17.3" laptop for £400 (ish)

esuhl

My sister asked if I could suggest a "good" laptop for her. (Groan! I've no idea what spec laptops are on the market!)

She'd really like a 17.3" screen, and "ideally" she has a budget of £400. (She knows I'll blow the budget! )

She wants it to work on multiple large spreadsheets, and general home/office stuff, and to connect to her work's VPN. Nothing too taxing.

The best I've come up with is this Lenovo IdeaPad 330 for £430:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8628697

It only has 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 5,400 RPM HDD, but they can be upgraded. What I'm most concerned about are the CPU specs:

Intel Core i3 I3-8130U processor.
Dual core processor.
2.2GHz processor speed.

Is that processor "good enough", or a false economy as it would need upgrading sooner than spending a little bit more...?


Are there any better 17" laptops she should consider?



Cheers

debitcardmayhem

esuhl wrote: »

My sister asked if I could suggest a "good" laptop for her. (Groan! I've no idea what spec laptops are on the market!)

She'd really like a 17.3" screen, and "ideally" she has a budget of £400. (She knows I'll blow the budget! )

She wants it to work on multiple large spreadsheets, and general home/office stuff, and to connect to her work's VPN. Nothing too taxing.

The best I've come up with is this Lenovo IdeaPad 330 for £430:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8628697

It only has 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 5,400 RPM HDD, but they can be upgraded. What I'm most concerned about are the CPU specs:
Is that processor "good enough", or a false economy as it would need upgrading sooner than spending a little bit more...?


Are there any better 17" laptops she should consider?



Cheers

If she considers re-furbs then she can blow that out the window in performance terms.
e.g. Not a recommendation just the first I looked at swap out the HDD for SSD ...https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-5-a517-51-17.3-inch-ci5-7200u-8gb-1tb-uma-no-odd-win10hm-a1-nx.gswek.004/version.asp

Chino

esuhl wrote: »

She wants it to work on multiple large spreadsheets

So is a display resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels good enough for her? If that or less is what she's used to then perhaps, I suppose, but I wouldn't have thought so.

debitcardmayhem

Oh and someone more nifty with me on specs will come up with something from SomeWhere.

debitcardmayhem

Chino wrote: »

So is a display resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels good enough for her? If that or less is what she's used to then perhaps, I suppose, but I wouldn't have thought so.

Ooops of course the one I suggested for a look above was not full HD

EveryWhere

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Oh and someone more nifty with me on specs will come up with something from SomeWhere.

Unfortunately, because of an earlier unpleasantness, it's not going to happen.

esuhl

Chino wrote: »

So is a display resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels good enough for her? If that or less is what she's used to then perhaps, I suppose, but I wouldn't have thought so.

She currently has a failing 15" laptop that is really old and slow. I'm sure I can fix it up for her (de-fluff/reinstall) but it's the bigger screen she really wants.


But yes, a decent 1920x1080 screen would be better... :-/ But for that price, I've not been able to find anything.

EveryWhere

Over budget

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9189207 IPS screen. YouTube video has TN screen.
https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c06247078
https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/vivobook-17-x705ua/CT11581118

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ocUuCHf2Y

Grade A refurb on budget

https://www.xsonly.com/collections/17-3/products/refurbished-asus-vivobook-x705ua-i3-8130u-4gb-1tb-173-1920x1080-intel-uhd-620-w10-90nb0ev1-m06620

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Asus-VivoBook-R702UA-GC523T-i3-8130u-4Gb-1Tb-17-3-1920x1080-Windows-10/352662665733

US keyboard

https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/ct250mx500ssd4

Both would have a 250 GB M.2 SATA SSD boot drive and 1TB HDD storage drive.

No reason sister should suffer...

agrinnall

I'd be having a look on the Dell Outlet website. Note that their headline price doesn't include VAT.



https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh&dgc=IR&cid=296386&lid=5667687&~ck=mn

Cisco001

Is it has to be laptop?

Could it be a used £200 tower with 2 monitors?

EveryWhere

agrinnall wrote: »

I'd be having a look on the Dell Outlet website. Note that their headline price doesn't include VAT.



https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh&dgc=IR&cid=296386&lid=5667687&~ck=mn

What was there? It states "sold out!" Cheapest I see with an IPS screen is £774. Without £642. So cannot imagine there was anything close to £400.