Laptop - Good screen, poor specs

[David Bisset]

Hi all,

I'm looking for advice on getting a laptop (15 inch) that will be used primarily for things like watching streamed TV, playing DVDs and similar. Possibly some light word-processing. It'll be doing no gaming at all, no complex mathematics, nothing. This all points to a cheap lappy - however I'd really like it to have a good picture with reasonable viewing angles.
I've had a look at some high-street shops and it seems that all they sell have shiny but rubbish displays unless you go to some of the apple products - but they're very expensive and given the lack of need for decent components I'm not willing to spend that much.

Anyone got any suggestions? Ideally I'd love a non-reflective IPS display etc but have noticed that those only seem to come coupled with fairly high-end guts that would be wasted. Any input welcome!

Thanks,
Dave

 

[d_brennen]

This subforum can be quite quiet...

To me it sounds like you are describing a tablet, bar the DVD playback. Where else will you get a super quality screen for not a massive investment?

 

[tigerstyle]

17" Vaio E series at around £510ish as an opening deal?
(off the top of my head) other 17"ers might have a FHD panel for less, and you have to accept 17" is a bit larger than 15" too unless thats a deal breaker.

 

[David Bisset]

Cheers for the input guys.

d_brennen: I may have slightly understated the liklihood of typing and my gf doesn't like touch screens so probably not a tablet

tigerstyle: Good suggestion, the Vaio E 17" with FHD panel is top of my list at the moment, I'd rather a 15" lappy as 17 is really huge but then I guess a bigger screen is nice anyway. Shame the Vaio E 15" has a rubbish 1366*768 glossy display I might go past a Sony Centre and see if they've got a 14" with the 1600*900 display - I'm not hopeful but if it turned out to be decent that'd be awesome (not too many reviews of the 1600*900, most seem to be the lower spec screen :/)

Edit: Hmmm, so I've read some reviews saying the 14" Vaio E has a non-reflective screen, others saying its super-shiny and way too reflective. D'oh!

 

[tigerstyle]

any reviews of the 1600*900, most seem to be the lower spec screen :/)

Edit: Hmmm, so I've read some reviews saying the 14" Vaio E has a non-reflective screen, others saying its super-shiny and way too reflective. D'oh!

My gut says it will be a gloss screen -they all are mostly.
using a 2 year old E series Vaio now with 1080p screen -lovely!
(just loud and a battery monster with a gen1 i5! and no onboard CPU gfx option)