Laptop recommendations

[rulefan]

I saw a 15.6 on Amazon for £399

 

[rulefan]

Oops. It was a Lenovo IdeaPad S145.

Does this rate with the experts here?
Used only for browsing, email, iPlayer

Is the S340-15IIL worth £100 more at £399?

 

[GreiginFife]

Oops. It was a Lenovo IdeaPad S145.

Does this rate with the experts here?
Used only for browsing, email, iPlayer

Is the S340-15IIL worth £100 more at £399?

It's basically the same laptop save for the touch screen.
Same Pentium Gold processor and (I presume) the same spec of RAM which IIRC is DDR4 2400MHz.

As a basic machine it would suffice, as I said in Chris' replies its not a machine with years and years of usability but it is certainly usable in the here and now.

 

[chrisd]

its arrived today and is pretty good I think. I've switched it to Windows 10 (without the s) and its great to be able to use both the keyboard and touchscreen as required. Screen looks good and as a tablet its a bit heavy but very responsive

 

[Rooter]

Great stuff Chris, My wife is extremely happy with hers.

 

[williamalex1]

its arrived today and is pretty good I think. I've switched it to Windows 10 (without the s) and its great to be able to use both the keyboard and touchscreen as required. Screen looks good and as a tablet its a bit heavy but very responsive

Chris I'm thinking of buying one of these to replace my old Toshiba, how have you found yours so far, would you recommend it ?
EDITED.
Is 4 GB big enough for home use, only for pictures, videos email , Facebook etc, no gaming, or should I go for the dearer 8 GB ??

 

[rulefan]

My wife got the Lenovo Ideapad S145 15.6" Intel Pentium from John Lewis for £299.
Super machine.

 

[chrisd]

Chris I'm thinking of buying one of these to replace my old Toshiba, how have you found yours so far, would you recommend it ?
EDITED.
Is 4 GB big enough for home use, only for pictures, videos email , Facebook etc, no gaming, or should I go for the dearer 8 GB ??

It's a really good laptop/tablet, I can use it with the keyboard but it's a touchscreen as well. I haven't done much on it as I bought it for a work building project and i dont want to mix work and leisure on it. It seems to hold a charge well and I'm sure it was good value.I'd always go for a higher memory where I'd use a laptop for photos and photo editing but i bought a secondhand tower computer for that as I've been known to take over a 1,000 photos on some holidays !

 

[Rooter]

Chris I'm thinking of buying one of these to replace my old Toshiba, how have you found yours so far, would you recommend it ?
EDITED.
Is 4 GB big enough for home use, only for pictures, videos email , Facebook etc, no gaming, or should I go for the dearer 8 GB ??

You need to maybe consider using cloud storage these days. Its becoming the norm that nothing is really stored locally these days, there are some very good deals to be had on storage and its very secure.

Of course, you could always get an inexpensive storage device either USB or even a wireless network drive which could also be of great use, you can then stream movies from it etc etc.

 

[williamalex1]

It's a really good laptop/tablet, I can use it with the keyboard but it's a touchscreen as well. I haven't done much on it as I bought it for a work building project and i dont want to mix work and leisure on it. It seems to hold a charge well and I'm sure it was good value.I'd always go for a higher memory where I'd use a laptop for photos and photo editing but i bought a secondhand tower computer for that as I've been known to take over a 1,000 photos on some holidays !

Thanks Chris, now to convince my financial director the wife .

 

[williamalex1]

You need to maybe consider using cloud storage these days. Its becoming the norm that nothing is really stored locally these days, there are some very good deals to be had on storage and its very secure.

Of course, you could always get an inexpensive storage device either USB or even a wireless network drive which could also be of great use, you can then stream movies from it etc etc.

Thanks Rooter, I have all my pictures and videos on a usb memory stick, just in case.

 

[urbandad]

If you want a 2-in-1 / touchscreen, I would recommend the HP Spectre x360, with the i7-8705G 4-core processor, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD storage, 4K 15.6" touchscreen display, and RX Vega M dedicated graphics card. Battery life is around 6 hours. This laptop will be great for video/photo editing, as well as gaming. The RX Vega M graphics performs in between the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti in games so you shouldn't have any issues.

 

[PhilTheFragger]

If you want a 2-in-1 / touchscreen, I would recommend the HP Spectre x360, with the i7-8705G 4-core processor, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD storage, 4K 15.6" touchscreen display, and RX Vega M dedicated graphics card. Battery life is around 6 hours. This laptop will be great for video/photo editing, as well as gaming. The RX Vega M graphics performs in between the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti in games so you shouldn't have any issues.

Think you just blew the budget big time

 

[williamalex1]

Now looking at a Lenovo Ideapad 3i 14 inch 128GB, SSD , Intel Pentium Gold, windows 10s, £329 from Currys.

Will this do the much same job as my nearly departed old Toshiba satellite c50-b-14 laptop ?

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Now looking at a Lenovo Ideapad 3i 14 inch 128GB, SSD , Intel Pentium Gold, windows 10s, £329 from Currys.

Will this do the much same job as my nearly departed old Toshiba satellite c50-b-14 laptop ?

The speed of the SSD will in some way compensate for the utterly dire CPU

I’d prefer a 256Gb SSD as a minimum
I’ve seen 128gb machines full up after 6 months

 

[williamalex1]

The speed of the SSD will in some way compensate for the utterly dire CPU

I’d prefer a 256Gb SSD as a minimum
I’ve seen 128gb machines full up after 6 months

Sadly the price jumps to £549

 

[bobmac]

Sadly the price jumps to £549

Apparently you could buy the 128gb and then get a 256gb ssd from amazon and swap them out

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Apparently you could buy the 128gb and then get a 256gb ssd from amazon and swap them out

In theory, but in practice they are moving away from Hard drives within cases to chipsets, some of which are removable, some are soldered into the motherboard

Becoming a bit of a land mine area

 

[rosecott]

Sadly the price jumps to £549

You know you can't take it with you, Billy, so splash out.

 

[ScienceBoy]

I highly recommend ensuring all data goes to the cloud, avoid storing any data locally. If the cloud isn’t an option do regular (daily at least) backups.

Local storage is really just for the OS and programs.