Refurbed laptop - are specs suitable for uni and home?

georgiac

I need to buy a laptop and have never done so before. I'm not techie and don't really want to have to change bits later if I can help it.


I read about Dell Outlet as I've always had Dell Pc's amd a Dell laptop from work in the past. I am a little unsure about buying a refurb but wondered if anyone has any experience?



I need one for the usual stuff, word processing and office apps. A bit of photoshopping and possibly and small amount of video editing but only for fun





One I have found has the following spec:



Inspiron 15 - 5570 Windows 10 Tray load DVD Drive
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-8550U (Quad Core, up to 4.00 GHz, 8MB Cache, 15W)
15.6 Inch Display
1 TB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Primary 3-cell 42W/HR Battery
128 GB Solid State Hard Drive
8GB (1x8GB) 2400MHz DDR4 Non-ECC
Certified Refurbished


Please may I ask opinions about the suitability of the spec and buying second hand?


Thanks

System

More than sufficient, I'd say actually overkill. Nothing wrong with buying refurb from Dell.

Browntoa

As above .....it's fine

But I'm sure someone will try to put you off by saying it's not got X,y or z or it's not the latest processor etc

It will cope fine with anything you throw at it in a normal home environment , watching video etc

Wouldn't do high end gaming but suspect not something you would do

georgiac

Thanks for your inputs, the closest it will get to gaming is the odd bout of solitaire!


I looked at a couple of forums but people were discussing processors, speeds and stuff I hadn't even heard of and won't affect what this machine will be used for.



I agree about the overkill, but the price was far cheaper than the model we'd seen in store with far inferior spec and either/ or hdd's but not both, especially with 15% discount for students.


I wondered if we'd missed something obvious as I have never really bought a laptop before.


I'm also a little scared of buying a refurb and worried that it might look a little bashed up.

EveryWhere

georgiac wrote: »

Thanks for your inputs, the closest it will get to gaming is the odd bout of solitaire!


I looked at a couple of forums but people were discussing processors, speeds and stuff I hadn't even heard of and won't affect what this machine will be used for.



I agree about the overkill, but the price was far cheaper than the model we'd seen in store with far inferior spec and either/ or hdd's but not both, especially with 15% discount for students.


I wondered if we'd missed something obvious as I have never really bought a laptop before.


I'm also a little scared of buying a refurb and worried that it might look a little bashed up.

Similar experience; https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/refurbished-dell-inspiron-5570-coretm-i7-8550u-quad-core-win-pro-10-16-gb-ram-2tb-256-gb-ssd-dvd-drive-amd-radeon-dell-outlet-3010439

arciere

The only thing about refurb laptops is the battery: they are normally excluded from the base warranty, and if they are older than 2 years, you may need to replace them (may or may not).
That laptop is fine, if I have to change something, I wouldn't have 2 drives, rather just a bigger SSD. You can always store documents and files on external drives if you need to.
Video editing: although you've got a i7 CPU, it looks like the graphics card is integrated, so you won't have much help from that.

Browntoa

Many of these dell refurbishment units are virtually unmarked , their description of each one mentions any marking .

Some are simply returns that are either unused or virtually unused

I think the small SSD drive is the dell recovery partition ?

arciere

Browntoa wrote: »

I think the small SSD drive is the dell recovery partition ?

No, it wouldn't make much sense to use a SSD drive for a recovery partition. Most likely it's got two drives: SSD for Windows for fast boot-up speed, the HDD for storage.

50Twuncle

arciere wrote: »

No, it wouldn't make much sense to use a SSD drive for a recovery partition. Most likely it's got two drives: SSD for Windows for fast boot-up speed, the HDD for storage.

Dell uses Hybrid drives

elsien

I had a refurb from eBay Argos outlet. I suspect it was one that had been returned as soon as it was bought. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, looked new, been going strong for a few years now.

arciere

50Twuncle wrote: »

Dell uses Hybrid drives

The 5570 has got two drives, most likely the SSD is a m.2 drive.