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Hi, I need to buy a laptop for my 11 year-old. It's mainly for doing homework and research on the internet for school but he'd also really like to be able to play the PC version of Minecraft on it too, so that's going to increase the required spec in terms of processor speed, RAM etc.
I'm aware of the minimum spec requirements for Minecraft, but I was wondering if anybody's bought a specific laptop in the last few months that they can recommend? Basically looking for as cheap as possible whilst still being able to cope with the demands of Minecraft 🙂
Thanks.
I know you said laptop but if it's not going to be carried round then get a proper PC with a decent screen and keyboard etc. A laptop is not something you should be sat using for hours and hours.
That said if you do want a laptop then a quick look suggests minecraft needs a proper graphics card. I'd be looking at a Dell 17". They will be very cheap for what you get as they are big, thick and heavy. The larger screen will be much better for your kid to use for longer and less likely to be carried around and used in bed etc.
That's a surprising difficult question.
Simply put, Minecraft will run on anything new, or indeed pretty much anything from the last few years.
However, to make the leap from Min requirement (aka almost anything) to recommended spec you need dedicated graphics which is a complete game changer price wise.
If we focus just on a decent laptop that will do for homework, browsing and run minecraft for maybe 5 years if they don't drop it.
This would be nice:
8th Gen i3, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD (M.2)
It's pretty much the spec Laptop I chose for work for myself and I buy IT hardware on the daily.
Note, 128GB isn't a lot, but Minecraft isn't big, but obviously Minecraft won't be their everything for ever.
If you want to make the leap to dedicated graphics, this is the cheapest one I'd buy on LDs
It's a 7th Gen i5 which is about par with an 8th Gen i3, same ram, same storage - higher res screen and a not amazing 940M GPU.
We bought our eldest a Lenovo core i3, 15” screen, pretty sure it’s 4gb of RAM, 1Tb HD. It plays Minecraft fine, much better than I expected it to. The screen is excellent. He’s moved on from Minecraft now & TBH, he found the PC version just a faff & ended up back on my old Xbox360 mist of the time. He still sits on it now. His latest laptop games are an Airport Sim & a pretty cool Rollercoaster Design program. The latest incarnation of his laptop appears to have a SSD which should speed things up a bit.
It’s light, ok it’s not built like a business machine, but it’s so light compared to my 15” work Dell Precision. It must be 1/3 of the weight.
I can’t believe someone suggested buying a child a 17” laptop, it would take all their strength just to lift the thing let alone haul it to School 🙂
I was glad to downsize mine from 17”.
To be fair though, it played Minecraft well with its Nvidia card, i7 chip & 32g of RAM. 🙂
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8333494
Why does an eleven year old need a laptop? Is he going to be taking it to work?
Why does an eleven year old need a laptop?
For browsing popular high-bandwith websites away from the prying eyes of his mum.
What does the school require?
Thump (S1 in Scotland) has been issued with a Chromebook by his school.
This gets carried to school everyday and is used for all homework.
These can be picked up for £100 refurbished - and might be the easiest way of solving that problem.
Minecraft - no idea.
Both my 9 and 11 year old do all their homework plus additional over and above work via a web portal, but they don't need to take their own laptop to school. My eldest has a cheap Windows laptop for this, can't remember the spec, but it was about £350 and is an HP, and she also plays Sims on it no issues at all, so Minecraft should be easy.