New laptop advice - worth considering refurbished?

[elsmandino]

Hi there.

I would be really grateful for some general advice on buying a laptop to replace my current desktop PC.

One of the main motivations is space - my wife and I both now work from home and we have a really tiny office.

We are thinking of taking it in turns to use the office, whilst the other one works at a breakfast bar.

My current tower is connected to two external monitors and there are a couple of external speakers as well.

I was hoping that I could put one of the monitors in the kitchen, so we could each have an external monitor.

I will look to sell the tower but not sure how much I will get for it (i3-2105 system with 8GB Ram).

Is it advisable to consider a refurbished laptop, rather than something brand new?

I have quite a limited budget (£300 but could push this up a little bit).

 

[geofelt]

Refurbished is a decent way to buy used.
Since your need is more for a small size than portability, look for a refurbished Lenovo tiny pc.
Perhaps like this:
https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-think...-workstations/p/1VK-0003-04N06?quicklink=true
Check the connections to use one of your monitors.

 

[elsmandino]

Apologies - should have stated that I would like to switch between working in my office and the kitchen, so I am looking at Laptops (though the tiny PC, that you linked, looks really good).

My research has suggested that Lenovo Thinkpads are the way to go as they are cheap to buy, rugged and there are loads of spare parts and upgrades on Ebay. Importantly, they seem to work really well with Linux.

I think, however, that I am going to have to update my budget a bit to more £400.00.

What do you guys think?

My only real requirement is a 15" screen and the ability to upgrade the RAM up to 16GB. An i5 would also be nice.

I am not a gamer so I do not need anything with amazing graphics, either.

 

[geofelt]

I very much like the thinkpads.
They will have good keyboards and are easy to upgrade.
Many refurbs will come from businesses upgrading their laptops.
If the refurb is done by a reputable outfit, that is good.
I would not worry about ram, thinkpads should be easily upgraded to 16gb.
One item I would insist on is a ssd of sufficient size for your work.
Even a slow i3-2105 system comes alive with a SSD.
Do not discount a cheap unit that had a ssd.
It is easy to clone the HDD to a SSD.

 

[elsmandino]

Thanks very much for that - really helpful advice.

My current desktop has a 1TB Crucial SSD so I would steal that for the laptop.

I found a deal on a Lenovo ThickPad L580 that looks pretty good - 240GB SSD, 16GB RAM, i5-8350U, Windows 11 Standard for £352.50.

Has a few scratches on it (advertised as Grade C) but does come with 1 year warranty.

Do you think this looks worth considering?

I am a bit out of touch with CPUs (especially mobile ones) but 8th generation still seems to be pretty good in this day and age.

 

[geofelt]

Looks good. In particular the ips panel.
Check on the type of ssd devices which comes with that particular model.and can be supported.
It is possible that you may need a m.2 sized ssd and not an old style 2.5" ssd.

The cpu is a nice upgrade over your i3-2105