What laptop would you buy next?

[motleyblush]

I have an Acer Aspire E15 which I got last year. I am already looking for the next one - always am. What about the others in this forum? What would you get for a budget of say $500 to $600?

 

[bruceb]

Can't comment on prices, but depending on what you want (I3 / I5 / I7 / AMD) there are lots of good ones to be had. I personally have had excellent results / reliability with Toshiba ... Dells are okay, but a bit pricey. And for myself, I like the older style keyboards as opposed to the chichlet and soft keyboards. This is a matter of preference. I am using a Toshiba Satellite C855-S5347 right now. It came with Win 8 and has been upgraded to Win 10 Home 64 .. I would have liked a backlit keyboard, but for web browsing and general work it does fine. It was saved from the local recyling center pile. It looked in good shape and just had to do a factory restore to get it working again. It only runs a Celeron B830 at 1.8Ghz with 4GB RAM

 

[EliteRetard]

I'd say hold off until the new GPUs and such trickle down in price (since yours is only a year old).
Those Acer E15s come with a 1TB+256GB SSD and 950m for $600 or less, which was (and still kinda is) a good deal.
But imagine a 1050 (or even mythical 1040) going in there at $600 or less, with 50-100% more performance.
I've seen the Acer 940m units at $460 several times, imagine a 1040 (with 960m performance) at that price.

 

[slugg]

I badly want a thin, light, powerful 15 inch laptop with a super high resolution (4K, "retina", or similar) and a long (8+ hour) battery life for $1800 ish. I would actually be willing to pay $2500 for the MacBook Pro if it wasn't overpriced, over-aged hardware. I really don't mind spending that amount of money if it ticks every box, but it doesn't.

 

[EliteRetard]

It's the 4k screen that murders battery life. The XPS 15 would meet your criteria, with the 1080 screen.
It's really hard to do thin, light, and super powered with good battery life because batteries are thick and heavy and you need a crap ton of them to get long run times with super powered.

With current software 4k on 15" seems rather pointless, you have to run everything zoomed in 200% (and some stuff doesn't behave correctly and just breaks) so you end up with an effective 1080 anyway. High resolution has it's uses, but I don't see the huge trade offs being worth it in a small/medium sized laptop (at least not right now).

 

[manly]

I badly want a thin, light, powerful 15 inch laptop with a super high resolution (4K, "retina", or similar) and a long (8+ hour) battery life for $1800 ish. I would actually be willing to pay $2500 for the MacBook Pro if it wasn't overpriced, over-aged hardware. I really don't mind spending that amount of money if it ticks every box, but it doesn't.

I was close to pulling the trigger on a Dell Precision 5520 ("pro" twin of the XPS 15 9560) five weeks ago but Dell killed a 20% coupon prematurely. I think it doesn't quite hit 8 hour battery life but checks off almost every other box for me with some caveats: no OS X, coil whine lottery, and an almost unusable webcam that I'd never use.

Hopefully the deal returns before the rMBP gets refreshed and price reduced lol.

 

[slugg]

It's the 4k screen that murders battery life. The XPS 15 would meet your criteria, with the 1080 screen.
It's really hard to do thin, light, and super powered with good battery life because batteries are thick and heavy and you need a crap ton of them to get long run times with super powered.

With current software 4k on 15" seems rather pointless, you have to run everything zoomed in 200% (and some stuff doesn't behave correctly and just breaks) so you end up with an effective 1080 anyway. High resolution has it's uses, but I don't see the huge trade offs being worth it in a small/medium sized laptop (at least not right now).

For the longest time (5 years?), MacBook Pros have been thin, light, powerful, and have a high resolution screen. So I don't really buy that 4K kills battery life. Perhaps Dell's current implementation kills battery life, but high resolution itself does not. Sounds like they need some more engineering time.

4K or comparable on a 15 inch screen would allow for scaling and still achieving crisp text while it's small. What this means for me is more code on the screen at a time, which is a major plus. However, it does seem like Windows's high-DPI support is still lacking, yet Mac's is pretty awesome.

You know what, I think I just talked myself into waiting for the MacBook Pro refresh. Haha

 

[fire400]

as far as the sub-$600 laptop is concerned, I'd get whatever good deal is available at time of purchase.

Best Buy has flash sales 11a-3p (CST), as well as one day sales, Sun - Tues, where laptops can go for $150-$350, that are usually never advertised widely. Acer laptops on Bestbuy.com are hard to match with excellent specs, only thing about Acer laptops, is if you've ever seen a Dell 2016 edition Latitude or XPS or Thinkpad X1 Carbon or Thinkpad t460s, Acer laptops under $1K are generally not the best in the competition, build quality wise; lots of chassis flex, extra screen space, slightly thicker and bulkier than the competition, consistent back-light bleeding, quality control issues with peripheral jacks, sometimes keyboard keys get stuck and are hard to press-to-activate, and in certain models, poor motherboard to OS implementation in driver support engineering where overall speed can suffer. I don't want to bash too hard on Acer, because they have great screens and lots of features and really good for cost effectiveness when buying new-in-box, but if you're looking for really decent quality, try looking elsewhere in brands.

most 2016 Lenovo keyboards on standard-consumer laptops are totally absurd, why they chose the miniature right-shift key as a primary design on their laptops? totally dumb... I read somewhere that at least one customer was told by Lenovo support that they were encouraged to use 3rd party tools from a google search to remap their keys for right handed key-shift'ers... I think I read it on newegg.com??? totally crazy, but funny^

depending on the year, HP, Dell, and Lenovo have stellar online sales on their websites where you can get +$1000 for around $600 or $700 with hugely discounted insurance plans. HP has an insurance plan that claims to offer money back if the program isn't used at all, not sure if it's credit back towards a new system or cash back or a visa, etc.

Microcenter usually always has slick deals as well, in-store or ready-to-ship, such as Acer i5-HQ with dedicated graphics for $600.

otherwise you can do eBay, which has 30-day money back guarantee.
thinkpad t460s, i5-gen6, 8gb, 180gb SSD, 1080p, warranty through summer 2019
[$700 shipped],
extended warranty, free shipping, tax free.

I was trying to upgrade a desktop, and spent $45 on an SSD, then after installing Windows 8.1 core (home), the 2014 Dell computer's product key was banned by Microsoft's server:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/978305/error-0xc004e002-during-activation-for-windows
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ason-for/81b16a4a-1d2c-49ad-b6e2-f968d8ae90bf
I'm like OMG, WTH, why does this happen to so, so many Dell customers... Don't Expect Long Life from some Dell products.
SH!T was annoying as F, and decided I'll just get a product key from play-asia for less than $20 rather than lose sleep over this. so I was looking for cheap desktops, and finally decided that a laptop would be faster, cheaper, and move convenient as an office desktop setup.
found this on eBay: thinkpad x220, i5, 4gb, 128gb SSD, good battery, and very good condition unit.
[$140 shipped],
and after looking for a cheap replacement desktop, I said damn can't beat that, takes 8gb max RAM and two SSDs, 7mm 2.5 SATA and mSata

between the two, I'd get the Asus over the Macbook Pro or the XPS, for the price. but definitely XPS over MBpro, no question, unless someone needs OSX that badly.
http://www.toptenreviews.com/computers/laptops/best-laptop-computers/asus-zenbook-pro-ux501-review/

edit:
really? waiting for the refresh, after another long 1-3 years, the way Apple is headed as of its last MBpro launch? Opposing PC market will probably have Apple looking pretty rotten and unsophisticated. I mean, seriously, DDR-3 old hardware, lack of upgrade options in the MB-Air line up, and the most terribly flat keyboards in all newer models and mostly useless touch bar over a touch screen? no...!! Tim Cook seems more operations-intensive, and less on innovation, business speak.

 

[slugg]

I can change my mind, you know. If the PC market comes out with something compelling, I'll do it. But as of right now, nothing really stands out to me and I'm still quite happy with my 2015 MacBook Pro. It's pretty much perfect, other than it's starting to get a little old. So yea, I'm not in a rush. Waiting for a refresh is no big deal.

And for the type of work I do, OS X is a fairly major advantage. That has value to me. Really, I don't mind spending the ridiculous amount of money because it's a tool of my trade, but I do mind paying for something that doesn't tick the right boxes.

 

[Valantar]

I have an Acer Aspire E15 which I got last year. I am already looking for the next one - always am. What about the others in this forum? What would you get for a budget of say $500 to $600?

In general, I wouldn't buy a laptop in that price range, simply because it's more or less guaranteed to last less than 2 years. Which is incredibly wasteful both financially and environmentally (seriously, buying a laptop that you know will be replaced in <2 years is like saying you want to live in a chemical waste depot). Even if you can't afford a $1000 laptop, IMO it's better to buy one with a decent (i.e. non-scalping/bankrupting) downpayment plan over a year or so rather than cheaping out. It's how I've always thought, what I've always recommended to friends and family, and it's always paid off in the log run. Of course, if you find something heavily discounted, that's another thing entirely. Also, once you move away from the cheap, creaky, awful plastic builds of low-cost laptops, there's no going back.

I've been building a list of possible laptop upgrades for a while now, and it contains these:

• Surface Pro 4
• Dell XPS 13 SKL
• Dell XPS 15 SKL + GTX 1050
• Thinkpad X270*
• Thinkpad T470*
• Thinkpad T470p*
• Thinkpad Yoga 370*
• Thinkpad X1*
• Thinkpad X1 Yoga*

* Not quite launched yet.


The arguments for each differ, but they should all be excellent. Some of the Thinkpads do start below $1000 too, although in low-end configurations. Then again, I'd rather buy a $1000 i5 than a $600 i7 (small performance difference in 15W laptop CPUs, and chances are that i7 is going to cook itself).

Edit: I guess if I was looking for more of a gaming laptop, I'd go for a Razer Blade 14" or the Gigabyte Aero 14.

 

[manly]

Pulled the trigger on a new XPS 15 9560, it's on sale for $1600 well equipped:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/474706/XPS_15_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Silver

Some people on Slickdeals think this is a price mistake that won't last. The true "list" price of this SKU is $1999. I'm probably better off ordering from Microcenter.com but I phoned into Dell Home Sales for a price match (if you like options such as Windows 10 Pro, this is the better route). Mainly I was concerned that Micro Center has limited inventory, and might cancel the order on Monday if they have none to ship, or realize the price is too low.

I also wanted 1 year ProSupport Plus although I think this is a mistake on my part.

Now I just have to pray that it won't have the annoying coil whine that's been an issue for several years...

 

[rsachoc]

My next buy is going to be either the previous generation XPS13 9360 with touch screen and 1080p or the newer XPS13 2 in 1 with the same specs. I currently have an Inspiron 2 in 1 (i3, 1080p convertible with 8gb RAM), but I love the form factor of the XPS 13 and the 1 pound lighter also makes it easier to carry around.

 

[Andrew Carnegie]

I don't know what I will get next because I am doing pretty great with my MacBook Air right now. Maybe I will stick to Mac because of its reliable battery life or maybe Dell XPS? I don't know. There are so many good laptops available these days, it's really hard to decide on one.