Student laptop advice

[Quira]

Hi

My daughter starts 6th form in Sept, at present she has an ipad and uses my laptop when needed. I think she's going to need something of her own so have been looking at what's available. TBH a bit shocked at prices!

I thought it would be better to buy something good quality now which would last the 5 years of A-levels and Uni, but I got conflicting advice in PC World, one person said 5 years isxa ling time to expect a laptop to work well and I should consider buying cheap and cheerful now and then something decent if and when she gets a uni place.

Can anyone give me any advice or share experiences of what's actually needed for studies? She's doing sciences and maths.

I am looking at investing in a bridge camera. The 2 that I like are the Polaroid IS2132 or the Nikon Coolpix L820. THe Nikon Coolpix L820 review is really good, but I cant seem to find much about the Polaroid.

Thanks.

 

[kurosagi01]

Depends how much you want to spend and the field she wants to study on, I know you mention science and maths which means you can get away with any laptop realistically as its mainly word processing.
However if you said she wants to get into photo editing or programming or video editing then you will be looking at spending more to be able to efficiently do those task without problem.

My advice is if its just basic word processing and web browsing then any of these laptops with these specs would be fine:
CPU - Intel i3/i5 or AMD Ryzen 3/5
Ram - 8GB minimum
HDD - Try find one with SSD and HDD combo (Can get away and just give her a external HDD)
Display - 11-13 if she wants it to be very portable and lightweight 15 inch max

If doing any intensive work like photo/video editing
CPU - Intel i5 minimum
Ram - 16GB or more
HDD - SSD + HDD ideal setup (Can get away and just give her a external HDD)
Display - You'll be wanting to look at the reviews for the laptop as you'll be wanting good colour accuracy
GPU - Definitely want a laptop with dedicated GPU to help off-load intensive work

Some of my recommendations would be if looking at Currys/PC World
HP Pavilion 14-ce1509sa (Intel® Core™ i3-8145U Processor,RAM: 8 GB / Storage: 128 GB SSD) - £449
LENOVO IdeaPad 330S (AMD Ryzen 5 2500U Processor,RAM: 8 GB / Storage: 256 GB SSD) - £479

 

[linktoinsanity]

Personally I would avoid Chromebooks due to their more limited and lower cost/lower powered (read that as performance) nature. Also make sure you get a laptop with at least a 256GB SSD or a 128GB SSD and 1TB hard drive combo (setting photo's and downloads to go to the Hard Drive) as you may otherwise be spending your time trying to fix issues related to disk space.

I would also avoid eMMC based laptops, they may look cheap, but often have 32GB of disk space, certainly not enough in this day and age. Make sure you also allow for Microsoft Office, although the university may supply an Office 365 subscription when your daughter starts there.

 

[Euan]

Hard to say without knowing what you would want to spend, If it were for uni I'd say maybe one of the Huawei Matebooks would be good, they run well and they look damn good which I'm sure your daughter would appreciate, a friend of mine got one recently and it really does seem like the real deal I think they got it for like £670 too, but again since it is 6th form I'm not sure if it's worth spending that much, maybe one of the cheaper HP Envys?