New Laptop time

[Cousin Jack]

My Lenovo is dying. Mechanical dying, as in the hinge/case is disasembling itself with much graunching. Pieces of plastic are crumbling off. It is only a matter of time before some electronics is involved too.

So what do I actually NEED? Last time around, having been bitten before by perfectly good computers becoming dog slow because of software bloat,I bought an i7 with 8M RAM and 1TB HD + a DVD RW. That was about 6 years ago and it looks as though it was overkill. I still haven't used the 1TB up, and the i7 may be more than I actually need today. Bloat seems to have been controlled of late.

Looking at the specs I am confused. I can get 1TB, but it is in SSD, and I will never need that much fast access. Few modern ones offer DVD drives, and that is a bit of a bummer, I actually have some stuff on DVDs.

I actually need something that is portable, with a proper keyboard. A decent battery life (5-6 hours, more is better). Enough space for lots of photos but I don't do video, so maybe 512 GB will do Assorted card slots please. 14" screen, maybe 15.6". It has to be Windows, the processor can be any make, I only mention i7 because I have heard of it, and I know of the i3/i5'i7 progression, no doubt other manufactures do good stuff

Prices are similarly confusing. Some i7s with 1TB are about £750, some are pushing £2k. Do I need quad cores (whatever they are)?

Bear in mind that I was once pretty computer savvy, but I am at least 20 years out of date, and half the TLAs mean nothing to me any more.

Suggestions please, and advice too. I would like to keep it cheap and simple, mainly because the current problem is mechanical, and I am not convinced that modern ones are any more robust. I don't want to drop £2k and break it.

[KungFooBob]

For the odd time you need a DVD drive, buy an external USB one.

512gb SSD will be overkill if you either use the cloud for media storage or an external HDD (You should be using the cloud these days).

I'd probably look at 10th and 11th gen i5's. I recently bought an ultra portable with an AMD Ryzen 3600 in it and it needs the fan on full if you open more than two browser tabs.

at least 8gb of RAM is a must.

For me it must have at very least a 1080 res screen, more is better. My current Ultraportable has a 13 inch 2k screen and it's just about right.

I've got the AMD CPU'd version of this..

https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/laptops/ ... k-13-2020/

But you'd hate it, no DVD drive, no SD card slot, only a 256gb drive, only 2 USB-C ports and nothing else. I did pay under £500 for it tho

[Cousin Jack]

For the odd time you need a DVD drive, buy an external USB one.

512gb SSD will be overkill if you either use the cloud for media storage or an external HDD (You should be using the cloud these days).

But you'd hate it, no DVD drive, no SD card slot, only a 256gb drive, only 2 USB-C ports and nothing else. I did pay under £500 for it tho

Yes, I think I may need to move just a bit closer to the 21st century

[KungFooBob]

It it's 13 inch you want and If budget allows, the Dell XPS 13 is a class leader. It comes top of all the comparison tests.

[Kneerly Down]

I'd be tempted to get a used but late-generation Lenovo with a recent i5, 8Gb of RAM and 256 or 512 Gb SSD.
256GB is probably plenty. As said above, if you've plenty of photos you want to keep put them on a USB stick AND a cloud platform - we use the 1TB that comes with Microsoft Office 365.

I bought No.2 son a Lenovo with those specs 3 years ago and it has spent a couple of years at Uni/Home (Covid!) and a year in China and is still in fine fettle.
If you need a DVD but don't need it often when out and about definitely go for a USB one rather than built-in.

[Mussels]

Watch them TLAs, they are designed to confuse people. 20 years ago i5 or i7 pretty much told you how good a processor was but now it doesn't mean much on it's own. A 'u' after the processor denotes low power, think tablets or phones where battery life is far more important than a useful processor and coincidentally they are much cheaper than the HQ versions that you'll be used to. Whether you need an HQ processor is debatable but I'd never choose 'u' out of choice, I'd also go for a minimum of 16GB of RAM as laptops are usually a bitch to upgrade.
For the hard drive is expect an SSD of 256GB is OK, 128 would be a pain.
Cores are also a bit confusing, a single core with hyperthreading can be described as dual core and you probably know it's no substitute. Then there's a difference with the resources cores get, this is where i3 i5 etc comes in more. It's a minefield and worth checking the specs on Intel closely to compare two similar looking chips. I'd probably choose two real cores, one to drive the OS and the other for the app you are using. Normal apps don't benefit much from extra cores and benefit more from a higher clock speed which means pricier processor and shorter battery life. It's not easy choosing the right stuff.

[Cousin Jack]

Watch them TLAs, they are designed to confuse people. 20 years ago i5 or i7 pretty much told you how good a processor was but now it doesn't mean much on it's own. A 'u' after the processor denotes low power, think tablets or phones where battery life is far more important than a useful processor and coincidentally they are much cheaper than the HQ versions that you'll be used to. Whether you need an HQ processor is debatable but I'd never choose 'u' out of choice, I'd also go for a minimum of 16GB of RAM as laptops are usually a bitch to upgrade.
For the hard drive is expect an SSD of 256GB is OK, 128 would be a pain.
Cores are also a bit confusing, a single core with hyperthreading can be described as dual core and you probably know it's no substitute. Then there's a difference with the resources cores get, this is where i3 i5 etc comes in more. It's a minefield and worth checking the specs on Intel closely to compare two similar looking chips. I'd probably choose two real cores, one to drive the OS and the other for the app you are using. Normal apps don't benefit much from extra cores and benefit more from a higher clock speed which means pricier processor and shorter battery life. It's not easy choosing the right stuff.

Thanks for that ^

I hadn't spotted that i5, i7 didn't mean what it used to mean. As for cores, threading, etc, I admit to confusion especially since some ads claim as many as 8 cores now.

[wheelnut]

For normal use, i5, 8gb, 256GB SSD will be fine. Stick with a brand you have heard of.

[Mussels]

Something manufacturers do that I find annoying is link RAM size with overall spec, so if you see a model with a big price hike for a bit more RAM it usually means that several parts are a bit better. I'll normally buy towards the top end of the budget offering as the really low end are the ones that will get slow quickly and premium models are just loaded with features that don't interest me.

[Cousin Jack]

I am leaning towards this.
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 0-pdt.html
Not as super-flashy as some, nor as cheap as others.

[KungFooBob]

Looks alright to me.

[v8-powered]

I am leaning towards this.
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 0-pdt.html
Not as super-flashy as some, nor as cheap as others.

Fella at work has just got the same machine but as an open box but unused model, £420. Think it was via their eBay outlet....

[Mussels]

I am leaning towards this.
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 0-pdt.html
Not as super-flashy as some, nor as cheap as others.

Not so sure about it myself, the intel site doesn't list it's base clock speed and as you'll see from here there's a big variation over the i5 range.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... ssors.html

They love to quote turbo speeds but that's a maximum achievable if ony one core is running, I find that isn't often. Currys quote the base clock as 2.4GHz which isn't great (but ok), I wonder if you are paying loads for the touch screen and buying the low spec premium model.

[Kneerly Down]

The processor looks fine.
My main concerns would be the lack of keyboard backlight (if you use it in low/no light), screen at 250nits doesn't seem all that bright and the 45% NTSC colour gamut is pretty low as well but I doubt you'd be unhappy with the laptop if those aren't too important.

It looks to be £599 on HP's own online store.