Good entry level laptop

[RocketsRRed]

Hey all,

Can you all recommend a good entry-level laptop? I'm caught between an Asus X543 and a Lenovo IdeaPad S145. Both around R6,500. Contender no 3 is a Dell Inspiron 3580. The Lenovo's the most expensive.

Need something that is light (under 3kgs), has decent processing speed (i3 turf), a relative high-def display (14-inch is ideal) and will handle some knocks! Will be used by a teenager going to varsity, so you get the idea.

This is a tough one I know! Wish I had 20 grand to blow on a serious machine but that ain't real life right now...

TIA!

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

What will the student be using it for?

Also, i3 is NOT "decent processing speed".

Standard 15.6" screens are standard on entry level notebooks...if you go 14" or smaller, the price skyrockets.

 

[RocketsRRed]

She'll be using it for everything, word processing, putting projects together, research...

OK so you reckon i5 is the minimum? Budget is tight (under R10K).

 

[WAslayer]

@Flashgear

 

[RocketsRRed]

Wanted to add that battery life is important and I know the faster the processor, etc, the more the battery gets sucked dry, so its a trade-off.

 

[Supercarfan]

I reckon an i3 should be just fine for stuff like that. Stay far far away from any N series Celeron machines.

For under 10 grand you're not going to find any great displays or the greatest build quality. They're all equally bad really.

If at all possible, at least get something with an SSD, or swop out the spinning hard drive. The difference in responsiveness is massive. I'd take an i3 with an SSD any day over an i5 or i7 with a traditional hard drive. Seems like South Africa is the dumping ground for notebooks with decent CPUs but crappy storage.

BTW, the latest budget Dell Inspirons seem to have 4 cell batteries vs 3-cell in the S145 Lenovos. So battery life 'should' be better with one of those Dells.

 

[RocketsRRed]

Cool.... OK so here's a couple of examples of what I'm looking at. Both have 8GBs of RAM and Solid State Drives.

Takealot

www.takealot.com

Takealot

www.takealot.com

Much of a muchness?

 

[chickenbeef]

Cool.... OK so here's a couple of examples of what I'm looking at. Both have 8GBs of RAM and Solid State Drives.

Takealot

www.takealot.com

Takealot

www.takealot.com

Much of a muchness?

That processor is weaker than the i3-7020U in the Asus X543

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmark-List.2436.0.html

Consider 1 of these and swap out the HDD for a 240GB/500GB SSD. Will come in below 10k. Put the HDD in an external enclosure. Ram could also be expanded.

Takealot

www.takealot.com

Takealot

www.takealot.com

This one has an SSD:

Takealot

www.takealot.com

 

[RocketsRRed]

Thanks for the input... that Dell looks like a good buy for R8K. Also has a full high def display.

 

[Supercarfan]

Thanks for the input... that Dell looks like a good buy for R8K. Also has a full high def display.

Actually bought the same model dell (except didn't have FHD) a month ago for my sister (also student). It isn't flashy looking or anything, but felt pretty sturdy for what you pay. Should be able to handle a couple knocks.

Here's a guide in case you want to crack it open to upgrade the RAM and hard drive:

With the harddrive it's pretty slow, especially since it's 5400rpm but I swopped it out for a Samsung 850 Evo from her old laptop, and it's pretty snappy after that. Would also recommend dropping in an extra 4GB of ram while you've got it open.

In geekbench it was almost 70% faster than the Core i5-3210m based Lenovo E530 she was coming from. With an SSD that machine was still perfectly fast enough, battery was just shot and screen started giving issues.

This model also has an m.2 slot, so you can even just add an SSD and leave the 2.5" drive in place. Move Windows over to the SSD, and leave the spinning disk as additional mass storage. Though an external is always handy too.

If buying an SSD, try to get one with a RAM cache. For a student it might not make a difference, but I've seen cases where the DRAM-less cheaper SSDs get bit choked up with large file transfers. WD's Green range of SSDs are an example of this cost cutting. The Blue range however includes a DRAM cache as far as I know.

 

[Exaelea]

The Blue range however includes a DRAM cache as far as I know.

They use a SLC cache. They also use their in-house on chip dram which has a lot less space .They wont perform as fast as one with 512mb+ dram on them. People used to fast SSD's will notice the huge difference when copying larger files. People coming from mechanical drives however will still wonder why they never changed to an SSD sooner.