What is the best laptop within my budget?

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Kaupakay

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Nov 30, 2013
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I am looking to spend around $600 on a new laptop. The requirements are that it needs to be thin, have decent battery life, be powerful enough to handle moderate gaming and photoshop, and be somewhat attractively designed. I understand that within my budget I can't expect too much but I would like to get the best that I can. In summary I am looking for something portable with enough battery life to get me through the day and enough power to handle games acceptably. What I am looking at now is the Acer Aspire V5-552P-X617. Would this be good enough?

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-V5-552P-X617-15-6-Inch-Touchscreen-Accelerated/dp/B00FS4UNG4
 
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hang-the-9
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If you drop the need for touchscreen, generally the battery life improves. Also - you can remove the hard drive and install a SSD drive and get better battery life. The mobile processors don't "gear up" and draw a lot of power when idle - only when processing.....so if you are playing games and/or running photoshop - don't expect long battery life. The more CPU/GPU you use, the higher the power drain.

Gaming is going to be based on GPU - and most of the better GPUs for laptops are going to be $800+ (great gaming at $1500).
 
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Yeah the second one is better but I'm turned off by how the loss of portability and higher price tag. It seems like it would be better at the gaming but worse on battery life, less portable, and not as attractively designed. I was also considering this http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaPad-15-6-Inch-Laptop-59406417/dp/B00HIYA4F2/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1412389323&sr=1-1&keywords=Lenovo+G505s+59406417 but I can't figure out if it is any better than the first laptop I posted. They seem to be extremely similar.
 
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Between the first and second laptops - the first has a 4.5 hour battery, the second has a 7 hour battery. They are within 0.5 pounds in weight....and it is about $70 difference in price. The 2nd uses a GPU that doesn't turn on for normal web surfing and light graphics use - it is only utilized when needed. I have an ASUS laptop that has the same GPU (it has a core i-7 processor) - and it does save big on battery.

If you are gaming on the laptop - neither will give you much more than 3 hours of battery....
 
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I really appreciate the help. So if you were to recommend one, yes I will use it for gaming, but mostly photoshop, school, multimedia, and basic everyday use. I will only do light gaming on it as I have a gaming desktop at home. When I do play games it will probably only be League Of Legends and other low impact games. I will also need to be able to carry it around almost everyday and would appreciate if it was light enough for this.
 
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5 pounds (give or take a few ounces) are pretty light. There isn't much weight difference between any of the laptops - I would suggest #2.

I have been looking at the Surface - it is super lightweight and portable - with great battery life....but such a small screen.
 
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Okay. And also, how productive and useful is a touchscreen for a laptop specifically for school purposes etc. And would it be useful with a stylus for photoshop similar to something like a wacom tablet or is it nothing similar?
 
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Generally a touch screen isn't super accurate for free handing stuff in photoshop. The old stylus/tablets used for drawing had a higher DPI so it was more exact - the touch screens are optimized for finger touch and gestures (i.e. on web surfing).

I am more sold on a tablet having touch - or like the Surface, where you don't have a keyboard attached or mouse for general use. If you are doing any typing - a keyboard is always faster. I can type 120 WPM on a keyboard - on the "virtual keyboard" on tablets - I don't think I can do 30 WPM.
 
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Okay. I'm just stuck between the two options. The cheaper one just seems more attractive to me as far as price point and features. I also like the backlit keyboard and how thin it is. I Guess I will have to look at them more.
 
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So would you recommend that I buy the 2nd one for the extra money considering most of my gaming will be on my desktop at home? After thinking about it I will probably not play anything all that intensive on it ever so I'm not sure if its worth it. Its most intensive primary use will be photoshop and that will be used often.
 
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Photoshop in rendering pictures - especially if you are doing 3D rendering or other advanced manipulation of the picture uses the GPU for faster performance. I find that 90% of what I do in photoshop doesn't utilize much from the GPU, and so my main workstation uses Intel Graphics (built in to the mobo). Almost all of my apps wouldn't benefit from the GPU.

You have to remember - the better the GPU, generally speaking the more power will be consumed which means less battery life between charges.
 
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