I think the volumes of consumer laptops sold are a fraction of what they were and there don't seem to be many new bargains. I looked at Costco's offerings but the HP's and Asus's etc around £500 looked pretty flimsy. Online I see they currently have a Lenovo Ideapad 8GB/256GB SSD/Core i5 for £490 -
www.costco.co.uk/Computers/Laptops-MacBooks/c/cos_16.1
For a present you probably wouldn't consider a refurb but I got one similar to the one below about 18m ago.
smile.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T430-i5-3320M-1600x900/dp/B01C6WNEL6/
Mine came with 16GB RAM otherwise similar. I'd check it's the 1600 x 900 screen not the 1366 x 768 which is a bit dim, and that it has the connectors your giftee needs. Mine has no HDMI or DVI for example.
My previous 2 laptops were the £300-£400 "Thinkpads" which fell apart in 3 years - now rebranded Ideapads I think. They were really just consumer laptops, not very robust. I've had a couple of other laptops in that price range that also lasted 3 years or less.
The T430 is probably from 2012-3 but would have been well into four figures new and is built like a brick outhouse - mine's fallen off the table with the screen open with no damage. For £300 it was a comparative bargain.
I also replaced our 13 year old desktop with a refurb Dell Optiplex 7010 - that came with a 480GB SSD and 8MB RAM for £175, and a slightly faster processor.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 27 Aug 20 at 12:31
|
Laptop advice new
Laptop advice new