Spec Me A Laptop For My Parents Friend

Valo · 20 Feb 2022 at 14:31

I'm looking for some advice on what I should be recommending at as a good all-rounder laptop for a friend of my parents. I've been volunteered into helping and giving advice even though I switched to Apple around 10yrs ago, and I've really not kept up with things on the PC side.

The laptop is mainly used for day to day tasks - Web, Email and Office (Word and Excel).

They'd like something with:

Large Screen 13"- 15" >
Good Size Trackpad and Keyboard
Good Battery Life
Reasonably Lightweight

They really aren't bothered/interested in a touch screen or a 2-in-1 style system.

Would be nice from my side to have some upgradability, like a RAM upgrade which could be done at a later date.

Budget would be £750 max but preferably less.

throwaway4372 · 20 Feb 2022 at 14:39

Basically anything from a major laptop manufacturer with 16gb ram and an ssd is going to be fine for those light tasks. There are rules about linking competitors so kinda hard to do that.

Valo · 20 Feb 2022 at 14:52

throwaway4372 said:
Basically anything from a major laptop manufacturer with 16gb ram and an ssd is going to be fine for those light tasks. There are rules about linking competitors so kinda hard to do that.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Any particular manufactures I should avoid?

Also Intel or AMD?

throwaway4372 · 20 Feb 2022 at 15:02

any manufacturer name you recognise is fine
the trash tier laptops all come with less then 16gb ram, so by making sure it's got that you're avoiding them.

Snapshot · 21 Feb 2022 at 18:04

Valo said:
Thanks for the quick reply.

Any particular manufactures I should avoid?

Also Intel or AMD?

Yes. Doesn't matter for the intended usage although AMD tends to be better bang for buck. For the intended use 8GB RAM is quite enough, 16GB is needless expense. The HP 15seq2510sa looks a good buy from the usual high-street source. My wife has an earlier model and it's more than enough for light use.

radderfire · 21 Feb 2022 at 18:28

I would look at Dell Inspiron 15 3000.

Processor - Intel i5 or a Ryzen will do, you don't need more.

15.6" screen.

For memory, they have something like 8 GB (physical), 1 x 8 GB, DDR4, 2666 MHz (virtual), which is enough.

Hard drive, get an SSD, personally I want 500GB minimum for storage, anything less and it gets used up quickly.

My fav brand is Dell, they are American. Otherwise, Asus (Taiwanese), Acer (Taiwanese) and Lenovo (Chinese) could be considered.

The Tech Chap, and Dave Lee / Dave 2D YouTube channels are good for laptop reviews.

LiE · 21 Feb 2022 at 22:58

Have a look on hotukdeals you can usually find a decent laptop deal there.