Too 4K-ing expensive? Five full HD laptops for work and play The intense competition in the PC market means that you can now get some pretty decent laptops for less than £500. However, one common cost-cutting measure employed by most budget laptops is the use of a lower-res display – typically just 1366x768 pixels. Most likely these displays will still be called HD in the blurb, but that’ …
Add to that things like RAM expansion and (cough, cough) HDD updates. Are they possible etc etc etc
{If I am shopping for an i7 powered device then I'd like to put at least 32Gb of RAM in it plus a 1TB SSD }
If this site is going to do this sort of review then unless they have never, ever read a similar type of article in the dead tree press then they'd know that the bit at the end comparing the spec and making a choice of gold, silver and the 'you What? are you crazy?' awards is more or less mandatory these days.
I can recommend the MSI cx61. 1920x1050 matt, 1 Tb / 8 Gb, VGA+HDMI, quad core i7, DVD, Gigabit, USB3. And it runs Linux very happily, with 2 external monitors. Disk is 7200 rpm too, slightly faster than the norm. About 700 dabs, here http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/MSI-CX61.htm
The only thing I wish it had is displayport, so I could have more external monitors at even higher res.
These days, if you want an all-round laptop with good specs and no missing hardware, what you want is called a "gaming" laptop, whether or not you're a gamer.
The Asus V Nitro range - very reasonable core i5 machine with 8GB, GeForce 840m (enough for occasional gaming) and with 1080p IPS screens. Just set one up for a mate and was quite impressed with it. Also has an M2 slot along with a built-in hybrid HDD so you can easily slot in an SSD for cheap.
I have a 1920 x 1080 Telly to watch video.
In computer terms we had better than TV full HD over 12 years ago.
I'm not ever buying a laptop to more than very occasionally watch Video. I want one to create and edit content.
anything by 1200 pixels high is superior. 1080 isn't quite enough for A4 page in Wordprocessor or PDF, though a 1920 x 1080 screen able to swivel to portrait mode might be acceptable.
1920 x 1440 would make more sense for a laptop. Apart from recent "retina" laptops there has been almost no screen improvements in 12 years on Laptops.
Most are shiny too. Causes eye strain due to moving reflections if people moving behind you. Again, we had pixel perfect ultra sharp 1600 x 1200 15" LCDs more than 12 years ago with almost zero reflection.
Indeed. Although time has moved on since that xkcd, and 1080p on phones and tablets is now pretty much standard, but is apparently still considered a big deal on laptops and TVs. Weird.
@Bassey: don't confuse the market for laptops with the PC market as a whole. PCs really haven't stagnated at all - more powerful CPUs and GPUs are coming out all the time, and DDR4 RAM is just starting to come into use. And of course, despite the constant declarations that PCs are dead, the market has been growing quite nicely recently.
It's only really laptops that have an issue, because they don't have a unique niche any more. Tablets and phones have taken their place for most of the more basic mobile stuff - emails and such, and desktops will always be better for the more high-powered stuff. So it often makes more sense to have a phone or tablet and a desktop in the office, than to try to compromise with a laptop. That leaves laptops desperately trying to justify themselves. Put a better screen in and it might be more attractive, but it will also be significantly more expensive. Why get a £1000+ laptop when you can get a much more powerful desktop in your office for the same price, and get a 6" mobile thingy on contract to do your emails on the commute?
As for Moore's law, that's not really relevant. Haswell mobile CPUs do have around double the transistor count of the Sandy Bridge ones, but raw transistor count stopped being the important metric a long time ago, as did raw clock speed, raw core count, and pretty much any other metric that has been considered especially important in the past. In any case, I have a hard time seeing how a two year old i5 (either Sandy or Ivy Bridge), 660M GPU and 8GB RAM can be considered essentially the same spec as a brand new Haswell i7, 750M GPU and 16GB RAM. It might not be worth the upgrade, but that's exactly the sort of improvement in specs you'd expect to see on newer models around the same price point. The only part that isn't a straight upgrade is having a hybrid drive rather than SSD+HDD.
The PC market seems to have completely stagnated. Two years ago last August I bought a 17.6" full-HD laptop (matte finish). It had a Core i5, 8GB of fast RAM, 1TB spinning drive, 128GB SSD, NVidia 660M Graphics (2GB DDR5) and a DVD drive. In other words, it had almost exactly the same spec as the Inspiron 17 in this group (slightly better here, slightly worse there but much of a muchness). It also looks remarkably like the Chillblast (i.e. remarkable only for its dullness). And it cost £800. How can the same machine be £50 more expensive over 2 years later? Whatever happened to Moore's law?
I used to buy a machine, upgrade the RAM and storage after year 1, sell it and replace after year 2. I can't see me replacing the laptop for another 2 years at the very least as I'm probably not using a fraction of the power yet. The same goes for the Core i3 desktop I'm typing on at the moment - a 2.5 year old HP that cost about £350.
I'm not saying it is a bad thing. Just strange that we seem to have reached a plateau where all machines are just good enough to do what we want. Benchmarks seem to be the only way to tell one from t'other.
It's too much anyway, we have full HD on our work laptops and either have to scale to 125% (which are apps don't support) or squint at the 15.6" screen they crammed all the pixels into, makes a secondary screen a must have otherwise you get a headache out of a days use, negating the laptop side of things.
But then the Toshiba W50 is so heavy anyway, it does must of the negating being a laptop before you even turn it on..
not sure what they cost in the UK but i got an 6month old Acer Aspire V5-573G "ultra thin" laptop (+-800 €) with an excellent 15" 1080p IPS screen,I5 cpu, 8gb ram, 1tb HDD , GT 720 with 2GB ram and an empty Msata port so you can add an SSD and use the spinner for data.
current model has an GeForce GTX 850M with 4GB dedicated ram
Really nice laptop, silent and really good matte (!) screen .
the VN7-571G goes for the same price (and seams to have same screen) while this is bulkier but you get one of those hybrid HDD's
I bought a Yoga 2 for my youngest daughter - i5 / 8GB / 1TB hybrid. She likes it a lot. I was tossing up whether to get a Yoga 2 Pro, 3 Pro or a Surface Pro 3 for myself, ended up with the Surface, that little bit more adaptable.
With the deskop dock and 2 external monitors, it is enough to replace my aging work desktop PC and in tablet mode, it is great for taking notes in meetings. Running RDP at native resolution is fun, and I was surprised, even with my poor eyesight, I can still read the screen at 100% scaling - 150% is more comfortable.
Win 10.x Seem pointless.
After using Linux on servers since 1999, I'm finally running a 2nd laptop with Linux Mint + Wine.
So far old windows applications that won't work on Vista/Win7/Win8 are working on Wine and I'm using now many native Linux Applications.
Buying MS since 1982 ... no longer.
Using NT since 3.5 and Server 2003 was the last version I personally got. I have hated sorting out IT issues on Vista, Win 7 and Win 8. Reminded me of ME.
I've tried Red Hat, Suse, Plain Debian, Ubuntu etc over the years on laptops. I have a server with Debian and one with Ubuntu (! yes, but that's what the client wanted to test his server apps, which is odd as the test SW runs in a VM anyway).
I hate it when companies use TV related descriptions, to claim HD, when in reality in the PC world, it's a low res screen, and was a low res screen 10+ years ago, let alone now!
My first ever flat panel monitor was a 15" 1280 x 1024 (5:4) over 10 years ago, and that was considered a standard resolution back then. Especially compared to the much higher res CRTs that were around. (I bought it to take to LAN gaming parties, happy days...).
These days, anything under 1080P is low res, and should be labelled as such. I find it crazy that my 5" screen phone, and 8.5" tablet, have higher res screens than typical midrange or lower laptops!
"The article also forgot to mention that the Chillblast has the option to have no OS, saving £41.66."
I bought something with a similar case in Feb 14, OS free for £610, i7, 8GB, 500GB HD, matte 1080 screen. OpenSUSE 13.1 installed in ~15 mins. It's been flawless. Rendering 1080/50p video is very, very fast although the fan then sounds quite loud - all 8 cores running at ~85%. Might have got a SSD but with 8GB I leave most programs running and just put it to sleep at night or for any extended breaks.
Case feels rather cheap but battery life even with the 4-core i7 is ~5hours
I hate those off-center trackpads. They taunt me nonstop with their unevenness, making me feel the urge to lean slightly to the left. I'd much rather have no number pad (I never use it anyway), and center the keyboard and trackpad together. That's one thing I'm glad Apple have done, in keeping the trackpad centered on their Macbooks.
<< Off-center Trackpad = Instant Failure
I hate those off-center trackpads. They taunt me nonstop with their unevenness, making me feel the urge to lean slightly to the left. I'd much rather have no number pad (I never use it anyway), and center the keyboard and trackpad together. That's one thing I'm glad Apple have done, in keeping the trackpad centered on their Macbooks. >>
It is pretty impossible to get a 15.6" or larger laptop without a number pad, which means you will get an off-center trackpad.
If you are very lucky, you will get actual mouse buttons with the the trackpad, instead of the one-piece designs that integrate the pad and the buttons into a single plate, a design from hell that makes accurate clicking a crap shoot.
I'm looking for a 17.3" HD laptop with NO number pad, a centered trackpad, 12 function keys that do not require pressing the Fn key in order to get the conventional functions, with a context menu key between the right Alt and Ctrl keys, and the left-side Ctrl key to the left of the Fn key (which rules out many Lenovos).
Seems simple. But I find myself ready and willing to part with my money but unable to find anything I want to spend it on.
Whoever is designing these things should rot in hell.
<< Off-center Trackpad = Instant Failure
I hate those off-center trackpads. They taunt me nonstop with their unevenness, making me feel the urge to lean slightly to the left. I'd much rather have no number pad (I never use it anyway), and center the keyboard and trackpad together. That's one thing I'm glad Apple have done, in keeping the trackpad centered on their Macbooks. >>
It is pretty impossible to get a non-Apple 15.6" or larger laptop without a number pad, which means you will get an off-center trackpad.
If you are very lucky, you will get actual mouse buttons with the the trackpad, instead of the one-piece designs that integrate the pad and the buttons into a single plate, a design from hell that makes accurate clicking a crap shoot.
I'm looking for a 17.3" HD laptop with NO number pad, a centered trackpad, 12 function keys that do not require pressing the Fn key in order to get the conventional functions, with a context menu key between the right Alt and Ctrl keys, and the left-side Ctrl key to the left of the Fn key (which rules out many Lenovos), that will run Windows 7 and for another year and be ready for Windows 10 when it drops.
Seems simple. But I find myself ready and willing to part with my money but unable to find anything I want to spend it on.
Whoever is designing these things should rot in hell.
Dell builds consumer junk and has poor / non-existent support. Strange hardware, too.
HP has Third Party (dubious) support and corporate problems. That aging blonde running the show seems to have a new 'idea' almost monthly. I expect anything I buy to be supported for at least three years.
BTW: Were these prices VAT-in or VAT-out?
Don't really get the push for more pixels per cm.. There is a point where more pixels are not usable because they are not visible, so you don't need any more. High res has been possible with print media for a long long time, but they don't bother because there is no use for it. Larger displays can use more pixels.
The obsession with numbers that sells things at the expense of genuinely useful benefits that are ignored.
I need a new car because it only has 4 wheels and there are some new ones out with 8 wheels.
1366x768 was truly horrible. Over 10 years ago I had an old Asus which had 1680x1050 and it was awesome. Ever since then trying to find something that wasn't 1366x768 at my "disposable" price point of £500-£700 has been basically impossible. I tend not to spend much more than that on a laptop since they get well-travelled and tend to die after a couple of years of airports and events.
Recently bought a unit from PCspecialist.co.uk for £550 and it's been doing the job nicely for a few months now. Didn't have to fork out for a Windows that I'm never going to use either.
I'll say thank you to Apple for giving other manufacturers a kick up the a*se with regards to building laptops with higher resolution screens.
I love being able to cram more windows, text, web pages etc onto a single screen view. I don't want higher resolution bouncy icons that end up being the same physical size on the 15" panel though, I think the marketing term for that is HIDPIDIIPIDDIIDPPI or something.
If the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 is anything like my Inspiron 13 7000 (full HD IPS touchscreen) then beware..
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19607216
Ghost touch problems on the touch screen, but also reported with very many other Dell products including the unlamented Streak.
My big gripe is that (almost) all screens are now shiny widescreen - Ok, for TVs - I get it, but on Tablets, Laptops and PCs Widescreen is at best annoying - but for content creation widescreens are downright cumbersome and unproductive - this is exasperated by applications from the likes of M$ that use this horrendous Ribbon which squishes the *usable* area of your document from a WideScreen 16:9 shape to something more like a letterbox. As for shiny screens - they're *ok* for use in a dimly lit room - but totally unusable outdoors where reflections make them unreadable. So some *quality* laptop manufacturers still produce business laptops with matt screens, but I've yet to see a single Tablets or Smart Phones with a Matt screen and by their very nature a Tablet or Smart Phone will largely be used outdoors.
Honestly, Phone/Tablet manufacturers, if you truly want to differentiate your product - just give it a matt screen and watch the sales flood in...
You should have mentioned the Yoga has many cpu options -- mine has a 2.0/2.5 GHz I7 that goes like stink.
I also upgraded to 8GB memory and added a second 250GB SSD.
A word of warning:- upgrading memory and adding an SSD is tricky. It involves ripping the keyboard of the machine (and I mean ripping its held down by dozens of little catches and double sided sticky tape -- think leg waxing!); disconnecting/ reconnecting some fiddly micro connectors. Refitting the keyboard takes several attempts before it seats properly.
So avoid an upgrade and ensure it comes with the spec. you want.
TN displays are bad bad bad.
Can you please rank proper glass fronted (matte or not) IPS displays far above TN displays please.
And if and when OLED screens (in laptops) debut, but rank them even further ahead.
Thanks.
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There's NO reason manufacturers couldn't now make 4K OLED screened 14-15 inch laptops for £1500 now.
I'd buy one (and so would you! ;))
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