Oh How Original Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) Been thinking about a laptop for a while, as a second to my main desktop, mainly for carrying with me, doing some photo editing and general use and eBays got 20% off a few laptop shops at the moment. Now I know, spend a bit more, get something better, but for people a bit more in the tech know, I hope you can help give me a recommendation. It needs to be able to run Lightroom/Photoshop, but nothing else heavy, mostly just YouTube and general web browsing. I'm liking the following three, but wondering if the cheaper one will actually do what I need, or would one of the other two be required. Also open to other recommendations from the same place, might as well make use of the 20% off. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-255-G7-15-6-Best-Windows-10-Laptop-AMD-A9-9425-4GB-RAM-128GB-SSD-Dark-Ash/193169439698?epid=22035864279&hash=item2cf9cbbbd2%3Ag%3AGkAAAOSwC-5drveJ&_trkparms=%26rpp_cid%3D5e0a01b7d51e75126678dd34 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-V155-15API-AMD-Ryzen-5-3500U-8GB-256GB-SSD-15-6-Inch-Laptop/362712751015?epid=3034601792&hash=item54735d5ba7%3Ag%3AYzgAAOSwLARd38Lq&_trkparms=%26rpp_cid%3D5e0a01b7d51e75126678dd34 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-255-G7-Ryzen-5-8GB-256GB-SSD-Full-HD-15-6-quot-Win10-Home-Laptop/293244629296?epid=4034589121&hash=item4446bdf130%3Ag%3Ay1gAAOSwmNBdiN~g&_trkparms=%26rpp_cid%3D5e0a01b7d51e75126678dd34 EDIT: Make that four, just found this one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-Ideapad-L340-17-3-Large-Screen-Laptop-Intel-Core-i3-8145-4GB-RAM-1TB-HDD/193207119381?epid=11035772894&hash=item2cfc0aae15%3Ag%3AbcgAAOSwk~VdzBZK&_trkparms=%26rpp_cid%3D5e0a01b7d51e75126678dd34 Edited January 9, 2020 by Oh How Original Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 We have 2x of those Lenovo V155s, my girlfriend has that exact model and I have an i5 version. Great laptops would definitely recommend. I use mine exactly how you would, Photoshop for the forum things but otherwise just browsing, emails etc. and occasionally PC game. Never has it felt slow or unresponsive and what I particularly like which I think is over looked with Laptops is the sturdy case. It isn't flimsy, it's rigid and sits well on any surface without being cumbersome or feeling unbalanced. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) I'm not gonna make friends with this one, but if stuff like an I3 or A9 is an option for you, you don't really need advice - you can just buy whatever is cheapest out there. Really, just get anything with a Ryzen 5 or i5/i7 (8265u/8565u), 8gb RAM and SSD. These are the things "necessary" for a nice/smooth working experience. Ryzen 5s generally are the cheaper option. Other than that, as per usual, you get what you pay for. All those lowest to low end laptops have bad/cheap panels. Here's a review to the Lenovo, and in general i'd stick with whatever they're reviewing (and their opinion). https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-V155-Review-Budget-laptop-turns-out-as-a-storage-giant.435036.0.html They're incredibly thorough in their reviews. Though i think that particular review is the 155 with 12gb RAM - still a solid choice for the money, i don't think you can do much better. You can do much worse though. Edited January 9, 2020 by m4inbrain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadioFish Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 I would try for one with SSHD (solid state hard drive) as normal HDD can suffer "head crash" i have just had to shell out for a new hard drive for my ine year old laptop Sent from my LG-H870 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) 19 minutes ago, RadioFish said: I would try for one with SSHD (solid state hard drive) as normal HDD can suffer "head crash" i have just had to shell out for a new hard drive for my ine year old laptop Sent from my LG-H870 using Tapatalk Both correct and wrong. SSHD does exist, but is not what you meant (assuming from context). SSHD means solid state hybrid drive, basically a HDD with a tiny nand flash memory. Basically they're both a 8gb SSD and "an amount" of HDD, the NAND in this case just acts a bit like Intels Optane, reducing access times. These can still suffer head crashes etc. You meant an SSD (Solid State Drive), and that advice is absolutely solid (pun not intended). No moving parts, no problems. HDDs are now yesteryears technology. SSDs aren't hard drives, the "hard" part refers to the spinning disk (hard disk). Not trying to come off as a smart-arse btw, but better to clarify before someone buys the wrong thing accidentally. The intended advice was absolutely right anyway. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadioFish Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Thats exactly what i meantjust far too many acronyms for my liking sorry for any confusion caused....Sent from my LG-H870 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oh How Original Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 I took that to mean solid state hard drive anyway lol. I'm in a position where I could spend a lot, but I have a decent desktop which does all my heavy stuff. I just fancy a back up kind of thing, plus if I go taking photos, it'd be nice to have it with me. I am planning a trip to Iceland for my birthday, so would be great to take with me for pictures and storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jumper Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 I wouldn't touch anything with 4gb of ram running windows. I think something with 8gb will be OK though. The v155 is the best, it has the newest gen ryzen and also the 8 gb of memory is running in dual channel which can make a big difference. The hp has 8gb but its configured in single channel so it will feel a fair bit slower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) In all honesty.. If you can stretch it just a little over what the v155 costs, you can get an XPS 9350, even a 9360 refurb/used. I mean, look at this. It's a 9370. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-XPS-9370-13-3-4K-Touch-Screen-i7-8550U/264591443701?epid=245263965&hash=item3d9ae106f5:g:v94AAOSwpbheFLgz Not only powerful, but also great display. Yeah this particular one is a 4k screen and i wouldn't usually recommend it, but at that pricepoint, yeah.. I'd take it. There's even some reasonably priced 9380s out there, and the Dell XPS 13 is just by far the best "general laptop" out there (don't take my word, have a look at reviews), most importantly with a decent screen that you can see in daylight, unlike the 200nits Levono screen. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oh How Original Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 That one you linked shows up at £1,499 to me. I mean, I could stretch the budget a little, merely to get a bit more for my money and something more worth buying, but not by £1,100 lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Interested to see where you went with this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 What about this one from argos ebay https://ebay.to/35FyVYL Lenovo IdeaPad S145 15.6 Inch Intel Core i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD Laptop - Black Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oh How Original Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 That also looks quite interesting. My current desktop has an i5 as well and it copes perfectly well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Oh How Original said: That one you linked shows up at £1,499 to me. I mean, I could stretch the budget a little, merely to get a bit more for my money and something more worth buying, but not by £1,100 lol. Hm lol, no it of course wasn't £1500, it was an auction. It was this one (hoping that i can link ended listings). https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-XPS-13-9370-i7-8550U-1-8Ghz-4-core-13-3-4K-display-16GB-256GB-SSD-New/184118474082?hash=item2ade50f562:g:yPYAAOSwcBpd9ShV That link appears to be working. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, Oh How Original said: That also looks quite interesting. My current desktop has an i5 as well and it copes perfectly well. There's quite a difference between a desktop i5 and a i5u. As in, they're entirely different. The one in the 145 is decent (8265u), but everything before 8th gen is wasted money. 7th gen i5us are basically useless (dual cores). Next, i'm not entirely sure i understand what you're even looking for. I do photo editing on my laptop, never in a million years would i consider a laptop with that crappy of a screen. It's not even 1080p/1920x1080 lol. And keep in mind that photo editing without some degree of colour accuracy is entirely pointless too. If by editing you mean "cropping", then it'll do, but anything else a 1366x786 screen with 150 nits peak brightness is woefully inadequate. To put very nicely. And it's on a 15.6in screen too, so that low pixel density gets blown out even more. Not to mention it only has 4gb RAM, as was already mentioned, if you want anything even remotely resembling a work flow, 8gb is the minimum with Windows 10. edit: case in point, you get a bottom of the barrel £400 laptop with a laughable screen, or for £650ish (that's what i meant by stretching) you get a powerful CPU, 16gb RAM, SSD and one of the best in class screens out there (400nits peak and high colour accuracy). If you're vigilant looking, you can get absolute bargains like i did - i have a 9380 (latest gen XPS), with 4k touch screen, 16gb ram etc pp - paid £700 because the speakers were broken. Otherwise brand new laptop. Audio over headphones still works, it's just the built in speakers that were removed. That's why, at least in my mind, you'd need to be daft to spend 75% of that kinda money on a laptop as basic as that £399 one. A 9360 with decent spec can be had for £500-550. Those were £1500 laptops 4ish years ago. edit2: okay bottom of the barrel was a bit unfair, the CPU in the £400 one is pretty good. But the screen is absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel, and 4gb was okay 10 years ago, not today. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oh How Original Posted January 10, 2020 Author Share Posted January 10, 2020 To be fair, the ram side of it doesn't actually bother me too much. I ran 8gb in my desktop for several months, I then added another 8gb and saw no noticeable difference. It's never above 6gb total anyway, no matter what heavy programs I run. When I said editing, I meant editing. Cropping I could do on my phone or in camera. You don't need to run Lightroom/Photoshop to crop. That second link is also working, the other one took me to a new one I guess. But yes, I don't want to be spending too much for the amount of use it will actually get. I have a little thinking to do I guess, if a laptop doesn't work out, perhaps a tablet would be more suited to my needs, but that's for another day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) 32 minutes ago, Oh How Original said: To be fair, the ram side of it doesn't actually bother me too much. I ran 8gb in my desktop for several months, I then added another 8gb and saw no noticeable difference. It's never above 6gb total anyway, no matter what heavy programs I run. When I said editing, I meant editing. Cropping I could do on my phone or in camera. You don't need to run Lightroom/Photoshop to crop. That second link is also working, the other one took me to a new one I guess. But yes, I don't want to be spending too much for the amount of use it will actually get. I have a little thinking to do I guess, if a laptop doesn't work out, perhaps a tablet would be more suited to my needs, but that's for another day The noticable difference between 8 and 16gb is under RAM heavy loads. Try video editing/scrubbing on 8gb, it's fun. And probably impossible to do reasonably on 4gb. 6gb > 4gb. Just pointing that out. No, i don't think you mean actual editing, that's my point. You can't edit a picture on a screen that doesn't show the colours correctly. You adjust colours to that specific gamut, it'll look entirely different on any remotely decent screen because the colours are off. That's why real desktop editing rigs have monitors that are more expensive than the computer itself (and are colour corrected with special/expensive tools). You don't need much processing power to edit a picture, but you do need a good screen. Bit like asking someone with bad vision to rebuild a small mechanical watch, he'll get the gears in there somehow but the results will be less than spectacular. Or: if you do mean actual editing, and think that the £400 argos rig is "interesting" for that, then you really should ask someone who does it professionally what to look out for at the very least. Doesn't need to be an expensive Mac (probably best bet for content creating), but i mean.. You know. Cheaping out doesn't work either, there's a middle way. That's what i mean with not understanding what you actually want. You can't edit photos on these kinds of screens. You can "physically" alter them (crop etc), but without anything even resembling colour accuracy, there's zero point in doing so. Just to point it out, of course you and i don't need a 102% Adobe whatnotgamut special deluxe £6000 monitor, but at least something resembling "decent", at least i think, should be considered. And i don't necessarily mean expensive, i mean decent. In the end you can do what you want, but especially on that £400 argos thing, i promise you you'll be disappointed. That panel is worth £20. It's basically a 720p TN panel, dim, bad viewing angles and "off" colours . Agree or not, it's factually useless for editing pictures. Now, it doesn't need to be a 4k screen either of course, that laptop i linked just happened to have one (they come as 1080p laptops too), i'd actually advise against the 4k one because it sucks batteries dry faster than a 1080p screen. Put it this way. You don't paint your shells with a rusty watering can and a used paint roller either. That's the equivalent of that screen in regards to photo editing. Roughly. edit: reminds me, i might throw one of mine up for sale. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Oh god I didn't notice that awful screen, yes ignore that This is good spec for money and decent ish display Also argos so at least easy returns https://ebay.to/2NhstAR HP 15s 15.6 Inch i7 8GB RAM 512GB SSD FHD Windows Laptop - Silver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m4inbrain Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 (edited) 15 minutes ago, tamiyafanboy said: Oh god I didn't notice that awful screen, yes ignore that This is good spec for money and decent ish display Also argos so at least easy returns https://ebay.to/2NhstAR HP 15s 15.6 Inch i7 8GB RAM 512GB SSD FHD Windows Laptop - Silver That's better, yeah. Looking up this laptop, the screen is still sub-average (not my words, but trustedreviews). Quote The HP Pavilion 15’s display is not well suited to photo editing. Low maximum brightness and poor colour gamut coverage mean that I wouldn’t recommend this even for the most basic of photo work or digital art. Even if all you’re doing is resizing your holiday snaps, if you’re after a laptop for any kind of photo work, you’d be better off picking up something like the HP Envy 13 or the Razer Blade Stealth 13 (2019). I recorded a maximum brightness of 223.55 nits using an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and DisplayCAL 3. That’s a poor score and explained why websites, photos, and games looked a little dull and washed out. If a laptop can’t give you at least 300 nits of maximum brightness in 2019, you should reconsider it. https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/hp-pavilion-15-2019 Personally, i'd probably still consider it, though editing in bright light isn't gonna happen (the screen is too dim to be seen properly when light shines on it) - but since i'm a night-owl, wouldn't bother me that much. The rest of the spec is actually really good. One thing to keep in mind: the screen is where a laptop gets expensive (or not). As seen, you can get a decent-ish spec £400 laptop, but the screen is absolutely awful. You can get a higher end laptop with the same specs for twice, even three times the price, and while yeah, some of that probably is brand name, most of that is the screen. A decent IPS panel (compared to a poop TN panel) just costs money. But: as i said, i'd actually consider that one if it has to be a new laptop. If not, i'd still shop around for a higher spec used one like the Stealth 13 (2018, no need for 2019 model - it's worse), XPS etc. They all can be had used in the same price-ballpark, and offer just the better experience. Except they're not new. That's personal taste though, i absolutely wouldn't buy a used toothbrush or even mattress, but a laptop? Absolutely. No reason (for me) not to go used. Edited January 10, 2020 by m4inbrain 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 12, 2020 Share Posted January 12, 2020 Just looking through came across this as well https://ebay.to/36KcgvG Lenovo V130- 15.6" Full HD Intel Core i7 Laptop 8GB RAM 256GB SSD, DVDRW, Win 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kukynas Posted January 12, 2020 Share Posted January 12, 2020 here you go with 50% discount, excellent bargain, shame I can't find such an offer in my country, would change my 4 years old thinkpad straight away 😥 https://ao.com/product/81q9001duk-lenovo-laptop-silver-71454-251.aspx or https://ao.com/product/81q7001cuk-lenovo-laptop-grey-69052-251.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 On 12/01/2020 at 09:25, tamiyafanboy said: Just looking through came across this as well https://ebay.to/36KcgvG Lenovo V130- 15.6" Full HD Intel Core i7 Laptop 8GB RAM 256GB SSD, DVDRW, Win 10 10% off this at the moment with code: PURCHASE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 21 hours ago, Kukynas said: here you go with 50% discount, excellent bargain, shame I can't find such an offer in my country, would change my 4 years old thinkpad straight away 😥 https://ao.com/product/81q9001duk-lenovo-laptop-silver-71454-251.aspx or https://ao.com/product/81q7001cuk-lenovo-laptop-grey-69052-251.aspx Good shout there are loads on that offer on AO https://ao.com/l/laptops-clearancedeal/1-24/250-251/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamiyafanboy Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 Did you go for any? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stupar Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 I was in a similar position to you. I wanted something portable that I could use away from the main PC, would fit in my camera bag and would allow me to use Photoshop for on the go editing. I ended up picking up a Dell Windows Tablet (Dell Venue 11 pro) Less than £200 got me the following specs - 10.8 inch FHD screen Intel Core M processor (runs cool so has no fan....makes it a silent tablet) 4GB RAM 128GB SSD Windows 10 pro I use Photoshop CS on it and along with the dell pen it makes editing a doddle on the go. The clincher for me though was battery life.....up to 12 hours thanks to the large battery in the tablet and the extra battery built into the keyboard Here's a couple of images showing it off DSCF1326 by Stuart Pardue, on Flickr DSCF1325 by Stuart Pardue, on Flickr DSCF1328 by Stuart Pardue, on Flickr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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