Laptop for my son

paul2louise

I am constantly in battle with my DS using the laptop. So santa is going to help hopefully. I dont want to spend more than £350. Not sure what these chromebooks are all about, are they a google/android version of a laptop. He likes gaming like roblox and minecraft but i do need it for school programmes for homework and online learning. I looked on John Lewis website and all the cheapish laptops are o/s. Any advice on good place to buy one from too, currys, argos pc world. Thankyou

November2

I've spent a lot of time googling this and still no wiser. I too have been looking for a budget laptop for a child to play Roblox but just can't seem to find any straightforward or helpful advice.  I do know Chromebooks are not suitable.   My Nephew had an Asus a few years back which cost around £290 and that wouldn't play anything nor would it even update windows so I'd avoid those.  Acer has cropped up a couple of times as being suitable yet when reading the reviews some say yes and some say no for Roblox!    

tacpot12

Anything that costs less than £600 new is going to be a dog. You need to be spending £6-700 to get a new laptop with reasonable performance. I've just bought a laptop Core i5 laptop second-hand on eBay for £160. Performance using Windows 10 is more than adequate. You just need to be very careful what you buy and who you buy it from. Lenovo/HP/Fujitsu/Toshiba will tend to be around the £250 mark on eBay, and Asus/Acer will be a bit cheaper. You need a Core i5 processor. Core i3's are just not fast enough for Windows. An SSD drive for the operating system will further improve performance. 128GB is fine for a child. If they want to play modern computer games, they need a gaming laptop which will cost £1000+, so if they want one of those, they need to get a part-time job. 

macman

Why don't you give him the laptop and buy a Chromebook for yourself? 
No constant OS updates, no antivirus needed, faster to boot, equivalent software available for most things (gaming being the exception, obviously). Plenty of choice from £200 upwards. I would never revert to a Windows OS.

paul2louise

a couple i have been looking at on currys website look ok. There isnt a lot of stock about. Argos is useless. I am right in thinking i need 8GB RAM. I saw one with Intel core i5 but only had 4GB ram.
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-14-cf2503sa-14-laptop-intel-core-i5-256-gb-ssd-white-10212897-pdt.html
i have seen these 2
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/acer-swift-1-sf114-32-14-intel-pentium-laptop-256-gb-ssd-silver-10193945-pdt.html
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-14-cf2508sa-14-laptop-intel-core-i3-256-gb-ssd-silver-10215345-pdt.html