Laptop under £400 advise please

Teetonetal

My fairly computer illiterate dad is looking for a new laptop as his has given up.

Ideally, looking for something that is:

very reliable

Not stuffed with useless bloatware

easy to get hold of

Must be windows

Used for email / photos (handling RAW files) / internet / office etc

I haven't bought a Laptop in years so have little clue as to whats good or not.

randella

The unfortunate thing about Windows - and the main thing that gives it a bad name - is the amount of crap that gets installed by third parties on a new machine.  It's not a bad idea to install a fresh operating system on any new machine before you've installed anything else.

I tend to concentrate more on the CPU spec, as you can stick as much physical memory in it as possible yourself, it's pretty cheap these days.  If you need more disc space later you can get terabytes of external disc for sod all now.  A decent CPU and plenty of RAM should speed up your RAW file processing.  Everything else on your list can be done by pretty much any modern processor.

Other than that, check out reviews of machines you're seeing for sale at the box-shifters like Dabs.  It changes on a weekly basis.  PC Advisor always seems fairly balanced.  They're all fairly elitist and will sass-mouth anything costing under £1,000 but you'll at least get an idea of what's better than what.

Sorry, I know you asked for a recommendation and got a waffle, but unless it's a machine bought  in the last few months an exact model recommendation is next to worthless.

Good luck!

Ianpdq

Get an Android pad or let him try one lot better than Windows

Danny1969

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

@randella 's point about being model specific is very spot on as HP make some very nice business laptops but they also make some truly dreadful laptops or to be more specific they get Compal, Quanta, Foxcon etc to make some very good or very bad laptops for them, as do Dell, Toshiba etc

Bloatware is a problem but installing a fresh OS isn't an easy option unless you want to buy another license as you don't get an OS disc with a machine anymore the OS license for the factory install is in the BIOS, you can with a bit of nounce use an OEM disc that will accept the license in the BIOS but it needs to be the right one

ICBM

We got a HP 250 G4 Notebook for my daughter earlier this year. It was £249, seems fine. Came with Windows 10 installed.

Axe_meister

Danny1969 said:

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

@randella 's point about being model specific is very spot on as HP make some very nice business laptops but they also make some truly dreadful laptops or to be more specific they get Compal, Quanta, Foxcon etc to make some very good or very bad laptops for them, as do Dell, Toshiba etc

Bloatware is a problem but installing a fresh OS isn't an easy option unless you want to buy another license as you don't get an OS disc with a machine anymore the OS license for the factory install is in the BIOS, you can with a bit of nounce use an OEM disc that will accept the license in the BIOS but it needs to be the right one

With windows 10 you can at least download the OS via the media creation tool.

The license key should be on the back of the laptop so a clean install should be fairly easy.

Danny1969

Axe_meister said:

Danny1969 said:

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

@randella 's point about being model specific is very spot on as HP make some very nice business laptops but they also make some truly dreadful laptops or to be more specific they get Compal, Quanta, Foxcon etc to make some very good or very bad laptops for them, as do Dell, Toshiba etc

Bloatware is a problem but installing a fresh OS isn't an easy option unless you want to buy another license as you don't get an OS disc with a machine anymore the OS license for the factory install is in the BIOS, you can with a bit of nounce use an OEM disc that will accept the license in the BIOS but it needs to be the right one

With windows 10 you can at least download the OS via the media creation tool.

The license key should be on the back of the laptop so a clean install should be fairly easy.

With Windows 8 and 10 the DPK is in the BIOS not on a COA sticker like Win 7  \ Vista  \ XP etc ...... You might get a 10 COA if you buy the OS from PC world but on a laptop brought new it's in the BIOS

randella

Danny1969 said:

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

Yep, very good point @Danny1969 - I've always been lucky in that mine, and the few others I've worked on, have been almost trivially simple to upgrade but it's been a couple of years since I meddled.  I ask you - who'd solder RAM to the motherboard?  Christ.

Mkjackary

Bloatware is good. People pay the laptop company to install it on there, making the laptop cheaper. And it is piss easy (albeit a bit tedious) to uninstall it all once you know how.

Pcdecrapifier is a program that is really usefull for that. Combined with "shouldiremoveit" even the most inexperienced person knows what to uninstall and what is/isn't safe to uninstall.

I like lenovo, they are a nice mix between cheap, and well built. They have solid build quality, not as good as dell or hp, but solid. But that means the performance to price ratio is pretty high.

Use websites like http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus to ccompare cpus as it isn't as easy to immediately tell if one is better than the other. i3 can be better than i7.

Get 4GB-6GB of ram, any more isn't going to be that useful for you, any less and it will start to hinder performance. Hard drive wise, if there is one with an SSD go for that, they are a very good way of improving a laptop's speed.

Also look at reviews online of things like the display/keyboard. My laptop was amazing value for money, but the screen is naff if you haven't got it at the correct angle.

Good luck

digitalscream

randella said:

Danny1969 said:

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

Yep, very good point @Danny1969 - I've always been lucky in that mine, and the few others I've worked on, have been almost trivially simple to upgrade but it's been a couple of years since I meddled.  I ask you - who'd solder RAM to the motherboard?  Christ.

Sadly, it's necessary in the latest thin-and-light laptops; there simply isn't enough clearance internally to put DIMM slots in.

One thing I would say, in terms of spec, is to try to find one without a glossy screen. That's pretty hard in the sub-£400 range, but I think it can still be done.

randella

If these replies tell anyone anything, it's that the pace of change in the cutthroat low-mid range PC market is terrifying.

Three years on and two-thirds of my advice is null and void!  Ah well, I'll stick to writing code I think, let some other poor sucker worry about the box on my desk

ICBM

digitalscream said:

One thing I would say, in terms of spec, is to try to find one without a glossy screen. That's pretty hard in the sub-£400 range, but I think it can still be done.

The HP 250 G4 has a matt screen.

west

Ive been looking for months now and its doing me noodle in , there is always a compromise , and after  reading reviews, just chucking more money at the problem dosn't necessarily solve the issue ...

west

If the hp probook had a 1080 screen i'd be sorted now as i found one core i5 5th gen 128 ssd for £350 ...

FX_Munkee

ICBM said:

We got a HP 250 G4 Notebook for my daughter earlier this year. It was £249, seems fine. Came with Windows 10 installed.

This is exactly what I was looking at for my eldest:-
http://www.ebuyer.com/740903-hp-250-g4-laptop-p5r50es-abu
He can buy his own SSD if he thinks it's not fast enough after I've bought it for him...

west

http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-250-g4-156-inch-laptop-core-i5-windows-10-home-4gb-ram-128gb-ssd-black/447-5385.prd

as kindly posted in my laptop  thread .... but i really want a full hd screen for filums ...

Mkjackary

Axe_meister said:

Danny1969 said:

I'm starting to see a lot of laptops now where adding ram or changing the harddrive is a major mission. Last week I fixed an HP Envy which had 2 memory slots as expected but both were under the motherboard meaning the motherboard had to be removed to add more ram. Changing the harddrive also mean removing the keyboard and palm rest, not a huge job but not exactly user friendly.

So if you do plan on adding more ram or upgrading to an SSD, make sure you can via the usual trap door on the bottom or HD slides out the side etc. One Asus I did a couple of weeks ago had the ram soldered to the motherboard via PGA and no ram slots at all!

@randella 's point about being model specific is very spot on as HP make some very nice business laptops but they also make some truly dreadful laptops or to be more specific they get Compal, Quanta, Foxcon etc to make some very good or very bad laptops for them, as do Dell, Toshiba etc

Bloatware is a problem but installing a fresh OS isn't an easy option unless you want to buy another license as you don't get an OS disc with a machine anymore the OS license for the factory install is in the BIOS, you can with a bit of nounce use an OEM disc that will accept the license in the BIOS but it needs to be the right one

With windows 10 you can at least download the OS via the media creation tool.

The license key should be on the back of the laptop so a clean install should be fairly easy.

Not with most modern ones, it is hard coded into the BIOS. You can download a program to figure it out for you, so it isn't too bad.

That is as long as it doesn't break, then finding the key is a bitch.

Axe_meister

Actually if you download the media creation tool from the laptop you can do an in place re-install just select refresh PC

guitarcookie1

My son seems happy with his Lenovo Yoga 500 that he got last week. £350 from pcworld.

Teetonetal

Thanks for the input, will check out that HP. Bit concerned that photos will eat up 128GB quite quickly.

This laptop will never be touched beyond the way it ships, so getting features right from the off is important. 

I hate buying computers. Bloody nightmare.

crunchman

If you want speed get an SSD and use external storage or cloud for photos.  You might get marginally better battery life as well as you don't need energy to keep a disk spinning at 5400rpm all the time the machine is on.

If you want storage space then you will have to sacrifice speed.

In some ways it's a bad time to be buying a laptop.  At the moment any SSD over 250GB is still expensive in comparison with a conventional spinning disk.  In 2 years time decent size SSDs will be a lot cheaper and they will be standard on new PCs at pretty much any price point. 

When I bought my wife a laptop last year I took a deliberate decision to go cheap.  It makes more sense to buy one for £280 now and then buy another one in 2 years time with an SSD and the next generation of processors than to spend £700 to get a decent one now.

This is the kind of thing I'd be looking at if I was buying now.  It's £275 with an i3 processor rather than the cheapy Celeron or AMDs:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/156-asus-x555la-xx1792t-laptop-intel-core-i3-4005u-17ghz-4gb-ram-1tb-hdd-dvdrw-windows-10-home