Need a new Laptop - Help

CelticGhirl

Hi, I am needing to buy a laptop, budget is around £400 and I’m not bothered if it’s brand new or refurbished.  I will need it for general browsing, storing photos, and to hook it to my tv for watching the odd football game due to having a virtual season ticket.  Can anyone recommend one or give me advice on the best specs to look for?  Thanks 

JJ_Egan

How are you going to Hook it to TV >??

Neil_Jones

If the TVs new enough you may not need to physically "hook" it up.  You should be able to mirror it.

Cisco001

Probably looking for something with Ryzen 3 4300u and SSD

CelticGhirl

I would Probably use an hdmi for the tv.  

TheRightOne

CelticGhirl said:

Hi, I am needing to buy a laptop, budget is around £400 and I’m not bothered if it’s brand new or refurbished.  I will need it for general browsing, storing photos, and to hook it to my tv for watching the odd football game due to having a virtual season ticket.  Can anyone recommend one or give me advice on the best specs to look for?  Thanks 

If this had a solid state drive fitted, it would have been a more attractive proposition:https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Inspiron-17-3000-3793-10th-i3-3-4ghz-1005G1-1TB-HDD-8GB-17-3-FHD-BLACK/303661003136

Would have been so easy to have marketed it with a pre-fitted NVMe SSD.

You could do it yourself, with an extra £45: https://www.awd-it.co.uk/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-256gb-m.2-ssd-pcie-gen3x4-internal-solid-state-drive.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVe96-F7V4g
In order to have a super fast Boot drive for Windows, keeping the 1 TB HDD for general storage.
Though I imagine that you won't bother yourself with all of that malarky. Plus it takes it over budget.
These days, I wouldn't run a PC without an SSD.

bobfredbob

I'd start by deciding how many photos you want to store and where you want to use the laptop.  If you edit home videos then they can take a lot of space.  Are you keeping all photos you ever take, or just the best?

So, for specs:  An SSD is a non-spinning disk and is fast, silent, and cool since it uses little battery power; but often very small so you can't get a lot of photos/videos on it.  A spinning disk (typically >128GB in the £400 price range) is slower (but fast enough), can get a bit warm in a laptop and cause lower battery life due to having to spin, but is much much bigger (around 10x bigger for the price range in Currys).  So, it depends if you're planning on sitting at a table with the power plugged in, or doing it in the park on battery.

Are the photos valuable?  If so, perhaps you need an external USB disk to do a backup.  Or use "Google Photos" or "Apple iCloud Photos" to store your photos, in which case they have the big versions and your laptop just keeps smaller versions.

What are you using to watch the football?  Perhaps a "Now TV Stick" will work and be easier?  They're often heavily discounted to a few pounds.  Or a Fire Stick?

For your laptop price range, I'd try and get 8GB memory since more memory often makes a machine feel snappier.  I'd probably also go for an SSD, do editing of recent photos on the laptop, and when finished, plug in an external disk and move them over to free up space on the SSD; or upload them to Google.

Intel vs. AMD probably won't make that much difference for new laptops for your usage.  I'd avoid older second hand AMDs unless they are "AMD Ryzen."