You guys we're fantastic back when I put together my desktop build a few years ago (still going strong 3 years later, with only a GPU upgrade by the way!) and as I'm in the market for a laptop, I thought who better to hopefully get some advice from Budget: £600 max, although there's always wiggle room Main uses: A mix of standard use (Office, Email, Browsing etc...) some Android development (Android Studio mainly) and maybe some lightish gaming (Football Manager, point n' click stuff. No heavy FPS ridiculousness - that's for the desktop!) Must haves: Minimum of 1080p screen please. No huge screens either as it'll have to be vaguely portable. I've been keeping an eye on Dell Outlet (I picked up a stupidly bargainous i7 laptop years ago for my partner which is still going strong) with little luck so far. But my laptop knowledge when it comes to the various bits and pieces is lagging far behind my desktop knowledge these days, which might have caused me to miss a bargain or two. Thanks in advance folks!
I've just ordered a Dell 17 5000 Inspiron with FHD screen and back lite keyboard for my daughter £659 she wanted a fast laptop that can play games,just waiting on it getting delivered.
I've alwas prided myself on restricting myself to not let the budget sneak too far north, but after some reviews and reading, I've come up with 3 possibilities. 1. The 13.3" Optimus VI from pcspecialist.co.uk standing at £657, without OS 2. The 15.6" Optimus VI from pcspecialist standing at £787, without OS 3. The 15.6" 3XS Graphite LG157 from scan, at £810, without OS. 4. The 15.6" Optimus VI from pcspecialist at £634, without OS. The middle two are very similar spec wise, with the first dropping to a i7-4710HQ processor, and the forth dropping even further to a i5-4210H. I'm still quite wary that I'm looking at spending a little too much more than needed. Plus any saved can go on upgrading the GTX 760 in the desktop! Let me know how it is. It's been added to the list
What about something like this? http://www.ebuyer.com/698708-msi-gp60-2pe-leopard-gaming-laptop-9s7-16gh11-664 Should be fine unless you are trying to max out games and under your budget.
I have the 13.3" optimus V (as far as I can see the difference is the replacement of the gtx 860m with a 960m, which is essentially no change at all as they are the same card) screen is nice, though small for fps games, battery life I get around 3-4 hours light internet, not tried gaming without it plugged in. I have recently repasted it, and that has made it much quieter in general usage, and slightly quieter in gaming (though I use fn + 1 key to run fans on full and shove earphones on instead) its not the smallest or lightest machine out there, but I get 80+ fps on planetside 2, only dropping in big fights were it becomes CPU bound I bought mine for 750 (with win8.1) and upgraded it with an additional 8GB (16 total) memory and 128GB msata ssd
I've been doing a little reading over the last few days, as well as some good old fashion window shopping, and just spotted this which looks like it ticks all the right boxes, apart from the tiny hint over my original budget. But with a leaning towards that particular processor it seems like an excellent price that offers a lot more power than the 5th gen U equivalents.
That is quite a good laptop for the money, but if you want it you'd better be quick as there is only 1 left when I had a look. Definitely better than the U-CPU's as they are only dual cores with low clock speeds which is good for mobility, but miles behind in performance if you compare it to the i7 quad in that laptop. And I don't think there are many laptops with a U CPU that also come with a graphics as good as the 860M.
I was actually quite surprised it was still there when I finally got a chance to order! But there it was, so order has been placed. It's just short of £200 more over at Scan, and not seen any sign of it for below £750 anywhere so looks like a decent deal. The equivalent - but with a 960M instead of 860M from PC Specialist would have set me back closer to £800 so I'm fairly happy. Thanks for the help folks Let's hope it all goes well!
Hope you enjoy the laptop, the 960M is just a rebadged 860M anyways, so not missing out much there and enjoy spending the money you saved somewhere else haha.
