Looking for a laptop less than $400 for school work and light gaming.

[manne11]

So im looking for a laptop that has enough battery life for 5 hours of school and is also good enough for light gaming like dota or cs:go. im currently looking at these 2 laptops one is acer and the other is dell which one is better? Feel free to recommend any other laptops that fits the budget.

 

[Unkk]

I'd look into the Acer:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/433677/Aspire_E5-551-T5SN_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Midnight_Black
You trade a little CPU speed for a much better graphics chip.

 

[Archaic59]

The CPU in the Acer has Intel turbo boost and will outperform the Dell by a small margin. They both have the same iGPU and most of the other features are the same or similar. Battery life is anyone's guess regardless of what they say since usage will vary from person to person, but don't expect much battery life from a cheap laptop. Here's a comparison of the CPU's-
http://ark.intel.com/compare/85212,84698

 

[mrmike_49]

the Dell has 6G ram, the Acer only has 4G ram, making the Dell a better choice unless you can upgrade the Acer.
4GB of Ram is NOT enough

 

[jaguarskx]

For $400 you are not going to get anything better than those laptops. Someone may suggest a laptop with an A8-6410 / A8-7410, but the performance is at best equal to a Core i3 and the integrated Radeon graphic cores in those APUs are less powerful than the Intel HD 4000 from 2 generatinos ago.

Of the laptops you linked to the Acer has the more power core i5 CPU, but inexpensive Acer laptops generally feel cheaper than inexpensive laptops from other brands.

The one thing I recommend is that you install another sticks of 4GB RAM into the Acer laptop so that the RAM operates in dual channel mode. That can improve game performance by 5% - 10% depending on the game. One stick of RAM means it will be operating at half speed or single channel mode.

Below is a link to Dota 2 being played on a Dell XPS 13 with the same Intel CPU and graphics core that is in the Acer. But it is running at 3200x1800 resolution which is much more stressful than 1366x768 resolution. The RAM is operating in dual channel mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhaCiH00bZk


CS:GO on Dell XP 13 at 1440x900 resolution. Actual performance with the i5-5200u and Intel HD 5500 would be higher when not recording gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZzpFGaMZGY

 

[jaguarskx]

Minor correction, it seems Dota 2 is being played at 1920x1080 resolution, not 3200x1600 resolution in the video link I provided above.