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I broke my nearly new laptop so after some bartering with the home insurance, I'm sitting here with a £750 voucher for PC World. I've never bothered with Black Friday but according to my colleagues I must wait until then before buying a replacement...
Busted laptop was a Lenovo Ideapad 700 series, the two big negatives for that was the super delicate micro-HDMI port, and rubbish battery life.
Anyone got any recommendations for replacements? Obviously any discounts will affect the final decision... I'd like a 13.3-14" IPS screen, SSD, metal or smart plastic case, decent battery, and ability to plug in two external monitors through a combination of either HDMI, USB-C, Mini-display port etc.
Ones that have caught my eye are the Lenovo Ideapad 500 series, a lower end Dell XPS, a Dell Envy model although I don't really need the touchscreen, or an Asus Zenbook, but I haven't seen those in the flesh as PC World sell them as online only. Left field option is the Microsoft surface but I think the thin/textured keyboard thing would annoy me and it looks like the screen rest would work best on a desk, and might be annoying for using on the sofa.
Any opinions welcome...
Dell XPS, it's my current work machine. Solid, fast, excellent battery, nice light charger if I had the cash I'd have one for home. Got the 7th Gen I7 and 16Gb which is hard to make it slow down.
Thanks, there are £1200 and £1300 models so they would depend if they are discounted and by much, I've never paid much attention to Black Friday, do they discount across the range or just offer big discounts on a few models?
Dell do decent sales and run a lot out through their outlet. No idea how much of a discount PC World do
Two weeks ago I bought from PC Curry World an Acer Swift 3 14" Intel Core i5 (8th generation) 8GB 256GB M.2 SSD for £599 (£50 discount at that time and now retail at £649).
For extra storage I am using an external USB 32 GB key dongle as it is only for work.
It is not a touch screen nor a super doper designer but merely a traditional square laptop design.
Based on the specs it seems to be the best value. Bluetooth is only 4.0 but apart from that there are plenty of ports for other things else so it is fine for me.
I have not used it yet as I am busy ... still need to install Microsoft office etc ...
😀
p/s: this one has IPS monitor and not the other version with shiny monitor that can cause reflection.
XPS is lovely, *officially* the worlds smallest, lightest 13” laptop, but they’re spendy, not sure you’d get much for £750.
I’m a bit in love with my ASUS Zenbook. They’re about £600 for the model I have (14” 8th gen i3, 4GB RAM 256gb). I upgraded to 8GB.
I sell IT equipment for a job, I wanted small, long battery, great 1080 screen (4K seems a bit pointless in 14”). i3 is perfect for me, I only use it for Office Suite stuff, my work is largely cloud based and we store documents in SharePoint so i5/7 is a waste of time, with the performance of the 8th gen chips I’d literally not see any gain from an i7.
Starts from cold in 6 seconds (I’m sad, I timed it) will do a full days work on a single charge without turning down the brightness to ‘mood lighting’.
Downsides:
Network port is only via USB3 adapter, but as I carry it in its little wallet thing I’ve never got it.
As with any small Laptop with a metal or strong plastic chassis it wobbles on any surface that’s not completely flat.
I got to test it side by side with an XPS (current gem, i7, 16GB, 1080) and it’s not quiet as nice, but it don’t cost £1700, and a Surface Pro (last gen, not the one that came out a few weeks back) way better, they’re great at what they’re great at and a total PITA the rest of the time, also spendy.
No, I don’t work for ASUS.
XPS is nice but the price will be more than 1k.
ASUS is fine but limited ports.
Lenovo is fine but I think it costs more for me at that time.
p/s: Acer Swift 2 is also "Network port is only via USB3 adapter, ..."
Look at x-stock and Europe for refurbished Dells, which are mostly machines returned either from the 30 day returns period or something that was doa and since replaced and retested. They can't then sell them as new so they become refurbished.
Have bought 4 or 5 like this and no problem and 3 year warranty of is a business model.
If money no object go for XPS ...
They already have the outlet for that
Just got one of these https://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop/laptops/latitude-7390-2-in-1/spd/latitude-13-7390-2-in-1-laptop/n019l7390132n1emea with the i7-8650, 16GB, and 256GB SSD, for slightly less than half price from the Dell Outlet
It's in perfect condition from what I can tell. Lovely little thing
Dell or Lenovo would be my go-to. Dell Outlet for bargains and Lenovo for build quality. You can always add money to the payout (if you have it). I paid £700 for a Dell laptop ten years ago and I'm typing on it right now.
Why have you got a PC World voucher rather than cash? Schoolboy error right there.
Get this one, 970 grams
Yeh its a PC World voucher, I had the option of cash via my insurance but to be honest its taken 4 weeks of wrangling to negotiate a laptop that is vaguely similar to my broken one (i.e. not 50% bigger and heavier) that when an email finally came through with yet another unsuitable replacement but as a voucher for £250 more than the models they have been proposing I jumped at it.
Also its an insurance gift card so I reckon I would have got less as a cash settlement, the gift card is £50 more than I originally paid for the laptop and I reckon they'd have stalled at that if it was a cash settlement.
It does limit me slightly but I work right next door to a massive PC World so its convenient anyway, thanks for all the advice.
I am leaning towards the Zenbook so I just need to get a look at a few...is Black Friday instore online or online, as the Zenbook isn't instore.
Black Friday gets worse and worse every year, I would imagine the only laptops appearing in offers will be old stock they're trying to sell off. Not necessarily a bad thing and if you're fine waiting until the 23rd before buying one you may as well wait but I wouldn't expect any current gen models you short-list now to be any cheaper on Black Friday (offers for which can be online or in-store or both, depends on the retailer and sometimes the specific offer)
Get this one, 970 grams
This one is better ^^^ 😀
I am leaning towards the Zenbook ...
Also a nice laptop.
Device's I'd consider:
Macbook Air:
The new one is just out, haven't seen it in person yet but I use my older gen one every day for personal use and love it.
Surface Laptops:
Just bought 200+ of these for work, lovely devices (not to be confused with the Surface Books or Surface Pros). Light, decent screen and keyboard.
XPS 13":
We have around 20 of these for our developers. Again lovely devices and more of a premium feel, you won't go wrong with one of these.
Two weeks ago I bought from PC Curry World an Acer Swift 3 14″ Intel Core i5 (8th generation) 8GB 256GB M.2 SSD for £599 (£50 discount at that time and now retail at £649).For extra storage I am using an external USB 32 GB key dongle as it is only for work.
It is not a touch screen nor a super doper designer but merely a traditional square laptop design.
Based on the specs it seems to be the best value. Bluetooth is only 4.0 but apart from that there are plenty of ports for other things else so it is fine for me.
I have not used it yet as I am busy … still need to install Microsoft office etc …
p/s: this one has IPS monitor and not the other version with shiny monitor that can cause reflection.
OP please don't get an acer swift. I'm on my third. On paper it is a brilliant laptop.
In practise, it's crap because the drivers are from Acer only and will not install from AMD,Realtek,Windows Update etc, and they are miles out of date and are seriously buggy. For example the Night Light windows feature results in trippy pink-o-vision. Playing 24 bit music results in static. Playing h265 video often results in a crash. Plugging in an SD card results in a bluescreen about 25% of the time. Resuming from sleep results in a reboot about 1/10 times.
The BIOS/firmware updates fix something and break something else everytime (currently the memory bus is running at half speed).
The power plug has gone loose already, and it has never ever been pulled or snagged.
Memory is not upgradeable.
Fingerprint reader is the slowest and most unreliable I've ever had.
So, an Acer then? 😉
They already have the outlet for that
yes, I know that as my first outlet laptop was from there, but at times their stock hasn't been good as they were selling them on to places like EuroPC and x-stock, which therefore had good stock.
Oh and a leftfield thought sell the PC world voucher and spend the cash where you want
P-JayMember
So, an Acer then?
Haha, well to be fair obviously kiwicraig has had better results with his swift than I have with mine. Maybe I've just been unlucky.
However I've owned both the the Intel i5 one and the AMD one (SF315-41) and all have had IMHO serious (but different) problems.
It is a fast machine at least thanks to the M2 SSD, but TBH any premium laptop should have that.
Yeah it's a bit 'Cracknfail' to dig Acer these days. We don't supply many as they tend to stay away from the Business market, very few models come with Pro OS.
I suppose as a purchaser I'm always wary of brands who offer the same like-for-like spec as Dell, HP etc for a lot less, and still cheaper than my usual go-to 'cheaper' brands like Fujitsu and Lenovo.
I have the higher spec Asus Zenbook 3 Deluxe (i7, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM) and love it. Not had it long but it replaced two older units, a big heavy-but-powerful HP Probook and a smaller Asus Transformer - it's a Macbook competitor, thin and light but powerful enough to run photo editing stuff quickly - I use Lightroom a lot and it's cracking for that.
Downsides - I've had to buy a few adapters and cables on top as it only has 3 USB-C ports, but it comes with a mini hub that includes a USB3 port and HDMI.
Upsides - It charges off any of the USB-C ports (including the one on the mini-hub so it's a darn sight easier to plug in. Also, since USB-C will do video, ethernet, etc it's easy to get and use adapters.
Update about my laptop Acer Swift 3.
All good and running as it should be but there plenty of unnecessary pre-installed software that need clearing out.
The Norton security trial software is a pain as I forgot to unhook it before uninstalling it so it pop up from time to time ... arrghhh ... will deal with that at a later stage. The pre-installed Firefox is 32bits so need to uninstall and to re-install a 64 bits version. No a problem.
However, if you wish to use Cortana you need to have a Microsoft account, which I have, but could never get it to work because Microsoft keeps saying wrong password etc ... so I cannot use Cortana or get onto Microsoft store whatever.
Windows update is fine as it automatically detected all Acer software updates and everything installed/updated properly.
Now I just have one more PDF software to install as PDF XChange reader is no longer free so need to use my older version.
OP please don’t get an acer swift. I’m on my third. On paper it is a brilliant laptop
I think most of the issues have been ironed out but then I uninstalled many of the software I don't use including all the music or movie or game related stuff.
This is just my work laptop so I need browser, Microsoft Office and some basic security features.
Never used Night Light so need to check that out but I want to mess with Cortana yet unable to for now ... argghhh ... Microsoft seems to want all your personal details to use their products by the looks of things.
😀
P jay. What's hp stuff like now days ?
I've used the business grey ones in the past and they have always been no problem
Toshiba Satellite??
What’s hp stuff like now days ?
Colleague bought a HP few weeks before me all well.
His last HP laptop lasted him for about 10 yrs.
Toshiba Satellite??
Have not seen that for ages ...
What’s hp stuff like now days ?
Colleague bought a HP few weeks before me all well.
His last HP laptop lasted him for about 10 yrs.
and the answer to the question is?
and the answer to the question is?
HP laptop is fine but not "sexy". Dull looking ... 😀
And has anyone noticed how many nowadays are only 4gb and non upgradeabe? Even though they are i3/i5 machines.
HP Elitebooks are cool looking , I use second hand ones as they are built strong , Lenovo at work = now they are the dullest looking of all but strong. Definitely get business level laptop if you can , they really are designed to last.
And has anyone noticed how many nowadays are only 4gb and non upgradeabe? Even though they are i3/i5 machines.
Yes, I noticed for most sub £1k laptops they come with fixed RAM (they are being considered as "value" (cheapo) laptop), hence I went for the 8GB to make sure it is slightly "future proof" but I guess as more apps get more RAM hungry even 8GB might not last that long before a new laptop is required.
I think now manufacturers/brands want us to buy more so take away the users' flexibility.
🙁
And has anyone noticed how many nowadays are only 4gb and non upgradeabe? Even though they are i3/i5 machines.
How many people are maxing out their ram these days? For the majority of people browsing and some light office is hardly tickling the chips on a modern laptop. It's not compulsory to buy one of them but it will do a lot of people who on reality need a tablet with a decent keyboard.
I've got 32 GB in my work laptop and still have Apps running out of memory! Also need a bigger SSD, filled up my 1 TB and can't get VMs to run properly on external SSDs (no idea why, USB-3 should be quick enough).
So typical user there footflaps.....
How many people are maxing out their ram these days? For the majority of people browsing and some light office is hardly tickling the chips on a modern laptop.
Based on that there is prob no need for a i3/i5 processor either - celeron would do the trick with a with the processor savings going to a ssd instead.
I'm just saying there are plenty of i5 machines for sale with 4gb of non-up gradable ram. No one would ever spec that if they were doing a self build - so why are manufactures doing it?
Based on that there is prob no need for a i3/i5 processor either – celeron would do the trick with a with the processor savings going to a ssd instead.
I’m just saying there are plenty of i5 machines for sale with 4gb of non-up gradable ram. No one would ever spec that if they were doing a self build – so why are manufactures doing it?
Because people want speed over the ability to do lots of things. Agree RAM impacts speed too once you have loads of applications running but fundamentally this is about mimicking a tablet with a decent keyboard - light weight, fast boot, responsive, decent price and i5/4GB may be the sweet spot for that. No one upgrades a tablet and if that means the manufacturers can either make these laptops more cheaply or more likely encourage planned obsolesence then they'll do it. So long as you think of a portion of the market being "tablets with decent keyboards that run MS Office" then it starts to make sense.
P jay. What’s hp stuff like now days ?
I’ve used the business grey ones in the past and they have always been no problem
Generally the low-end stuff is good VFM, robust, no frills, and importantly use a lot of good quality generic parts so screen replacements etc are cheap and quick.
Again as you go up the ranges they get fancier, but never that flash. 'Elite' level stuff seems pointlessly expensive and the cases are different to lower end stuff, but not really 'better'. and they do try it on with some software stuff that no one really uses, which is really hard to remove. it's Bloatware really.
Their major problem with buyers like me is that Dell is better than HP at what HP is known for, plus there's little or no bloat with Dell (not such an issue for single users, but we're setting up dozens at a time sometimes). Their support is equal or better than HP and they're generally a tiny bit cheaper.
I’m just saying there are plenty of i5 machines for sale with 4gb of non-up gradable ram. No one would ever spec that if they were doing a self build – so why are manufactures doing it?
Got any examples? I can't recall seeing any recently.
There's loads of laptops that come with 4GB soldered to the board, but there's still a slot for an additional card. Admittedly most spec sheets are terrible don't make it very clear.
https://www.ebuyer.com/861447-hp-250-g6-i5-laptop-4wu13es-4wu13es-abu
https://www.ebuyer.com/843947-lenovo-v130-laptop-81hn00hvuk
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8657431
A month ago I was looking at a new laptop on ebuyer. Many of the i3/i5 machines I was looking at ebuyer customer services confirmed that the ram was non-expandable as the 4gb was soldered in (?)
There’s loads of laptops that come with 4GB soldered to the board, but there’s still a slot for an additional card. Admittedly most spec sheets are terrible don’t make it very clear.
That's good to hear. I did see it on some high end business machines. I7's that come with 4gb expandable to 32.
Yeah, those are all examples of terrible spec sheets.
The first two have 4GB soldered to the board, but have an empty slot so possibly 20GB Maximum, but a more realistic 8GB would be an easy job. This is becoming more an more standard these days, especially with smaller units.
The last is a standard 4GB in a slot so a maximum of whatever the board will accept, probably 16GB as it's a bit older I think.
None of that info comes from your links, they're crap, HP site is no better, I had to hunt around to be sure.
That’s good to hear. I did see it on some high end business machines. I7’s that come with 4gb expandable to 32.
That can often be wrong too, sellers take the theoretical maximum from the slot and double it, without taking into account the fact you can't remove the on-board.
I've seen my Laptop sold as "4GB only" and "32GB Maximum" but neither is true. The maximum is actually 20GB - 16GB in the slot (the maximum the board will take for a single card) and the on-board 4GB. really, the optimum is 8GB for reasons my old-school workmate always tells me, but I forget. Lots do still come with 2 slots though.
We manage about 3500 end users at the moment, I don't have anyone who actually needs a 16GB laptop, let alone a 32GB, the ones we manage as status symbols really, they want the best XPS John Lewis sells for streaming Netflix on their boat, or because they're so important they need an i7 to run Outlook. The 'power users' we have all use desktops because they're better in every way, apart from the obvious moving about thing.
Got my daughter an HP Omen for school / gaming. Separate graphics card, 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD, 8GB ram, £800 from PC World. Looks cool with a funky lit keyboard thats customisable, great display.
Thinking of binning my mac for one as swaying back towards Windows 10 again.
Well, after too much research and three browsing sessions instore, this was my list in order of preference ready for Black Friday 'deals'.
1) Dell XPS, 13.3", £1200, 13.3", i5 8250U, ports galore including thunderbolt, 11hr battery and the smallest. Not likely to be discounted by anything that will put it close to the other options.
2) HP Envy, 13.3", £850, i5 8250U, no thunderbolt but does have a USB-C and a Displayport (confusingly this is exactly the same as USB-C but with a different logo and function) 14hr battery life, and low end dedicated Nvidia graphics. Speakers appear much better than the Ideapad and Yoga. Only a few mm's bigger than the XPS.
3) Lenovo Ideapad 530S, £850, 14", i7-8550U, good range of ports but suspect it cannot do dual external monitors as its only display output appears to be HDMI. Poor 8hr battery life.
4) Lenovo Yoga 720, £800, 13.3", i5 8250U, decent range of ports including displayport and thunderbolt but no SD slot, 10hr battery, smaller 128gb SSD drive than the rest, rubbish speakers.
I have swayed towards all four of these laptops but settled on the HP Envy, then I noticed HP had the Envy on their own website for 'black friday week' at £699, (£686 with a discount from my employers 'perks' website). Made a note of it but then noticed the stock was going down daily and decided to go in today and get PC World to price match it before it went out of stock. Whilst waiting I noticed the model number was different but couldn't see any difference in spec so crossed my fingers they wouldn't notice. However, we didn't even get that far, apparently PC World only price match with certain retailers which is a pretty poor show! They would not offer any movement on the price.
Walked out, phoned the insurance company and they agreed to cancel the gift voucher and give me cash instead, knocking 9% (£70) off the value due to discounts they get with suppliers. Did a quick bit of maths based on the current prices, rather than topping up £100 instore, I top up £8 at HP and order direct. So I placed my order earier, and just now decided to try and find the difference in models. Turns out its a newer processor, faster with a slightly smaller cache, but overall is a better performer than the one in PC World. Not that I will ever notice...
(i5-8265U v i5-8250U if anyone is interested)
arrghhh I've tried to fix that formatting four times now, and I'm on my crunchy old chromebook so limited methods to reformat the text in notepad or something!
(i5-8265U v i5-8250U if anyone is interested)
OOhh ... faster CPU. 😀
My Acer is still good and I think I have found my Skype login etc so will try Cortana ... colleague (IT bloke) told me Cortana was a waste of space ... 😀
Don't know about Cortana, but whilst I was waiting for the sales person who could not price match, I noticed Microsoft claiming how much faster/battery efficient their Edge browser is, compared to firefox and chrome. I think it said 98% longer battery life when watching streaming video compared to firefox and/or chrome which is a pretty big claim, anyone switched to Edge and have any thoughts?
... anyone switched to Edge and have any thoughts?
Yes, Edge is fast but I am used to Firefox so will stick to that for a while but will keep a note on battery life saving if I am travelling as Firefox can be very hungry.
Amazon have Microsoft surface pro 6 with keyboard for £749. Don’t know if that’s any help tho.
Asus UX331UN £749 at John Lewis - 8th gen i5 / 8 GB / 256 GB SSD / NVidia graphics / USB-C / light and skinny as in an aluminium case / fingerprint reader / pen compatible 13 inch HD screen apparently
14 inch i3 / 4GB / 256 GB SSD / on board graphics for £529 / £549.
We've had a HP Envy 17" laptop for a few years. Big machine, but is gaming capble as it has an i7 and a GTX video card.
Upgraded with to 16GB Ram (from 12) and whacked in a 1TB SSD (has 2 drive bays so the HD went in as number 2)
Seriously quick even now it's about 4 years old. Doesn't play games quite as fast as my son's Gaming machine, but the GFX card is older. We also have a HP Pavilion 15" - standard bit of kit, but we upgraded with SSD and to 8GB. Quick.
We also got a second hand HP Spectre XT, really small, thin and light, but you can't upgrade the RAM as it's just 4GB. That said, it's an ideal college laptop - again SSD drive as standard.