15" laptop up to around £1500

FL630 · 25 Feb 2020 at 18:17

Looking for a new laptop and am really quite clueless. My must haves are....

Thin and light, I travel a lot and don't want a monster gaming laptop
Colour accurate screen
16Gb RAM
Decent sized SSD

My would-likes:
Discreet graphics for a bit of gaming, but I don't expect to play AAA's on amazing graphics, but just some light weight gaming. Perhaps 1660 sort of level.

Main heavy use will be photo editing and the above light gaming.

I would accept a 13 or 14in laptop if it ticked all the right boxes but I like the real estate of a 15".

Obviously the XPS15 does tick a few of the boxes but there are no 10th gen models yet which I'm not a fan of.

Budget is ideally sub-£1500 but can stretch a few hundred more if needed.

Thanks!

MiSJAH · 25 Feb 2020 at 20:56

Either of these:

or you could get this for £1,517.00

Chassis & Display
15.6" Matte Full HD IPS 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 Max-Q - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 3 in 1 Card Reader (SD / SDHC / SDXC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 230W AC Adaptor
Battery
46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language
PER-KEY RGB BACKLIT UK MECHANICAL KEYBOARD
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

That's a 144Hz display, I7, RTX 2070 MQ GPU, decent NVMe SSD and 2TB storage HDD, and a mechanical keyboard.

NB: No O/S add £106 for Win 10 from the supplier or appropriate your key from the bay or elsewhere for next to nowt.

willhub · 26 Feb 2020 at 09:53

The HP Omens seem good value, my 2070 Max Q, 144Hz 15.6" 1080P with i7 9750H actually came to 1400, seems nice and compact, it looks good, not too out there, ok it's not an RGB per key mech keyboard just a normal with 4 zone lighting but it more than does the job.

The config also came with a 256GB NVME, 1TB HDD, I switched this out for a 2TB SSHD, 512GB Evo 970 and repasted the CPU/GPU (It was a faff removing the fan grills to get the cooling setup off, but just needed a bit of patience.

You DEFINITELY want to undervolt the i7 9750H to prevent it hitting 100 degrees.

When you say color accurate screen, if this is something essential for work then you'd be spending a lot more I think or sacrificing specs for a better screen.

I chose the Omen over one of the custom builds above, searching the web it seems generally there are cooling issues with them as well as other issues (which may be isolated but checking their forums where everyone would come together about the brand), that combined with potential build time, just felt more convenient to get a good laptop from a big brand.

FL630 · 26 Feb 2020 at 12:40

Thanks for the replies both.

I have to admit I have looked at the Razer Blade 15 but there is something about that awful tramp stamp logo which puts me off. It does look a nice size and build so I guess I could wrap it.

I did also look at the Omen, but they're quite chunky if I remember correctly? I'd sacrifice performance over size if I'm honest as gaming comes down the list of priorities compared to productivity.

With regards to colour accuracy, this is something I'd like. I'm not talking about super high end stuff, but the new Zenbook Duo does claim to be Pantone certified with 99% sRGB, but I can't find anything for it's AdobeRGB profiles, for my photography this a device that's in the running.

L33 · 26 Feb 2020 at 16:29

I currently have a Razer Blade 15 for sale in the members market if you feel like saving around half of your budget

FL630 · 26 Feb 2020 at 19:37

L33 said:
I currently have a Razer Blade 15 for sale in the members market if you feel like saving around half of your budget

Very kind and normally I'd snap this sort of thing up, however this is a work benefit to buy it so it has to be from new.

How did you find it though? Good laptop?

L33 · 28 Feb 2020 at 00:02

FL630 said:
Very kind and normally I'd snap this sort of thing up, however this is a work benefit to buy it so it has to be from new.

How did you find it though? Good laptop?

No worries!
Love it, its brilliant. The only reason for selling that one is I then got the itch to upgrade to the top end model.

Ayahuasca · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:21

I picked my 4K OLED XPS 15 up off the Dell Outlet for just above £1200. You can undervolt both the CPU and GPU fairly easily, mine runs the likes of Diablo 3 and Grim Dawn just fine at 4k.

radderfire · 3 Mar 2020 at 12:16

LG Gram 15 might be worth a look, made to be thin and light. I know there is a recent review of the larger Gram 17 on YouTube.

Mint_Sauce · 3 Mar 2020 at 17:31

You could also consider the MSI gs-63vr or similar.

Hades · 4 Mar 2020 at 22:20

Thinkpad X1 Extreme?

Less gaming focused but it does have a dedicated GPU. Another to consider anyway.

DFish · 7 Mar 2020 at 16:16

MiSJAH said:
or you could get this for £1,517.00

Chassis & Display
15.6" Matte Full HD IPS 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 Max-Q - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 3 in 1 Card Reader (SD / SDHC / SDXC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 230W AC Adaptor
Battery
46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language
PER-KEY RGB BACKLIT UK MECHANICAL KEYBOARD
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

That's a 144Hz display, I7, RTX 2070 MQ GPU, decent NVMe SSD and 2TB storage HDD, and a mechanical keyboard.

NB: No O/S add £106 for Win 10 from the supplier or appropriate your key from the bay or elsewhere for next to nowt.

What make/model is this out of interest?

Thanks
Fish

MiSJAH · 7 Mar 2020 at 19:59

So there are 480+ mentions of the brand of I posted about on this forum but the mods keep deleting my posts with reasons like "No".

I'm not certain why they are victimising me, and ignoring every single other mention of these.

Mod, how about a link or citation of the rule that I am falling foul of that no one else is?

Thanks.

DFish · 8 Mar 2020 at 13:26

Misjah, dont worry I think I found the brand last night.

Fish

MiSJAH · 8 Mar 2020 at 13:31

DFish said:
Misjah, dont worry I think I found the brand last night.

Fish

Good stuff. I hope you get a machine you enjoy.