Refurbished laptop recommendations

[JQ]

I need a laptop for my son. Having bought a recommended “cheap” laptop for my elder son, we have discovered how crap they are in comparison to the work laptops I and my my wife use, so would rather buy a used high end laptop that’s been refurbished.

I know nothing about computers, so is anyone able to recommend some models for me to search on eBay including what minimum specs I’d need. Budget is an absolute max of £400 and would prefer to spend less.

Thank you.

[megaphone]

There was a recent thread with a few options. https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Dell outlet is a good option. There are two apparently.

[JQ]

Perfect. Thank you.

[AJB88]

What is said laptop actually for? homework or gaming or what?

99% of these cheap laptops have HDD rather than SSD and low RAM which makes them run slow straight away.

[grumbledoak]

AJB88 said:

What is said laptop actually for? homework or gaming or what?

99% of these cheap laptops have HDD rather than SSD and low RAM which makes them run slow straight away.

Most professional refurbs are four year old business models either with or upgraded to 8GB and SSD. They offer good performance at half the price of a new one.

[anonymoususer]

Delkl Outlet again
Got a great deal on an ultrabook Latitude thing for one of the Daughters

[JQ]

anonymoususer said:

Delkl Outlet again
Got a great deal on an ultrabook Latitude thing for one of the Daughters

Which one did you get?

[anonymoususer]

JQ said:

anonymoususer said:

Delkl Outlet again
Got a great deal on an ultrabook Latitude thing for one of the Daughters

Which one did you get?

It was about a year ago. Funnily enough I just briefly glanced at the outlet sit and couldnt see ultrabooks listed I didnt look intensely but they seemed to be either basix xps or alienware

[Monsterlime]

I've just picked up a "refurbished" HP Elitebook 840 G5. 8th gen Intel i5, 16GB RAM and a 512GB M.2 SSD for a very reasonable price (about £400). This was released in 2018, and the G6 uses the same 8th gen family so didn't seem worth it (decent premium on a G5), and is replacing a now very old HP Elitebook 820 G1 (which, tbf, if you only needed to do light browsing, Word etc, will be fine and can be had for £200 off eBay, but I needed more cores etc).

I have some fairly specific requirements which is why I went with HP (I already had a docking station that it works with, for example), but am so far very happy with it.

I had looked at the Dell outlet store, refurbished Thinkpads etc and all look very reasonable. If I had not really needed an HP, I would likely have picked up a Thinkpad.

[xyz123]

If u r little bit tech savvy, get any half decent laptop of ebay (7th or 8th gen Intel processor) and then change HDD with SSD and add RAM. Changing to SSD will make biggest difference.

Lot depends jn what you want to do with it. See beko for a cheap brand new laptop. Fine for daily browsing etc..

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

[xyz123]

xyz123 said:

If u r little bit tech savvy, get any half decent laptop of ebay (7th or 8th gen Intel processor) and then change HDD with SSD and add RAM. Changing to SSD will make biggest difference.

Lot depends jn what you want to do with it. See beko for a cheap brand new laptop. Fine for daily browsing etc..

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

Ignore the link. That laptop was £399 yesterday.

[JQ]

Many thanks for the help.

Lenovo Thinkpad T450 i5 - 5300U 8 GB 256GB SSD ordered via Amazon for delivery tomorrow. Could have got it cheaper from eBay, but liked the idea of the Amazon warranty and quick delivery. Plus some of the cases and mousepads on eBay looked quite rough. The Amazon product looks mint.

[xyz123]

JQ said:

Many thanks for the help.

Lenovo Thinkpad T450 i5 - 5300U 8 GB 256GB SSD ordered via Amazon for delivery tomorrow. Could have got it cheaper from eBay, but liked the idea of the Amazon warranty and quick delivery. Plus some of the cases and mousepads on eBay looked quite rough. The Amazon product looks mint.

T450s are good quality laptops. Did you actually buy from Amazon or is it sold by third sorry via amazon platform.

[JQ]

xyz123 said:

JQ said:

Many thanks for the help.

Lenovo Thinkpad T450 i5 - 5300U 8 GB 256GB SSD ordered via Amazon for delivery tomorrow. Could have got it cheaper from eBay, but liked the idea of the Amazon warranty and quick delivery. Plus some of the cases and mousepads on eBay looked quite rough. The Amazon product looks mint.

T450s are good quality laptops. Did you actually buy from Amazon or is it sold by third sorry via amazon platform.

Via a 3rd party but has a 12 month Amazon backed guarantee.

[xyz123]

JQ said:

xyz123 said:

JQ said:

Many thanks for the help.

Lenovo Thinkpad T450 i5 - 5300U 8 GB 256GB SSD ordered via Amazon for delivery tomorrow. Could have got it cheaper from eBay, but liked the idea of the Amazon warranty and quick delivery. Plus some of the cases and mousepads on eBay looked quite rough. The Amazon product looks mint.

T450s are good quality laptops. Did you actually buy from Amazon or is it sold by third sorry via amazon platform.

Via a 3rd party but has a 12 month Amazon backed guarantee.

Thanks. I had no idea amazon offer guarantee on third party products. If you don't mind me asking how much was it?

[miniman]

An area where buying cheap is a false economy. I fired up my 2010 HP Folio 13 today for home learning action and it is super quick, still has good battery life and is generally mint. Rather different to the same-era Dell Vostro which cost half as much and was long ago consigned to the skip.

[xyz123]

miniman said:

An area where buying cheap is a false economy. I fired up my 2010 HP Folio 13 today for home learning action and it is super quick, still has good battery life and is generally mint. Rather different to the same-era Dell Vostro which cost half as much and was long ago consigned to the skip.

I am typing this on a 2011 dell vostro and it works perfectly fine. Only thing i have changed since i bought is to replace HDD with SDD and its perfectly acceptable for home learning for kids and web browsing/videos...

[miniman]

xyz123 said:

I am typing this on a 2011 dell vostro and it works perfectly fine. Only thing i have changed since i bought is to replace HDD with SDD and its perfectly acceptable for home learning for kids and web browsing/videos...

Yeah I think the SSD is the key to be honest. I bought an iMac last year with basic HDD and took it back within a week as it was utterly unusable.

[biggiles]

For school work, almost any laptop with an SSD will work fine. In "one of the earlier lockdowns" I bought a 7-year-old HP Elitebook with SSD on ebay, for under £200. When new it was very expensive, but now it's cheap.

Any older business-grade laptop with SSD should be fine.

[hyphen]

JQ said:

I need a laptop for my son. Having bought a recommended “cheap” laptop for my elder son, we have discovered how crap they are in comparison to the work laptops I and my my wife use, so would rather buy a used high end laptop that’s been refurbished.

I know nothing about computers, so is anyone able to recommend some models for me to search on eBay including what minimum specs I’d need. Budget is an absolute max of £400 and would prefer to spend less.

Thank you.

Look on eBay for any Lenovo Thinpad/Dell Latitude/HP Elitebook ex-corporate laptop. Make sure it has warranty left on it - it will be 1 or more years of onsite.

Will be cheaper to buy an i5 or i7 cpu and then upgrade the rest (if not soldered on...), but if you don't know/want to diy, then look for 16GB ram and a SSD hard disk with a minimum of 500GB. The disk space the better.