Laptop Recommendations

Anyone recommend a laptop? Mines 8 years old and appears to have finally died. Preferably around £800?

I saw that EG had an article up for precisely this, but looks like half of its for the US and the UK stuff is either out of stock or doesn't actually exist! 🙄

Where is the best place to shop for laptops nowadays? I'm the market too for similar reasons, and I'm not even really sure which sites have the best deals anymore. Last time I got a laptop was straight from the manufacturer, and that was about six years ago.

Cheers all!

Cheers. I was looking on Currys, which seemed to have some decent prices, although I'm so out of it when it comes to PC hardware.

Since we had kids and the spare room became a bedroom I don't have space for a desktop PC, so my laptop kind of has to be a workhorse.

8GB isn't too bad if it's just for general browsing/office stuff. Anything more intensive than that and yeah, definitely make sure you can upgrade or just get the right amount from the start.

8GB is fine for office work, but with modern games you are definitely going to suffer.

Then again, I must admit, my laptop isn't so powerful as to run modern games at anything more than 1080p and 30fps anyway, due to both the GPU and the CPU being somewhat weak. This is basically a laptop for Xbox One era games. There is enough RAM for those, and in that regard, it can run at 60fps almost everything the X1 could run at 30fps, unless the port is crap, or bottoms down at still higher settings than the Xbox One had.

Still, yeah, not very future-proof. But I wanted a thin and light laptop, and now I pay the consequences of it.

Hah, mine is merely a Ryzen 5500U and GTX 1650, so it's a lot less powerful. But it was just 800 euro, so yeah, of course there would be compromises.

Still, I wouldn't have found anything else for that price and form factor (it's 14" and just 1.3Kg, with a 90W power brick), especially at that point in time. Build quality is also good and the screen is a nice looking IPS, which is more than I can say about most laptops in that price range. So it's not too bad overall. Reviews were very good overall. I just wish I had checked whether the RAM was upgradeable.

But even if I had... dunno, chances are I'd have taken it anyway. The 16GB model was not available and I needed the laptop somewhat urgently.

Any chances of sneaking into the daughter's bedroom while she's out and yoinking the PC?

You can probably replace it with a cheapo prebuilt POS, chances are she can't tell the difference... right?

No under the stairs cupboard that could suffice as a gaming nook?

Fair. I'm just waiting for when we cave and let my eldest have a TV in his room. I might get a chance to play on my ps5 in the living room then!

I've been more than happy with my Acer Helios. The current ones tick all your boxes and aren't too flashy. Mine is pretty weighty so not exactly portable if that's an issue. I got mine from Currys but they seem to be everywhere.

Just an example www.currys.co.uk/products/acer-predator-helios-300-17.3-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i9-rtx-3070-1-tb-ssd-10241293.html

Jeez these 4090 laptops are not cheat (shock) cheapest I've seen so far is £3800. Most expensive... £5300. This is going to be hard to swing past Mrs Buu

I guess the argument to not go full shiny is that I said I wouldn't spend over £3500. But I know what I'm like, if it's 'only' a little bit over that I'll probably stretch to it and use some creative story telling.

Really it's the Asus Zephyrus duo I had my eye on and hoping they do a 4080/4090 version but seeing the cost of the 4090 machines out so far, it's going to be a moment requiring vast amounts of vaseline and ankle grabbing. 

Waiting to see the benchmarks. If it's true and the 4090 is close to a desktop 3090 it would make me more happy to get rid of my desktop as it would be more or less the same performance (I currently have a 3090) and would mean I could still use my monitor from time to time or even use the TV downstairs - that would be a treat.


Seems like benchmarks aren't going out for a while though. 

If it's more or less on a par with a 3090 then I'm likely going to bite the bullet and ask for forgiveness after.

I'm on the waiting list for the Razer Blade 16 as they haven't shown the cost yet but I expect it'll be out of my range. It's Zepheryus I really want but no word on price yet.

For sure, you're right with regards to 4K and small screens. It's just that I still would like to be able to wire it up to the 65 OLED in the living room (something I could never be bothered to do with my desktop) and still use my AW3821DW occasionally.