4gb ram + 128gb ssd or 4gb + 1tb hdd, which is better combo?

ExoMale · 30 Sep 2018 at 10:06

looking to get my mum a laptop for Christmas, just for general and office related uses and looking around the local stores, it seems for up to £400 theres a common spec of 4gb ram + a hard drive of some kind.

im looking at the pentium gold, an i3 or an A9 however reading some reviews people are saying they are slow even with the ssd??

what will be the better overall combo including processor for up to £400? im going to wait till the sales to buy.

Emlyn_Dewar · 2 Oct 2018 at 04:15

I've got a 4gb/SSD laptop that I use for work, and it does the job fine.
I'd say the SSD is essential, unless you think your Mum would need to store a decent amount of files.

Plenty of people buy this kind of spec and expect performance that's impossible. I don't think any of the CPUs listed would be slow for general web browsing, YouTube and office tasks.
5400rpm hard drives however, they will always be slow.

edscdk · 2 Oct 2018 at 06:04

I think for office stuff those cpus are about the same, the ssd however make the machine 4x faster..

Mark1989 · 2 Oct 2018 at 11:05

I bought the Mrs a lenovo with pentium m and 4gb w/ ssd, been perfect for her only uses it for photos and YouTube

Akagi · 2 Oct 2018 at 11:11

Do you need more than 128GB? There's your answer.

Loki · 5 Oct 2018 at 10:01

I would agree about considering SSD above larger capacity drive. If space does become a consideration, some laptops will have an extra slot for installing a HDD.

The Running Man · 5 Oct 2018 at 17:13

You need a 1tb plus ssd imo.

Otherwise if you try backing up a 32gb phone to your laptop and other stuff you'll benoit of space quickly on just a 128gb add. Windows install takes about 1/5 of the drive anyway .

Emlyn_Dewar · 7 Oct 2018 at 15:23

It's 2018, back up to whatever online drive service works for you.
1tb SSD a requirement is a pretty crazy recommendation.

Rannoch · 7 Oct 2018 at 15:32

Get the SSD so you don’t have to spend all of Boxing Day running Windows updates on a slow hard disk

Psycho Sonny · 31 Oct 2018 at 14:43

hybrid drive?

Admetos · 31 Oct 2018 at 19:03

SSD's make sense on Laptop's due to lower power and lower heat, they should also be more robust if the laptop is knocked.

But otherwise 4GB is not really enough, and would look at 8GB.