Laptop for the wife

Sgt_Pepper · 3 Sep 2020 at 08:37

My wife is starting back at college next Thursday, so i am going to treat her to a new laptop. Can I get something good for around £600-700 or will I need to up the budget?
What brands should I belooking at, also I’ve no clue about mobile cpus, what would be the go-to in that price range. Cheers

Lokken86 · 5 Sep 2020 at 16:13

What sort of things will she be using it for?

Vince · 5 Sep 2020 at 16:19

Sgt_Pepper said:
My wife is starting back at college next Thursday, so i am going to treat her to a new laptop. Can I get something good for around £600-700 or will I need to up the budget?
What brands should I belooking at, also I’ve no clue about mobile cpus, what would be the go-to in that price range. Cheers

600 to 700 gets you into a HP Envy x360 13 with Ryzen 4500u - Its small, light weight and powerful. I just got the ryzen 7 model and it's a fantastic little machine. It also has a battery life that will do a full days worth of work.

Sgt_Pepper · 5 Sep 2020 at 20:00

Vince said:
600 to 700 gets you into a HP Envy x360 13 with Ryzen 4500u - Its small, light weight and powerful. I just got the ryzen 7 model and it's a fantastic little machine. It also has a battery life that will do a full days worth of work.

Just had a look at this, looks perfect.

Vince · 5 Sep 2020 at 20:36

Sgt_Pepper said:
Just had a look at this, looks perfect.

Had mine about a week or two now, nothing at all bad to report. Build quality is top notch, keyboard is very nice, screen is lovely, precision touchpad with multitouch is spot on, webcam etc are all very good. There are some other machines in the envy line but the convertible aspects such as tent mode, tablet mode, touch screen, pen support (although the 13 doesn't come with the tilt pen, I'm using the pen from my spectre x360) make it a winner for all kinds of the sorts of applications you might use it for in the classroom setting. There is a very slightly dubios \ key placement on the keyboard but it's nothing too bad and i've seen much worse layouts in keyboards. Really its the size and power and what you get out of the package that is compelling.

My little one has really surprised me and is actually a much better machine than my 2018 spectre which was double the price. There are probably other notable machines in this price range but if there is a better all round package let me know because after a few weeks looking I couldn't find one.

In the flesh it really is an awesome little thing. Also has a silent mode which turns all the fans off and downclocks the cpu so that it can operate fanless. In this mode it doesn't even get warm and battery life goes through the roof.

Brummies · 6 Sep 2020 at 18:16

^ I’ve had one on order since 13th July (same Ryzen 7 model) due to arrive on this coming week I hope. Looks like I’ve made a good decision.

Vince · 6 Sep 2020 at 18:30

Brummies said:
^ I’ve had one on order since 13th July (same Ryzen 7 model) due to arrive on this coming week I hope. Looks like I’ve made a good decision.

I was going to order one but then found one in the channel so didn't need to order directly from HP. I needed a couple fairly quickly and one of the distis I use came through with a couple. There appears to be a few different variations on the same machine as there are two (or more) UK serials for the same Ryzen 7 model. It's possible there are slight variations in the keyboard layout with the one you have on order likely to clear up the only gripe I have with my one.

Spit · 6 Sep 2020 at 18:41

Vince · 6 Sep 2020 at 18:49

Spit said:

I'm not too sure about that these days. Since I built the wife a desktop she has become a bit of a performance snob. When I recently had to set her up on a temp laptop after using her 3600 ryzen based desktop for a few months straight away it was all about how the machine wasn't fast enough for her. Or didn't have a big enough screen or whatever else.

stephen0205 · 7 Sep 2020 at 21:27

I owned the enjoy with teh 2500u ryzen in it, great machine, but it wasn't. After a few months with it, battery was rubbish, screen started to unstick from the metal (i used it in 360 mode a lot) overall ended up hating it and selling.

But recently both my parents and her inlaws were asking about laptops, they got the honor ones and the matebook ones, deals to be had, free headphones, routers, backpacks and mice for about 500 quid, and they are cracking, not great webcams but

Vince · 8 Sep 2020 at 16:44

stephen0205 said:
I owned the enjoy with teh 2500u ryzen in it, great machine, but it wasn't. After a few months with it, battery was rubbish, screen started to unstick from the metal (i used it in 360 mode a lot) overall ended up hating it and selling.

But recently both my parents and her inlaws were asking about laptops, they got the honor ones and the matebook ones, deals to be had, free headphones, routers, backpacks and mice for about 500 quid, and they are cracking, not great webcams but

Battery in mine today is a good example, ive done 8 hours of average use, mainly web browsing and using it to make edits to a pbx while rolling stuff out. As I sit down now there is 67% battery remaining. OEM's are putting much more into build on 4000 series machines than they were 2000/3000 series machines imo.

The construction on the envy is the same as the spectre in terms of screen and my 2018 spectre took more abuse than pretty much any machine I have ever owned, the machine is literally bent like a bannana and apart from a smashed screen is still booting.

I haven't used an honor machine yet and am unlikely to any time soon as I work in IP and Huawei are not exactly a welcome brand at this point but at £500 they don't look too bad. What materials are they made out? I shall have a look at a few reviews. edit: having a look all the 2020 designs are 3000 series ryzen, the 4000 series is literally the only reason this machine (the envy) works as well as it does, if 4000 series didn't exist I would be all in on intel in the mobile space.

Uriel · 15 Sep 2020 at 13:28

I note there's no HDMI on the Envy x360 13" is there? How are connections to external monitors if needed? Presumably via the USB-C?

Vince · 15 Sep 2020 at 19:41

Uriel said:
I note there's no HDMI on the Envy x360 13" is there? How are connections to external monitors if needed? Presumably via the USB-C?

It comes with an adapter as seen in this pic alongside the other bits I tend to carry. The only bits you get with the 13" are a charger and hdmi adapter. Anything else you need to add yourself. I updated mine to 10 pro 2004 rather than home, the c to a adapter came with my spectre as did the tilt pen which comes with the 15" but not the 13" for the 2020 envy models. In the box is a new tilt pen HP gave me as when I called them looking for new nibs I was told you can't buy them. Turns out that because of that now every time I ring them up looking for new nibs (probably once or twice a year) they now just send me another last gen tilt pen rather than the nibs I would much rather they just send me, because of this I always have a new one spare.

ShivP · 9 Oct 2020 at 09:50

@Vince sorry to hijack but I have a question about HP Pens

What is the best one for Envy x360? Is it the Tilt pen?

The website is quite confusing as there are so many different options for pen e.g. Active Pen G3 etc....

Vince · 9 Oct 2020 at 10:03

ShivP said:
@Vince sorry to hijack but I have a question about HP Pens

What is the best one for Envy x360? Is it the Tilt pen?

The website is quite confusing as there are so many different options for pen e.g. Active Pen G3 etc....

This one (this is a new and unused one) and is a tilt with bluetooth... I have a couple if you want to do a wanted thread we can work something out.

I think they run at about 50 to 75 depending where you buy. They have pressure sensor in the nib, rechargeable by usb c and come with a couple of spare nibs.

ShivP · 9 Oct 2020 at 10:36

Vince said:
This one (this is a new and unused one) and is a tilt with bluetooth... I have a couple if you want to do a wanted thread we can work something out.

I think they run at about 50 to 75 depending where you buy. They have pressure sensor in the nib, rechargeable by usb c and come with a couple of spare nibs.

Okay... Thanks

I found one somewhere with damaged packaging for 65 but not worth that much as I can get a new one through hp website with student discount for £45. The only issue is they are out of stock.

Vince · 9 Oct 2020 at 10:53

ShivP said:
Okay... Thanks

I found one somewhere with damaged packaging for 65 but not worth that much as I can get a new one through hp website with student discount for £45. The only issue is they are out of stock.

Im sure we can do better than that and we have stock

ExoMale · 9 Oct 2020 at 12:35

Quad core, 8gb ram, 256gb or 512gb ssd.

All brands will offer good and bad and at that budget you could probably get a flip style with above spec.

Depends what your wife does at college as you might not even need to spend so much? I got my partner the 14" lenovo ideapad 5i with i3 2c/4t, 8gb ram, 128gb ssd which she uses for work that involves AWS software and its been brilliant for her, faster than an i5 quad desktop of old it replaced, build quality is great, battery life is very good, its just overall perfect really and it only cost under £450. A bigger hard drive version is like £500 or less i think.

ShivP · 9 Oct 2020 at 13:13

Vince said:
Im sure we can do better than that and we have stock

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