13.3" laptop please

e36Adz · 15 Oct 2010 at 01:29

Whats the best slim 13.3" laptop available for around the £300-£400 mark?

It will be used for internet browsing and college/uni work mainly. I saw an Asus UL30A which looked very decent, going for £340 and when I visited the site to buy it today, it was sold out and discontinued. I can't seem to find this model anywhere else for a similar price.

Can you find it or possibly something better?

olivier renault · 15 Oct 2010 at 09:17

Lenovo edge 13'' (bit over budget).

Dell m101z.

Acer 3810TZ.

These are slightly over your budget (unless you find a refurb / open box). Here you have the Toshiba T130-13Q. It's a single core though.

sja360 · 15 Oct 2010 at 10:13

you can get the toshiba t130 as mentioned above but the 16w which has the intel su4100 which is a dual core 1.3ghz low tdp cpu. costs 330 online from a main retailer online.

olivier renault · 15 Oct 2010 at 11:04

Yeah, I'd go dual core.

d_brennen · 15 Oct 2010 at 11:08

The Thinkpad Edge is an awesome looking piece of kit. Quite pricy for the specs though. The Intel option is better than the AMD for battery, heat and slightly on performance iirc, but costs more of course

e36Adz · 15 Oct 2010 at 11:16

sja360 said:
...but the 16w which has the intel su4100 which is a dual core 1.3ghz low tdp cpu. costs 330 online from a main retailer online.

Can you email me the link please mate?

edit: Think I found it.

e36Adz · 15 Oct 2010 at 11:31

Total Price of the Toshiba T130-16W with discount comes to just under £320 inc delivery. Worth it? It's very similar in spec to the original Asus one I was previously looking at but £20 cheaper.

sja360 · 15 Oct 2010 at 12:34

well thats the one i was going to get the gf but she was up in arms because it looks plain. personally i like toshiba, and i have one of their tv's and its pretty good.
for the price i would buy one myself if it wasnt for the fact i have a pc and older laptop that she uses atm.
i think it *may* be capable of playing 720p videos as well. atleast i'd hope with the X4500 intel gma that it should when paired with the 1.3 Dual core.

e36Adz · 15 Oct 2010 at 16:56

sja360 said:
well thats the one i was going to get the gf but she was up in arms because it looks plain. personally i like toshiba, and i have one of their tv's and its pretty good.
for the price i would buy one myself if it wasnt for the fact i have a pc and older laptop that she uses atm.
i think it *may* be capable of playing 720p videos as well. atleast i'd hope with the X4500 intel gma that it should when paired with the 1.3 Dual core.

lol similar scenario here tbh, its for the mrs and she has had a bad experience with toshiba saying her sisters old toshiba laptop never use to work! I think it's more a case of she didn't know how to work it...

Anyway it does look a bit plain but I am more bothered about spec. It doesn't seem half bad for the price, 13.3" screen, 10+ hrs battery with a dual core cpu, 3gb ram and a big hard drive with HDMI aswel. Should be well upto the job while still being fairly portable and light. Think I'll order it tonight.

tempac · 15 Oct 2010 at 18:17

I have had a similar experience to your Sisters then. I purchased a Toshiba TV for £1400 it broke 6 months into its first year of ownership. Since then its been sat awaiting a repair, Toshiba just ignore me when I call advising 'take it to the retailer', A company that suggests 'We Love Electricals!' didn't even give evidence, the 'judge' instead believed despite the law saying differently that 'if I had bought a car and it had broken within the first year I couldn't demand a full refund' this despite the tv now being out of production, multiple reports of failure even after repairs no I couldn't have my money back either in full or partial refund.

Still he did offer me the opportunity to 'if you think my decision is unfair you can have leave to question it in another court', of course I received my paperwork a month later, I turned over the letter and it said in big red letters 'leave to have decision reviewed: DENIED!'

The 'judge' believed that Toshiba provided 'good quality' products, this despite me providing evidence that they do infact purchase TVs and other products from other retailers. Infact 'Toshiba' is purely a trading name, their products can also be labled Goodmans, Matsui, Samsung et al. Didn't do me any good however.

My suggestion is AVOID TOSHIBA in case you should make the same mistake as I did!

e36Adz · 18 Oct 2010 at 22:29

I managed to find another one better spec'd then the Toshiba.

How does this look:

Acer TravelMate

Intel® ULV Core 2 Duo (ULV SU9400, 3 MB L2 cache, 1.4GHz, 800MHz FSB)
13.3" (Acer CineCrystal, 1366x768 HD, High Brightness, LED Backlit)
Win Vista (will be upgrading to Win 7 Ultimate 64)
4GB (DDR3 1066MHZ)
320GB
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB Dedicated RAM
5-in-1 card reader (SD//MS/MS-Pro/MMC/xD-Picture card™)
3x USB 2.0 ports
Kensington lock slot
8 Hrs+ Battery Life
1.6Kg

Price: £330 delivered

I have seen this laptop get good reviews last year at over twice this price with integrated graphics. The dedicated graphics, 4gb ram, decent cpu and good battery life seemed a no brainer really. I have read it also comes with bluetooth, webcam and a fingerprint reader although the description from the site I ordered it says no to all of those, so they would definately be a nice bonus. It doesn't have HDMI or an internal DVD drive but I can live without those. Hopefully this has solid build quality because it seems like a bargain for this price. I searched hard but couldn't find a equally/better spec'd 13.3" for this price.

Hopefully I get it sometime this week!

haz_pro · 19 Oct 2010 at 00:34

e36Adz said:
I managed to find another one better spec'd then the Toshiba.

How does this look:

Acer TravelMate

Intel® ULV Core 2 Duo (ULV SU9400, 3 MB L2 cache, 1.4GHz, 800MHz FSB)
13.3" (Acer CineCrystal, 1366x768 HD, High Brightness, LED Backlit)
Win Vista (will be upgrading to Win 7 Ultimate 64)
4GB (DDR3 1066MHZ)
320GB
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB Dedicated RAM
5-in-1 card reader (SD//MS/MS-Pro/MMC/xD-Picture card™)
3x USB 2.0 ports
Kensington lock slot
8 Hrs+ Battery Life
1.6Kg

Price: £330 delivered

I have seen this laptop get good reviews last year at over twice this price with integrated graphics. The dedicated graphics, 4gb ram, decent cpu and good battery life seemed a no brainer really. I have read it also comes with bluetooth, webcam and a fingerprint reader although the description from the site I ordered it says no to all of those, so they would definately be a nice bonus. It doesn't have HDMI or an internal DVD drive but I can live without those. Hopefully this has solid build quality because it seems like a bargain for this price. I searched hard but couldn't find a equally/better spec'd 13.3" for this price.

Hopefully I get it sometime this week!

Just seen this, i am SO tempted but not sure if its a worthwhile upgrade over my 2.1ghz AMD dualcore 2gb laptop. Its such a good size but not sure if it would handle everything i want it to do.

How would it be for programming, pretty decent?

Guess 1080p video is a no go.

Rroff · 19 Oct 2010 at 00:55

720p will probably play mostly ok but 1080p almost definitely a no.

tommytinkle · 19 Oct 2010 at 12:22

Rroff said:
720p will probably play mostly ok but 1080p almost definitely a no.

720p would be ok, some people have got 1080p to be smooth using vlc and changing some options so it might be worth a go. Laptop spec and price wise looks ok though.

olivier renault · 19 Oct 2010 at 14:52

e36Adz said:
I managed to find another one better spec'd then the Toshiba.

How does this look:

Acer TravelMate

Intel® ULV Core 2 Duo (ULV SU9400, 3 MB L2 cache, 1.4GHz, 800MHz FSB)
13.3" (Acer CineCrystal, 1366x768 HD, High Brightness, LED Backlit)
Win Vista (will be upgrading to Win 7 Ultimate 64)
4GB (DDR3 1066MHZ)
320GB
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB Dedicated RAM
5-in-1 card reader (SD//MS/MS-Pro/MMC/xD-Picture card™)
3x USB 2.0 ports
Kensington lock slot
8 Hrs+ Battery Life
1.6Kg

Price: £330 delivered

I have seen this laptop get good reviews last year at over twice this price with integrated graphics. The dedicated graphics, 4gb ram, decent cpu and good battery life seemed a no brainer really. I have read it also comes with bluetooth, webcam and a fingerprint reader although the description from the site I ordered it says no to all of those, so they would definately be a nice bonus. It doesn't have HDMI or an internal DVD drive but I can live without those. Hopefully this has solid build quality because it seems like a bargain for this price. I searched hard but couldn't find a equally/better spec'd 13.3" for this price.

Hopefully I get it sometime this week!

For the price, it's a bargain really. Slightly more expensive than a netbook, and much better in every department. The CPU is a bit lightweight, but no complains here from my UL30A. It does the job very well for a notebook.

There are many configurations of similar systems. I doubt you'll have all the nice things like bluetooth, but from the base specs alone, it looks very capable.

e36Adz · 19 Oct 2010 at 15:14

hi mate, which cpu is in your UL30A?

olivier renault · 20 Oct 2010 at 00:52

SU2300. The SU9400 has slightly faster clock and bigger cache. Performance I would be in the same order or magnitude. You can check out notebookcheck for CPU benchmarks and info.

Here's a write-up of your model (I think).

Rroff · 20 Oct 2010 at 00:57

Those CPUs aren't actually _that_ bad... if you declutter the OS - especially all the crud that comes preinstalled on many laptops... I have an SU2700 1.3gig single core in one of my laptops and it runs suprisingly well for what it is if you take the time to tweak a little.

olivier renault · 20 Oct 2010 at 01:13

Basically, for £330, you have to lower your expectation, but CULVs are really fine for notebooks and basic productivity. Hell, the m11x used to come with a SU7300, granted it was a weak link, which they rectified with a i5 / i7 ULV.

e36Adz · 20 Oct 2010 at 12:23

Just got back from the gym, no sign of it yet but good news when I checked my emails... 'Your order from ********* is out for delivery today and is due to be delivered between 13:49-14:49.'

I will format and install a fresh copy of Win 7 Ultimate 32 or 64 and see how it does.