Question Which laptop among these?

[FoxInFlames]

So I'm looking for a new laptop (my older one, i5 9th gen and GTX 1650 gets slow and occasionally hangs, and it's around 3 years old so...) and i have a rather low price range, i am just looking for a laptop that has a good cpu and can play light eSports (such as Valorant, CS GO, maybe also minecraft) at 1080p 60, which among these will be the best for me?

Acer aspire 5 A515 - 57G (i5 1240P, RTX 2050)

MSI gaming GF63 Thin (i5 11400H, RTX 3050)

Fujitsu CH intel evo core i5 (i5 1135G7, Iris XE)

Asus vivobook pro 14 OLED (Ryzen 5 5600H, amd integrated graphics)

Dell Inspiron 14 5410 (I5 11320H, Iris XE)

Dell Inspiron 3511 (i5 1135G7, GeForce MX350)

Lenovo IdeaPad slim 5 (i5 1135G7, Iris XE)

I require these 'features' ranked from most to least important:-

1. Portability (lightweight)
2. CPU performance
3. Battery life
4. Build quality (would appreciate a sleek look though)
5. Gaming performance (as mentioned, just very light gaming, either eSports or old titles, think GTA San Andreas and before)

 

[Lutfij]

Could you please pass on the links to each laptop that you've shortlisted? That way we get to see what the other specs to your shortlisted laptops have and at what price point(not to mention the possibility for future drop in upgrades, if there are any). Adding your location, your budget and your preferred site for purchase can also serve the community to provide suggestions if there are any options better than what you've found.

 

[FoxInFlames]

Ah, okay
Acer aspire 5
MSI gf63 thin
Fujitsu CH (couldn't find the original site therefore the Amazon link)
Asus vivobook pro 14 oled
Dell inspiron 14
Dell Inspiron 3511(couldn't find the exact model on dell's site, so Amazon link)
Lenovo IdeaPad slim 5

Since I'm Indian many prices in the USD currency don't stay the same and might blow out of proportion, but my budget is roughly 790 USD tops.

As for future drops in upgrades, I'll probably get the usual, an upgrade to 16 gigs of ram or a bigger storage (or both, but i don't have any plans for now)

Preferred site for purchase, either the site's own market, or Amazon, or Flipkart

 

[Nighthawk117]

My vote goes to:

1. Asus vivobook pro 14 OLED (Ryzen 5 5600H, amd integrated graphics)
2. Dell Inspiron 14 5410 (I5 11320H, Iris XE)

You can upgrade the RAM in the Dell but not the Asus, so really you would need to buy the Asus with 16GB. I wouldn't recommend a laptop with 8GB if you want any longevity. OLED screens also require a little more care than others but otherwise look very impressive.

 

[FoxInFlames]

OLED screens also require a little more care than others but otherwise look very impressive.

I'm torn between this and the other choices to be honest, for the exact reasons, because this vivobook's variant that's in my budget comes with 8 gigs and the 16 GB version falls wayyy out of my budget. But still, this will be the first OLED display i would get (provided i buy this laptop) that's bigger than my phone size

What do you think about a vivobook K15 OLED though? It comes with one stick soldered and another for Expendables. The one that i could go for has a i5 1135g7 and and an iris XE, with 8 gigs of ram that's expandable to 40 gigs (unusual number, but then again, I'll probably not go beyond 20)

 

[Nighthawk117]

I'm torn between this and the other choices to be honest, for the exact reasons, because this vivobook's variant that's in my budget comes with 8 gigs and the 16 GB version falls wayyy out of my budget. But still, this will be the first OLED display i would get (provided i buy this laptop) that's bigger than my phone size

What do you think about a vivobook K15 OLED though? It comes with one stick soldered and another for Expendables. The one that i could go for has a i5 1135g7 and and an iris XE, with 8 gigs of ram that's expandable to 40 gigs (unusual number, but then again, I'll probably not go beyond 20)

It's a decent laptop, it's a more budget friendly machine but in terms of picture quality you won't beat it at this price point. It of course depends on priorities but if you told me portability was the most important thing and the Asus Vivobook Pro is out of budget then I would go for the Dell Inspiron 14 5410. I've used the 15" version, they are pretty sleek and well constructed for the price. The 14" version is going to be more pleasant to carry around than a 15" laptop. It's not a gaming powerhouse but the Iris Xe GPU should be good enough to do a decent job of the titles listed, though you will need another 8GB RAM to get dual channel memory.

It says 40GB's as the max for the Asus because the max DDR4 DIMM size is 32GB and you've already got 8GB installed.

I didn't pay much attention before but I note you have a 9th gen laptop with a 1650. You mention it's slow, have you explored any options for speeding it up? In my mind that should be quite capable for the titles you mentioned. The 1650 is certainly a lot more powerful than integrated graphics.

 

[FoxInFlames]

didn't pay much attention before but I note you have a 9th gen laptop with a 1650. You mention it's slow, have you explored any options for speeding it up? In my mind that should be quite capable for the titles you mentioned. The 1650 is certainly a lot more powerful than integrated graphics.

I don't have a problem with the 1650, it's the i5 9th gen that i have issues with, the stuff that i have to do with my laptop (such as using MATLAB) sometimes makes it unresponsive (there's a bit of light stuttering everytime, but it sometimes goes with the faded window and the (not responding) when i load one data to another, which is kinda irritating.

Not to mention that I've tried thermal repasting and cleaning the fans on a monthly basis, but it still reaches around the 100 degree Celsius mark on the CPU when it comes to minecraft.

And that laptop (it's the 2019 edition of the acer Nitro 5, the 17.3 inch model) is bulky and huge, and around the 3Kg weight mark, so I'd want my next to be something light and small. I'm a day scholar so it takes me around an hour to commute to college, so I'd prefer something that doesn't break my shoulders along the way

I don't need gaming performance much because i have a desktop with a 3080Ti anyways, but i participate seldom in some of my college eSports competitions, thus the slight requirement.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I assume that's a i5 9300H you have in there, my only concern would be that most of these CPU's won't be a big upgrade on what you have. The 5600H and i5 1240P would be though it does depend on laptop cooling particularly with the latter.

It sounds like your CPU may be throttling though if it's reaching those temps. Having carried laptops on the daily commute I don't know how you've managed with 3kg. The Asus Vivobook K15 is much lighter than what your used to at 1.8kg, the Dell Inspiron 14 though is lighter again at 1.44kg.

 

[FoxInFlames]

I assume that's a i5 9300H you have in there

It is a 9300H indeed, sorry for not clarifying it earlier, as for when it comes to this:

The 5600H and i5 1240P would be though it does depend on laptop cooling particularly with the latter.

I came across a paragraph on notebookcheck that said (for the aspire 5)

"The heat generation is similar to that of other multimedia laptops. After our 60-minute stress test (running FurMark and Prime95), temperatures reached up to 43°C (109°F) at the top and 48°C (118°F) at the bottom. Whilst these values are not optimal, they are acceptable as long as you don't place the device on your lap. At idle, the entire chassis stayed nice and cool at below 30°C (86°F)."

I think that's good enough? The display isn't spectacular but cpu performance is more important for me here (and I've worked with bland displays before)

I'm personally set on that K15 too because the 1135g7 has a very nice TDP that will help with battery life too

 

[Nighthawk117]

"The heat generation is similar to that of other multimedia laptops. After our 60-minute stress test (running FurMark and Prime95), temperatures reached up to 43°C (109°F) at the top and 48°C (118°F) at the bottom. Whilst these values are not optimal, they are acceptable as long as you don't place the device on your lap. At idle, the entire chassis stayed nice and cool at below 30°C (86°F)."

Bare in mind that's the chassis temperature and not the CPU temp. The CPU itself hit 92C for the package temp, it's shown in the screenshot just a little further down under 'Stress test'. The CPU throttled quite heavily when both the CPU and GPU were loaded. The CPU on it's own though seemed to sustain performance relatively well.

I must confess I don't use Matlab but are you sure it's the CPU that's the root cause of the slowness and not RAM or anything like that?

 

[FoxInFlames]

I must confess I don't use Matlab but are you sure it's the CPU that's the root cause of the slowness and not RAM or anything like that?

I think it's the CPU because the cpu usage and temp shoots up for the smallest of reasons, for example went to Intel's site and downloaded Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool (downloaded, not installed) and the cpu usage shot up to 63% from idle 3-10%, and the temperature went from 39 to 63 degrees. I don't really have anything that is a sure indication of said assumption.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I think it's the CPU because the cpu usage and temp shoots up for the smallest of reasons, for example went to Intel's site and downloaded Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool (downloaded, not installed) and the cpu usage shot up to 63% from idle 3-10%, and the temperature went from 39 to 63 degrees. I don't really have anything that is a sure indication of said assumption.

If it really is the case that the 9th gen quad core is inadequate for the task at hand then the i5 11400H, i5 1240P and Ryzen 5 5600H
would be appropriate choices. 11th gen is 25% faster at the same clock speed so my expectation would still be a performance improvement with the 11th gen quad cores, particularly the i5 11320H. However I don't know what clock speed your current laptop and the laptops in question settle at under sustained loads to make an accurate estimate of what the performance difference might be.

 

[FoxInFlames]

However I don't know what clock speed your current laptop and the laptops in question settle at under sustained loads to make an accurate estimate of what the performance difference might be.

To 'test' my laptop, i started multi core cinebench and monitored the numbers using Hwmonitor, around 2 minutes into the benchmark, here's the gist of what I see

Package max power is 49.93 W
Max package temperature is 93 degrees
Max core temperature is 94 degrees
The clocks have settled between 2890 and 3090MHz (both values included, though 2900MHz for most of the time), though it reached 4092MHz for a second before the temperatures hit the high degrees (which was almost instantaneous)

End score: 3211 points

 

[FoxInFlames]

My battery wear is concerning in any case, 33%, designed capacity was 58751mWh and now it's full charge capacity is 39655mWh

 

[Nighthawk117]

To 'test' my laptop, i started multi core cinebench and monitored the numbers using Hwmonitor, around 2 minutes into the benchmark, here's the gist of what I see

Package max power is 49.93 W
Max package temperature is 93 degrees
Max core temperature is 94 degrees
The clocks have settled between 2890 and 3090MHz (both values included, though 2900MHz for most of the time), though it reached 4092MHz for a second before the temperatures hit the high degrees (which was almost instantaneous)

End score: 3211 points

2.9Ghz is pretty reasonable. So I come at this from a fairly biased position, I've used big and small laptops, personally I just find the smaller ones more useful because they are easier to carry around.

So given there is a need for the machine to be somewhat portable, the Dell Inspiron 14 5410 would be my default suggestion. Small, compact and you can stick in another 8/16GB of RAM at a later date.

The question is would it give you enough power to do what you want to do. Unfortunately I cannot find the Dell Inspiron 14 5410 i5 11320H reviewed anywhere to know for what TDP the CPU is configured and what the cooling is like.

Assuming there are no short comings in the cooling system that would prevent the CPU from maintaining it's base frequency. The i5 11320H would be anywhere from 7% to 37% faster than your current i5 9300H.

The laptops with the i5 1135g7 are unlikely to offer any performance improvement over what you already have. The MSI gaming GF63 Thin is quite a nice package if performance is paramount, not too heavy either at 1.8kg, it would certainly do a good job of your games. You do compromise on battery life though, I don't have a reference for the 11th gen but the 9th gen version was around 4.5 hours web browsing which is quite common for gaming laptops.

My battery wear is concerning in any case, 33%, designed capacity was 58751mWh and now it's full charge capacity is 39655mWh

That does seem high for 3 years assuming it's accurate. I did notice my current laptop battery has worn a bit faster than my other devices like my phone despite much fewer charge cycles, I did wonder if it's heat related.

 

[FoxInFlames]

Thanks for the suggestion, it seems that I'd get the most out of portability with the Inspiron and performance with the gf63 thin, incidentally (and i might say i took a liking to the overall looks and specs) what do you think of the aspire 5 in case? Because the i5 1240P (atleast according to nanoreview) can go slightly faster than the i5 11400H, and it's the only one that comes with 16 GB of ram and under the budget.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Thanks for the suggestion, it seems that I'd get the most out of portability with the Inspiron and performance with the gf63 thin, incidentally (and i might say i took a liking to the overall looks and specs) what do you think of the aspire 5 in case? Because the i5 1240P (atleast according to nanoreview) can go slightly faster than the i5 11400H, and it's the only one that comes with 16 GB of ram and under the budget.

Overall I would expect the 1240P to perform better than the 11400H in single threaded and multi-threaded performance. Assuming your workload scales well with core count, the Acer Aspire 5 is substantially stronger than what your currently have. Battery life is much better at over 7 hours vs over 4 on the MSI. My expectation would still be that the Dell would have the best build quality. Though my experience with Acer Aspire's has generally been pretty good.

If CPU and battery life are very important then the Acer is a good pick. The only thing you lose vs the Dell is some of that portability, but it's still much lighter than your current machine at just over 1.8kg.

 

[FoxInFlames]

If CPU and battery life are very important then the Acer is a good pick. The only thing you lose vs the Dell is some of that portability, but it's still much lighter than your current machine at just over 1.8kg.

Guess I'll take the aspire then, thanks