ISSUE385|COMPUTER SHOPPER|MARCH2020 51
01
Abasic laptop costing around £300
will run everydayoffice,multimedia
and education software,but it won’t be
suitable for3Dgaming or processor-intensive
tasks such as video editing. Many laptops at
this price have a15.6in screen and weigh over
2kg, so they’re best used around the house
and foroccasional journeys.
02
If you want to playmodern games,
you’ll need alaptop with adedicated
graphics chip such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX
1060M. Good gaming laptops tend to have
large15.6 or 17in screens and weigh around
3kg, so they’re best suited to useathome.
03
If you want alaptopthat you can
take everywhere,look foramodel
that weighs less than 2kg. Forthe best
Choosinga... Laptop
portability,buy one that has a13.3in or 14in
screen. In general, the smaller and lighter the
laptop,the more expensive it is, especially if
it has plenty of processing power.
04
Battery lifeisextremely important
foralaptop,particularly if you’ll be
carrying it around. We’d expect all but the
biggest and heaviest to last foratleast
five hours on asingle charge,but foran
ultraportable that you carry everywhere,
eight hours and above is more desirable.
05
Laptops use mobile versions of
processors to conserve power,
and these lag behind desktop chips
when it comes to performance.For a
budget Windows laptop,anIntel Core i3
processor will do the job,but if you
want better performance,you should
look foranIntel Core i5 or Core i7
model instead. We recommend a
minimum of 4GB of RAM, although 8GB
is better formultitasking.
06
Most budget and mid-range laptops
use amechanicalhard disk for
storage.You’llwant at least 500GB, but
1TB or more is better.Solid-statedrives
(SSDs) have faster performance,making
your computer quicker to boot and more
responsive.Theyhavelower capacities,
though. You’ll need at least 128GB.
07
Convertibles and 2-in-1 laptops can
change from laptop mode to tablet
mode.We’ve listed our favouritemodels later
on in this guide in the Tablets section.
LAPTOPS
HPEnvy13
★★★★★
£779•store.hp.com
There are
plenty of great
ultraportables
available these days, but most
of them cost well over £1,000.
The Envy 13 is an extremely attractive alternative: it’s slim and light,
weighing just 1.2kg, but it has plenty of power and high-end features
including afingerprint reader and dedicated graphics, and what’s
more,it’s relatively affordable.
PROCESSORQuad-core1.6GHz IntelCorei5-8250U•RAM8GB•DIMENSIONS307x212x14.9mm
- WEIGHT1.2kg•SCREENSIZE13.3in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,920x1,080•GRAPHICS
ADAPTORNvidiaGeForce MX150•TOTALSTORAGE256GBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Windows 10 Home•PARTSANDLABOURWARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.hp.com•
PARTNUMBERah0001na•FULLREVIEWSep 2019
The Aspire 5isthe
epitome of the
sensible mid-range
laptop.It’s not ultra-stylish
and it doesn’t have a
professional-quality
display, but forthe
price it offers reliable performance in a
variety of workloads, and it will last afull dayonbattery power
without much trouble.
PROCESSORQuad-core1.6GHzIntel Core i5-8250U•RAM8GB•DIMENSIONS382x263x21mm•
WEIGHT2.2kg•SCREENSIZE15.6in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,920x1,080•TOTALSTORAGE
256GBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows10Home•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•
DETAILSwww.acer.com•PARTCODEA515-51-50YS•FULLREVIEWOct2018
DELLLatitude3300
★★★★★
£629•www.dell.com
Dell’s
affordable
and well-built
Latitude 3300 is made for
students, but the fact that it
has strong specs forthe price
can be appreciated by anyone
looking forageneral-purpose laptop.The quad-core CPU keeps
performance up,and this particular model has asuperior 256GB SSD
to the even cheaper versions’ eMMC drives.
PROCESSORQuad-core 1.6GHz IntelCorei5-8250U•RAM8GB•DIMENSIONS330x231x22.9mm
- WEIGHT1.56kg•SCREENSIZE13.3in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,920x1,080•GRAPHICS
ADAPTORIntelUHDGraphics620•TOTALSTORAGE256GBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Windows10Pro•PARTSANDLABOURWARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.dell.com•
PARTCODEn013l330013emea•FULLREVIEWJan2020
ASUS ROGStrixScarIII
★★★★★
£2,600•www.box.co.uk
The ROG Strix Scar III
compromises nothing
in its pursuit of
top-quality portable gaming.
While this means ahighprice,
it also means a240Hz display,
an incredibly powerful Core i9
processor and Nvidia’s high-end
RTX2070 GPU. Despitenot being atrue thin-and-light
gaming laptop,it’s not tooheavy and unwieldy,either.
PROCESSOROcta-core2.3GHzIntelCorei9-9980H•RAM32GB•DIMENSIONS360x275x24.9mm
- WEIGHT2.57kg•SCREENSIZE15.6in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,920x1,080•GRAPHICS
ADAPTOR8GBNvidia GeForceRTX2070•TOTALSTORAGE1TBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Windows10Home•PARTSANDLABOURWARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.asus.com
- PARTCODEG531GW-AZ055R•FULLREVIEWOct2019
ACERAspire5
★★★★★
£599•www.currys.co.uk
ire 5isthe
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ixScarIII
ixScar III
snothing
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being atrue thin-and-light
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ticular model has asuperior 256GB SSD
