Youngfella's confirmation money is burning a hole in his pocket. After a short-lived diversion towards getting a Tablet, he is now back in the market for a laptop. He currently uses my ancient Acer Aspire with a lines of dead pixels running down the middle of the screen and buttons missing from the keyboard.
Given that his main activity is editing his card-trick videos, Netbooks were immediately cast aside. He needs something with a decent screen and some welly that costs less than €500. It ended up being pretty easy to narrow the field down to 4-5 possibilities. The spec I came up with, based on browsing what's out there was:
- 15.4" screen
- 2-4 GB RAM
- Intel i3 or similar dual-core CPU
- Decent GPU (incl built-in)
Some nice to haves would be:
- HDMI out
- More than 3 USBs
- Firewire or USB 3.0
When you take the first 4 spec items, you end up with a set of laptops all within €20 of each other and all compromising in different ways. We found:
- Samsung R540
- Acer Aspire 5742
- Lenovo G560
- Asus K52F
It looks like we'll go with the Samsung. It has the faster 2.4GHz i3, 3GB RAM and a 320GB HDD. Downsides are a slightly washed out screen, plasticky body and poor battery life. Since this will spend 90% of its time in the house, the latter two are no big deal.
I was disappointed to see that Dell had nothing competitive in that €450 (inc VAT) range.
Anyone have experience of these type of spec? Any other suggestions?
Bookmarking for future reference. Will be in the market for similarly specced machine in a few months time.
It’s funny that it’s pretty much exactly the same chassis spec (brought up-to-date) that I used when buying the Aspire in 2005. Of course it is now one third of the price!
I’ve been on exactly the same search in the past week. I’m told the IBM S series latest (lenovo) and the new Toshibas are out at the end of this month in a similar price range.Waiting till then.
Thanks for the tip Emmet. I didn’t even bother with Toshiba as I assumed they would be more pricey for same spec (ditto HP). I’m enforcing a cooling off period on the young lad so he doesn’t rush into anything. He is currently looking for reviews on the source of all knowledge in his universe, YouTube.
Dell have suddenly gone (about a year ago) from being really good to really bad for laptops.The toshiba C660-155 seems like a good laptop for around €450http://twitter.com/pixelbeat_/status/50248666929299456
Thanks Pádraig, that Toshiba looks great. I used to only buy Tosh when working in companies with money
They were indestructible but usually expensive and behind the curve on tech. But that one’s fantastic value. More RAM and faster CPU than all the others.
Ah, Tosh has only 2 USB and no HDMI. I think all these guys put the same-priced feature tweaks in a bingo wheel and build whatever mix comes out. * 3GB vs 4GB* 3 USB vs 2USB* 2.1 GHz vs 2.4 GHz* HDMI vs no HDMI* 1 speaker vs 2 speakers
Hi Conor.I was just in Pete’s on Dame Street and saw a great Acer machine. 4 gb Ram, 350 HD, loads of USBs and HDMI in and out. 12 hrs battery life. Camera, Windows 7 etc. I think it has a 1.6 processor.It’s not for me, as it doesn’t outperform my old Toshiba Portege, but then again, it was under €400. Mine cost €1600 3 years ago, and the upgrade costs €2,500, so to see something similar for under €400 was an eye opener. I’m a big Tosh fan, but still. At that price… hmmm
That is an incredible price! We’ll probably pass as he needs as much CPU welly as possible for the money since he renders videos for YouTube. When I was 11, I was ……..