Lightweight laptop/convertible with 4GB RAM and under £300
Discussion
Also lightweight as its for an A level student to take to/from school (while the 17" weighty beast of a laptop stays home).
Any recommendations please that meet the above criteria?.I can find lots of cheapies with only 2GB of RAM (eg ASUS T100HA, HP PAVILLION X2, HP Stream 11), but little with 4GB. Being both a laptop & tablet isnt crucial, and i think the compromise may be too great (ie its not good at being either). Thanks all.
Any recommendations please that meet the above criteria?.I can find lots of cheapies with only 2GB of RAM (eg ASUS T100HA, HP PAVILLION X2, HP Stream 11), but little with 4GB. Being both a laptop & tablet isnt crucial, and i think the compromise may be too great (ie its not good at being either). Thanks all.
Hey Zespak. I got my dad a Chromebook last year and he doesn't like it compared to his old Windows Dell (i have not used it so cant really comment. I got it so he wouldnt ring me every week with a Windows issue!!!).
MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are the key apps used as she already has them on her "home based" laptop which is too heavy to lug to school.
Wondering if the £299.99 model here will do the job - http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
As you say, the reviews of most £200 laptops are pretty rubbish - those with 2GB RAM must be dire with Windows 10 and Office apps.
MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are the key apps used as she already has them on her "home based" laptop which is too heavy to lug to school.
Wondering if the £299.99 model here will do the job - http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
As you say, the reviews of most £200 laptops are pretty rubbish - those with 2GB RAM must be dire with Windows 10 and Office apps.
Lenovo Yoga just fits the bill:
http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
I've got a Lenovo S20-30 touch with similar specs, although they no longer offer it. Runs Windows 10 fine along with Office etc. I wouldn't push it to run big things but fine as a secondary portable machine for light work.
http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
I've got a Lenovo S20-30 touch with similar specs, although they no longer offer it. Runs Windows 10 fine along with Office etc. I wouldn't push it to run big things but fine as a secondary portable machine for light work.
sjtgeray said:
Hey Zespak. I got my dad a Chromebook last year and he doesn't like it compared to his old Windows Dell (i have not used it so cant really comment. I got it so he wouldnt ring me every week with a Windows issue!!!).
MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are the key apps used as she already has them on her "home based" laptop which is too heavy to lug to school.
Wondering if the £299.99 model here will do the job - http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
As you say, the reviews of most £200 laptops are pretty rubbish - those with 2GB RAM must be dire with Windows 10 and Office apps.
At that price point, the lack of RAM is far from the biggest problem.MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are the key apps used as she already has them on her "home based" laptop which is too heavy to lug to school.
Wondering if the £299.99 model here will do the job - http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/300-seri...
As you say, the reviews of most £200 laptops are pretty rubbish - those with 2GB RAM must be dire with Windows 10 and Office apps.
Horrendous build quantity, bad screen and worse keyboards are the beginning of the list. Trust me, I've had a couple pass through my hands. At that price point, at least the Chromebooks can have a great screen and good keyboard.
For school use something like this would be ideal. Reasonably robust and plenty quick enough, lightweight and small. I had the next model up for a few years.
http://www.grabalaptop.com/windows-7-laptops/Dell-...
They'll even upgrade to SSD for under £200 all in. Only restriction I *think* is a maximum of 4Gb RAM.
At that price if it gets bashed about in a bag it's not a problem.
http://www.grabalaptop.com/windows-7-laptops/Dell-...
They'll even upgrade to SSD for under £200 all in. Only restriction I *think* is a maximum of 4Gb RAM.
At that price if it gets bashed about in a bag it's not a problem.
If buying new then either up your budget and look at something like the Yoga 700 11.6" ( £450 on Amazon right now) or go ASUS Transformer Book T100 and a large micro-SD card for storage (and backup to cloud regularly) and save some money.
There really isn't much else I'd consider at 11-13" sizes for £200-300. Rather than going 64GB eMMC or 128GB SSD most manufacturers stick in a slow 500GB HDD which just tanks performance - I had a T100 until my dad broke the screen and the 2GB RAM was rarely a limitation, and the fact it had eMMC rather than a mechanical HDD meant it was actually quite responsive. By contrast most low-end laptops with mechanical hard drives are borderline unusable out the box, particularly with all the pre-loaded OEM crap on them.
Unless you have an application which explicitly NEEDS 4GB RAM (and most don't, even if the minimum specs say they do, the only things I had that outright wouldn't run on the T100 due to lack of RAM were games) that's what I'd do anyway.
There really isn't much else I'd consider at 11-13" sizes for £200-300. Rather than going 64GB eMMC or 128GB SSD most manufacturers stick in a slow 500GB HDD which just tanks performance - I had a T100 until my dad broke the screen and the 2GB RAM was rarely a limitation, and the fact it had eMMC rather than a mechanical HDD meant it was actually quite responsive. By contrast most low-end laptops with mechanical hard drives are borderline unusable out the box, particularly with all the pre-loaded OEM crap on them.
Unless you have an application which explicitly NEEDS 4GB RAM (and most don't, even if the minimum specs say they do, the only things I had that outright wouldn't run on the T100 due to lack of RAM were games) that's what I'd do anyway.
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