Best budget laptop for school 17 January at 11:13AM in Techie Stuff 25 replies 1.4K views

truescot

Hi,

Need to buy a laptop asap for my 16 year old son for studying for Higher exams. Nothing fancy - NO gaming etc. Internet, MS Teams, email, Word. Obvious budget pressures due to the cost of living. New or refurb fine.

Any advice?

Thanks

debitcardmayhem

Budget is the key factor ... how big a budget. Saves people recommending too expensive.

truescot

I suppose I would start with the cheapest laptop money can buy, and decide if that would do the job for school work and nothing else. And if not, why not. I'd like to think no more than £300, and significantly less if possible.

gefnew

Something like this.
HP Laptop 14-eg0001na 4G LTE with 20GB of EE data, 14 inch, Snapdragon 7c, 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC, Windows 11 - Silver £149.99 @ Amazon | hotukdeals

truescot

gefnew said:

Something like this.
HP Laptop 14-eg0001na 4G LTE with 20GB of EE data, 14 inch, Snapdragon 7c, 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC, Windows 11 - Silver £149.99 @ Amazon | hotukdeals

This looks great. What would be the downsides at this price?

debitcardmayhem

It's an arm chip I wouldn't, eMMC ram too not the best for upgrading.

here are some others https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/laptops-under-300-pounds?sortOrder=1&pageNumber=2

Tucosalamanca

I'd say minimum i3 processor, 8gb ram and 128gb SSD (larger if possible). Anything lower spec'd and I'd politely suggest that you're throwing money away, if you want it to be suitable for 16-22yr olds.
Ebay currently have a 10% sale running, I'm looking at this one for my son but need to do some more research (how upgradeable it is) before purchasing.
Yes, it's significantly over your budget (£449 with discount applied) but will provide good service for a number of years.
ASUS VivoBook 14 Laptop Core i5-1135G7 16GB RAM 512GB SSD 14" FHD IPS Win11 Home 4711081503019 | eBay

Tucosalamanca

gefnew said:

Something like this.
HP Laptop 14-eg0001na 4G LTE with 20GB of EE data, 14 inch, Snapdragon 7c, 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC, Windows 11 - Silver £149.99 @ Amazon | hotukdeals

Windows 11 will barely run on this machine, 4GB RAM although listed as minimum spec is not really adequate in 2023 (and will be woeful by say 2026)

truescot

This is where my complete ignorance comes in. "Throwing your money away" whilst appreciated, doesn't really mean anything to me in terms of what would be the practical problems my son would encounter when using it day to day. For instance if he was accessing TEAMS, past papers online, youtube and other websites or create word documents, what would hinder him?

Also I've never upgraded a laptop in my life. Use it for a few years then get a new one. Shelling out £450 straight after Christmas is not really an option unless anything cheaper would be actually useless. 

km1500

This is £399 but 100 off with the code SAVE100 so £299

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptop-computers-2-in-1-pcs/inspiron-15/spd/inspiron-15-3515-laptop/cn31503sc

Not sure how long the sale is on for.

daveyjp

It depends on what the school expects and recommends, but my daughter does all her school work on a tablet with a keyboard.

With web based Office 365 and cloud computing the school advise this is more than adequate.