Laptop for a 12 year old - Advice sought

[Superhoop]

My daughter is starting high school in September and the school have advised that it would be preferable to have a laptop for homework etc.. which is fine, however; when it comes to computers I'm not the most tech savvy person out there..

Budget has been set at around £500 and definitely no more than £600 and there seems to be a lot available in that price range.. But they all seem to vary in spec..

14" or 15.6" screens - I'm guessing smaller = lighter and therefore easier to transport..

But then we get on to touch screen or no touch screen.. as a 12 year old, where all she's really ever known is things that have touch screens it could be an important factor, but assume the same money gets more laptop if you ditch the touch screen.. ??

AMD or Intel processors.? Much of a muchness, or is one superior to the other.?

I assume SSD is a must now.? bit 4MB or 8MB.?

RAM size.? is 256 ok, or should I try to get 512.?

Brand.. HP (work laptop is HP and I find it to be ok) Dell.? Lenovo? or someone else.?

I'm making the assumption that a laptop is preferable to a 2 in 1.?

So far I'm looking at

A HP HP 14s-fq0000na Laptop - AMD Ryzen™ 5 https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id...

Or a Dell New Inspiron 14 https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/inspiron-1...

But am I on the right lines..? Ideally something that will last until at least 6th form would be a good..

As I said, advice sought...??

[underwhelmist]

I think some of your numbers for RAM and disk size got mixed up. Get a minimum of 8GB ram, and an SSD of at least 256GB. More memory and disk is always better.

Edit: of the two you’ve linked I’d go for the Dell. Dell are easier to upgrade in my experience.

[Superhoop]

Yes, they definitely did..

Just found this too.. again, it is HP, adds touchscreen, but switches from AMD Ryzen 5 to Intel core i3

Still has 8GB RAM and 256MB SSD storage..

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/la...

[grumbas]

Bought something similar to this last Black Friday with exactly the same usage requirements to you.

https://deals.dell.com/en-uk/productdetail/9jw3

Unless they're doing a course with very specific requirements it's more than good enough for homework and web browsing.

Personally I prefer Dell to HP as you can normally source parts easily on ebay down the line if required.

[rxe]

Get a really cheap one, preferably second hand.

They get dropped, kicked by the class tt, and people run though the power cord when they are plugged in.

8 Gb RAM is the important bit, Nothing else really matters.

[stemll]

If storage isn't an issue then the Microsoft Surface Go Laptop starts at £549. Only 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC at that price. Creeps £80 over budget for 8GB and 128GB SSD, both with a 10th Gen i5. Lovely small form with it's 12.4" 3:2 touch screen and it's a lovely screen too.

No problem with people tripping over the power lead as it's magnetic and just disconnects (are you paying attention Apple? Put MagSafe back).

Keyboard is a little cramped as being a 3:2 makes it narrower but recently got one for my 14 yo and he likes it more than the nasty cheap 14" Asus it's replacing. We don't store anything local to any laptops, it all goes on the NAS which has multiple backups. Dead laptop does not mean lost data that way and can buy cheaper with less storage. OneDrive could serve a similar purpose.

Only thing that's a bit odd is that he aluminium top and the composite bottom don't quite match colour wise

rxe said:

Get a really cheap one, preferably second hand.

I'd disagree with that approach because that's what I did with his previous Asus and it only lasted 18 months before the screen died. Wasted money IMO but you might get lucky

Edited by stemll on Friday 9th July 20:50

[Superhoop]

I didn’t realise it would be staying at home, so the easily transportable bit is less of an issue now, so this then means slightly larger screens are viable..

Any thoughts on this.? Top end of the budget, but specs look to be good.. and takes on board what was said about repairability and the ease of upgrading

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/dell-windows-laptops...

[BritishBlitz87]

Sounds like what you need is a refurbished workstation desktop if it's going to be staying in one place. A basic second hand monitor good enough for school work will only cost £10-£20, same for the keyboard and mouse.

[Tracy Island]

I've bought a couple of Lenovo laptops from here https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/newandusedlaptops4u

Good service and the laptops appeared to be in great condition. Something like a Lenovo 400 series would do the job, just make sure it has at least 8gb of ram and a solid state drive.

[The_Jackal]

Literally anything will be up to the job of homework as long as it has an SSD and 8 Gb RAM.

[eps]

I would look at Dell Outlet.

Something with an i5 Processor, 512GB HDD/SSD and 8GB RAM. Check the screensize as well.

Stuff goes on and off there quite quickly

[alorotom]

BritishBlitz87 said:

Sounds like what you need is a refurbished workstation desktop if it's going to be staying in one place. A basic second hand monitor good enough for school work will only cost £10-£20, same for the keyboard and mouse.

Whatever you do, do not do the above … no child wants to be saddled to a desk / fixed location plus it limits the usefulness of the device for other purposes and situations.

[mike9009]

I would wait a moment.

Last week my daughter was given a Chromebook by her school. Every year 7 pupil was given one. Everything they do is on Google Classroom, so the supplied Chromebook is ample for their needs.

There was no prior warning of this, I don't know whether it was some government scheme?

Unfortunately, during lockdown in Jan, I bought her a new £500 laptop, which will now probably serve no useful purpose......

[james_TW]

I did exactly this for my 13 year old daughter a couple of months ago - She ended up with a "HP Pavilion x360 14-dw0521sa". It cost me just short of £600. It's a 2 in 1 thing and she loves it. Gen 10 i5, NVMe drive (256Gb), 8 Gb RAM and does everything she wants it to do.

However, I looked longer for myself and found, on the Dell Outlet page, something far better: 14inch 2 in 1, Inspiron 5406, Gen 10 i5, 8 Gb RAM, Nvidia MX 330 2Gb dedicated video card, 512Gb NVMe drive for £480. I was a bit gutted as it's better than my daughter's, nicer and cheaper*. It was a "scratch and dent" model but there's no markings on it at all to suggest this. That said, I can see this being "donated" to my son in the future as his is much lower spec than both, but he's nearly 10, so he'll get a better laptop when he's older

Dell outlet would be my go to if there's no hurry - Be warned that delivery times are slow.

*Disclaimer: It now has a 1Tb NVMe drive and another 8Gb RAM. Making it, now, more expensive, but it didn't need these... Honest.

[Captain Answer]

mike9009 said:

I would wait a moment.

Last week my daughter was given a Chromebook by her school. Every year 7 pupil was given one. Everything they do is on Google Classroom, so the supplied Chromebook is ample for their needs.

There was no prior warning of this, I don't know whether it was some government scheme?

Unfortunately, during lockdown in Jan, I bought her a new £500 laptop, which will now probably serve no useful purpose......

I suspect that will be unique to her school, there were so many kids unable to do any level of meaningful online work during the last lockdowns some schools are digging into funding to get their pupils laptops but its not universal

Google Classroom is great tho, one of my sons had all his school work there and it was just flawless, the less said about Teams for my other son the better

Both mine have a HP Elitebook with an i7, 32gb ram and ssd's , but I built them myself from a job lot of auction units I got, they work nicely tho and got a box of spares if needed

Choromebook I do like esp for the price point, if you have office 365 or learn to use google docs properly they are good for most day to day "school" type tasks it runs out of road a bit tho when you find some programs you need are windows only & I cant get some software for my 3d printer working there despite it saying it is compatible, not that it matters I run that from other laptops already

Edited by Captain Answer on Thursday 15th July 15:24

[Emeye]

It is worth keeping an eye on Hotukdeals.com - last year when the kids were all sent home, someone posted a deal on for laptops on the Dell Refurbished site. https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/laptops site. They regularly have large discount codes.

I work in IT so hopefully know what's what - I bought 3 decent spec small notebook style laptops Dell Latitude 12 7000 Series (7280) for just over £300 each for two of my kids and my wife - two of them were touch screen and they are the perfect size at 12".

They were like brand new but not in the original boxes. They started out at a high RRP and are very sturdy - still going strong and being well used. They are not a budget laptop - keyboards light up etc.

ETA Like this one - currently 40% off:
https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/item/dell-latitu...

There are quite a few variations - check the spec carefully on the right to make sure it has a touch screen. 12.5" screen is perfect size for kids and the wife, especially as they carry them around the house. Note the warranty is limited to 180 days.

Edited by Emeye on Thursday 15th July 15:21