Any thoughts on the newest Dell Inspiron 15 7000? Looking for a desktop replacement-ish machine around the $800-1k price point that can do some light to medium gaming (WoW Classic, rando Steam stuff) but doesn’t look like a gaming laptop. It’s got a 1050 (meh) but I’m reading it can be bumped up to a 1650 but I can’t confirm it. Design, performance and reliability are more important than portability or battery life for me.
A 1050 isn’t going to age very well, so it depends on what games you’re wanting to play. It’s already a couple years old and already can’t really play modern games at high with 60fps. If you want something that’ll last you want to look for a laptop with at least a 1660 Ti in it, or just forgo the idea of really gaming seriously. If you’re looking to play games that are 4-5 years old already, sure a 1050 will be fine, but for something you’re probably going to want to have for at lest 3-4 years, I’d personally want something with a little more headroom.
It's mostly a rule of thumb, but try to get the best GPU and CPU you can afford in a laptop. RAM and drives can be upgraded (for the most part).
Same for display quality, but that tends to be subjective (for example I don't use a laptop much so I'm willing to sacrifice display for better CPU/GPU to extend the life of the laptop. Yes that's counterintuitive for the most part.)
It's mostly a rule of thumb, but try to get the best GPU and CPU you can afford in a laptop. RAM and drives can be upgraded (for the most part).
Same for display quality, but that tends to be subjective (for example I don't use a laptop much so I'm willing to sacrifice display for better CPU/GPU to extend the life of the laptop. Yes that's counterintuitive for the most part.)
Agree with this, but also make sure the RAM isn't soldered in.
It's mostly a rule of thumb, but try to get the best GPU and CPU you can afford in a laptop. RAM and drives can be upgraded (for the most part).
Same for display quality, but that tends to be subjective (for example I don't use a laptop much so I'm willing to sacrifice display for better CPU/GPU to extend the life of the laptop. Yes that's counterintuitive for the most part.)
Agree with this, but also make sure the RAM isn't soldered in.
Sometimes RAM is soldered in, sometimes the drive (read: SSD) is glued or soldered in. I doubt HDDs are secured that way but they're getting rare in laptops.
My rule of thumb (before checking) is that the thinner a laptop is, the more likely that everything is soldered/glued in. A slightly chunkier machine is more likely to have user-replaceable RAM & drive(s).
Laptops designed with gaming as a priority should generally fall on the more upgradeable end, though. It's a selling point for the customer, and the machine is already likely to be slightly thicker (even in the MaxQ age they're not competing all that much with thin & lights) to accommodate the cooling.
I’ve seen/read the odd thin and light gaming laptop where maybe half the ram is soldered in and there is SODIMM slot, and I’ve seen plenty of examples where the ram is on the back side of the motherboard so you have to take the whole thing apart to get at them, but I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a proper “gaming” laptop that has the RAM and SSD soldered on.
My 2011-era Alienware laptop had RAM slots on both sides of the motherboard (two each side). One set you could get at easily by just taking the bottom panel off as normal, the other required you to take out the keyboard to get at it. Which wasn't massively complicated, it turned out, and I managed to get RAM in there in an hour or so and I was going very, very slowly and carefully.
My wife is looking for a new laptop as she returns to school. We went to a local shop and looked around. The Asus Vivobook S15 caught her eye. What's the verdict on this one? She was also looking at the Zenbook 14. Budget is approx. 1200CAD.
My wife is looking for a new laptop as she returns to school. We went to a local shop and looked around. The Asus Vivobook S15 caught her eye. What's the verdict on this one? She was also looking at the Zenbook 14. Budget is approx. 1200CAD.
What is the use case? Just productivity type work? what are you looking for in terms of portability/weight? I like the new HP Envy x360 series. Not quite as high end as the Spectre line, but gets you most of the features for a good price. Best Buy Canada has the 13” model with a Ryzen 4500U, 8GB, 256GB, for $1050 right now.
My wife is looking for a new laptop as she returns to school. We went to a local shop and looked around. The Asus Vivobook S15 caught her eye. What's the verdict on this one? She was also looking at the Zenbook 14. Budget is approx. 1200CAD.
What is the use case? Just productivity type work? what are you looking for in terms of portability/weight? I like the new HP Envy x360 series. Not quite as high end as the Spectre line, but gets you most of the features for a good price. Best Buy Canada has the 13” model with a Ryzen 4500U, 8GB, 256GB, for $1050 right now.
Primarily productivity work. Portability is high on her list of requirements.
I'm using the HP Spectre x360. I got the i7-1065G with 16GB RAM and 1TB ssd.
It's pretty snappy. I can't do any gaming on it but very light stuff unlike I can with my Razer Stealth with the 1060 in it.
The ability to use it as a tablet and draw up electrical circuits and take notes far outweighs the gaming stuff.
I never realized how awesome it is to have a touch screen. Then be able to use a pen to take notes/draw. Makes engineering courses much better as the time taking notes is cut down significantly.
Also, it can run CAD programs like Fusion 360, it does chug at moments when rendering or when moving around an object quickly, but it's still quite usable.
Just wish Fusion was easier to use a pen with. The functionality just isn't there yet.
Bloodycow on
" I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.”
― John Quincy Adams
@BlazeFire Hey, that laptop I linked to is actually on sale for $900 at best buy right now. That is a helluva deal.
I have been looking at it a bit. I partially wrote it off because of the 360/convertible screen. I had one a while ago and wasn't crazy about them. Have they gotten better?
(Thanks for the heads up on the sale, btw. I think we might go down to best buy to see one in person)
@BlazeFire Hey, that laptop I linked to is actually on sale for $900 at best buy right now. That is a helluva deal.
I have been looking at it a bit. I partially wrote it off because of the 360/convertible screen. I had one a while ago and wasn't crazy about them. Have they gotten better?
(Thanks for the heads up on the sale, btw. I think we might go down to best buy to see one in person)
I just wonder what you don’t like about them? You literally never have to flip the screen around if you don’t want to. It shouldn’t take anything away from the functionality of the laptop in normal use.
Yeah, that was my thought, the hinge could be slightly worse for overall durability (I'm speculating), and the downside then would only be price if anything, and it looks like price may not be the issue there. I didn't choose it in part due to some nebulous concerns about HP as a manufacturer, but I think spectres are very well reviewed.
Edit: I'm finding that I haven't used my 2 in 1 hinge as much as I thought, but it's been appreciated when I did, and I use the touchscreen all the time, since it can be more comfortable to switch up house I use my hands.
BlazeFire Hey, that laptop I linked to is actually on sale for $900 at best buy right now. That is a helluva deal.
I have been looking at it a bit. I partially wrote it off because of the 360/convertible screen. I had one a while ago and wasn't crazy about them. Have they gotten better?
(Thanks for the heads up on the sale, btw. I think we might go down to best buy to see one in person)
I just wonder what you don’t like about them? You literally never have to flip the screen around if you don’t want to. It shouldn’t take anything away from the functionality of the laptop in normal use.
From my prior experience, the hinge was pretty loose even when it laptop mode. This was a few years ago though so I'm trying to keep an open mind until we get to Best Buy to check it out.
The hinge on my x360 is not loose at all. If I go to rotate the screen without holding down the bottom of the laptop it will just raise the bottom without moving the hinge one bit.
Once the base is about 45 degrees then the hinge will allow the screen to start transitioning.
Bloodycow on
" I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.”
― John Quincy Adams
We went and checked something similar out at best buy. I had the wrong idea about how the hinge worked based on my tablet experience long ago. I can see these are much better. So we're down to comparison between 2 HPs.
899$ vs 999$
Tablet vs standard
Ryzen 5 4500U vs i5-1035G1 (Ryzen is superior here, I think?)
256GB NVME SSD vs 512GB SSD (I think the edge goes to the smaller, NVME drive?)
Does anyone have thoughts to add? The rest of the specs seem pretty standard to me.
the SSD in the non convertible laptop is probably nVME, but honestly even if it was a SATA SSD in day to day use for productivity you likely won't notice any difference.
The Ryzen 4500U and 1035G1 CPU's are probably about the same in day to day as well, but the Ryzen will have a way better GPU, not "play AAA titles on a laptop" better, but a little extra oomph that could be a benefit down the line.
It looks like the non convertible doesn't have a touchscreen. So there's that.
Personally, if it were me, I'd get the x360 model. It's cheaper, 256GB of storage is fine in most use cases, and you have the option of a touchscreen. I didn't really think I'd use touch on my XPS 13 when I bought it, and I actually use it all the time. I personally think it's better to have the option, even if you don't use it, then not have it at all. But not everyone agrees, and that's cool too.
Basically unless you have to have the extra storage, the x360 is probably a better overall buy at $900.
Ryzen is the way to go for laptops right now simply for battery life reasons.
Sort of? The Ryzen H series laptop parts are destroying the Intel H series laptop parts on productivity/battery life workflows, but the U series parts seem to be about equivalent to similar intel based U series laptops.
The Ryzen U series laptops are finally at parity and competitive with the Intel U series parts for the first time basically ever, and that’s what’s compelling.
Some of the reviews I've seen of the Ryzen 5 4500U has put the performance closer to the i7 u processors at a much lower price point and more power efficient as well.
How's the HP Pavilion line of laptops, generally speaking?
The Envy and Spectre lines seem like pretty good machines.
The Pavilion brand is their "low end" branding. Basically their cheapest laptops are branded Pavilion, mid range is Envy, and high end is spectre.
the Pavilions will be thicker, heavier, lower build quality, have lower quality displays, and probably won't have as big of batteries as the others.
That doesn't mean they'll be bad machines, and honestly if the primary purpose is mostly to sit on a desk or just moving from desk to couch and the primary use is internet and word processing, they can be a very good choice. It just really depends on what you want to do with the machine, and the priorities you have.
Basically looking to pick up laptops for my kids for distance learning (and want them to be juuuuuust beefy enough to last a couple-to-five-years). So, sub-1k-prices are nigh-necessary; touch screens are good to have; massive gaming power or great portability is not required.
Mostly just curious if the Pavilion line had a reputation for bad reliability.
We just got a MSI Prestige 15 A10SC for the missus (it just arrived today) and it's just a pretty piece of laptop. Mostly for work and some light gaming, and if I wasn't into hardcore PC gaming it's the kind of machine I'd like.
Still not liking the whole "factory seal" for anything that's not the secondary M2, but I don't plan on upgrading it in the next year anyways.
Looks like you can upgrade the RAM but I didn't dig too hard
No, it's only the secondary M2 slot that's available. I don't particularly mind, because it's a 16GB machine that won't need extra RAM in the near (under 12 months) future. If anything, it will need the secondary M2 much sooner than that to expand the original 512GB.
But still, it's a bit weird that those things are under a factory seal sticker. Otherwise the machine is pretty awesome, and the battery life is crazy long.
The battery on my Y50-70 is officially dead. I still don't need a replacement laptop, so I'm probably just going to drop the $52 on a new battery on Amazon. It's still the original battery from.....<checks watch> 2014
0
TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
Hey you guys!
My mom is looking for a laptop. Mostly for web surfing, email, some light office work, and streaming. Her budget is $700.
Costco has an Acer Swift 3 on their website that I think would work for her. Any other suggestions?
My mom is looking for a laptop. Mostly for web surfing, email, some light office work, and streaming. Her budget is $700.
Costco has an Acer Swift 3 on their website that I think would work for her. Any other suggestions?
It looks like a solid laptop, the only two negatives I could see are the screen size (some older people prefer 15-inch screens) and the non-upgradable RAM. 8 gb should be okay for a casual user, but technology moves fast. If you could get 16 gb for a bit more I personally would spring for that. Make sure this laptop is the configuration with a SSD, it's a world changer.
Looking for some troubleshooting help. We got that HP Envy x360 for my wife a couple months ago. We've run into a problem with the USB-C port on it though. It doesn't recognize anything plugged in there. We've tried a Vantec dock as well as my Pixel phone to no avail. In Device Manager, I've noticed that under "USB Connection Managers", there is a device listed, UCM-USCI ASCP Device". After a reboot it looks ok, but once we plug in a USB-C device, it gets the yellow exclamation/triangle symbol and the device status is "Windows has stopped this device because it reported problems (Code 43)".
Windows updates are all complete, searching for new drivers reports that the best drivers are already installed. Google hasn't been much help. The only tech forum responses I've seen point to an HP support article saying to install a cumulative update for Windows 10 1809 but the laptop is on 2004.
There should be some sort of utility on the laptop to check HP's site for driver updates. Use that. If that doesn't work, try going to HP's support site. Barring all that, try booting into the BIOS and see if you need to select something to enable the USB-C
Looking for some troubleshooting help. We got that HP Envy x360 for my wife a couple months ago. We've run into a problem with the USB-C port on it though. It doesn't recognize anything plugged in there. We've tried a Vantec dock as well as my Pixel phone to no avail. In Device Manager, I've noticed that under "USB Connection Managers", there is a device listed, UCM-USCI ASCP Device". After a reboot it looks ok, but once we plug in a USB-C device, it gets the yellow exclamation/triangle symbol and the device status is "Windows has stopped this device because it reported problems (Code 43)".
Windows updates are all complete, searching for new drivers reports that the best drivers are already installed. Google hasn't been much help. The only tech forum responses I've seen point to an HP support article saying to install a cumulative update for Windows 10 1809 but the laptop is on 2004.
Does anyone have suggestions?
The USB C on my wife's x360 Spectre acts up sometimes. I randomly googled an article about it a while back, and long story short, if you just shut down and then hold the power switch down for some very long amount of time it'll reset the USB C circuitry. I am afraid I don't remember further details but she does it from time to time. For whatever reason, the USB C ports only fail one at a time rather than all at once, but the reset fixes things back.
Last night I was playing PoE and my fans seemed to just shut off suddenly. Humming along, and then dead quiet. After a moment they would start back up again and sound fine, then restart again later.
This morning I paid some more attention to it after they shut off at 8:20. They restarted again at 8:25 and 8:30. It wasn't from overworking I guess, because it also happened at 8:35 just sitting on the desktop, and again at 8:40 as I wrote this post.
Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? Seems very strange to be happening at such an exact interval regardless of load. Google hasn't been much help so far.
edit: ah, sounds like asus pushed a bios update and others with my laptop are having the exact same fan behavior. My monitored temperatures seem fine so I'll just keep an eye on it I guess.
Posts
A 1050 isn’t going to age very well, so it depends on what games you’re wanting to play. It’s already a couple years old and already can’t really play modern games at high with 60fps. If you want something that’ll last you want to look for a laptop with at least a 1660 Ti in it, or just forgo the idea of really gaming seriously. If you’re looking to play games that are 4-5 years old already, sure a 1050 will be fine, but for something you’re probably going to want to have for at lest 3-4 years, I’d personally want something with a little more headroom.
Same for display quality, but that tends to be subjective (for example I don't use a laptop much so I'm willing to sacrifice display for better CPU/GPU to extend the life of the laptop. Yes that's counterintuitive for the most part.)
Agree with this, but also make sure the RAM isn't soldered in.
Sometimes RAM is soldered in, sometimes the drive (read: SSD) is glued or soldered in. I doubt HDDs are secured that way but they're getting rare in laptops.
My rule of thumb (before checking) is that the thinner a laptop is, the more likely that everything is soldered/glued in. A slightly chunkier machine is more likely to have user-replaceable RAM & drive(s).
Laptops designed with gaming as a priority should generally fall on the more upgradeable end, though. It's a selling point for the customer, and the machine is already likely to be slightly thicker (even in the MaxQ age they're not competing all that much with thin & lights) to accommodate the cooling.
But always check.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
What is the use case? Just productivity type work? what are you looking for in terms of portability/weight? I like the new HP Envy x360 series. Not quite as high end as the Spectre line, but gets you most of the features for a good price. Best Buy Canada has the 13” model with a Ryzen 4500U, 8GB, 256GB, for $1050 right now.
Primarily productivity work. Portability is high on her list of requirements.
I will take a look at the HP you have mentioned.
It's pretty snappy. I can't do any gaming on it but very light stuff unlike I can with my Razer Stealth with the 1060 in it.
The ability to use it as a tablet and draw up electrical circuits and take notes far outweighs the gaming stuff.
I never realized how awesome it is to have a touch screen. Then be able to use a pen to take notes/draw. Makes engineering courses much better as the time taking notes is cut down significantly.
Also, it can run CAD programs like Fusion 360, it does chug at moments when rendering or when moving around an object quickly, but it's still quite usable.
Just wish Fusion was easier to use a pen with. The functionality just isn't there yet.
― John Quincy Adams
I have been looking at it a bit. I partially wrote it off because of the 360/convertible screen. I had one a while ago and wasn't crazy about them. Have they gotten better?
(Thanks for the heads up on the sale, btw. I think we might go down to best buy to see one in person)
I just wonder what you don’t like about them? You literally never have to flip the screen around if you don’t want to. It shouldn’t take anything away from the functionality of the laptop in normal use.
Edit: I'm finding that I haven't used my 2 in 1 hinge as much as I thought, but it's been appreciated when I did, and I use the touchscreen all the time, since it can be more comfortable to switch up house I use my hands.
From my prior experience, the hinge was pretty loose even when it laptop mode. This was a few years ago though so I'm trying to keep an open mind until we get to Best Buy to check it out.
Once the base is about 45 degrees then the hinge will allow the screen to start transitioning.
― John Quincy Adams
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/hp-envy-x360-13-3-touchscreen-2-in-1-laptop-nightfall-black-amd-ryzen-5-4500u-256gb-ssd-8gb-ram-windows-10/14538550
https://www.amazon.ca/HP-13-AQ1001CA-Laptop-i5-1035G1-7YZ81UA/dp/B0899J7B28/ref=gbps_img_s-4_512c_bebca7b9?smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_p=1977e9ab-0025-4776-b342-9f06b5be512c&pf_rd_s=slot-4&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=gb_main&pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_r=DPBPZ68TSWG448FJQHSS
899$ vs 999$
Tablet vs standard
Ryzen 5 4500U vs i5-1035G1 (Ryzen is superior here, I think?)
256GB NVME SSD vs 512GB SSD (I think the edge goes to the smaller, NVME drive?)
Does anyone have thoughts to add? The rest of the specs seem pretty standard to me.
The Ryzen 4500U and 1035G1 CPU's are probably about the same in day to day as well, but the Ryzen will have a way better GPU, not "play AAA titles on a laptop" better, but a little extra oomph that could be a benefit down the line.
It looks like the non convertible doesn't have a touchscreen. So there's that.
Personally, if it were me, I'd get the x360 model. It's cheaper, 256GB of storage is fine in most use cases, and you have the option of a touchscreen. I didn't really think I'd use touch on my XPS 13 when I bought it, and I actually use it all the time. I personally think it's better to have the option, even if you don't use it, then not have it at all. But not everyone agrees, and that's cool too.
Basically unless you have to have the extra storage, the x360 is probably a better overall buy at $900.
Sort of? The Ryzen H series laptop parts are destroying the Intel H series laptop parts on productivity/battery life workflows, but the U series parts seem to be about equivalent to similar intel based U series laptops.
The Ryzen U series laptops are finally at parity and competitive with the Intel U series parts for the first time basically ever, and that’s what’s compelling.
The Envy and Spectre lines seem like pretty good machines.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The Pavilion brand is their "low end" branding. Basically their cheapest laptops are branded Pavilion, mid range is Envy, and high end is spectre.
the Pavilions will be thicker, heavier, lower build quality, have lower quality displays, and probably won't have as big of batteries as the others.
That doesn't mean they'll be bad machines, and honestly if the primary purpose is mostly to sit on a desk or just moving from desk to couch and the primary use is internet and word processing, they can be a very good choice. It just really depends on what you want to do with the machine, and the priorities you have.
Mostly just curious if the Pavilion line had a reputation for bad reliability.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Still not liking the whole "factory seal" for anything that's not the secondary M2, but I don't plan on upgrading it in the next year anyways.
No, it's only the secondary M2 slot that's available. I don't particularly mind, because it's a 16GB machine that won't need extra RAM in the near (under 12 months) future. If anything, it will need the secondary M2 much sooner than that to expand the original 512GB.
But still, it's a bit weird that those things are under a factory seal sticker. Otherwise the machine is pretty awesome, and the battery life is crazy long.
My mom is looking for a laptop. Mostly for web surfing, email, some light office work, and streaming. Her budget is $700.
Costco has an Acer Swift 3 on their website that I think would work for her. Any other suggestions?
It looks like a solid laptop, the only two negatives I could see are the screen size (some older people prefer 15-inch screens) and the non-upgradable RAM. 8 gb should be okay for a casual user, but technology moves fast. If you could get 16 gb for a bit more I personally would spring for that. Make sure this laptop is the configuration with a SSD, it's a world changer.
Windows updates are all complete, searching for new drivers reports that the best drivers are already installed. Google hasn't been much help. The only tech forum responses I've seen point to an HP support article saying to install a cumulative update for Windows 10 1809 but the laptop is on 2004.
Does anyone have suggestions?
It already has a damaged USB slot. Its out of warranty so I may very well send it in for repairs. I like it that much.
The USB C on my wife's x360 Spectre acts up sometimes. I randomly googled an article about it a while back, and long story short, if you just shut down and then hold the power switch down for some very long amount of time it'll reset the USB C circuitry. I am afraid I don't remember further details but she does it from time to time. For whatever reason, the USB C ports only fail one at a time rather than all at once, but the reset fixes things back.
This morning I paid some more attention to it after they shut off at 8:20. They restarted again at 8:25 and 8:30. It wasn't from overworking I guess, because it also happened at 8:35 just sitting on the desktop, and again at 8:40 as I wrote this post.
Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? Seems very strange to be happening at such an exact interval regardless of load. Google hasn't been much help so far.
edit: ah, sounds like asus pushed a bios update and others with my laptop are having the exact same fan behavior. My monitored temperatures seem fine so I'll just keep an eye on it I guess.