Used laptop recommendations

[AndreiArgeanu]

I was thinking of getting myself a laptop since I need something that I can carry around college since schools fully reopened in the UK and my current laptop is too bulky for that. My budget is pretty low around 250£, so I'm going to get one used. I have tried looking at some new laptops with the new 10nm celerons and pentiums but the only laptop I could find was around 400£. My main use will be programming in python and C#, writing documents and some light gaming on the rare occasion.

 

I want decent battery life at least 4 hours watching videos/programming/writing documents and the screen size should be around 13-14inches.

Lack of an SSD or not much memory is not an issue as long as I can upgrade them at a later date.

 

So I was looking around ebay for laptop's equipped with U-series 8th gen i5 cpu's since they're quad core cpu's with hyper threading. And I found a few models that fit my criteria

Dell Latitude 5490 i5-8250U 8GB RAM 240SSD 240£

HP ProBook 430 G5 i5-8250U 8GB RAM 500HDD 250£

HP Notebook 14-cf1599sa i5-8265U 4GB RAM 256SSD 235£

 

I was looking to get some recommendations but also some opinions on the laptops I'm looking at, at the moment. Personally I'm leaning more towards the Dell laptop since it seems to be pretty good all around, it's main downside being that the replacement batteries do cost a bit more.

 

TLDR

Looking for laptop around 250£, will be used for Office, programming ,and some light gaming from time time. Must have at least 4 hours of battery life or so playing video/writing documents/programming. Can be a new one assuming it beats the used models I mentioned above.

 

 

[Darkseth]

Latitude, because it has an SSD, and is a "higher Tier" series.

 

ProBook is also great, but HDD in a Notebook is close to beeing "pure Cancer".

Also, ProBook was a cheaper Business entry series, while Latitude was a bit higher, more expensive. ProBook also has slightly less performance, and much lower battery life.

 

HP-14 is an o lder low level consumer notebook, and quality is below the othe 2.

[AndreiArgeanu]

22 hours ago, Darkseth said:

Latitude, because it has an SSD, and is a "higher Tier" series.

 

ProBook is also great, but HDD in a Notebook is close to beeing "pure Cancer".

Also, ProBook was a cheaper Business entry series, while Latitude was a bit higher, more expensive. ProBook also has slightly less performance, and much lower battery life.

 

HP-14 is an o lder low level consumer notebook, and quality is below the othe 2.

The dell kind of got sold in time. What do you think about the Dell Latitude 5300. I think it has thunderbolt. 8gb ram 240ssd and I could potentially get it for around 250£ if I'm lucky on bidding.

 

Oh and the latitude 5400 as well

[Darkseth]

slightly smaller 13,3" but otherwise, pretty decent overall. If it's in good condition, you can go for it i think.

[AndreiArgeanu]

7 hours ago, Darkseth said:

slightly smaller 13,3" but otherwise, pretty decent overall. If it's in good condition, you can go for it i think.

Ended up getting a ThinkPad L380, sadly the Dell's went far out my budget at the end of the auctions. It looks to have good battery life at 8hr 30 minutes of surfing the web on wifi at 150 nits brightnees. 2 memory slots so I can add some more later if I find the 8gb not enough. And it charges through USB C which is very convenient since I can share the charger with my phone. I hope I didn't make a bad choice, though I have 30 days to return the laptop if I don't end up liking.