Looking for a laptop (School and work) that will last in the long run

[Delusional Phil]

As the title have stated, I'm looking for a laptop which is under $1000 because I don't want to blow my Uncle's budget. Over his trip to Best Buy (I know it is not the greatest place but you gotta make do), he took some pictures of the specs and model number of each laptop and I have finally pick out the 2 that looks best to me: (My usage is heavy on the business side of things):

The first is the HP ENVY x360 - 15m-bp012dx: ~$780

Core i5-7200U
Touch screen 

12GB of DDR4 (this is super weird to me)

1TB HDD 7200rpm

55.8Wh battery (HP claims it can last upto 10 hours on mix usaged so I'll take that with a grain of salt and say it lasts about 7.5-8 hours)

 

The second is the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series ( They didn't put the Model number on the price tag so I don't know the specific model, so I'm gonna eyeball it and say it this ) : ~$700

Core i7-7500U

16GB of DDR4 

1TB HDD (5400rpm I think?)

AMD Radeon™ R7 M445 Graphics 4GB GDDR5

and from what I've gathered and eyeball on the internet, about 42Wh battery ( so about 5 hours I think?)

 

Has anyone owned or try these two laptops and can you describe your experience with them (i.e screen brightness, color accuracy, responsiveness, battery life, fan noise, heat, keyboard, typing experience and sound quality as I prioritized those aspects more than others)

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

look for a semi gaming laptop i suppose, proper cpu ( pref i7 ) and a decent gpu aswell ( so u can do ur own stuff too c: )  spec wise id go for the dell

[RadiatingLight]

Maybe wait for 8th gen CPUs?

double the cores and threads will really help for future-proofing.

 

I'd personally also take the envy. battery life > everything else if you're going for a school laptop.

[LienusLateTips]

Wait for KBLR

[Damascus]

Kaby lake R will give you that longevity, as would an MX150 equipped laptop.

[genexis_x]

The new HP Envy comes with i5 8250U or i7 8550U (both 4c8t) and an optional MX150 GPU (which is roughly equivalent with GT 1030, powerful enough for everyday needs)

[ErrystioT]

Do you have any size and weight preference? Anyways, the Dell is better specs wise (if you don't mind the battery life) cuz the R7 M445 is like a GT 940M. But I'd say you can get something like the new Acer Aspire 5 for about $100 less than those 2 and uses the new MX 150 which is significantly better than the Dell's R7 M445

[Delusional Phil]

9 hours ago, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

look for a semi gaming laptop i suppose, proper cpu ( pref i7 ) and a decent gpu aswell ( so u can do ur own stuff too c: )  spec wise id go for the dell

 

9 hours ago, RadiatingLight said:

Maybe wait for 8th gen CPUs?

double the cores and threads will really help for future-proofing.

 

I'd personally also take the envy. battery life > everything else if you're going for a school laptop.

 

9 hours ago, JDE said:

Wait for KBLR

 

8 hours ago, Damascus said:

Kaby lake R will give you that longevity, as would an MX150 equipped laptop.

 

8 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

The new HP Envy comes with i5 8250U or i7 8550U (both 4c8t) and an optional MX150 GPU (which is roughly equivalent with GT 1030, powerful enough for everyday needs)

 

5 hours ago, ErrystioT said:

Do you have any size and weight preference? Anyways, the Dell is better specs wise (if you don't mind the battery life) cuz the R7 M445 is like a GT 940M. But I'd say you can get something like the new Acer Aspire 5 for about $100 less than those 2 and uses the new MX 150 which is significantly better than the Dell's R7 M445

Welp looks like I'll be waiting for the 8th generation Kaby Lake R and MX 150... The question is: How long do I have to wait and where can I shop for those laptops? (Shops must be in Philadelphia btw)

Another question would be that how do I know which laptop is better since they all support the same specs? (Cause the highest end models will get reviews first)

In regards to size and weight, I would say that I need the laptop to be straight up ultrabooks or at least a semi ultrabook. (which basically means anything over 3kg is too much and I don't want to hull that around all day)

[LienusLateTips]

2 minutes ago, Delusional Phil said:

 

 

 

 

 

Welp looks like I'll be waiting for the 8th generation Kaby Lake R and MX 150... The question is: How long do I have to wait and where can I shop for those laptops? (Shops must be in Philadelphia btw)

Another question would be that how do I know which laptop is better since they all support the same specs? (Cause the highest end models will get reviews first)

In regards to size and weight, I would say that I need the laptop to be straight up ultrabooks or at least a semi ultrabook. (which basically means anything over 3kg is too much and I don't want to hull that around all day)

Desktop 8th gen Coffee Lake comes out in October, I think KBLR is supposed to come at the end of this month.

[Delusional Phil]

26 minutes ago, JDE said:

Desktop 8th gen Coffee Lake comes out in October, I think KBLR is supposed to come at the end of this month.

Should I preorder them from the manufacturers themselves or look for a retailer and if so, which retailer would you recommend?

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, Delusional Phil said:

Should I preorder them from the manufacturers themselves or look for a retailer and if so, which retailer would you recommend?

Any retailer will do. Best Buy, Newegg (if there is a pick up warehouse, idk if there is or if you stay long enough) or something like that.

[Delusional Phil]

3 minutes ago, JDE said:

Any retailer will do. Best Buy, Newegg (if there is a pick up warehouse, idk if there is or if you stay long enough) or something like that.

Oh I'm not there at all, my uncle is doing the shopping for me so it's a bit of a hassle having him go to store, take pictures then return and send me those pictures, wait for me to respond and then go there again to ask cause I have specific specs in mind... 

 

Oh and that Dell Inspiron deal for $700 looks very tempting to me at the moment...Although I know I'll have buyer's remorse after buying it since Kaby Lake Refresh is just around the corner...

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, Delusional Phil said:

Oh I'm not there at all, my uncle is doing the shopping for me so it's a bit of a hassle having him go to store, take pictures then return and send me those pictures, wait for me to respond and then go there again to ask cause I have specific specs in mind... 

 

Oh and that Dell Inspiron deal for $700 looks very tempting to me at the moment...Although I know I'll have buyer's remorse after buying it since Kaby Lake Refresh is just around the corner...

If you can ship to a address, newegg and amazon is good.

[Delusional Phil]

4 minutes ago, JDE said:

If you can ship to a address, newegg and amazon is good.

I'll try and ask him to create an account... If there are many hiccups, I'll probably go for the Dell tbh...

[ErrystioT]

3 hours ago, Delusional Phil said:

Welp looks like I'll be waiting for the 8th generation Kaby Lake R and MX 150... The question is: How long do I have to wait and where can I shop for those laptops? (Shops must be in Philadelphia btw)

Another question would be that how do I know which laptop is better since they all support the same specs? (Cause the highest end models will get reviews first)

In regards to size and weight, I would say that I need the laptop to be straight up ultrabooks or at least a semi ultrabook. (which basically means anything over 3kg is too much and I don't want to hull that around all day)

There's already 1 8th Gen based laptop (with i5-8250U) available on Amazon US right now which is the Acer Swift 3 (https://www.amazon.com/Acer-i5-8250U-NVIDIA-GeForce-SF314-52G-55WQ/dp/B0746P25QX/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1506107125&sr=1-3&keywords=Acer+Swift+3) comes at $800 in a quite lightweight package with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and MX 150

[Delusional Phil]

19 hours ago, ErrystioT said:

There's already 1 8th Gen based laptop (with i5-8250U) available on Amazon US right now which is the Acer Swift 3 (https://www.amazon.com/Acer-i5-8250U-NVIDIA-GeForce-SF314-52G-55WQ/dp/B0746P25QX/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1506107125&sr=1-3&keywords=Acer+Swift+3) comes at $800 in a quite lightweight package with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and MX 150

This seems too good to be true. I'm gonna tell him now...

 

One thing that seems odd to me is the RAM, why it is LPDDR3 when it's on a Kaby Lake R? (I'm not well verse in terms of distinguishing RAM types)

[ErrystioT]

5 hours ago, Delusional Phil said:

One thing that seems odd to me is the RAM, why it is LPDDR3 when it's on a Kaby Lake R? (I'm not well verse in terms of distinguishing RAM types)

I know right? I can't even tell why Acer decided to use LPDDR3 instead of DDR4 (I do hope though even if it's DDR3, at least it's 1866MHz). But nonetheless, right now that Acer Swift 3 is the only 8th Gen laptop that I've come across at this point. Europe has the new HP Envy 13 (with MX150) available, don't know when it'll reach US though.

[Delusional Phil]

7 hours ago, ErrystioT said:

I know right? I can't even tell why Acer decided to use LPDDR3 instead of DDR4 (I do hope though even if it's DDR3, at least it's 1866MHz). But nonetheless, right now that Acer Swift 3 is the only 8th Gen laptop that I've come across at this point. Europe has the new HP Envy 13 (with MX150) available, don't know when it'll reach US though.

I thought DDR3 isn't compatible with the newer generations of chips or am I mistaken?

[ErrystioT]

1 hour ago, Delusional Phil said:

I thought DDR3 isn't compatible with the newer generations of chips or am I mistaken?

According to Intel's ARK site (https://ark.intel.com/products/124967/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz), apparently the LPDDR3 is of 2133MHz variant so maybe, the Acer's LPDDR3 might have that 2133MHz speed. This goes back to earlier days where there was 2133MHz on DDR3 desktop RAMs (overclocked ones) but idk why Intel or manufacturers decide to label it as LPDDR3 instead of just DDR4 lol . 

[kirashi]

On 9/21/2017 at 10:40 PM, Delusional Phil said:

As the title have stated, I'm looking for a laptop which is under $1000 because I don't want to blow my Uncle's budget. Over his trip to Best Buy (I know it is not the greatest place but you gotta make do), he took some pictures of the specs and model number of each laptop and I have finally pick out the 2 that looks best to me: (My usage is heavy on the business side of things):

The first is the HP ENVY x360 - 15m-bp012dx: ~$780

Core i5-7200U
Touch screen 

12GB of DDR4 (this is super weird to me)

1TB HDD 7200rpm

55.8Wh battery (HP claims it can last upto 10 hours on mix usaged so I'll take that with a grain of salt and say it lasts about 7.5-8 hours)

 

The second is the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series ( They didn't put the Model number on the price tag so I don't know the specific model, so I'm gonna eyeball it and say it this ) : ~$700

Core i7-7500U

16GB of DDR4 

1TB HDD (5400rpm I think?)

AMD Radeon™ R7 M445 Graphics 4GB GDDR5

and from what I've gathered and eyeball on the internet, about 42Wh battery ( so about 5 hours I think?)

 

Has anyone owned or try these two laptops and can you describe your experience with them (i.e screen brightness, color accuracy, responsiveness, battery life, fan noise, heat, keyboard, typing experience and sound quality as I prioritized those aspects more than others)

Neither laptop have an SSD, so I can't recommend either to you. Windows 10 and MacOS 10.9 and up both operate like pigs on 5400rpm hard drives in every laptop I've ever used. I used to sell computers for a living, and with the way Windows 10's updates work, even the $1600 CAD ASUS ROG gaming laptops with dual 500GB 5400rpm HDD's in RAID0 were sluggish, despite having i7-6700HQ CPUs.

 

That being said, I can make other recommendations, but you need to let us know what you actually need the laptop to do before I can do this. Otherwise it's like buying a vehicle that you plan to tow a boat with, and walking out of the dealership with a minivan instead of a truck. Sure, you can tow the boat with a minivan, but I hope you've got a couple thousand kicking around when your transmission EXPLODES.

[Delusional Phil]

4 hours ago, kirashi said:

Neither laptop have an SSD, so I can't recommend either to you. Windows 10 and MacOS 10.9 and up both operate like pigs on 5400rpm hard drives in every laptop I've ever used. I used to sell computers for a living, and with the way Windows 10's updates work, even the $1600 CAD ASUS ROG gaming laptops with dual 500GB 5400rpm HDD's in RAID0 were sluggish, despite having i7-6700HQ CPUs.

 

That being said, I can make other recommendations, but you need to let us know what you actually need the laptop to do before I can do this. Otherwise it's like buying a vehicle that you plan to tow a boat with, and walking out of the dealership with a minivan instead of a truck. Sure, you can tow the boat with a minivan, but I hope you've got a couple thousand kicking around when your transmission EXPLODES.

For usage I'll definitely be using it for extensive research and writing in the future, a long with presentations, excel and database management, basically white collar jobs. I'm not planning on gaming since I already have a desktop that can do light gaming and I don't need video editing or photo editing on the laptop just yet since I do not own a decent camera and a decent camera is pretty far down as far as my wishing list is concern. I need a laptop that has a good typing experience, solid build quality, a very long battery life, a bright screen is definitely appreciated although not a necessary requirement since I'll be typing in coffee shops anyways and color accuracy is just the icing on the cake. Portability wise I'm aiming for less than 2.5kg.

In terms of price in the original post I said that the budget was less than $1000. However I have not sorted out with my relative about the budget since I don't know how much he has in his wallet right now and I'm going to take a wild guess from the pictures that he have sent me that his budget is around $800 (even though he did send a picture of the Macbook Pro 2017 edition). So if you have other suggestions, go ahead... (he has yet to respond to the Acer I sent him that I saw earlier in this thread so we still have time for reccommendations.)

[ErrystioT]

6 hours ago, Delusional Phil said:

-snip-

Just checked, the Acer Swift 3 has its price dropped by $70 on Amazon US (from $799.99 to $729.99). That's almost 10% off (8.75% to be exact) and would make this a killer deal for a Kaby Lake R based laptop with MX150 right now

[kirashi]

13 hours ago, Delusional Phil said:

For usage I'll definitely be using it for extensive research and writing in the future, a long with presentations, excel and database management, basically white collar jobs. I'm not planning on gaming since I already have a desktop that can do light gaming and I don't need video editing or photo editing on the laptop just yet since I do not own a decent camera and a decent camera is pretty far down as far as my wishing list is concern. I need a laptop that has a good typing experience, solid build quality, a very long battery life, a bright screen is definitely appreciated although not a necessary requirement since I'll be typing in coffee shops anyways and color accuracy is just the icing on the cake. Portability wise I'm aiming for less than 2.5kg.

In terms of price in the original post I said that the budget was less than $1000. However I have not sorted out with my relative about the budget since I don't know how much he has in his wallet right now and I'm going to take a wild guess from the pictures that he have sent me that his budget is around $800 (even though he did send a picture of the Macbook Pro 2017 edition). So if you have other suggestions, go ahead... (he has yet to respond to the Acer I sent him that I saw earlier in this thread so we still have time for reccommendations.)

Awesome! Thanks for clarifying. Based on your use, I'd highly recommend looking into Lenovo's IdeaPad 510 / 710 series as they offer really good value for being a thin and light business laptop that's does office tasks well. I know this is for school, but much of what you do in school aside from multimedia is all going to be business-like.

 

If you want a 15" screen instead of 13" or 14", I'd look at Dell's XPS 15 series instead. Yes, I'm a bit biased here since I own one, but they're hands down the best 15" laptop under 2.5kg for the money. You don't need a top end i7 CPU 512GB/1TB SSD model like I bought for just school, unless you do want to do light gaming on it or video editing, so looking at something like the i5 model with a 256GB SSD would be plenty fine for your needs.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-15-9560-laptop/dncwxb1641sv2

 

The keyboard feels great to type on, is backlit too, and the battery lasts about 8-12 hours if you're just web browsing and don't mind turning the screen brightness down or enabling power saver mode. The only thing that's not great is the webcam placement, but I mean, unless you video conference regularly, it won't matter one bit. It's basically the 2017 MacBook Pro that Apple should have made but chose not to because DONGLES.

 

It's over $1000 yes, but I know from experience that Dell's higher end and business models are built like tanks and will last most people at least 3 years before they really even want to upgrade, as long as their needs don't change a ton. Highly recommend buying online direct from Dell when the laptop is already on sale, then stacking coupons on top of that. http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-coupons-codes/ab/dell-coupons-codes?~ck=mn