Could I please have your opinion on a laptop I am thinking of purchasing?

Tropez

glicky wrote: »

Thank you so much Tropez. I'm going to buy the one from John Lewis with 8gb of ram on it. You are right, it's got a wonderful write up and from John Lewis it's even more reasonable than from other places, plus a 2 year guarantee.

Thank you for your hard work. :beer:

No problem, I hope you're happy with it.

If you encounter any issues (such as Windows 8.1 and it's silly tiles) drop me a PM and I'll help you out.

almillar

General advice with no techy knowledge required - don't buy tech stuff from very - they're not competitively priced as NiftyDigits proved to the OP up the thread. If you see something you like on very, check the prices elsewhere.

HarryMcGarry

Tropez, may I say what a pleasure it is to find some feedback that isn't condescending and is written in plain English for non-techies? When I searched this morning for "best budget laptops" the first article said something along the lines of "if you can only stretch to £600, this isn't terrible". Not all of us are gamers or graphic designers and willing to spend 4 figures on a laptop!


Anyhoo, flattery over. I've looked at the Very website and am very tempted by i7, SSHD version of the Lenovo. Once the £100 credit and VAT cashback are factored in, it is a cracking deal (if slightly over what I was hoping to pay). Do you have an opinion on the Flex 2-15? It also qualifies for the £100 credit and VAT cashback, making it just under £400. Would post a link but, as a newbie, I can't.


Cheers in advance.

Tropez

HarryMcGarry wrote: »

Tropez, may I say what a pleasure it is to find some feedback that isn't condescending and is written in plain English for non-techies? When I searched this morning for "best budget laptops" the first article said something along the lines of "if you can only stretch to £600, this isn't terrible". Not all of us are gamers or graphic designers and willing to spend 4 figures on a laptop!


Anyhoo, flattery over. I've looked at the Very website and am very tempted by i7, SSHD version of the Lenovo. Once the £100 credit and VAT cashback are factored in, it is a cracking deal (if slightly over what I was hoping to pay). Do you have an opinion on the Flex 2-15? It also qualifies for the £100 credit and VAT cashback, making it just under £400. Would post a link but, as a newbie, I can't.


Cheers in advance.

Hey there. Glad you found what I said helpful.

I'm going to assume you're on about the i5 version of the Flex-2 since you say it comes to under £400 with the discounts applied. It's decent enough. The graphics chip is an nVidia 820M which is entry-level as far as mobile computer graphics go. Not terrible, not special. I gather you won't be gaming and doing graphic design so this is likely perfectly suitable.

What I might be inclined to say though is that if you're not doing anything overly powerful on your system, you could actually go for the i3 version because peculiarly the i3 version actually comes with an SSHD, whereas the i5 doesn't so you have this strange situation where the i3 version, although having less processing power, may actually access your most frequently used applications faster because of the flash memory complimenting its storage. It does only have 500Gb of storage though, so if you download a lot of files this might be something to think about - although by the time you fill it up, the chances are you could get external storage and still have saved money. Seagate do a range of high capacity external storage solutions at pretty reasonable prices.

There's 2Gb less memory but 6Gb should still be ample for most casual users.

If it's a case that you're going to be doing a bit of Microsoft Office (or equivalent), some browsing, some streaming and don't need to be doing all that stuff at the exact same time, then the i3 might represent a better deal here. You don't get the VAT cashback from Lenovo (as it is only available on systems costing £500 or more) but you do get the £100 credit from Very which knocks the price down to £300 (depending on how exactly this credit is applied, I would check the details on that).

Now as for the system itself, you are paying a premium for what is presumed to be a convenience of having a touchscreen and being able to flip your laptop around and use it as a sort of hybrid tablet, although without being able to detach the screen entirely. This could be useful if you intend to watch a lot of movies on it while it sits on a table in front of you, or perhaps on a tray in bed, but may be one of those things that sounds quite cool in theory but you never use it in practice. You can't really use this as a tablet, as the screen doesn't appear to fold all the way over, so it is just a laptop with slightly more flexibility in how you position the screen. Does this seem like something that would be worth it for you?

So yeah, basically, if you're not going to need to do a lot of more intensive multi-tasking and you're not running anything particularly powerful but you do like the sound of the flexible screen, I'd really consider that i3 with the SSHD. If you do think you might need to do a bit of multi-tasking though of more demanding applications then the i5 might be better.

Also do shop around as I can't confirm that Very definitely has the cheapest price, even with the discounts on these particular machines.

Edited to add: Mistake on my part. There's a handful of different i3 options on Very's website. I was comparing them with the specs listed on Lenovo's so I got them right and still ended up getting them wrong! The i3 one I referred to actually only has 4Gb RAM and doesn't have a Full HD display. The 6GB Full HD one is £499 so still only comes down to £399 when you apply the credit (and sadly avoids qualifying for the VAT back offer by £1!).

The i5 one is only 1366 x 768 resolution as well. So it's really going to boil down to whether you believe that the screen positioning thing is worth it, otherwise you could get a better specced laptop without that feature for a similar, or lower price. None of them are bad laptops though.

HarryMcGarry

Thanks for taking the time to reply in such depth, Tropez. I'm going to go for the i5 with 8GB of memory. We also have a ASUS T100 and we're quite used to the touchscreen now so it would be good to have the continuity between the 2. Also, I'm a touch typer so I wondered about attaching a 'proper' keyboard and, in that case, it could be quite useful to use the stand position.


Delivery due Monday!


Cheers.