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Thread: Laptop <$1k - what are my options?

  1. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by msommers View Post
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    Specs? Price?
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    Quote Originally Posted by jwslam View Post
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    Thanks I saw that too.
    I don't even need a gaming laptop... just looking for a good deal on a sub $600.

    Pretty hard when the following things make me cringe:
    -HDD
    -4gb or less RAM
    -Not FHD screen
    -The word 'celeron'
    This is a decent deal - $683.99 + 5% ebates and you might even be able to find a promo code to stack on that to get you under $600:

    https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/ibmeppf.../p/88IP8FX1273

    Password is: FNDEPP if asked.

    Ryzen 5 3500U w/ Vega 8 iGPU
    8GB Ram
    256GB SSD (probably SATAIII).
    14" 1080P IPS multi-touch display
    Last edited by Mitsu3000gt; 07-26-2019 at 03:27 PM.

  3. #83
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    Cheap general use laptop, rare with 16GB RAM:

    https://www.costco.ca/Dell-Inspiron-...100471796.html

    $599
    15" Dell Inspiron
    Ryzen 7 2700U (Vega 10 GPU)
    512 GB SSD
    16GB RAM
    1080P/FHD Display

    It's a little beefy but good value for those specs.

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    How's AMD stacking up nowadays?

    Mostly used Intel and for some reason, every AMD chip I ever used back in the quad-core days was never a great experience.

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    Quote Originally Posted by rx7boi View Post
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    How's AMD stacking up nowadays?

    Mostly used Intel and for some reason, every AMD chip I ever used back in the quad-core days was never a great experience.
    Incredibly well - their Desktop 3XXX series has surpassed Intel in IPC but not quite maximum clock speeds yet. What they also do is offer 50-100% more cores for a lot less money than Intel. They are already on the 7nm node (Intel won't even have 10nm out until end of year) and they increased performance over the outgoing generation by 20-25% which is crazy in the CPU world. Their built in GPUs (Vega) are 2-3x better than Intel's 620/630s, though Intel will have a competitor to Vega when mobile Ice Lake becomes mainstream by end of year / early 2020.

    Basically since Ryzen debuted, you can forget everything you knew about AMD of the past. It's on another planet compared to the pre-Ryzen days. Before Ryzen, the last good AMD CPUs were the Athalon days in the late 90s / early 00s.

    On the Mobile side something like the Ryzen 2700U is a 4c/8t product with 3.8Ghz turbo. It's Vega 10 integrated GPU is roughly equivalent to a GeForce MX150, though it does share system RAM where the MX150 has dedicated 2-4GB depending on the variant.

    My next desktop PC will likely be Ryzen and I would have no issue at all buying a Ryzen Laptop - I am tired of Intel's overpriced offerings and with the gains Ryzen is making. AMD also guaranteed their AM4 socket to last minimum 4 generations, a promise they have kept so far, so you don't have to buy a new mobo every time a new CPU comes out. Intel is starting to look like the Apple of the PC world.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mitsu3000gt View Post
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    Cheap general use laptop, rare with 16GB RAM:

    https://www.costco.ca/Dell-Inspiron-...100471796.html

    $599
    15" Dell Inspiron
    Ryzen 7 2700U (Vega 10 GPU)
    512 GB SSD
    16GB RAM
    1080P/FHD Display

    It's a little beefy but good value for those specs.
    I would be weary if the SSD was not brand name - ie some cheap knock off. I've seen many with short life spans.

    If it was a major brand then all is OK there.

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    Quote Originally Posted by revelations View Post
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    I would be weary if the SSD was not brand name - ie some cheap knock off. I've seen many with short life spans.

    If it was a major brand then all is OK there.
    SSDs in laptops are always a crap shoot, even the exact same models with the same capacities can have 2-3 different SSDs because every big laptop manufacturer (like Dell) multi-sources their SSDs based on cost and availability, not performance. Dell uses everything from LiteOn to Toshiba to Samsung. It'll also be a SATAIII SSD at this price point even if it's a M2 interface (another thing they often try to hide). I don't think it's too difficult to upgrade the SSD in an Inspiron though if needed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by revelations View Post
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    I would be weary if the SSD was not brand name - ie some cheap knock off. I've seen many with short life spans.

    If it was a major brand then all is OK there.
    Meh, it's a laptop. Not like you have a choice on the matter and should never keep anything important on it.

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    If I was looking at that laptop and it came with some no name SSD - you can slap 200$ on top of it.

    Its not about data retention, its about avoiding down time in my case.

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    Quote Originally Posted by revelations View Post
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    If I was looking at that laptop and it came with some no name SSD - you can slap 200$ on top of it.

    Its not about data retention, its about avoiding down time in my case.
    You can buy 1TB NVMe drives from Crucial for $105 or so and if you're willing to go cheaper you can buy SSDs for under $40 that aren't as bad as the price would suggest. To go with a higher end Samsung or something though, yeah it would be $200ish depending on size. With a SATA interface though you are shopping the cheap side of things anyway. Unfortunately until you get the laptop in your hands there's no way of knowing what's in it because they use so many different vendors.

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    Good deal on the Razorblade Stealth, OOS at the moment though:

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/p/ra...t:techspecstab

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    Pretty good for $650, sale ends today:

    https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product...ws-10/13620847

    Good chassis
    1080P screen (15.6")
    i5 8265U
    8GB RAM
    512GB SSD

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    I'm still using a Refurbished Lenovo I bought 8 years ago. Still works great, but getting slow. Looking to upgrade from my old one that has i5 2.4GHz, 6GB Ram. Need 15" screen, and English only full sized keyboard.

    Any suggestions or current sales going on?

    Can anyone comment on this one:

    https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product...ished/12884295
    Last edited by cidley69; 09-12-2019 at 08:01 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by cidley69 View Post
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    I'm still using a Refurbished Lenovo I bought 8 years ago. Still works great, but getting slow. Looking to upgrade from my old one that has i5 2.4GHz, 6GB Ram. Need 15" screen, and English only full sized keyboard.

    Any suggestions or current sales going on?

    Can anyone comment on this one:

    https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product...ished/12884295
    That's a 6-year-old laptop, I wouldn't bother with it personally. The price is outrageous considering the age of the hardware. It also weighs 6lbs which is pretty enormous. It has a quadro GPU which is content creation oriented rather than games, but I'm not sure what your usage is.

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    Wow, didn't realize it was that ancient, that explains the huge discount. Thanks for pointing that out.

    I don't do games or content creation. Mostly use it for web surfing, emails, getting files to/from NAS, not much else. Want laptop that will future proof me for a while, as I plan to keep it 5 years at least.
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    Quote Originally Posted by cidley69 View Post
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    Wow, didn't realize it was that ancient, that explains the huge discount. Thanks for pointing that out.

    I don't do games or content creation. Mostly use it for web surfing, emails, getting files to/from NAS, not much else. Want laptop that will future proof me for a while, as I plan to keep it 5 years at least.
    Yeah it looks like it's also from a re-seller, rather than sold by Best Buy, and a lot of those re-sellers buy old refurbished product and try to flip it. Same deal with Dell Refurbished stuff - it looks super cheap until you realize it's from 2013 haha.

    I'll keep my eye out for you, there seems to be at least one laptop deal a week that pops up, especially for relatively basic usage - you don't need anything too powerful for the usage you described.

    This was actually a really good deal, but sale ends today and looks like it might be sold out:

    https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product...ws-10/13620847

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    Can i get your opinion on this one:

    https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/ibmeppf...0/p/20NB004HUS
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    I liked my e-series laptop. It's the low end of ThinkPad, but reasonably light. I like the ergonomics, good battery life.
    Can't comment on price. Laptop price confuses me, see my many posts above.
    Quote Originally Posted by killramos View Post
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    You realize you are talking to the guy who made his own furniture out of salad bowls right?

  19. #99
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    Quote Originally Posted by cidley69 View Post
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    Can i get your opinion on this one:

    https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/ibmeppf...0/p/20NB004HUS
    You can't really go wrong with those, but there is no way that is a $2000 laptop normally. Not bad at $1000 though. The E5XX is a good chassis that has been around for a long time and is one that Lenovo regularly offers deep discounts on.

    The main negative with those is they use a really slow SSD, despite it being PCIe/NVMe, it is a Toshiba model with rather poor relative performance. This may or may not matter to you, but it annoys me when manufacturers cheap out in such an important area. SSDs in laptops is such a lottery, it's so frustrating because they use multiple hardware vendors - sometimes even the exact same model can get 2 different SSDs, one being way better than the other, and you don't know for sure until you buy it.

    The only other thing to be aware of is it has no discrete graphics, you are limited to the integrated Intel HD620 which is totally fine for the usage you mentioned above, but if you ever want to do more graphically intensive work it will be lacking. Most laptops in the $1000 and under category though will not have discrete graphics.

    Battery strikes me as a bit small too at 45Wh, some 15" laptops have 80+Wh batteries. Lenovo is advertising over 12 hours but reviewers are seeing around 6.5 hours on a WiFi / Web Surfing test. That's not terrible, most laptops do nowhere near their advertised levels.

    Honestly for your usage, you should be able to find something in the $650-750 range relatively easily. The few previous deals I posted were better values than this IMO.

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    Anyone looking for a cheap laptop for simple field/office work (email, web, documents), look at a 8+ year old Lenovo T410 on ebay (has an internal frame).

    I just picked up my third 8GB ram, i5 model for 150$. (one for around the house, one for spare, one went to a client)

    Slap an Intel SSD in it, grab a new battery and it will last for years. The SSD is where it REALLY counts. This W10 machine boots in about 10 seconds.
    This model also accepts a wedge battery that can get you 12-13 hours of work.

    Buying a 500$ cheap plastic, new laptop with an HDD, makes no sense to me.
    Last edited by revelations; 09-13-2019 at 10:03 AM.

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