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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Apparently a normal, decent, inexpensive laptop is like unicorn shit!

49 replies

pollypenguin01 · 21/07/2019 15:07

So I need a new laptop.

I’ve spent hours trying to research the best for my budget and I’m getting nowhere!
One site tells me that a certain Dell is the best laptop ever, the next site says it’s shit get a MacBook.

Every good review seems to want me to spend over £1000 some even flippantly expecting a £2000 budget for a laptop as reasonable and normal.

I just want a laptop with decent memory, can cope with my OU studying, can occasionally play games/watch YouTube/Netflix and doesn’t cost more that £600.

AIBU, is this like fucking unicorn shit to find? Because I seem to be utterly incapable of finding one with my wants, at a decent price, with ok reviews and not going to blow up within a week!?

Help me....PLEASE! 🤯

OP posts:
IPokeBadgers · 21/07/2019 15:10

Watching with interest as am in a similar position....always went Dell before and was happy enough....but last time opted for HP which has been the most disastrous, disappointing piece of shit 😒

LellyMcKelly · 21/07/2019 15:13

If you want to play games your not going to get much change from £1k these days I’m afraid. Mine is a £500 Lenovo but I only use it for Word and Excel mainly. We put on on my son’s games on it and it ground to a halt.

MyDcAreMarvel · 21/07/2019 15:14

If you can stretch to £800 get a MacBook.

DragonMamma · 21/07/2019 15:15

I have a Lenovo Yoga c930 for work. It’s expensive but they have less flashy versions within the range for almost half the price

BeardofZeus · 21/07/2019 15:17

Try a reconditioned laptop, they usually come with a warranty but are just as good as new but bring the price down. My current laptop is reconditioned and would normally have cost about £650 and i bought it for around £300

EmeraldShamrock · 21/07/2019 15:17

It depends on the games you want to play, everything is available on most laptops.
Can you visit a tech shop ask for an ex display model or previous season stock, it still comes with a warranty etc.

NoBaggyPants · 21/07/2019 15:17

If you're happy not to use it for gaming, you don't need to spend much at all.

www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-ideapad-330s-81fb00dcuk-laptop-amd-ryzen-r3-processor-4gb-ram-128gb-ssd-15-6-inch-platinum-grey/p4005388

www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-ideapad-330s-81f400bquk-laptop-intel-pentium-4gb-128gb-ssd-14-inch-grey/p3633302

I've the older version of the first, it's excellent.

orangeshoebox · 21/07/2019 15:18

for a charity I bought a few lenovo idea pads recently. they were about 200£
hardly any storage but with a cloud service good for our purposes (mainly word & excel)
gaming would have been painful though.

RockingRocket · 21/07/2019 15:18

Yep, it's the playing games bit that makes what you want expensive now. I'd still go for the Dell but £800 kind of level.

EmeraldShamrock · 21/07/2019 15:18

Everything else but gaming capicity is available on most laptops.

orangeshoebox · 21/07/2019 15:20

but have a look at how much space antivirus and software update need. the cheapest laptops sometimes don't have enough disk space for that.

Spanneroo · 21/07/2019 15:22

Yes, get a reconditioned laptop. I got an ex-business use laptop. It's bulky but has a lot of memory and RAM and can run sims4 on the very rare occasion I get to play it. It's mainly used for excel, word, and banking. Cost me £120 from a trusted eBay seller. You can also get reconditioned ones from Currys I believe, if the eBay route isn't your bag.

Original poster
pollypenguin01 · 21/07/2019 15:24

Thanks for the replies.

I mainly need it for studying and probably won’t play games on it at all but the capacity to be able to play The Sims would be nice (that’s the only game I very occasionally play)

I don’t mind a reconditioned but again the problem is which on do I go for?
The reviews for pretty much every laptop are so varied it’s really impossible to find something that has decent reviews across the board!

For instance a HP laptop I quite liked the look of had good reviews on TechReview but awful ones on Amazon! Confused

OP posts:
ElizaPancakes · 21/07/2019 15:30

I just bought this one from Very although it was £100 cheaper and I’ve seen it cheaper elsewhere as well (I just wanted the 12 months int free).

I like it a lot. I play games on it - Sims 4, Simcity and Cities: Skylines - don’t know how well it would fair with faster games like Destiny. It’s absolutely fine for Internet stuff, and while I don’t use it for studying I can’t imagine it would be a problem. The only downside is that the speakers are not amazing, but you can easily get past that with decent headphones or separate speakers if it’s not your primary method of watching tv. It’s ok for streaming the Xbox app through tho to play faster games.

NoBaggyPants · 21/07/2019 15:31

All the laptops linked to have excellent reviews, and can run antivirus and updates.

It's easy to get bogged down with looking for a certain spec etc, when for most of us it means very little. But from a reputable retailer (not Curry's) and if the laptop is faulty you can return it without any fuss.

ElizaPancakes · 21/07/2019 15:32

X-post!

Which Sims? I have Sims4 and play with all packs at highest graphics level and I have no issues. It was important to me to have a decent graphics card, 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive. I could have compromised on the RAM and hard drive but I also download quite a lot of stuff.

NoBaggyPants · 21/07/2019 15:32
  • Buy not But
helpmeiamatoad · 21/07/2019 15:33

I have a macbook air for studying and internet browsing, it’s perfect for me. But I’d recommend a pro rather than an air if you want to do a bit of gaming, my air does get quite hot just from playing a bit of sims. A second hand one shouldnt set you back more than 8/900

YouFellAsleeep · 21/07/2019 15:33

The problem with wanting to play games, even occasionally, it puts you into a completely different price range. Whilst something like The Sims may run on a cheaper laptop, it’s not going to be good on the computer and may overheat etc. I play occasional games too like the sims, cities skylines and a few others, so went for a gaming laptop and that was £750 (2 years ago) and that was the sale price because it was a discontinued model.

With reviews, there’s always going to be loads of bad reviews, people mostly only leave reviews to moan about something! As long as the spec is decent for what you want, I wouldn’t take personal opinions too seriously.

Nat6999 · 21/07/2019 15:35

My ds has an HP laptop 1TB storage, he does all his school stuff on it, watches TV & plays games on it, it was £399 from Currys.

TonTonMacoute · 21/07/2019 15:36

We had HPs for ages, as DH worked for them and we got a discount. Since he has left we have had Dells, and can't really fault them.

Dell's after sales service was also fantastic, we had a problem with the screen on a fairly new machine, and they sent an engineer to DHs office to fix it.

DH games on his, Civilisation is his game of choice, and it runs perfectly.

tttigress · 21/07/2019 15:40

You should easily be able to get one for £600, my tips are, you should get one with an SSD and at least 8GB Memory.

pp12 · 21/07/2019 15:44

www.ebuyer.com/878738-asus-intel-i7-8gb-256gb-full-hd-15-6in-win10-home-a540ua-dm1842t

8gb or more in RAM
SSD is a must

pp12 · 21/07/2019 15:45

I would avoid HP laptops they have a habit of overheating due to how they are designed