Laptop for Student

[boyse7en]

My daughter will be off to college in September and will be in need of a laptop. As its her birthday I'm planning on killing two birds with one stone and getting one now, but I'm not au fait with modern PC specs (I use a Mac) so would appreciate any advice/input.

She'll be studying A-levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Law, and as it is a specialist college she will be living away from home during the week, so the laptop will also be used for entertainment – youtube, TV, a few games no doubt (although she has a Switch for that), plus (hopefully) Facetiming her mum on a regular basis.

I thought a Dell would be a safe bet, so I'm looking at an Inspiron 15 with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, 16GB RAM, 15.6in HD screen and Windows 11 Home for £379.

Is that a reasonable spec? I don't want to spend a fortune on something that a teenager is going to stuff in a backpack every day, both due to the risk of damage and of it being nicked.

[BlueMR2]

Might be worth checking with the course what software will be run first incase you need a pc/mac.

You can probably get an education discount for the mac if that's the case.

[boyse7en]

BlueMR2 said:

Might be worth checking with the course what software will be run first incase you need a pc/mac.

You can probably get an education discount for the mac if that's the case.

Even with the educational discount a Macbook starts at £900, which is well out of my league

[jonsp]

boyse7en said:

I thought a Dell would be a safe bet, so I'm looking at an Inspiron 15 with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, 16GB RAM, 15.6in HD screen and Windows 11 Home for £379.

Is that a reasonable spec? I don't want to spend a fortune on something that a teenager is going to stuff in a backpack every day, both due to the risk of damage and of it being nicked.

Not a bad price and decent spec, she could probably get away with 8GB for the use case you've described.

Given she's going to be carting it around I'd probably be tempted to go for a 14" screen. Obviously smaller and lighter for her

[camel_landy]

...an alternative approach:

Get a refurbished 'corporate' style laptop (something like the Lenovo T480, HP Elitebook, etc). It'll be plenty powerful enough for Office applications, report writing, etc. whilst also being small enough to be portable (lectures, etc). You can get them for £170 from Amazon.

Together with the laptop, get an external monitor, keyboard & mouse. It'll be more comfortable but it'll also provide an larger external monitor for watching video, etc.

...and seeing as she'll have a phone in her pocket anyway, you might as well make it one which she can FaceTime with Mum.

M

[BlueMR2]

boyse7en said:

BlueMR2 said:

Might be worth checking with the course what software will be run first incase you need a pc/mac.

You can probably get an education discount for the mac if that's the case.

Even with the educational discount a Macbook starts at £900, which is well out of my league

Fair enough but still check for any required software to make sure you have the right spec.

[Haltamer]

boyse7en said:

Even with the educational discount a Macbook starts at £900, which is well out of my league

Could look at CEX?

You can get some of the older M1's for ~500 and with 5 year warranty - Having moved over to Mac recently, I'd strongly steer away from Windows for use you'd encounter at school.

Another interesting option in a similar vein, used iPad Pro 11in 4th Gen / New iPad Airs with an Apple Pencil and keyboard case (I got a £20 from Amazon that works excellently) - Would be my go-to for college use; Much less cumbersome and more flexible than a traditional laptop, excellent battery life, etc.

Depending on the requirements, you could even opt for the base model iPad (£300ish?) - Though I think you may miss the maths solving in notes.

The only downside to the iPad route is the OS and software support - But if it's just Word, note taking etc. then it'll be a far nicer experience, and more likely to actually get used as it's not a clunking great device to haul around.

Generally, any 'specialist' software requirements at the college / 6th form level would usually be provided on college PC's, and whilst you can often get educational licenses / downloads, it can be a faff, so if it's only incidental use of a given application, I wouldn't tailor the requirements to it.

[Somebody]

camel_landy said:

...an alternative approach:

Get a refurbished 'corporate' style laptop (something like the Lenovo T480, HP Elitebook, etc). It'll be plenty powerful enough for Office applications, report writing, etc. whilst also being small enough to be portable (lectures, etc). You can get them for £170 from Amazon.

Together with the laptop, get an external monitor, keyboard & mouse. It'll be more comfortable but it'll also provide an larger external monitor for watching video, etc.

...and seeing as she'll have a phone in her pocket anyway, you might as well make it one which she can FaceTime with Mum.

M

This. Build quality on corporate laptops like Elitebooks and Thinkpads are much much better than consumer grade offerings.

Have a look at refurbished laptops at Newandusedlaptops4u, a eBay seller (currently 10% off voucher too). I've had some decent machines from them in the past. I'm tempted by an Elitebook 745 G6 AMD Ryzen 5 8 GB Ram 256 GB SSD with Windows 11 Pro that's on there for under £140 after 10% code.

I'm posting this on an old Thinkpad X61 which I'm using as an everyday machine. I will grudgingly have to upgrade when Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10 later this year.

[Ry.Clarke]

I’ve had a number of thinkpads now, I buy a new in box off EBay for one that’s a year or two old, get decent discounts.

Currently on an X1 Carbon I paid £700 for new, with an RRP of over £2k.

Build quality is night and day to the consumer st. Mac’s are no use to me; I’m in Excel all day

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

boyse7en said:

I thought a Dell would be a safe bet, so I'm looking at an Inspiron 15 with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, 16GB RAM, 15.6in HD screen and Windows 11 Home for £379.

Is that a reasonable spec? I don't want to spend a fortune on something that a teenager is going to stuff in a backpack every day, both due to the risk of damage and of it being nicked.

Yes that is a decent spec and a decent price. My children have both got Dell Inspirons and they have been great. The added bonus is, if the screen gets damaged they cost £33 on eBay (and they are as good if not better than OEM) and take about 5 minutes to change.

I would say go brand new rather than buying some unknown old laptop from eBay.

[camel_landy]

Somebody said:

This. Build quality on corporate laptops like Elitebooks and Thinkpads are much much better than consumer grade offerings.

Have a look at refurbished laptops at Newandusedlaptops4u, a eBay seller (currently 10% off voucher too). I've had some decent machines from them in the past. I'm tempted by an Elitebook 745 G6 AMD Ryzen 5 8 GB Ram 256 GB SSD with Windows 11 Pro that's on there for under £140 after 10% code.

Lenovo ThinkPad T480 Windows 11 Ultrabook - 14" Full HD Quad Core i5-8350U 16GB 256GB SSD HDMI WebCam WiFi PC Laptop

^^^ FWIW - This is one I bought over the weekend... Now at £175

M

[nvubu]

My daughter had an Acer Spin 3 Convertible for her 2 years for A levels (Maths, physics, biology) at boarding school in 2022, and now has a Acer TravelMate Spin P4 for her 4 years at uni in the USA.

My wife is using the Spin3.

She has been very happy with both laptops.

[boyse7en]

Ok, I've been looking at Dell Latitude and Lenovo T490/495/14s until my brain is a jumble of meaningless model numbers and processor specs.

Here is an example of one that caught my eye :

Refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T495 AMD Ryzen 5 Pro Vega 8 Graphics 16GB RAM 512GB SSD Windows 11 Pro Gaming Laptop.
£229 with a one year warranty from a company called PC RENEWED

Now their blurb sounds good, saying it's good for watching Netflix etc as it has a 1080 screen, and that there Vega 8 means it can do gaming... But is a Ryzen 5 Pro better or worse than an i5? And even then they have extra model numbers that might mean something to someone, but are they important? ( This one is a Ryzen 5 3500U 2.1ghz, but every laptop seems to have a different processor number)

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Don't get too hung up on it being an i5/Ryzen 5 etc. The most important thing is which generation it is.

A good way to find out the performance of a CPU is to Google the model number and 'cpu benchmark'. Basically the higher the number the better.

For instance the Ryzen 7 you initially posted has a CPU benchmark of 18251

The Ryzen 5 3500u of the secondhand laptop has a CPU benchmark of 6875.as it is several years and generations old.

As for a Vega 8 being able to run games, they will be older games running at low resolution, low quality at a low framerate.

The i5-8350U linked above has a CPU benchmark of 6143

Edited by ThingsBehindTheSun on Wednesday 7th May 08:09

[vaud]

Just check with the college first if she will have any OS dependent applications.

As noted the X1 is wonderfully light.

[thebraketester]

I would avoid anything 2nd hand unless you have the time/knowledge to trouble shoot it when/if it goes wrong.

Have you asked her what she would like?

[boyse7en]

thebraketester said:

I would avoid anything 2nd hand unless you have the time/knowledge to trouble shoot it when/if it goes wrong.

Have you asked her what she would like?

She just wants a laptop, and knows less than I do about them. She uses one at school to do exams etc (she's got hypermobility and ligament issues that mean she can't hold a pen properly, so is allowed a laptop for accessibility) but other than that it is a Windows machine i know nothing.

As she will be in a little student flat she will be using it for homework, project work, watching TV and Youtube etc, and whatever else normal 16 year olds do with them. That's why i thought a second hand one might be better as it will free up budget to buy a monitor so she has a decent sized screen.

[vaud]

Then email or call the college first?

[thebraketester]

boyse7en said:

She just wants a laptop, and knows less than I do about them. She uses one at school to do exams etc (she's got hypermobility and ligament issues that mean she can't hold a pen properly, so is allowed a laptop for accessibility) but other than that it is a Windows machine i know nothing.

As she will be in a little student flat she will be using it for homework, project work, watching TV and Youtube etc, and whatever else normal 16 year olds do with them. That's why i thought a second hand one might be better as it will free up budget to buy a monitor so she has a decent sized screen.

All the more reason to buy a new one and one from an actual shop. It will cost you more but at least she will have an actual physical point of contact should something go wrong with it.

[camel_landy]

Don't over think it... "Perfection is the enemy of good enough".

The primary use case is the Uni work, anything else is just a bonus.

M