Looking for something which doesn't seem to exist..

yer_averagejoe

yer_averagejoe

yer_averagejoe

Soldato
Joined
23 May 2005
Posts
2,964
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Hi all, I'm looking for a laptop for work. requirements are:

- small and light-ish (I've been looking at 13.3" and 14" screens)
- reasonably fast (I5s)
- Discrete graphics. Preferably switchable for power saving
- NO SSD. I already have a 128GB crucial M4 I plan on putting in it so would not like to pay for another.
- Good build quality
- Ok screen.
- Should be quiet doing light tasks such as web browsing
- Budget of < £800

My search started with the Dell XPS 14z. looks good on paper but slightly expensive for what it is and I've heard a lot of horror stories about the XPSz series.

This took me to the thikpad Edge E320.. This is customisable to have an I5 2450M and Radeon HD 6630M (switchable), but apprently the build quality isn't top notch and the screen isn't the best. Plus I can't find anything about how noisy the thing is. Seems like the E320 is relatively undiscovered in the wild. £600 after discounts

Then I moved onto the VAIO SA series. This can be customised to pretty much the same spec as the Edge E320 but add a carbon lid and a slimmer frame plus a higher resolution screen, DVD drive and simply the fact that it is a vaio.. I thought I'd found the dream laptop but after reading into it, the SA series is apparently very loud even with light tasks and build quality doesn't live up to the VAIO name. £700

It looks like the further I search, the further I'm getting from my goals. I've briefly looked at the ASUS U36D/G laptops. They look ok but I'm not sure about how well they're built.

Ideally, if someone asked me to build a laptop, I'd take the Lenovo E320 at £600 and with the remaining £200 I have in my budget, I'd add a better screen and better materials.

Is there anything else I should be looking at?

Annoyingly, when I look at laptops at the top end of my budget, I'm confronted with mandatory SSDs and graphics cards loose peformance in favour of stability for business applications.

April 8th is the date I've heard for Ivy Bridge, which is unfortunately too far away.
 
Lol, the E320 awesome. Buy from lenovo and use the 10% quidco checkout discount + cashback and it’s a win win. The screen is a typical business notebook screen which has limited viewing angles to increase privacy in shared or public spaces. They do offer a glossy or matte screen though.

Only other financially sensible options with rock solid build are the HP Probook 4330s really or an HP Elitebook.

Build quality on the thinkpad is rather good. People who say it isn't are simply trying to justify not buying one.

Sony is over-priced.

Good thread here on the thinkpad edge http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18371689

Nothing comes close to the E320 for a 13/14" notebook esp with the 6630 graphics in the price range.
 
The screen is a typical business notebook screen which has limited viewing angles to increase privacy in shared or public spaces
Click to expand...

Err, what? It's a normal screen, shared amongst milions of other laptops.
 
Lucero said:
Err, what? It's a normal screen, shared amongst milions of other laptops.
Click to expand...

What that really means is it's a cheap poor quality screen put in to cheap(er) laptops to keep cost down...:p


OP your problem is that there is a distinct lack of decent 13" machines anyway, further reduced by your low price limit. Unfortunately sub 15" screens become expensive quickly and you're always going to have to pay more for the same quality in a smaller machine.

Unfortunately I can't really recommend anything in your price range other than say the SA, which you have already said no to.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I've been looking at opinions of the e320 and that seems to suffer from a noisy fan, even in machines without the discrete gfx option. I might have to drop the requirement of discrete graphics tbh.. It's annoying because the intel hd 4000 seems to be exactly what I might need (similar benchmarks to gt 520) but ivy bridge is still a couple of months away...

Will keep looking. Basically I need something smart, small-ish and powerful. Im a games programmer by trade so decent graphics would be nice but not essential (won't be used to actually play games). Fan noise can be very annoying in a quiet room and if I took it into a meeting I wouldn't want to be THAT guy with the noisy laptop.

I've seen that you can get e xternal gtx solutions for vaios but these are incredibly expensive for what they are.

Will keep searching!

Edit: I can always up the budget a bit more if it makes sense.
 
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So I can't even swap discrete graphics for a decent screen..

A 768 vertical resolution is not acceptable for this day and age. You can get smartphones to match that. As far as I know, laptops have been this resolution for ages! Where are our options? I sort of feel cheated by manufacturers sneaking in cheap screens under the label "HD".

My HP mini 311 had a vertical resoultion of 768 in an 11.6" screen 3 years ago. I'd expect better in 13.3, 14 and 15.6 inch screens now.
 
as i said mate, m15x is a decent way to go for changable graphics and decent screen (1080p) however if you are set on a smaller laptop you could always grab an EGPU for home use if you wont be gaming on the go for example.
 
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