[CONSUMER ADVICE] Laptop Buying

this is definitely a worry, never thought about it with the Air, but the keyboard and feel of the last macbook just wasnt right

OK so the Dell XPS 13/15 seems to be the de facto undisputed Windows laptop these days, but what else is in a similar league? They are SO expensive!!! Also, my work laptop is a 14" screen and it is the perfect sweet spot between the 13 (which feels a little too tiny) and the 15 (which I prefer but is a bit bigger and more $$$)

Ideally I'd like something with user-upgradable RAM, though I know that gets harder and harder these days, and a Ryzen would be great but isn't critical. The only heavy duty stuff I do is very occasional video ripping/conversion with HandBrake, and retro-ish gaming, like mostly stuff that came out 10+ years ago. I don't play a lot of newer stuff, so I think an integrated GPU should be more more than adequate (for reference, my current machine is a 2012 ThinkPad T530 with 8 GB of RAM and I played through Dead Space and Bioshock Infinite just fine on the lowest settings, which I didn't at all mind). I want a nice, solid keyboard, and in terms of screen I want it to have great color and brightness, but I don't need it to go beyond 1920x1080 (I had 3000x2000 on my last work laptop, and it was great but unnecessary and caused scaling issues in a lot of programs, and I switched to a 1920x1080 several months ago and it's caused little-to-no bother). I also don't really care about touch.

When I last bought a laptop (2012), USB3 was still newish and a lot of laptops didn't have it, but I assume everything at this point has USB-C/Thunderbolt, so I don't imagine ports or interfaces will be much of a factor.

Given that I'm only looking for 16GB of RAM and something in the i5 range, do I even need a workhorse/ultrabook style laptop? Does build quality drop off precipitously at the $1000 range? I have no idea what I'm doing anymore apart from whatever Wirecutter recommends.

I bought two of my kids the HP PC Portable Pavilion Gaming 15,6" i5-9300H - RAM 8Go - Stockage 128Go SSD + 1To HDD - GTX1050 - Win 10. Each was 600 €. They seem fine?

I need a new laptop. This one is fucked. It keeps randomly switching itself off, dunno why, I don't think it's overheating, the battery isn't dead, there's nothing in the Event Log. The headphone socket/soundcard is also fucked, which is v annoying because it's the main way I play music through my stereo.

I have no idea what brands/etc are good these days. I only know I wouldn't buy one of these again, it's a Medion and it's a piece of junk. it has a serious drawback for a laptop. you can't take it anywhere or the screen will break. I've had to replace it twice, just through it being in a suitcase, wrapped in clothes, in the boot of a car. get to destination and the screen is totally fucked, like in those videos of idiots punching their TV when their sports team loses. never had that happen with any other laptop ever.

I don't want to spend more than £1000. any ideas? I don't play a lot of games or anything too intensive really. what are good brands these days? I had a Lenovo before this one that was good for a lot longer but I have no idea what they are like nowadays. I use a MacBook for work but I am not an Apple fan at all. I figure I'll get a Windows laptop, then wipe this one and stick Linux Mint on it.

Lenovo are solid value, asus and acer in the same bracket as safe vets before you start to delve into the different configurations available

i reaearched a purchase for my brother lately and ended up recommending matebook which has really good build quality on top of the actual reportwd specs

I just got an HP laptop with bang & olufsen audio through this site - https://www.mycheaplaptop.co.uk/ - they do refurbished only, I got a laptop sold for £2000 a couple of years ago for £500 and they were happy to change the specs (I wanted a bigger HD) when I called them. Been burned on refurbished laptops before but this one seems good so far, the website looks really dodgy I know.

It is great having a top spec sound card after years of shitty laptops

My company gave me a Dell laptop at the start of the pandemic... I don't actually know the model number. It's fine, fairly robust but I've only taken it out of the house a handful of times

Asus & Acer seem to be pretty affordable, thanks dmac.

there are some bargains on mycheaplaptop.co.uk, processors are well old though, presumably that's why they're so cheap though. pity they don't have anything a bit more expensive at the moment, because the prices seem good. thanks, will keep an eye on it

dependimg on whats important to you the variations can be fucking dizzying out there tbh

xp yeah having a look they just seem to have the cheaper ones on there right now for some reason.

I went browsing in the shops on tottenham court road before I bought, that was useful.

this isn't going v well.

I thought maybe I'd splash out a bit and upped my budget a bit, but the 2 laptops I had my eye on, at different websites, both went up £350 last week. wtf. so those are way out now because they were already more than I planned to spend.

another thing - are UK keyboards being phased out or something? I keep seeing laptops at UK shops like Currys with US keyboard layouts. what's that about?

thinkpad x1 carbon series is a bit above your price range but are excellent machines that work well with linux

If you're not bothering with Windows, you can save a bit and customize pretty much everything on your laptop (including keyboard layout):
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-intel

Also, if you're mostly using a browser and music playback (not recording), you could save even more with a Chromebook (which does have the option to run Linux within it, but apparently there's no USB support so forget recording music etc...).

Lastly, if you're alright with having your work MacBook do double duty, you could install a Linux virtual machine on it via https://getutm.app/ and work out a backup/encryption scheme if work ever reclaims it, or segregate it entirely by running it off a small external SSD.

don't transport it by wrapping towels around it! laptops are delicate precision machines! spend £20 on a padded laptop protector at least

I have a £300 voucher for Currys/PC World, as a replacement for a laptop that was so slow as to be useless (but had been covered by one of their insurances). Would probably double my spend to get something half decent. Likely to be used a lot but not for much fancy (eg. gaming) - more emails, internet browsing and a small amount of music. As ever, any recommendations? Ta!

And/or anything to particularly look for? (Bloke in shop mentioned Corei3 or above).

Do PC shops in the UK let you test out devices in-store?

Something I think really gets overlooked for laptops is just how comfortable the keyboard is -- try a few typing tests with them.
If they have internet set up, you might also try testing how responsive it is after opening 20 tabs on a browser playing various youtube clips simultaneously -- also pick a movie scene you like to see how much you like the screen.

As far as processor goes -- this wouldn't be a direct test, but if you can, try the above tests using just battery to see how it performs (often, laptops behave quite differently plugged in than on battery), listen to hear if a fan starts revving up.

Chromebook could cover a lot of your requirements while allowing budget for screen/build quality imo

Ta, both.

https://gizmodo.com/hp-pavilion-plus-14-2023-review-performance-1851066819

$900 is budget now?