First laptop recommendations

[Modinstaller495]

Hey all!

 

I've just started looking for a laptop (my first). General purposes, bit of everything, some light gaming (small easy to run indie games). 600€ or less budget.

I ran into a dude who sells a ton of different Dell models secondhand. It seems like the best kind of deal I can get right now, being a thrifty spender.

However, it's hard for me to know which one would suit me better.

 

My priorities are :

durability (10+ years) > build quality (esp keyboard/trackpad) > battery life (7+ hrs) > weight

And of course I'd like for the hardware to be good enough for small indie games.

 

The different secondhand models are : (he's not very exhaustive on cpu and gpu specs)

• Dell Latitude 7490 (i5-7300U / HD 620) 400€

• Dell Latitude 5400 (i5 8th gen / unknown gpu) 450€

• Dell Latitude 7300 (i5-8365U / unknown gpu) 460€

• Dell XPS 13 9360 (i7-7500 / unknown gpu) 500€

• Lenovo Thinkpad L13 (i5-10310U / unknown gpu) 550€

• Dell Latitude 5410 / 5310 (both unknown) 600€

Out of all of these, what do you think best fits my criteria? Are these good deals or should I keep looking for something else?

Any other recommendations for my budget (600€ or less)?

 

Thank you all for your time :)

[Darkseth]

Ignore those Intel 7th series, they are only Dual Cores.

Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake > 8th Gen of course, but 8th gen is also perfectly fine, since it's already 4 Cores.

 

I personally think, for 600€ you could maybe find a Thinkpad T-model, they are known for a very high durability, and repairability. I think, if you don't need that much performance, you could downgrade to a Dual Core (Thinkpad T430 / T530 up to T470/T570), if you're lucky, you can find a T480/T580 with Quad Core 8th Gen.

 

From those, i'd probably pick the Latitude 7300, maybe Thinkpad L13.

 

 

But noone could promise you 10+ more years. Either you're lucky and it runs 10 years without issues, or something breaks.

More important is: Can you repair it easy, if anything happens?

 

 

However keep in Mind, Windows 11 needs TPM 2.0 module, so Copmuters that are only 5-6~ years old now, could already not support it anymore. I've read that are CPUs up to 7th Gen Kaby Lake, or Ryzen 1000 series, but that's on Desktop.

Windows 10 will be supported untill 2025, after that you should absolutely NOT use it anymore, and switch to Linux. Or get Windows 11 on it somehow. I'm sure, there will be workarounds to use Windows 11 without TPM module.

[Modinstaller495]

Many thanks for your help!

 

I started looking at your recommendations and I'm finding some secondhand T580 Thinkpads with an i5 8350U for a measly 380€. They seem to have a UHD 620 igpu. Is that sufficient for the games I'm looking to run on it? (small indie games like, say, stardew valley, starbound, hades, don't starve...)

 

Good to know about Windows 11, however, for now I'm not too concerned about it. (goddamn W11 looks like macOS, blergh)

 

I'll keep looking. Does the t580 look like a good deal?

Edit : the sellers didn't give much info, they seem to be on the lower end, 16 gb ram, 256 gb ssd

[Darkseth]

Possible, but it won't get any better than this, maybe if it's a Ryzen 5 3500u Variant (T585), but such basic things should be not much of a problem.

 

If that T580 for 380€ is in a decent condition, that's an incredible good Price.

[Modinstaller495]

The T580s, I found two of them, one has a 256 GB SSD, the other 168 GB. They both have a UHD 620 gpu and an i5 8350U cpu. They don't seem to have a secondary HDD (I think I'll just buy an external, ~25€ per TB is cheap as hell). They both have 16 GB ram. Other than that, I don't know much. They don't seem to have warranty anymore, and I'm waiting to hear from the sellers to know what kind of use they've seen. One is at 380€, the other 390€. I wonder why they're listed so cheap?