You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I'm looking at a budget device to answer emails, create Word or Excel documents and visit websites, download Netflix or similar for when we go on holiday. Smallish (14") and light is good as it will get carried a bit.
I'm not looking Chromebook - others in the house want Windows and Office.
I've tried a few Surface laptops and always thought that the keyboard, build quality and general feel was excellent. Reviews suggest this is a good device, it's just 4 years old. That said, my work laptop is a 2020 HP Probook i3 with 8gb of ram and still whizzes through most things.
I suspect the new Vivobook will be faster, but how much by I cannot tell...and will the nicer Surface experience be better for a modest machine?
Looking at:
Surface 4 refurb:
Vivobook 14 new:
https://www.asus.com/uk/laptops/for-home/vivobook/asus-vivobook-14-x1404/
Depends on the spec of the vivobook...
I had a 10th Gen i3 (only a 2 core processor with 4 threads) and 4gb of ram and frankly it was rubbish.
The ram was not enough obviously, you need 8gb minimum, but also the i3 laptop cpu is also pants.
And the screen was pants too.
I've since upgraded to an Asus expert book, 11th gen i5, no hypertheading but 4 proper cores and 8gb ram, with an OLED 13. 9?" screen and it's perfect.
I actually chose that as the ram is easily upgradable but I've found for casual use.. I really don't need to upgrade it to 16gb so I've not bothered.
Can multi task easily and the oled screen is fantabulous, but I got a screamingly good deal on it.. I think it was about £650.
Edit.. So basically it's not quite as simple as choosing an i3 or an i5.. You need to look at what generation it is...
Without checking I imagine a gen 12 laptop i3 is a lot better than a gen 10 one, for example.
Vivobook is i3-1315U and 8gb.
Surface is i5-1145G7 and 8gb.
As ever I can peer at all sorts of silly geekiness over which processor is x% faster on a test bench. But in the real world, taking an extra 0.14 of a second to open a word file is not as important as build quality to me...
Can’t comment on the vivobook, not used one, but I wouldn’t expect much from the spec you’ve offered.
I bought a top end MS surface and have been using it for the last 8 years, i5 with high SSD & ram. It’s been faultless. This is my personal machine and it’s on 24x7. I’ve traveled quite a lot with it, but I’ve also got a work laptop for work travel.
the surface is not perfect, but MS (or someone) put a lot of thought into the device & the manufacturing quality is good.
I'm sure you will be able to google a tonne of regular faults on it, design quirks etc, just sharing my experience.
The arc mouse is nice too.
I know very little about computers... but last year I bought an almost new Surface 4 Go (I do know that's the smaller version!). I love it! Half the price of a new one; not a mark on it; does word, excel, Netflix, my blog, etc. Very light, good battery life, nice screen (imho). It just seems to work well for me, even though others describe it as being very low spec. And when did memory cards become so cheap?
Bought from a private seller on ebay
We have a ~10 year old Surface Pro 4, was great until a few years ago, when it wanted to keep the cursor in the top right corner (some firm but not hard pressing along the top osf screen sorts this eventually). Showing its age these days, replaced it with an Honor Pad X9 tablet for general use by better half, the Surface Pro 4 is now relegated to Zwift duties (and it always shocks me how it takes ~4mins to start tablet, launch Zwift and be able to join an event)... But it's a far bigger screen than using one of my mobiles!
I would go for the Surface. My wife has had two over the years and they have both been faultless. Both my work colleague and I bought Vivo books on a deal 2 years ago and they were noisy and hot from the start and mine has now got a screen fault which because it’s an oled will be expensive and his randomly switches off at least once a day. Also the battery life on both is not even half of what was promised while the surface gets exactly what the specs say.
Basically they are just not built well. Would never have another and will be getting a surface next
Cheers all - I now need to just decide if it is Surface 4 or 5, as there is £80 in it for a +1 generation of processor...
If I were looking at a windows machine a surface would be pretty high on the list.
If you can stretch to the next generation of processor then that is where the money is really worth spending. Especially if you plan on keeping the machine for a while.
I use a surface pro 5, and it's great. Only possible issue is that only pro 6 and newer will be directly updated to windows 11, don't know if this is an issue for you? My surface 5 is in the strange position of meeting Microsoft's upgrade spec yet not on their list so I'll be upgrading manually
Worth also considering a Lenovo X1 carbon?
For any Lenovo machine, be very careful with screen resolution specifications. Often refund can be low res versions