For the record, I'd like to say that around a year ago, a friend bought an Acer Aspire E15 E5-576-392H for somewhere between $300-$350 and bought a 256 GB SSD for it. I set it up and use it occasionally, and find it to be pretty much awesome. I would have bought it without hesitation, but they seem to be sold out on Amazon and the price at the other stores are >$400, so I'm looking for an alternative to that.
1. What is your budget?
$300-$400
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14" - 15.6"
3. What screen resolution do you want?
Doesn't matter particularly. Not less than 1366/768
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Not sure what this means exactly. I will mainly be using it at home, but may travel with it occasionally too.
5. How much battery life do you need?
The bigger the better. This is quite an important feature for me, as we don't have much electricity during the day where I am. Still, my current laptop has an hour at good times and <15 minutes when it wants to be temperamental, so anything would be an improvement. I'm not sure if I'll find something comparable to the Acer Aspire E15 mentioned above with its crazy long-life battery, but if there is something comparable to it, that would be great.
6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Not too important to me. I play World of Tanks, but have been playing it on a 2nd gen Pentium without a dedicated GPU, so again, just about anything would be an improvement on that. My friend's Acer Aspire E15 has done a decent job dealing with everything I've thrown at it.
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Possibly a bit of photo/video/audio editing, but not my primary concern.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Hard to say. I don't use Google Docs or any of that stuff due to sketchy internet connectivity, so I think 500 GB is a minimum. I have a 500 GB HDD in my old laptop which I could use on top of an SSD, but I plan to sell the old laptop, so taking the HDD out would make it that much more difficult.
I am almost certainly looking at a computer with both an m.2 and 2.5" bay so that I can have both an SSD and HDD running together.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Amazon.com. There may be other options, but I'd need to check about the possibility of ordering through them, as I'll be ordering through a company who ships stuff from the States to Africa.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Ha! As long as possible! I've got more than 8 years of life out of the secondhand HP ProBook 6450B, and am still using it, so I'm not particularly worried about my computer becoming obsolete. 😀
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
They're always nice to have, but not necessary.
12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
No preference so long as the computer is decent. I haven't seen anyone recommend any knockoff brands on Tomshardware yet, so I think I'm good with anything you would advise me to get.
13. What country do you live in?
West Africa for now, but I'll be ordering from the States.
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I think 4 GB RAM is too little for me. I am looking more at 6GB-8GB. Also would like at least an Intel I3 or Ryzen 3 as far as CPU is concerned.
Some cheap RAM I found if I get a laptop that can add additional RAM: Only 1 Left Though
I'm not sure how the Acer Aspire E15 E5-576-392H managed to pack so much into their computer at such a cheap price. The battery is awesome, it has a DVD drive, lots of ports, a solid CPU, slots for both m2 and 2.5" drives, etc. A steal of a buy at the price we got it for. If I can find something comparable to it, that would be awesome.
This is the best bet I've come across so far:
Acer Aspire 5
The SSD size is really poor, and I'll definitely need to use another drive with it, I could upgrade the RAM fairly cheaply to 8 GB. Battery life isn't as awesome as the E15, but still good. Do you think I can do better than this, though?
1. What is your budget?
$300-$400
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14" - 15.6"
3. What screen resolution do you want?
Doesn't matter particularly. Not less than 1366/768
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Not sure what this means exactly. I will mainly be using it at home, but may travel with it occasionally too.
5. How much battery life do you need?
The bigger the better. This is quite an important feature for me, as we don't have much electricity during the day where I am. Still, my current laptop has an hour at good times and <15 minutes when it wants to be temperamental, so anything would be an improvement. I'm not sure if I'll find something comparable to the Acer Aspire E15 mentioned above with its crazy long-life battery, but if there is something comparable to it, that would be great.
6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Not too important to me. I play World of Tanks, but have been playing it on a 2nd gen Pentium without a dedicated GPU, so again, just about anything would be an improvement on that. My friend's Acer Aspire E15 has done a decent job dealing with everything I've thrown at it.
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Possibly a bit of photo/video/audio editing, but not my primary concern.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Hard to say. I don't use Google Docs or any of that stuff due to sketchy internet connectivity, so I think 500 GB is a minimum. I have a 500 GB HDD in my old laptop which I could use on top of an SSD, but I plan to sell the old laptop, so taking the HDD out would make it that much more difficult.
I am almost certainly looking at a computer with both an m.2 and 2.5" bay so that I can have both an SSD and HDD running together.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Amazon.com. There may be other options, but I'd need to check about the possibility of ordering through them, as I'll be ordering through a company who ships stuff from the States to Africa.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Ha! As long as possible! I've got more than 8 years of life out of the secondhand HP ProBook 6450B, and am still using it, so I'm not particularly worried about my computer becoming obsolete. 😀
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
They're always nice to have, but not necessary.
12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
No preference so long as the computer is decent. I haven't seen anyone recommend any knockoff brands on Tomshardware yet, so I think I'm good with anything you would advise me to get.
13. What country do you live in?
West Africa for now, but I'll be ordering from the States.
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I think 4 GB RAM is too little for me. I am looking more at 6GB-8GB. Also would like at least an Intel I3 or Ryzen 3 as far as CPU is concerned.
Some cheap RAM I found if I get a laptop that can add additional RAM: Only 1 Left Though
I'm not sure how the Acer Aspire E15 E5-576-392H managed to pack so much into their computer at such a cheap price. The battery is awesome, it has a DVD drive, lots of ports, a solid CPU, slots for both m2 and 2.5" drives, etc. A steal of a buy at the price we got it for. If I can find something comparable to it, that would be awesome.
This is the best bet I've come across so far:
Acer Aspire 5
The SSD size is really poor, and I'll definitely need to use another drive with it, I could upgrade the RAM fairly cheaply to 8 GB. Battery life isn't as awesome as the E15, but still good. Do you think I can do better than this, though?
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