Intel i5 with ssd vs i7

[bulunion3]

Hello. I am going to college in the fall and am looking to get a new laptop. My main question is would it be worth it to spend the extra money to get the i7 will HDD or get the i5 with an ssd? I will mostly just me surfing the internet and using word and excel. But I would like to have the capability to do more.

My other question is best but has certified refurbished laptops. Should I avoid those completely? Why or why not? Also I was told it depends what was wrong with the computer before. So what would be wrong with the computer before that I should shy away from it.

Last question is I'm looking at the Lenovo flex 2, dell Inspiron, and the asus notebook. Which one would be the best bet?

 

[tonnycassidy25]

i would recommend an i7 with hdd,you can simply add an ssd to it,while its almost impossible to upgrade the cpu on a laptop

 

[manmeetpaul]

It depends on how much you'll depend on the processing power and how much your college projects might involve such processor activities. Anyways, if the question is i5 with SSD vs i7 of course i5 with SSD FTW. But since this is a laptop we are talking about, i7 is a better bet, you can buy a 60 buck solid drive any other day and swap it in.
And out of all the options, dell inspiron is the best.
Best of luck, for laptop and college

 

[photonboy]

*IMPORTANT*

Don't forget that i3,i5, and i7 have very different meanings on laptops. Most people think of the "i7" as being a quad-core with Hyper-Threading but that's not necessarily the case on laptops. Some are even DUAL-CORE.

So you need to GOOGLE the model of CPU and find the Intel link. Also the Turbo frequency varies a lot too. Some of the thin models may be a lot lower than thicker models.

A quad-core + HT i7 on a laptop is usually pretty expensive even without a dedicated GPU.

GAMING?
You really need to decide whether heavy, light or no gaming is your goal. For non-gaming and not doing anything else task heavy like video editing usually any CPU is good enough though I'd go with Intel.

Upgrading to a good GPU adds a LOT of money. You can get a pretty nice non-gaming laptop for about $600USD. You can even find cheaper but be careful to get one that's reasonable quality.

Other:
SSD??

If possible, I'd look for either:
a) Hybrid SSD installed, or
b) m.2 SSD installed + spare 2.5" drive bay, or

No idea how easy either of those will be. An SSD can add a lot to the price though you can usually buy one for a lot cheaper. Dual 2.5" bays are rare so you can't simply buy a 2.5" SSD after the fact and then switch and use the HDD as a spare drive (after cloning to SSD).

Just some food for thought to get you started...

Summary:
a) Decide on EXACT usage
b) Look into SSD + HDD options
c) Budget
d) Screen resolution and other options
e) Narrow down and look at customer feedback etc to help determine quality

 

[NBSN]

*IMPORTANT*

Don't forget that i3,i5, and i7 have very different meanings on laptops. Most people think of the "i7" as being a quad-core with Hyper-Threading but that's not necessarily the case on laptops. Some are even DUAL-CORE.

So you need to GOOGLE the model of CPU and find the Intel link. Also the Turbo frequency varies a lot too. Some of the thin models may be a lot lower than thicker models.

This times a million. I see it all too many times. People thinking that just because something says i5 or i7, it means a certain thing.

Although, i7 will give you hyper threading, even on a two core CPU. But I would opt for a quad core i5 without hyper threading that has a better clock over an i7 two core with hyper threading.

The sales papers for computers will frequently list information like: 3rd generation i5 processor...but you will need to look the specific CPU due to the differences. You could get a two core with a 2.4 GHz clock...or it could be a quad core with a 4 GHz clock (those are just examples out of my rear, you can look up all the information on Intel.com).

 

[LookItsRain]

All mobile i3s and i5s are dual cores with ht, all i7s are 4 core with ht UNLESS its a u suffix or y suffix.