Laptop for University?

[michty_me]

A family friend's son is away to start university and they have been given recommendations for sourcing a laptop. This is a mechanical and electrical Engineering course. Budget they have in mind is roughly £500-£700 but they also said, be mindful it will belong to an 18 year old.

I did wonder if a gaming laptop would have been worth while as I know he is a gamer but turns out he will be staying at home with full access to his desktop so this will be work only.

The Uni have recommended:

i5/i7 CPU or equivalent.
8/16Gb RAM (I would have thought 16Gb minimum)
512Gb HDD+
13/15" Screen.
Lightweight and long battery life.

 

[mattyfez]

Will he be running any specialist /demanding software for his course or will he just need essentially just a nice office machine?

 

[Begbie]

Apple whatever, like every other student will have.?

 

[sandys]

Looks like light requirements from Uni, likely not running anything local and it is just for remote access, documentation mostly, won't likely need local power, worth confirming though, so perhaps could be a mac assuming software is compatible, i know for my daughter Windows was the recommendation, so some core ultra 3 or wildcat based machine, most of these will run for more than a days use on battery etc. and be sub 1kg.

Perhaps look as some of last years laptops that are being sold off, the prior core Ultra chips were plenty efficient too.

 

[michty_me]

All it states in the recommendation file is that processing power is less important than weight and battery life and that some classes/disciplines would expect you to run software to compliment the course but it doesn't specify anything further on the software front.

They don't recommend Chromebooks or iPads by the looks.

Normally when I'm looking at laptops it's for gaming so I'm not overly familiar with looking down the efficiency route.

 

[radderfire]

Go 16GB Ram, and I prefer at least a 15" screen.

Dell or Lenovo for a Windows laptop. The budget is a little low though. Try Dell Outlet for a refurb with more power.

Or MacBook Neo.

 

[michty_me]

I would be thinking minimum of 16gb rather than the unis recommended minimum of 8gb.

I've got a 14" work laptop and it does my head in with the small screen, it's also pretty old. Maybe they have improved. I'll check Lenovo out as have had pretty good machines from them.
They have now said max budget probably £1,000

 

[eddyr]

16:10 ratio screen might be helpful also.

 

[michty_me]

Well I've just messaged them trying to get more information and they've said they just went into a high street tech shop and bought an Asus that was offer so I guess that ends that search. Nice of them to say...

 

[sandys]

for the original budget £550 you can get an Acer aspire 16 AI OLED with 16Gb, ryzen 5 and 512Mb SSD, at that price it is not lightweight @ 1.55kg but good value.

 

[sandys]

Well I've just messaged them trying to get more information and they've said they just went into a high street tech shop and bought an Asus that was offer so I guess that ends that search. Nice of them to say...

It's often better to go into a store and have a hands on play at a shop to be fair than buying blind on the internet.

 

[michty_me]

It's often better to go into a store and have a hands on play at a shop to be fair than buying blind on the internet.

Yeah true, it was mainly just to give them a rough idea what to look for.