Good laptop for £500?

Streeteh · 11 Sep 2011 at 21:30

Hi Guys,

A friend of mine has asked for advice on a laptop, i know nothing about them but thought it'd be good of me to forward the question on to those who are knowledgeable.

So yeah, the budget is £500, usage will be mainly for video playback, office stuff and a bit of light gaming. He originally was going for an i3 with 6gb of ram, i however have a suspicion he would be better off cutting back to 3gb and getting a i5 based laptop instead for the same price.

Has anyone got any specific recommendations? Any would be greatly appreciated.

Gilbert89 · 12 Sep 2011 at 09:55

I have had a quick look and have been struggling to find both an i5 CPU and a dedicated graphics card within your budget also the ones within your budget do not specify graphics card although its under the dedicated card catogory, maybe Im looking in the wrong place currently at work so if there has been no other response, ill have another look when I get home.

Streeteh · 12 Sep 2011 at 14:36

That would be awesome, thanks. Would an integrated graphics chip not cut the mustard?

hbk123 · 12 Sep 2011 at 18:36

Google: ASUS X53E-SX399V i have it at the moment and its not bad, should do what your friend wants

Gilbert89 · 12 Sep 2011 at 21:54

Streeteh said:
That would be awesome, thanks. Would an integrated graphics chip not cut the mustard?

Will have a look now, Well Im no expert although its not that the integrated chip won't cut it Im just thinking of heat issues, on my MacPro I can run World of Warcraft high settings, within 2 minutes my fans have sped up to full RPM and my CPU temps is in excess of 80 degrees, safest bet is a dedicated chip to minimise heat issues as I assume those temperatures rant sustainable at long periods of time can't be healthy!

Gilbert89 · 12 Sep 2011 at 22:05

Budget is tight, maybe its worth looking at the bog standard Dell XPS coming in at £528.99 slightly over budget. But it has a dedicated graphics card 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M Graphics Card although I would recommend adding additional Ram as the bog standard jobby comes with 2GB you looking at about 30 quid I believe for 4GB DDR3 Ram.
Like I said over budget but this it what I would go for as the others just don't cut it for what you are wanting. Unless someone can correct me, I hope they can for you sake!

Streeteh · 13 Sep 2011 at 18:46

Thanks very much guys. I'm going to try to persuade him to up his budget.