Advice on buying a standard laptop.

[Tolkienista]

I'm looking to buy an entry level laptop.......I'm not a gamer, don't need one for work, I've just retired.
I'll be using it for general internet browsing, storing photos, emails and shopping.

I'd rather go into a store and buy one than order one online, any suggestions?
I'd like to come in around £300 at the most.
Thanks.

You're going to struggle to get anything worthwhile with that budget, it really needs to be £500.
Features you need:
Processor - Intel Core i5
Memory (RAM) - minimum 8GB
Hard Disk (SSD) - minimum 512GB

I'm living abroad and seem to be blocked from looking at Currys, but there are a few at Argos that meet these criteria, some under £500 but not as low as £300. But you won't get much help at Argos, it's just somewhere I can look that's a shop.

Yes that figures @filka .
I'm probably being totally unrealistic on price.......haven't done any research, but thanks for your advice that's really helpful going forward.

I might start at John Lewis they have a two year warranty on goods,
bought my new phone there last October.
I'm going to start my research on laptops soon.

I recently bought an Acer Chromebook from Curry's, it's great and under £300.
It has a detachable keyboard, 14" screen, if you take the keyboard off you can use it as a tablet (fab for sitting in your armchair scrolling the Internet, reading Kindle and stalking MN!)
It also has a a magnetic cover which has a stand built in.
I was a bit worried that the screen would be too small, my eyesight is not what it should be but it's great.
It's small enough to carry on holiday in your bag

@itsgoingtobeabumpyride thanks for your help, that sounds great, I like the idea of a detachable keyboard .
I'll definitely look into that.

Have a look at Morgan computers : a second laptop from them will be just fine

Never heard of Morgan computers, so I'm going to look into that.
Thank you.

Admittedly it's been a while since I researched chromebooks, but I was put off them because they don't have a hard drive, so you can't store much (if anything?) on the computer itself. You have to store stuff in the cloud.

This is a good shout if you literally just want to use the internet, online banking etc, though if that’s the case, you may be better off with a cheap iPad.

Anything more than this, you’re basically buying a potato. It’s also unlikely to be durable and will disintegrate quickly if you let kids use it.

That's interesting about the Chromebook......I don't think I'd have much to put into storage, but it's something to consider for the future.

At that price point I'd be looking at getting a refurbished business level machine. Better specs, better components and better longevity.