Any laptop experts to help out a clueless mum

[mummyof2boys30]

We are thinking of getting our two boys a laptop each for Christmas. They currently share our old one which has seen better days.
Mainly used for schoolwork and playing roblox. We have budget of roughly 500 each. We had seen these two in argos and thought they looked good(bit over budget currently) . Hoping to wait for black friday deals

Both of those are marketed as "gaming laptops" and have pretty good specs. If it's JUST for homework and Roblox you could easily drop down a price category to anything that's around £300. On the other hand, if you suspect that your boys will want to play more complex games as they get older, then those laptops should be fine for a good few years.

For reference, my DS15 plays all sorts of games on a laptop that's older and cheaper than those, and my DD18 who isn't a gamer but needs lots of graphic processing (she's at art school) has something very similar to what you're considering.

That just shows how clueless i am. Didn't know they are aimed at gaming. From reading advise sites online seen people say i5 or i7 with 8gb ram so that's basically what im looking up lol. We have an lenovo ourselves which is why im looking at that brand. Possibility of more gaming is definitely a thing.

I've had a quick look and it seems that if you put all the graphics settings on Roblox to the very highest, then that Lenovo spec is reasonable. But that's not "needed" to play the game. Either of those models will also be fine for most games for a while (maybe not at the highest graphic settings, but serious gaming computers are in the high thousands of pounds).

One of the disadvantages of a laptop compared to a desktop is that most brands are very hard to upgrade with more memory. (Desktops are easy! You can open up the case and swap components.) We bought an "Acer" for DD so that she could upgrade if she needed. Turns out that the basic model is fine for what she does (uni work with a lot of graphics)

With a lot of online games, the thing that will slow the experience down is the speed of the internet connection rather than the computer being used.

Good luck!

Thanks for that advise. Definitely has to be a laptop as thinking DS10 might need for school/homework in the near future as hes dyslexic so want to have that option as well. There's so many different things to consider.

You can get really good second hand laptops - both DD and I have one. Usually ex and refurbished work laptops.

You can also get a separate monitor if space is no issue.

Over the last 10+ years I've bought at least 7 Lenovo A1 grade refurbished laptops from www.morgancomputers.co.uk/ and not had a single problem with any of them.
You have to decide how big you want them to be -screen size? 13" will be noticeably cheaper than 15.6" - I've had up to 17.3" wide but 15.6" is fine for most things.
The quality of the screens has a big impact on the overall price - high brightness, high resolution screens cost more - so when you are looking at different laptops take care to check the actual resolution - I've found it's easy when you are looking at different machines, the prices and other parts of the specification to forget to check this again just before you place an order
1366 x 768 High Definition (HD) - fine for office work (I use the free LibreOffice 7.3 atm - it's a very good replacement for Microsoft Office)
1920 x 1080 Full High Definition (FHD) - I wouldn't get less than this for gaming
2560 x 1440 Quad High Definition (QHD) - do you really need this resolution
but there are a lot of specs on screens to look at - refresh rate, etc.

Get 8Gb min memory - some offer 12Gb as a half way house to 16Gb - you really ought to get a solid state drive - a minimum of 128Gb - ideally 256 or 500 in addition to a hard drive of around 500Gb.

It's at this point I realise there is a lot for think about when choosing. Have a look on Morgan Computers.

I'd also ask - does it have to be a laptop? Really is it going to be moved or used in different places or just sat on a desk? A desktop or a mini-tower will be considerably cheaper - you need to buy a separate screen, keyboard and mouse - I think far too many people overlook desktops and buy portable devices when they don't need to be portable.

I bought an HP laptop with a year's Windows 10 software from Argos for £250. It's a bit noisy but it does the job for gaming, googling and homework.
Daily mail then sent a cheaper offer for same model, silver not white. I will see if I can dig it out.

I'm no expert, but I'd go with the i5, 16 gig, in theory more ram quicker the programs, ect but don't expect them to run call of duty ect

I bought a refurbished business laptop (dell) for under £180, advised by computer expert friends. It's Absolutely great, i5 processor and 8gb ram.

Thank you so much everyone for all your advise. Plenty to look at now. Thanks to poster about screen resolution too, hadn't actually looked at that at all as was too worried about running spec. Hate spending so much money on something i know nothing about

My first laptop, the battery was rubbish, but it was an impulse buy. all the best

Try LaptopsDirect. You can get a high spec refurbished model for a similar price to a brand new lower spec one.

I was looking for a new laptop - just for WFH so not RoBlox- and an IT friend said a minimum of an i3 processor, 8GB RAM and 256GM memory.