Picking Between Three Laptops

Centurius · March 2, 2016

Hey all,

So for the past few months I have been looking into upgrading my by now ancient laptop which I've been using for University. It has served me well to date but the hardware is starting to show age and the battery won't hold for as long as I'm going to need it in the near future without charge. This has eventually boiled into three options.

Dell XPS 13 1080p non-touchscreen with an i5 6200U, 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD for €1299

HP Spectre x360 13-4159 1080p touchscreen with an i7 6500U, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for €1259(regular price is 1399 but I get 10% student discount)
Asus Zenbook UX305UA 1080p non-touchscreen with an i5 6200U, 4GB RAM(though expandable to 8) and 256 GB SSD for €999

My primary use case for this is of course University but the key here is battery life. I am going to be traveling a lot and wanting to do work on the go as well as using it during lectures in rooms where there is not always access to an outlet. As such an Ultrabook could very well have to do 8 hours or more of regular activities(browsing, word, most of the time with wi-fi) without a charge in between. Beyond this when I'm somewhere in home I would like to be able to stream a game off of my desktop if I don't feel like going to the basement or just feel like enjoying the sun in the upcoming summer.

The combination of these elements is leading me to the Spectre as from the reviews I've read the Asus doesn't do that well with battery this generation and it's a lot cheaper than the Dell while having a higher their cpu and a touchscreen enabled screen which can come in handy for me. On the other hand, despite having had a HP before that did fine, I have read bad things about them and I don't want something that breaks down in a year or two.

Any recommendations/personal experiences would be strongly appreciated.

sushisharkjl · March 2, 2016

From what I've read the Spectre's battery life is around 4 hours, which is a far cry from what they advertise.

I would go the Dell route, just because it is in general a more premium feeling product and Dell doesn't overadvertise its battery. I believe Dell also have a student discount, at least in the US.