Best Windows Laptop Make for Reliability, Build Quality and Support?

radderfire · 14 Oct 2018 at 18:41

What do you think the best laptop make is for reliability, build quality and support?

Also, do you think an i3 processor can be adequate if you will be using Photoshop and maybe Premiere Pro for video editing? Would it be fast enough? Would you need to have 8GB of RAM in it? I don't need it for gaming.

Thanks

Columbo · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:12

Don't think an i3 would be my 1st choice, i5 minimum would be my suggestion but if your budget stretches I'd go for an i7, minimum 8gb bt preferably 16gb and definitely a large SSD.
I use a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 at work and it has a 256gb m.2 drive with 16gb RAM and has space for a 2nd SSD / HDD should I need and the i7 seems to be powerful enough for some the tasks I use it for.

I've got a 6th gen i3 laptop at that my daughter uses at home and even basic edits to 24mp jpegs can see me waiting for them to complete, so I'd expect photoshop actions and video editing would also be protracted in terms of time to complete.

Admiral Huddy · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:43

I'm looking for one myself for PS editing on the go. PS is very memory hungry and loves multi-core CPUs so I would go for the minimum 16GB and i5..

The other issue is the screen. Whilst you want plenty of real estate to work with, you also need a decent colour presentation which I'm struggling to find.

The dell XPS range is superb but pricey..

The HP 15-cn0007na seems like a decent buy. I'm personally looking at the ENVY 17-bw0000na 4K UHD Laptop with Optane Storage Acceleration but HP don't seem to quote their colour gamut range..

paradigm · 15 Oct 2018 at 17:44

For best support I’d say Lenovo, but I prefer the styling and configurations that Dell have to offer at the moment.

HP, well, I’ve got one as my work machine (an Elitebook of some description, 7th gen i7 with 16GB RAM), and the build quality is utter garbage compared to my XPS 13 and my Lenovo X260, cheap and nasty plastic galore, an awful keyboard (I’ve had it less than 2 months and the down arrow is failing/sticking), and pretty poor expansion also. My own money wouldn’t go towards a recent/current HP.

loltim · 15 Oct 2018 at 20:59

I would always go Dell/Lenovo until very recently interestingly.
Have been using a HP Elitebook X360 G3 (i7/16GB) over the last week or so and it's lovely. I can't speak for longevity but the keyboard is comparable to the latest MacBook in terms of key travel and general feel. The screen resolution is great and it hardly has any bezel. Battery life is excellent and B&O audio top facing speakers, too.

edit: to be clear I'm not saying I'd go HP over Dell/Lenovo but that you may want to consider HP these days as I've always instantly ruled them out.

EsaT · 15 Oct 2018 at 22:23

radderfire said:
Also, do you think an i3 processor can be adequate if you will be using Photoshop and maybe Premiere Pro for video editing? Would it be fast enough? Would you need to have 8GB of RAM in it? I don't need it for gaming.

With ever increasing resource demands of bloating software I would keep quad core and 16GB necessary for laptop to stay relevant longer.
And especially heavier photoshoppping and video editing easily hogs lots of memory.

Though if you're looking for normal laptop instead of ultrabook, those likely have commonly memory slots and you could later upgrade amount of memory.
But for ultrabook with soldered memory you'll need that 16GB from the start.

Admiral Huddy said:
... and i5..

Too bad i5 just doesn't tell anything concretic with all various Core generations on sale...
Myself have started to look for ultrabook convertible and many times have noticed some model which would seem good only to notice that CPU is dual core.

DarrenM343 · 18 Oct 2018 at 23:32

Shame Sony don't make Laptops anymore. Best one I've owned to date is a top end Sony carbon fibre framed jobby from the Sony Z range, which is what I'm using right now. After getting it I remember some saying the raid drives were a bit of marketing and I kind of agreed, but that aside, 6 years later and many many hours of use, including being carried around everywhere and it's still going strong.
I believe Lenovo now make them.
Had a few Dell's in the past, including an XPS1330 but they haven't lasted much beyond 3 years if I remember correctly.One of them was troublesome during the manufacturers warranty so when they offered a special deal to extend the warranty I did. Good thing too as it had more issues. Was easy to repair myself though - Dell sent me the parts and I did the work (2 or more keyboards, a hard disk, a power supply)

easyrider · 20 Oct 2018 at 15:47

Admiral Huddy said:
I'm looking for one myself for PS editing on the go. PS is very memory hungry and loves multi-core CPUs so I would go for the minimum 16GB and i5..

The other issue is the screen. Whilst you want plenty of real estate to work with, you also need a decent colour presentation which I'm struggling to find.

The dell XPS range is superb but pricey..

I returned two XPS last month due to poor screen and back light bleed in all four corners...

tropicola · 25 Oct 2018 at 13:04

Not sure 1 brand has it all

from my experience

Reliability/Build quality - asus, gigabyte (gaming models etc)
Support - Dell (but you pay a premium ofc on the laptop price for the service that comes with it seems

as for the i3 for photoshop sure

but video editing or 3d, you will want a fast processor and a modern fast GPU, alongside a fast SD hardrive and large amount of ram

basically if you run out of ram, it will start using your SD or HD which is slower

example speeds, Ram is 10x faster than ssd and 50x faster than hdd (depending on speed/brand etc)

but if you have all the time in the world then sure i3 will be enough