how on earth do I choose a half decent laptop? too much choice!

[meglet]

I've even been on the Which website and that hasn't really helped, the best buys are almost all over £600. I can't spend that much!

I've spent an hour flicking between which, argos and John lewis. One website likes a laptop, another one slates it.

Are the cheaper ones any good? There's a chance my 6yo will break it so it might be better to go cheap. Any new brands are ok?

Oooo, I like a bit of recycling.

Where does one even get a refurbished laptop from? Do they run modern software (need it for the dc's mathletics).

Cheaper ones are perfectly fine, no different at all internally from some that are twice the price. Just the brand name. Currys or Argos are your best bet. They have some good machines around the £250-£300 mark at the moment

Have a look on the HP website, they have some reasonably priced systems.

Thanks for the link. I'm setting myself a deadline of Monday to decide.

What do you need to do on it?

Seconded - whether a laptop is decent depends on what you want to use it for/how you want to use it.

I got a very cheap, relatively underpowered laptop because it was very small and light and I knew I'd be using it mainly for surfing, little bit of coding, maybe watch the occasional thing on YouTube. It's fine for that - struggles if I have two browsers open or too many tabs, but I don't care about that because to me, being able to shove it into a bag & take it with me easily is worth it. A colleague got the same model and hated it.

Things I'd suggest considering:

Battery life - are you regularly going to want to use it for long periods w/o power?

Weight - are you going to be carrying it with you a lot or will it mostly live at home?

Processor/memory: what do you want to run on it? Editing movies is going to need a more powerful machine than reading email/MNetting.

Screen size - again depends what you want to use it for. There's a bit of a U shape in price in my experience - very small and very big screens tend to be more costly.

If buying new get the cheapest one with 8 GB RAM. That will allow you to use it for few years.

Have you had a Mac before? Or only Windows?

I think that the one thing you DO know, is whether you want a Mac or Windows.

swedishedith mn-etting mainly, general web surfing, kids mathletics, general microsoft office bits for home admin, storing photos and downloaded music.

Don't watch tv on the laptop or anything. And it's only really used while plugged in.

Consider a Chromebook then meglet. You can do all of those things, really light and fast, long battery life and cheap.

DON'T get the HP Pavilion, OP. It's awful.

Sorry, just read the Microsoft office bit - it doesn't have that but has its own equivalents.

Dell Inspiron 5000, Core i5 processor and 8GB RAM, starting at £429, and there is the cheaper Inspiron 3000 starting at £229 (I'd probably go for at least the £249 version of that though).

I'd buy the cheapest. They are all outdated very quickly.

If you have a good rating, Staples does interest free credit on laptops. I tend to get the cheapest one there; it's fine for a couple of years.

Don't get a Chromebook, everyone I know who has one hates it.

I love my Chromebook!

what about Dell laptops?? as mine is slowly dying and i need to upgrade it at some point this year??