Spec me a laptop!

[Mr Gimp]

Having specced a nice new desktop to play with soon, I need to find a replacement to my aging fossil of a laptop but am struggling through a barrage of dross and misinformation. Would I be correct in assuming Sony's are still built like tanks, Lenovo's are a little bland but functional and Toshiba are the midfield dependable choice? I have had a few Acer's in the past and they're seemingly made of cheese!

I'm basically looking for something around the £500 mark that is built solidly, uses the latest i3 or i5 mobile processors with around 8GB of RAM.
Not too fussed if I go over budget for something exceptionally better.

Please help!

 

[Space Monkey]

Before I was looking recently in a bricks and mortar shop for a laptop for the misses, I thought the Sony's were still built like tanks and Lenovo was a budget choice but we were very shocked with the Sony's build quality, lots of plastic and not how they used to be, then we found the Lenovo Z500 which was mostly metal upper casing and very solid, so we've bought that, about a month or so on and she's still very pleased with it, can be had for about £480 (RRP is approx. £6-700), so that'd be my choice unless you buy something a lot more expensive?

 

[iv-tecman]

sony are nowhere near what they used to be, back in the mid 90's I purchased a sony viao laptop and it was very solid and quite slick in its looks, but not the greatest performer..

Went to Dell after that, D600 then XPS and finally ended up with Alienware (dell branded gaming stuff)

I did have a Samsung for a very short while before the Alienware, that seemed well built but I know the lenovo have had some fantastic reviews of late but it all depends on what you want and what you want to do with your laptop.

So give us what you want to do with it and we might be able to give a few ideas to help you make a choice..

 

[kitkat9933]

Sony are absolutely crap now (primarily the entry E Series), they make their laptops out of the same plastic as fisher price use for their toys (their very top end ones are quite well built tho, like the Z series)

I find that now HP's are decent ish built for their price and same with Lenovo.

 

[Mr Gimp]

I'm gonna be generally pootling around on the web and typing like a maniac, but other than that next to naff all usage wise.
Looking at i3 or i5 as a measure of future proofing if that makes any sense too.
I've had a look around tonight and the Lenovo G series don't seem too bad?
Do any of the manufacturers do 15.6 inch systems without the number pad any more though? I remember Lenovo not having the numeric pad in the past I swear, and I prefer it that way as my work machine (Dell D620) is that was and its silly comfortable.

 

[Space Monkey]

The Lenovo Z500 I mentioned has a number pad [just re-read your comment, so ignore mine, lol]

Also agree with kitkat above, the HPs seem very nicely built, aluminium and some have IPS screens too, very lush but they are priced around £900! I did consider one for myself at one point.