Buying Laptop and technical question

[Dippyllama]

1. What is your budget? £250 - £320

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 14"/15"

3. What screen resolution do you want? 1080p but can live with 1366 x 768

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portable

5. How much battery life do you need? 5 hours plus is fine

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)? No just browsing

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) No

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 128gb + ideally just to have some wiggle room after win install for futureproofing

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 5+ years maybe

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? None

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. Offbrand is fine

13. What country do you live in? UK

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

The main reason I wanted to make a thread was to see what is best suited for browsing. So this Laptop https://www.currys.co.uk/products/l...p-intel-core-i3-128-gb-ssd-blue-10240519.html is an absolute beast in terms of the CPU, 20 - 50% better in most processes comparative to other laptops in this price range only downside is the 4gb RAM really which is quite low for modern day tech, concerned it wont be enough in a few years time.

Conversely theres this one https://ao.com/product/8b4u3eaabu-hp-15fc0017na-laptop-black-98295-251.aspx which isnt as good in single core processes to the 1215u, however it does boast LPDDR5-SDRAM.

Question is, which one is going to perform better for browsing. The decent CPU + very fast RAM or the very fast CPU and decent RAM? assuming both the m.2's are similar speeds.

I know browsing is a basic activity and speed doesnt really matter but I may aswell go for the best I can in the budget range for what its meant for, you know?

Open to any other deals if you can find them better.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

Personally, I'd go a different route.

Look at this: https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/len...-windows-11-pro-laptop-82yu00fvuk/version.asp

Although the Intel system has arguably the better CPU, in every other aspect I'd prefer the one I've just linked.

It has 8gb of ram versus 4gb on the Intel. It also has a 256gb drive to allow for more docs/data/vids etc. For browsing 8gbs is essential. 4gb is simply not enough (now, not in years time) for system usage and opening more than 1 or 2 tabs. Not a nice experience.

Just those reasons alone would sway me that way. Budget is the limiting factor here. For maybe £700 or so, you could get something quite decent.

 

[Dippyllama]

Hey there,

Personally, I'd go a different route.

Look at this: https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/len...-windows-11-pro-laptop-82yu00fvuk/version.asp

Although the Intel system has arguably the better CPU, in every other aspect I'd prefer the one I've just linked.

It has 8gb of ram versus 4gb on the Intel. It also has a 256gb drive to allow for more docs/data/vids etc. For browsing 8gbs is essential. 4gb is simply not enough (now, not in years time) for system usage and opening more than 1 or 2 tabs. Not a nice experience.

Just those reasons alone would sway me that way. Budget is the limiting factor here. For maybe £700 or so, you could get something quite decent.

Thanks for your advice and reply, I will probably bump the RAM if possible somewhere to 8GB in that. My question about RAM vs CPU performance still stands though. I will be looking for an 8gb option based on below response.

DDR5 4gb 5500mhz + 7320U
DDR4 4gb 3200mhz + 1215u

If DDR5 5500mhz is better performance in browsing then I'd go for this one: https://ao.com/product/e1504fanj199w-asus-vivobook-go-e1504fa-laptop-silver-96129-251.aspx

There are no other options with the 1215u which are close in price and have the 8gb RAM but I'd be tempted to swap out the RAM myself in that case.

 

[Dippyllama]

I've come across another consideration now aswell, is it worth sacrificing CPU power for PCIE 4 NVME ?
I can upgrade the RAM to 8gb in both previously mentioned laptops so that shouldnt be an issue now and research has shown the difference between DDR5 and 4 is quite negligible for browsing etc so now I'm wondering if PCIE4 has more of an impact being doubly as fast as pcie 3.
Any thoughts?

 

[Lafong]

I've come across another consideration now aswell, is it worth sacrificing CPU power for PCIE 4 NVME ?
I can upgrade the RAM to 8gb in both previously mentioned laptops so that shouldnt be an issue now and research has shown the difference between DDR5 and 4 is quite negligible for browsing etc so now I'm wondering if PCIE4 has more of an impact being doubly as fast as pcie 3.
Any thoughts?

The PCIe 4 versus 3 distinction for NVMe drives has minimal consequences in real-life workloads. You might consider that small advantage if you were buying an upper level machine, but at your budget I'd give a higher priority to raw CPU horsepower, drive capacity, and RAM amount.

I wouldn't get wound up in RAM speed either.

I'd hope you can get your hands on any prospective purchase for a few minutes of experimentation to ensure you can live with the keyboard and display. They can be critical on a laptop.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Don't be over thinking it too much.

This may help: https://www.techspot.com/review/2116-storage-speed-game-loading/

As suggested by @Lafong the difference in real world usage is minimal. Only in synthetic benches and the like see the potential speeds.

 

[Dippyllama]

Thanks for both of your replies, I have taken your comments on board. You're right, I'm overthinking it there's not enough performance changes at the price range for the little bits to matter so long as there is enough to run the tech (ram size and ssd storage size).