this does increase cost by a hundred and something plus upwards. (depending on the size of the SSD.) And by size, well under 500GB. IIRC from the last time I looked. it's about 120GB for about the same price. a quid a gig roughly.

I guess it only benefits those who really do want speed over price. Or those who are still frustrated that it loads slowly (but plays fine) with loading from shut down, or from start up of game loading. (for those who use it with gaming)


Actually, as an Edit really. Whilst I say limited write cycles, we're talking lots, LOTS, not like the equivalent of weeks/months use. So to be fair, if you can deal with a small sized drive in your laptop/desktop there is not really massive reason to run two at a time unless you are trying to maximise price versus length of life time overall.

Just randomly looking at a 512GB Cruicial SSD, priced about £500 it's talking about 1.2million hours worth for MTBF. (mean time between failure, manufacturers way of saying how long it'll last)

I think eventually SSD will be the way forward, but they're getting massively better from when they first came out, size wise, and price per gig wise.