value for money laptop, low budget

[danlightbulb]

wilbo83 said:

Did you make a decision OP? Thanks for posting the link of the ASUS N551VW, I think I am going to go for that. Spec seems too good to miss and ASUS seem to make good quality laptops.

Not quite. I nearly ordered it but then noticed that although the title says SSD the spec list doesnt. I messaged them twice now asking about it but no response.

I also saw an advert for wolverhampton computer fair which is on sunday so i might go along to that and have a look. If anyone has any feedback from a computer fair and whether its any good that would be great because my other option is driving 2 hrs up to huddersfield to buy direct from laptops direct.

Edited by danlightbulb on Friday 6th May 21:19

[wilbo83]

danlightbulb said:

Not quite. I nearly ordered it but then noticed that although the title says SSD the spec list doesnt. I messaged them twice now asking about it but no response.

I also saw an advert for wolverhampton computer fair which is on sunday so i might go along to that and have a look. If anyone has any feedback from a computer fair and whether its any good that would be great because my other option is driving 2 hrs up to huddersfield to buy direct from laptops direct.

Edited by danlightbulb on Friday 6th May 21:19

I noticed the same thing about the SSD not being listed in the tech spec, I asked about it via the online chat and got a reply via email from the sales team however they said it had a 750gb had and a 250gb SSD which I don't believe so that didn't inspire much confidence.

After checking out the below linked reviews I am going to get it from 'save on laptops' instead. Reviews are far more positive, they use DPD to courier, the product description does state SSD and they are the same company as Box Ltd, in fact the website layout is almost identical, just that the prices are a bit cheaper.

Couple of things I did notice which may affect your decision is that the keyboard isn't backlit and I have read mixed opinions if the screen is IPS, some said it's the same screen ASUS use in the ROG range which is IPS but then I saw an Amazon review which said it wasn't.

http://www.reviews.co.uk/company-reviews/store/sav...

http://www.reviews.co.uk/company-reviews/store/lap...

Hope this is useful.

[Richair]

I'm currently in the market for a laptop and have similar requirements to you OP and like you I started out with a budget of around £500 but have realised that I need to up this to get something that will last me a good few years.

Have you been on the HP website as they have some great deals and seem cheaper than a lot of retailers? I'm pretty tempted by on of these, however it's only 15" so doesn't quite match your full criteria:
http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=...

I've not found a lot else our there that can touch the spec for the money though...

[danlightbulb]

^^ have been looking at that one. The asus we are linking to above does beat it in the graphics dept but has an i5 instead of an i7 in the HP. So its close.

I spoke to laptops direct and confirmed the asus does have an SSD as well as a HDD. I was willing to drive up to huddersfield to their store tomorrow to look at it /buy it but they don't have it there. I really want to just drive and buy the bloody thing- this mail order stuff just gets on my nerves, having to wait for delivery, not knowing if the thing will be smashed when it arrives...all a PITA.

Think I'm going to go over to wolverhampton computer fair tomorrow and see if there is anything there. But I'm worried these will all be older refurbs for £150 and not what I'm looking for and I'll have wasted my £3 entry fee.



On the games front - i have been looking at what games I might play and was reminded of an old game I loved called roller coaster tycoon! Even that old game won't run on my current laptop so I can't wait to get my new one and play it again. There is a new version coming out by the same company called planet coaster which looks brilliant all in 3d. These sim type games are what I like if anyone has any other suggestions, and anything that reminds me of games I used to play on my Amiga 1200 and early pc in 1999.

Edited by danlightbulb on Saturday 7th May 17:43

[Richair]

I see what you mean, the GTX 960M on the Asus would be nice to have. In reality there's probably not a lot between the quad-core i5 and i7 processors, plus Asus tend to get better user reviews on the web where people seem to either love or hate HP!..

So I think you may have swayed me to the ASUS N551VW-FW258T.

[danlightbulb]

It has 12GB of DDR4 too, better than the HP with 8GB of DDR3. I think that makes 3 of us buying that one lol, we can all compare notes!

[Thorburn]

danlightbulb said:

It has 12GB of DDR4 too, better than the HP with 8GB of DDR3. I think that makes 3 of us buying that one lol, we can all compare notes!

'Better'

DDR3 vs. DDR4 the main gain is lower power consumption - memory bandwidth goes up a bit, but so does latency.
12GB vs. 8GB - 12GB will be an unbalanced configuration, 4GB + 8GB, so the memory controller can't interpolate some requests - can have a negative impact in performance. If the 8GB one is 1 x 8GB then it is worse, if it is 4 + 4GB then it'll probably be quicker in memory bandwidth workloads.

Matters more for integrated graphics though, in a discrete graphics setup you won't notice much difference.

[danlightbulb]

The HP is 1x8GB. I remember when I was into PCs in the early noughties that it was all about the dual channel RAM and that you needed a matching pair. Its not something that is prevalently advertised in the modern kit though, so I kind of thought it had gone away.

[Thorburn]

danlightbulb said:

The HP is 1x8GB. I remember when I was into PCs in the early noughties that it was all about the dual channel RAM and that you needed a matching pair. Its not something that is prevalently advertised in the modern kit though, so I kind of thought it had gone away.

Like I say, matters more for IGP stuff (Haswell GT3 parts it could make a 30-40% difference in performance). Something I've done a bit of work on in the past, unfortunately OEMs value saving a few pennies and getting the numbers for marketing purposes (1 x 8GB will be literally maybe 50p cheaper than 2 x 4GB, plus slightly quicker during build) over making decisions that benefit consumers.

[danlightbulb]

Just been to Wolverhampton computer fair at Dunstall park racecourse. st.

Cost £2 to get in and I spent half an hour in there, and that was only because I walked round 3 times hoping I'd missed something decent. I hadn't.

Hardly any laptops of 15.6" or bigger, all 2+ year old tech. Only a single laptop in there with dedicated graphics (Geforce 670), and wanted £550 for it!!! That card benchmarks at the same as the 940mx which I can get in a brand new laptop for £600.

Edited by danlightbulb on Sunday 8th May 13:04

[danlightbulb]

This is doing my head in now. The only game I want to play will be planet coaster which is out in late 2016. I've researched the min specs of the current alpha release and its an i5-2300 (which is already a quad core 2.8GHz processor albeit 3 years old) and geforce 660 graphics (scoring 3980 on 3dmark) . The laptop I'm about to buy now, in 2016, only seems to just meet these minimum specs albeit with later generations of kit (i5-6300 quad core, geforce 960m still scoring only 5320 on 3dmark). So there is a risk I buy this laptop and it won't satisfactorily run this game.

This reminds me so much of when I used to pc game 15 years ago. I was never willing to spend enough to run what I wanted to run. Its not like I'm spending a small amount here and its really bloody frustrating.

Edited by danlightbulb on Sunday 8th May 15:47

[Thorburn]

danlightbulb said:

Just been to Wolverhampton computer fair at Dunstall park racecourse. st.

Cost £2 to get in and I spent half an hour in there, and that was only because I walked round 3 times hoping I'd missed something decent. I hadn't.

Hardly any laptops of 15.6" or bigger, all 2+ year old tech. Only a single laptop in there with dedicated graphics (Geforce 670), and wanted £550 for it!!! That card benchmarks at the same as the 940mx which I can get in a brand new laptop for £600.

Those things have always been overpriced computer jumble sales, for what you want you need to buy online.

You've had plenty good options and are making a real fking meal out of it.

[wilbo83]

The ASUS seems a great deal to me. So much so that I ordered one Sunday night from Save on Laptops and it should be with me in a couple of hours, delivered by DPD. Great customer service throughout. Thanks for the link danlightbulb

[Richair]

I can understand danlightbulb's frustrations having just been through it myself! Eventually I tracked down a machine in my elevated budget that ticked all my boxes: I've bought a factory refurbed/return Dell 7559 via eComputers on ebay, i7 6700HQ, GTX960H and I paid to fit an 256gb SSD to sit alongside the factory 1tb HDD. Cost me £730 all in, bargain. I hope!

The Asus was a close second though I reckon, although there is/was near new a HP Pavilion ak113na on ebay in Wolverhampton that the vendor was willing to do for a good cash price so that had me tempted...

[danlightbulb]

I think the Asus does look a great deal - I'm just worried it won't play the games I want to play so I'm holding back. I guess I was just expecting too much for my money again (a common fault with me).

I just don't understand the price/spec jump to be honest. That asus is £715 and has 'nearly' everything needed. If it had a 970m instead of the 960m it would have the performance for games and be spot on, yet the jump up to the 970m card means an additional £500 or thereabouts (jumping up to a £1200 laptop). It doesn't make sense to me, since the card increment doesn't cost £500.

[Thorburn]

Minimum specs on games are rarely the MINIMUM specs on games - many games that state something like a GeForce GTX 660 as the minimum will still be playable on integrated graphics with the detail turned down.

You're looking at a laptop with specs over the requirements for the game (GPU performance 33-50% higher, CPU is fine too) and then dithering about it - it's a nice machine, MTFU and buy it.