Used laptop advice as a desktop replacement

elsmandino

Hi there.

I would be grateful for some general advice on obtaining a used laptop - only have a £350 budget (possibly £400 at a stretch) and so am thinking of going second down the second hand route.

By way of background, I have a rather old Desktop PC with a large tower but we simply don't have the room for it now that my wife works full time from home and I work from home three days per week (as a result of Covid).

Any general advice would be much appreciated.

Based upon my initial research, used Lenovo Thinkpads seem to be a really good idea as:

1. They are office devices, traditionally, and thus unlikely to have been thrashed with gaming on them
2. There are loads of them out there, meaning that they are cheap and there are loads of cheap replacement parts
3. They are highly upgradable compared to other brands
4. They are supposedly really rugged
5. They work particularly well with Linux (which is something I dip into, sometimes)

I have had a look on Ebay but I am a bit wary of spending so much on something that might be a dud - would one of the online refurbishing laptop companies be a better bet?

What sort of specs should I be looking for?  I realise that I cannot get the very latest generation of CPU chip for my budget but I don't want to buy something so old that it is barely any better than the desktop chip it is replacing (which is an i3-2105).

Any advice would be much appreciated.

My only real requirements are that it comes with a 15" screen and be upgradable to 16GB RAM.

Thanks very much.

Olinda99

My advice eould be to get a laptop with a SSD rather than HDD

Why do you need 16gb  memory ?

Brie

I got this one new from John Lewis about a month back.  Not much more than you are stretching to.  Only 8 GB but it does have SDD

Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Laptop, Intel i5 Core Processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 15.6" Full HD, Graphite Grey Product code: 82712430
Qty: 1	£429.99

[Deleted User]

Hi,

might find something HERE.

elsmandino

Thank you - sorry, should have said that my desktop has a 1TB SSD in it so I will whip that out and put it into the new laptop.

16GB Ram is part futureproofing (as I tend not to update my equipment very often) but also because I occasionally use Reaper for recording music - which does tend to like the extra RAM.

elsmandino

Whoops sorry - more post whilst I was doing my reply.

I have no idea that Argos did refurbished - thank you.

Brie - unfortunately, that link did not work.  Bit of a shame as you sound like you got an amazing deal on that.

elsmandino

I was looking on one of those refurbished business laptop websites and found a deal on a Lenovo ThinkPad L580 that looks pretty good - 240GB SSD, 16GB RAM, i5-8350U, Windows 11 Standard for £352.50.

Has a few scratches on it (advertised as Grade C) but does come with 1 year warranty.

Do you think this looks worth considering?

I am a bit out of touch with CPUs (especially mobile ones) but 8th generation still seems to be pretty good in this day and age.

J_B

elsmandino said:

Thank you - sorry, should have said that my desktop has a 1TB SSD in it so I will whip that out and put it into the new laptop.

Are you sure it will fit?

Don't "rather old" desktops have larger 3½" drives, whereas laptops have 2½"

elsmandino

Yep - it is a modern 2.5" SSD that I picked up during Amazon's last BlackFriday.  The only upgrade I have made in years.

gefnew

Quite few think pads here for you to browse through.
Refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad Laptops – itzoo

outtatune

Definitely recommend a refurbished Thinkpad for exactly the reasons given. Plenty of decent sellers on eBay; I've bought a couple that way myself. Look for sellers with huge (5000 and up) feedback ratings.

Be aware that there are loads of Thinkpad models so it can take time to figure out how decent any particular one is. I think your hardest task will be to find one with a 15" screen.