School laptop around 600 Euros

[Tauwer]

A friend of mine asked me for advice on a laptop, she's looking for a laptop that's primarily going to be used for school around the 600 euro mark.

i saw the lenovo-ideapad-l340-15api-(81lw00bqmh) and it looked good but i only understand specs and such, not very at home in the laptop world when it comes to quality of screens, keyboards etc.

 

So I'm looking for a laptop around these preferences, preferably a ryzen cpu if possible.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

[AndrewB121]

Does she need it be able to play games? If not I recommend the lenovo s540, cheaper and much smaller/thinner. 

[Tauwer]

4 minutes ago, AndrewB121 said:

Does she need it be able to play games? If not I recommend the lenovo s540, cheaper and much smaller/thinner. 

No games as far as i know but it needs to last for a bit

 

And when i look up that laptop there seems to be many versions of it, which one do you mean specifically?

[AndrewB121]

10 minutes ago, Tauwer said:

No games as far as i know but it needs to last for a bit

 

And when i look up that laptop there seems to be many versions of it, which one do you mean specifically?

Here's the one I have. This is the UK store so I'm not sure what the price in the EU is. Also if she's a student make sure you take advantage of lenovo student discounts. 

[Tauwer]

1 minute ago, AndrewB121 said:

Here's the one I have. This is the UK store so I'm not sure what the price in the EU is. Also if she's a student make sure you take advantage of lenovo student discounts. 

How is the build quality, keyboard, screen and trackpad?

[AndrewB121]

Just now, Tauwer said:

How is the build quality, keyboard, screen and trackpad?

The build quality is fantastic, one of the best on a windows laptop imo, except maybe the surface laptops. The whole thing is aluminium, nice and rigid, feels very premium.

 

The trackpad is also fantastic, second only to apple imo. Nice and big, responsive and generally nice to use. Used to hate trackpads, now I like them.

 

The screen is really good. Obviously it's just a standard 1080p ips panel so nothing amazing but colours are good and I like it. Maybe not as good as higher end models but it definitely holds up for the price.

 

The keyboard is...meh. It's not bad compared to some laptops I've used but it definitely isn't great, can feel a little mushy at times. Not a deal breaker for me but takes a bit of getting used to. 

 

Otherwise the laptop is fast, with a ryzen 5 3500U and NVME ssd, and can handle older games surprisingly well. The battery life is also fairly good considering the size.

[Himommies]

I would take a look at the Surface Go. IMO the surface is the best "school"/note taking laptop in existence because of its awesome displays and keyboard. If you want something a bit bigger the Lenovo is definitely a good choice, but if shes just using for school to take notes and stuff then maybe look at a chromebook. It'll be faster in the long run and you can get a lot more computer.

[Roswell]

18 minutes ago, Himommies said:

I would take a look at the Surface Go. IMO the surface is the best "school"/note taking laptop in existence because of its awesome displays and keyboard. If you want something a bit bigger the Lenovo is definitely a good choice, but if shes just using for school to take notes and stuff then maybe look at a chromebook. It'll be faster in the long run and you can get a lot more computer.

Not having access to Office while in college would be a total nightmare.

[Himommies]

Just now, Vitamanic said:

Not having access to Office while in college would be a total nightmare.

Like I said. If you just want to take notes and aren't doing visual studio or excel then google docs is pretty good. I wouldn't really spend 600 on a laptop just to do that, because your getting similar build quality and performance from a 300 dollar chromebook

[Roswell]

4 minutes ago, Himommies said:

Like I said. If you just want to take notes and aren't doing visual studio or excel then google docs is pretty good. I wouldn't really spend 600 on a laptop just to do that, because your getting similar build quality and performance from a 300 dollar chromebook

The problem is that while Google docs can open and edit Office extensions, it's not all that great at maintaining formatting. So you can end up sending your professor an absolute mess without even knowing.

 

Then there's the issue of not being able to work on collaborative Office files in groups.

 

Regardless, many classes are going to require you to have Microsoft Office, so Chromebooks aren't an option at all.

[Himommies]

1 minute ago, Vitamanic said:

The problem is that while Google docs can open and edit Office extensions, it's not all that great at maintaining formatting. So you can end up sending your professor an absolute mess without even knowing.

 

Then there's the issue of not being able to work on collaborative Office files in groups.

 

Regardless, many classes are going to require you to have Microsoft Office, so Chromebooks aren't an option at all.

The use case I was thinking about is mainly if they have another PC at home a Chromebook would probaly be another option.

2 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

The problem is that while Google docs can open and edit Office extensions, it's not all that great at maintaining formatting. So you can end up sending your professor an absolute mess without even knowing.

I use office and Docs interchangeably and they recently added this. Have not really had any formatting issues.

 

5 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Regardless, many classes are going to require you to have Microsoft Office, so Chromebooks aren't an option at all.

You can get by through a lot of classes without MS office but really depends on OPs use case and situation. Just depends on whether he needs to. I would personally do it since basically the whole world runs on office but it's really up to OP