Which laptop should I get for college??

[prmrabby]

About to start a Computer Security and Forensics course at college so looking for a laptop to do college work on. Budget is £1000 but less is obviously better.

I've been looking at the VivoBook Pro N752VX and the ZenBook UX430UQ but I'm not 100% sure yet. 

Battery life is what put me off the VivoBook but its also cheaper and has more RAM and dedicated graphics. Basically if there were anything that was same spec as the VivoBook but with better battery life that would be perfect. I'd be using it mostly for college work and maybe occasionally using photoshop to edit photos/make gifs. Looking for at least 8GB RAM and an i5 or better, the best battery life possible not too bothered about screen size but the lighter the better as I'd have to be taking it on the train to college every morning. I'm in the UK and I'd probably be buying from Amazon or PCWorld. 

Any suggestions??

[The Sloth]

dell Inspiron 7000 with 1050 and 7700hq/ 7300hq

[unknownmiscreant]

Dedicated graphics doesn't add a huge amount to performance to productivity type applications for the low end cards, and can significantly lower battery life. 

 

The kaby lake i5s and i7s score the same in cinebench (300) ish. The i7 has slightly better single threaded performance, but not enough to justify the extra cost for me at least.

 

If you want to game on it, the dell inpsiron mentioned above would be great, however if you are prepared to sacrifice dedicated graphics, and possibly a bit more cost, an i5 dell XPS 13inch would be small, light and have great battery life.

 

I can't really compare the machines, as dell's models differ between region.

 

[prmrabby]

The Dell Inspiron is a bit too bulky I think and the XPS 13 is a bit too expensive for me. Thank you though.

[unknownmiscreant]

2 minutes ago, prmrabby said:

The Dell Inspiron is a bit too bulky I think and the XPS 13 is a bit too expensive for me. Thank you though.

Yeah, the XPS are very pricey. How about the LG gram?

 

Maybe look for something a bit older and replace its battery. (My 5 year old laptop I use for college still performs the same as its modern equivalents.) It is quite bulky though.

[prmrabby]

1 minute ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Yeah, the XPS are very pricey. How about the LG gram?

 

Maybe look for something a bit older and replace its battery. (My 5 year old laptop I use for college still performs the same as its modern equivalents.) It is quite bulky though.

I'm not sure the LG Gram is available in the UK and from what I've read if you do manage to find it somewhere its usually really expensive.

[unknownmiscreant]

Just now, prmrabby said:

I'm not sure the LG Gram is available in the UK and from what I've read if you do manage to find it somewhere its usually really expensive.

Basically rule of thumb is the thinner the laptop, the fatter the stack of cash.

 

Maybe look for something like a hp folio I used to have an i3 one back when I was in school. It wasn't powerful, but it was small, thin, light and last 8 hours ish on battery.

 

You won't find a new one though, as they were 2011 machines. However they can be upgraded to 8gb of ram fairly easily and are fairly cheap, so would leave you some money for the ram and potentially  new battery/larger ssd etc.

[genexis_x]

On 02/08/2017 at 8:29 AM, unknownmiscreant said:

Dedicated graphics doesn't add a huge amount to performance to productivity type applications for the low end cards, and can significantly lower battery life. 

 

The kaby lake i5s and i7s score the same in cinebench (300) ish. The i7 has slightly better single threaded performance, but not enough to justify the extra cost for me at least.

 

If you want to game on it, the dell inpsiron mentioned above would be great, however if you are prepared to sacrifice dedicated graphics, and possibly a bit more cost, an i5 dell XPS 13inch would be small, light and have great battery life.

Dell 7567 is one of the exception. 1050TI GPU inside but still has a very long battery life.

 

Keep in mind that mobile i5 and i7 comes with ULV and HQ models. An i5 HQ is significantly faster than an i7 U

[unknownmiscreant]

3 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

Dell 7567 is one of the exception. 1050TI GPU inside but still has a very long battery life.

 

Keep in mind that mobile i5 and i7 comes with ULV and HQ models. An i5 HQ is significantly faster than an i7 U

Yeah, I've spent quite a while looking into performance laptops. I gave up on being able to take my workstation with me, as even decent laptops still have markedly lower performance than desktops, for a higher price.

 

I have found 300 (ish) in cinebench to be more than adequate for light web-browsing and note-taking on the go.

 

Also keep in mind that the HQ processors use much more power than the U series, and this means worse battery life.

[mrchow19910319]

12 inch macbook?