New laptop consideration

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elvisruns

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1. What is your budget? <$500
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 14"+
3. What screen resolution do you want? Not conernced.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Replacing an old laptop who's keyboard is kaput and motherboard may be going
5. How much battery life do you need? 5-6 hours under continual use would be excellent
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 games
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) General office business, much of it is web based, some light graphics/photo editing but not on a regular basis
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 250GB+ (we archive things to flash drives quite a bit so a ton of storage isn't critical
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. https://www.newegg.com/
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/22/campaigns/outlet
http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 4-5 years would be expected lifecycle
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? None preferred to keep weight down
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. Lenovo, Dell (the two brands we have now, and have been generally reliable); am open to others though
13. What country do you live in? USA
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed: Looking to replace my wife's laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1500 that is about 4-5 years old. Used for mostly web-based business use, with some light photo editing work done from time to time. Prefer to find something with an SSD for speed & weight savings, but am not sure if I'm putting too much stock into that as my primary spec in what I've been looking at online so far. Mainly looking for something that boots quickly, runs smoothly, weighs less than the Inspiron. Probably don't require a ton of storage as we archive a lot of files to flash drives periodically - the biggest thing on her hard drive are going to be 2-3gb photos. We do a lot of cloud storage now as well, so that takes a lot of previously required storage space down. I'm all for a refurb/open box/outlet type deal, but I'm not finding too much in the price range with a little larger screen (14+ inches). I'd totally consider a Chromebook, but our office's printer service technician told me that they haven't been able to get one to jive with the accounting software we use when we're in the office. :fou:
 
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For this price I usually recommend the Acer Aspire E5-575-33BM due to the fact that its 1920x1080 resolution is a fair bit less limiting than the 1366x768 in other laptops, as to how much you'll be able to fit more onscreen. Default 125% scaling increases size of things onscreen but still gives you more "screen realestate" than 1366x768.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i3-7100U-Windows-E5-575-33BM/dp/B01K1IO3QW

It also claims 12 hours battery life and I've heard of 10 hours actually being achievable.

EDIT: No SSD, but if you're fine buying one after-market and reinstalling the OS on it, it could work.

EDIT2: This ASUS has an SSD and an even better display (same 1920x1080 resolution, but it's a much better quality (IPS) display...

elvisruns

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Sorry - I am looking for recommendations on the replacement. I've been looking but the various sites filters don't always narrow the search parameters down to be as specific as possible.....and frankly I'm getting exhausted trying to sift through all of it.

 

schwartzasher

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I bought from sams club for 375 the hp 15-ba037cl. I do video editing on it and I love and reccommend the laptop to anyone looking for one. If you need a good recommendation, then HP is your way to go on fast lightweight and cheap laptops
 

elvisruns

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Sam's/Costco isn't going to be an option for me since I don't have a club membership. I did see that HP has like a business outlet online - has anyone had any experience purchasing from that?
 

edit1754

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For this price I usually recommend the Acer Aspire E5-575-33BM due to the fact that its 1920x1080 resolution is a fair bit less limiting than the 1366x768 in other laptops, as to how much you'll be able to fit more onscreen. Default 125% scaling increases size of things onscreen but still gives you more "screen realestate" than 1366x768.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i3-7100U-Windows-E5-575-33BM/dp/B01K1IO3QW

It also claims 12 hours battery life and I've heard of 10 hours actually being achievable.

EDIT: No SSD, but if you're fine buying one after-market and reinstalling the OS on it, it could work.

EDIT2: This ASUS has an SSD and an even better display (same 1920x1080 resolution, but it's a much better quality (IPS) display that doesn't have the grayish blacks and washed out colors). AMD CPU should be fine for basic use.
- https://www.amazon.com/Asus-Performance-A10-8700P-Processor-Graphics/dp/B01MQDRHQD/
 
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schwartzasher

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I have a huge problem with the price. It is a good laptop, but for the price, it is too expensive. I can get the one i mentioned (even though it is at sams club) for 400 after taxes. It has a 2.4ghz cache instead of 1.8. It uses one 8gb ddr4 ram card (2 slots available) It has a AMD A10-9600P (instead of 8700P) The one I have uses a 1TB 5200RPM hard drive instead of an SSD but it can easily be upgraded (I upgraded to a 1TB SSD)
Here is a link to the amazon link: https://goo.gl/bQbJRT
It is cheaper than what you mentioned but still is great. I love the laptop and I use it every day for school. The keyboard is great and feels a little mushy but I feel like that is common with laptops unless you pay over $500 for a laptop. It has a nice amount of ports on it and comes with ok speakers. It is fast and doesn't have any sort of lag/glitch. You can do low end gaming on this machine and doesn't get hot. The touchpad is a little different than what the old HP computers used to be but I got used to it (the only thing is the top of the touchpad transitions into the case a little too much for you to realize that the touchpad ended) You eventually get used to that. The battery is not that great but if you are using it mostly to write something up, it lasts 4.5 hrs. If you watch a movie, you can get through one movie. Basic web browsing lasts 4-4.5 hrs. The screen is 1366x768 but I can't find too much of a difference between a 1080p screen and this unless they were compared side by side (The screen looks phenomenal). The nice addition is the F1-10 keys are reversed. I usually do not use the F1-10 keys, but since I have had an HP, I use them because they switched them around where you can just press the button to mute the volume and change the volume, change and pause a song through a music app, you can also change the screen brightness (You can still access the F1-10 keys by pressing the FN button). There is not much more to say other than that I have had the best luck with HP. I used to do crazy stuff with computers. My 2nd computer was an HP and that was in 2011. I have done things to the computer that probably would have destroyed a different computer from that time, and it is still running (every component inside is perfect). If I were to recommend something, click on the link I provided above or right here:
https://goo.gl/bQbJRT
(P.S.
I use goo.gl links so that it is easier for someone to manually type in the website. goo.gl is owned by google and is just a URL shortner. Just thought you should know that)
Hope you find what you are looking for!
 

edit1754

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If you compare a 1366x768 TN and a 1920x1080 TN (one of today's 1080p TNs which don't have the high contrast like the old 1080p TNs), you won't see much quality difference.

What you get from the 1920x1080 itself is a less limited screen realestate. 1366x768 makes it difficult to fit more than one window onscreen at a time. 1920x1080 at default 125% scaling for 15.6" is already less limiting (effective 1536x864's worth of space), or if your eyes are fine with using it at 100% scaling, you get a lot more screen space.

With the IPS display in the ASUS versus a non-IPS laptop display, it's this kind of difference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7Etz_3Mp8

All in all, 1366x768 may work, but I am of the opinion that differences between displays can have a lot more of an effect on how nice the computer is to use, than the differences between a lot of things.

If $500 is fine, I think the ASUS with the SSD and the 1920x1080 IPS display is a good value. If you need to spend less, I would recommend the Acer with 1920x1080 in most cases.

Or, for another 1920x1080 (non-IPS) option, this: https://www.amazon.com/HP-Notebook-15-ay011nr-15-6-Inch-Processor/dp/B01CGGOZOM/
 
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