Spec me a small laptop

Joebob

Joebob

Joebob

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Hi,

Looking at getting my 12 yr old daughter a laptop for xmas and I'm after some recommendations.

It has to be a Windows laptop
Preferably small, i.e. 11 inch or so so she can carry it with ease between my house and her mums.
It needs to be able to run Minecraft (that's her requirement, mine is MS Office for Homework etc.)

Not looking at spending a fortune, pref' around a couple of hundred.

Any advice really welcome.

Thanks
 
Not sure you will find much that can play minecraft well for a couple of hundred There is the Lenovo Yoga 2 11.6-inch with a Intel Pentium N3540 2.16GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD for about £300 online.

Otherwise it might be better looking at Importing a Chinese hybrid tablet/laptop, I've just ordered a Cube I7 stylus as I was after a good performance tablet that I can also use with it's keyboard dock which was ordered separately. That came to about £240, it was £260 with shipping from China, there is also a VOYO A1 PLUS Ultimate that looks similar to the Lenovo Yoga 2 for cheaper but it has a new Atom CPU in it X5-8300 which is available for pre-order for less than £200.
 
Thanks. I guess £200 was a little naive. Have adjusted the budget to £300 - hopefully I can find something soon a I really need to get it ordered in time for crimbo.
 
I would still say that the suggestions that I have listed are still some of the better offerings in the price bracket. There is also the Lenovo YOGA 300 and the Lenovo YOGA 500 for about £300 you can get a full sized laptop (15") like the Asus X555LA with an i3 processor in it for <£300 but you are after something smaller. There is an ultrabook (13.3" Lafité ) that can be customised to required specs on a competitors website so if you google it you should find it or "13.3" Lafité II" looks like good specs for the price.
 
nick_000000 said:
I would still say that the suggestions that I have listed are still some of the better offerings in the price bracket. There is also the Lenovo YOGA 300 and the Lenovo YOGA 500 for about £300 you can get a full sized laptop (15") like the Asus X555LA with an i3 processor in it for <£300 but you are after something smaller. There is an ultrabook (13.3" Lafité ) that can be customised to required specs on a competitors website so if you google it you should find it or "13.3" Lafité II" looks like good specs for the price.
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Thanks for that info, I will check those models out.

I have been looking at the HP 255 G4, which has an AMD Quad Core, 8GB RAM and Radeon R4 1GB Dedicated Graphics. I'm not really up to date on my GFX cards any more though so I have no idea if this is decent or not!

I'm not too bothered about it being 11 inch any more, I guess that bumps up the price.

As long as it will play Minecraft and The Sims then that would be more than enough I think.

Would the systems you have listed handle Minecraft do you think?
 
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If the size isn't too much of an issue I would go for the 15.6" Asus X555LA Intel Core i3-5005U laptop should handle Minecraft and The Sims fine with the Intel graphics that the broadwell based CPU it has. For less than £300 it comes with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive should be a good investment.
 
nick_000000 said:
If the size isn't too much of an issue I would go for the 15.6" Asus X555LA Intel Core i3-5005U laptop should handle Minecraft and The Sims fine with the Intel graphics that the broadwell based CPU it has. For less than £300 it comes with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive should be a good investment.
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Do you think this would be better than the HP 255 G4 which I have found? (AMD Quad Core, 8GB RAM and Radeon R4 1GB Dedicated Graphics) - it's £330 but I don't mind spending that little bit extra for something which will last.
 
nick_000000 said:
I would still go for the asus - the intel chip is newer and cooler running - http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-5005U-vs-AMD-A8-6410. Fairly similar performance from both of them, if you wanted to invest a bit more money try googling The 13.3" Lafité II as you can customise it to your needs and decide how much you want to spend on it.
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I already looked at that but it works out a lot more expensive, even with fairly low end specs!
 
Joebob said:
I already looked at that but it works out a lot more expensive, even with fairly low end specs!
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You might be able to get something on offer on Black Friday/Cyber Monday like a laptop with a Intel Core i5 5200U or an AMD A10 APU in, have a look and see if there is anything that's in your price range then as I imagine you will find something on the big sale days. There is currently an ASUS E5-573 which has a FULL HD screen, Intel Core i5 5200U, 4GB ram and 500GB hard drive for £400 so I'm sure that there will be others or possibly this one that drop in price.
 
The HP Pavilion x2 10-n054sa 10.1” has been getting good reviews and is widely available at £200.

Intel Atom Processor Z3736F
Storage: 32 GB eMMC but has memory card slot (I think micro sd)
2GB ram but felt nippy in the store, obviously not going to be a heavy multitasker machine
 
I just tried Minecraft on a i5 2510m, 4GB RAM and Intel HD 3000 Lenovo X220 and got about 40-50fps.

It's a laptop I thoroughly recommend as it is very well made, incredibly quick if you get one with an SSD. Some of the business features could be quite useful as you can lock out some settings that you don't want her to mess with.

It has a 12.5" screen and weights 1.6KG with the extended battery in. Speaking of that - it lasts about 12 hours.

The downsides are it's very retro design might not appeal to a 12 year old and you can only get them 2nd hand. However a lot of them have spent their entire lives in docking stations and are still in near new condition.

Just my 2 pence.
 
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