Need help finding a Laptop.

[Boleyn]

Hello all.

I’ve been tasked with finding a laptop by the better half and I have absolutely no idea what specs are good in laptops, Desktops I’m fine with but Laptops….

All I’ve been given is it must be fast, have some future proofing and handle multi tasking easily. i.e Photoshop open, a few spreadsheets, other documents and several browser tabs (and possibly other stuff like iTunes e.t.c) and be able to play some games like Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition.

So to start an SSD but how big? And do laptops have further internal storage or will it have to be external?

How much Ram? 8, 16, 32 GB?

CPU: i5, i7, i9 or Ryzen. Clock speed? Cores?

Price wise max £1500 but preferably under £1000

Sound and GPU are not especially important, it would be nice to have good ones but these can be sacrificed (Needs to play Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition though – this is the one game she wants to play most of all)

Anything I’ve missed?

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Boleyn]

No suggestions?

Thank you anyway.

 

[sithlord]

Get a 16GB RAM (cant upgrade ram on lenovos) Lenovo X1 carbon 6th or 7th gen with 512GB SSD (can upgrade later).
Processor i7 8th gen... but if budgets tight i5 8th gen CPU.

Just my preference cos I love the keyboards and they are super light around 1kgs! I own the 5th gen Lenovo and its a beast and the battery lasts ages.
I also own a HP with an 8th gen processor, its also good but for multimedia. For working on plus portability I prefer the Lenovo.

 

[pcfarrar]

I’ve got an X1 6th gen with the HDR screen, 4G, i7 etc. It’s a decent laptop but it does have one major annoying issue. You need to disable panel self refresh in the intel graphics options or it freezes whilst using windows every few seconds. Every time there’s an intel graphics driver update it switches back on and freezes again. You can live with it but it’s annoying and I’ve found no permanent fix. Pretty poor for a laptop that cost £2k. Also it shows finger prints really bad especially on the trackpad. That being said it’s nice and lightweight, good to type on and gets frequent bios updates from Lenovo.

 

[andy_mk3]

Can very strongly recommend the Dell XPS13. I love mine. i7, 16gb ram, 512gb nvme, 8hour battery, superb keyboard, build quality and screen. Reviewers really struggle to bring up any bad points on it. Probably on the upper end of the budget but you really can't go far wrong with it if you don't want to game. It's light yet solid too. Mines with the 4k touch screen which is pretty awesome.

 

[Boleyn]

Thanks everyone. extremely helpful.

That Dell XPS 13 looks amazing for the price. i7 8th gen, 16gb ram, 512gb SSD and a 4k touch screen for less than £1500?

But does it play Baldur's Gate II I was asked again.

Thank you all again for your thoughts.

 

[pcfarrar]

That Dell XPS 13 looks amazing for the price. i7 8th gen, 16gb ram, 512gb SSD and a 4k touch screen for less than £1500?
But does it play Baldur's Gate II I was asked again.

The only real disadvantage with the Dell XPS is that it only comes with 1 year warranty, at this price level machines like the Carbon X1 have 3 Year onsite.

You should be fine playing Baldur's Gate on almost any modern laptop.

 

[sithlord]

4k screens eat a lot of battery compared to 1080p screen (about double), so think about that too.

 

[andy_mk3]

4k screens eat a lot of battery compared to 1080p screen (about double), so think about that too.

It's nowhere near double. The 1080p version of the XPS13 has around 2 hours more granted, but when you're getting 6-8 hours already it's nowhere near double. Plus with a USB-C PD battery bank you can double your battery life on the go easily enough.

 

[Boleyn]

The only real disadvantage with the Dell XPS is that it only comes with 1 year warranty

John Lewis includes a 2 year warranty with the Dell.

Thank you everyone for your help.

 

[Boleyn]

Like I said in my original post I know nothing of Laptops so I there may very well be an obvious reason why both the Lenovo X1 and the Dell XPS 13 were recommended over these 3 I just found here on Overclockers.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-....3-fhd-i7-9750h-gaming-laptop-lt-291-ms.html#
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...4hz-ips-i7-9750h-gaming-laptop-lt-03e-au.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/hp-o...z-intel-i7-9750h-gaming-laptop-lt-04h-hp.html

All 3 have a better CPU, better GPU, same 16GB memory, larger screens albeit not 4K touch screen but is that really noticeable at 13.3"? Larger storage and all at the same price or cheaper than the two recommended.

Now the other half definitely likes the Dell (same spec Lenovo is a bit pricey) but she is concerned about the small screen size and she keeps talking about games, Baldurs gate 3 now so a better GPU would be nice.

So what I'm asking now is, is the Dell still recommended over any of those 3? The same mandate stands, fast and capable of serious multitasking but any extras would be nice.

Thank you again.

 

[sithlord]

The laptops youve listed are gaming laptops. They are much heavier, hotter and bigger than the ones we listed above.

All the ones we listed are quite capable of running most RPG type games I think.

If your a heavy gamer and want to play very latest games 2019 then the Omen gets my vote.