Laptop for school under 800$?

[Tarun10]

I'll be using this laptop for college mostly for web browsing and media consumption. I'm just dipping into a bit of video editing and some light gaming. I'm playing at 720p 20fps so anything should be an upgrade. Also I'm not sure if I'll be carrying it around to class a lot yet, it's uncommon for people to take notes with laptops here.

 

CPU: Ryzen 5 3500U or i5-1035G1 seem like the best options.

GPU: Anything if the budget allows

Display: FHD, 250 nits at least

RAM: 8GB with upgradability to 16GB

Battery: As I've mentioned I don't know how long I'll be actually away from an outlet. Over 5 hours at a moderate brightness for browsing or movies would be good.

Size: I'm torn on this one, as long as bezels aren't big, 15 inches should be manageable. Same with weight. As long as it isn't well over 2 kgs I should be fine.

Ports: SD card reader and Type C would be welcome but less important.

Input Devices: As long as they're not terrible. Standard layout would be good.

Storage: 256GB SSD. All my previous laptops have no SSDs so this should be a big change. A hard drive would also be good for larger files but I could use an external one or add it in later.

 

I live in India and my budget is around 600-800$ which is around 45000 to 60000 INR. I could stretch if there's something that check everything. I've tried to narrow it down but the build quality, thermal performance and display quality are a bit tricky to evaluate even with good review websites like notebookcheck. There are about 20 different model names for the same chassis(HP!!!!) so I need help finding the best value.

 

Any decent gaming laptops with decent battery lives, displays and portability in this price range? Or should I get a notebook with AMD graphics. amazon.in probably has the best prices but some manufacturers are completely out of stock even on their own websites. 

[Bombastinator]

22 minutes ago, Tarun10 said:

I'll be using this laptop for college mostly for web browsing and media consumption. I'm just dipping into a bit of video editing and some light gaming. I'm playing at 720p 20fps so anything should be an upgrade. Also I'm not sure if I'll be carrying it around to class a lot yet, it's uncommon for people to take notes with laptops here.

 

CPU: Ryzen 5 3500U or i5-1035G1 seem like the best options.

GPU: Anything if the budget allows

Display: FHD, 250 nits at least

RAM: 8GB with upgradability to 16GB

Battery: As I've mentioned I don't know how long I'll be actually away from an outlet. Over 5 hours at a moderate brightness for browsing or movies would be good.

Size: I'm torn on this one, as long as bezels aren't big, 15 inches should be manageable. Same with weight. As long as it isn't well over 2 kgs I should be fine.

Ports: SD card reader and Type C would be welcome but less important.

Input Devices: As long as they're not terrible. Standard layout would be good.

Storage: 256GB SSD. All my previous laptops have no SSDs so this should be a big change. A hard drive would also be good for larger files but I could use an external one or add it in later.

 

I live in India and my budget is around 600-800$ which is around 45000 to 60000 INR. I could stretch if there's something that check everything. I've tried to narrow it down but the build quality, thermal performance and display quality are a bit tricky to evaluate even with good review websites like notebookcheck. There are about 20 different model names for the same chassis(HP!!!!) so I need help finding the best value.

 

Any decent gaming laptops with decent battery lives, displays and portability in this price range? Or should I get a notebook with AMD graphics. amazon.in probably has the best prices but some manufacturers are completely out of stock even on their own websites. 

Availability is a hard one lately.  The “good” laptops are often nearly impossible to actually get.

[Tarun10]

On 9/28/2020 at 9:01 PM, Bombastinator said:

Availability is a hard one lately.  The “good” laptops are often nearly impossible to actually get.

Do you have any recommendations? I think the Acer Swift series is the best value notebook in this price range.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Tarun10 said:

Do you have any recommendations? I think the Acer Swift series is the best value notebook in this price range.

Not much.  I’m It’s too area and inventory specific.  One thing people are doing is picking a model they want then setting up software that checks if it comes into stock on a specific set of sites and posts a notification at which point you go to that site and hopefully buy the item before it sells out.  Can be minutes for popular items. 

[omuleanu]

this should be enough for school: https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-14are05-14-ryzen-3-4300u-8-gb-ram-256-gb-ssd-us/

depends what you're doing in school

[Tarun10]

14 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Not much.  I’m It’s too area and inventory specific.  One thing people are doing is picking a model they want then setting up software that checks if it comes into stock on a specific set of sites and posts a notification at which point you go to that site and hopefully buy the item before it sells out.  Can be minutes for popular items. 

I'll try that