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Decent Student Laptop for $300-400ish?
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
in Help
Long story short...one of my daughters is going off to college. I thought she had a laptop arranged but it got complicated and now she doesn't.
She's going to be a chemistry major and she's not a computer nerd, so she does not need an octocore i7, a fancy graphics card, etc.
What I am looking for:
- Ideally $300-400
- Windows
- I'm thinking it'd be cruel to buy a laptop with an HDD in 2018...so ideally SSD but does not need much space
...and I'm not sure I have any other real requirements. Thoughts?
Comments
I'm literally about to get a £300 Lenovo windows 10 14inch with a 128SSD. Only problem is it's UK retail so I'm not familiar with a US equivalent. Lenovo though, worth looking at.
Laptop:
& throw in a 120GB SSD
Look for a refurbished Lenovo T440s or similar. They come with maxed ram, a good processor in the i5 or i7 family and a 180 - 240 GB SSD for under $400 USD.
At that price, don't look for anything new as you'll end up with a Celeron and wish you had gone used or refurbished.
If it were for myself I'd get a 2-3yo middle-high-end thinkpad with windows 7 on craigslist rather than spending the same amount on a crappy new windows 10 model. Other than that I've had good luck with Acer among lower cost new laptops. If it's for a present I can understand wanting something new. Unfortunately MacOS is getting as craptacular as Windows or I'd suggest checking out that direction.
Since it's for college, you may want to pay attention to the computer's weight. I think most people forget about that.
I'd go for a used Lenovo T-series. Good and reliable gear and in that price range you should find something within the "like new" class. In typical real life you probably won't notice if the CPU etc. is a few years old. Plus it's good(tm) to buy used hardware.
Good point, I prefer the X series to the T series these days. The X's are basically the same innards, but smaller screen and no optical drive, resulting in a smaller computer. Recent T's may have also gotten rid of the optical disk.
Well, how about a chromebook? great for text, video, etc
Otherwise, a HP 15-bw090nd would do the trick:
AMD A6 9220 - 8GB - 128GB SSD > battery life of over 7 hrs
Get an ARM based laptop. Take a look at PineBook. Although they take orders through invite only but you can contact then somehow to get the laptop. You will like it a lot. I have Linux mint running on it and it works great for my basic needs.
And it is just $100
Don't bother with ARM or chromebooks - a bunch of chemistry specific garbage, matlab, etc probably will want windows.
Seconded. A refurbished/used X series Thinkpad is what i would look for too.
Chemistry majors do sometimes have some CPU-intensive tasks, like some basic Tinker/Spartan calculations. They might also have to do some coding with Fortran or C in the third or fourth year.
That's way too cool for her...I put in a BTO for a 14" for myself, though...
We LET cognoscenti do stuff like that on servers.
I have a feeling they'd use Java anyways. Stuff like C or Fortran is to hard for university students these days.
Besides imo any kind of serious coding is quite yuck on a server. Latency is annoying when typing and i'd rather have a GUI editor once a couple 1000 lines scattered over X files are on the table.
Windows 10 is only 2 years old? Hmmmm... Actually, maybe I was using a prerelease.
Refurbished Latitude or Thinkpad. Widely available, robust enough for this kind of usage, specs will be good enough.
I traditionally use and supply family with 2nd hand Thinkpads since 10+ years and have never regretted it.
One should note though that the Windows stickers on the back are usually old versions. I personally don't care because I have only 1 Windows VM for development and Win7 is good enough for that. On the other hand a 2nd hand Thinkpad + a Win10 license is still less than 400$ I guess and you get relatively solid hardware. I have Thinkpad from the T2x series that still work fine.
I used to be a fan of cheap thinkpads, but these days I think they aren't such a good deal especially with the super low res 720p screens found in a lot of them.
if you can stretch a bit more, there is a brilliant option, the Cube Thinker.
https://www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_620996.html
battery life / weight ?
just outside of your budget at $499 Acer Aspire V 13 V3-372T-5051 13.3, 6GB, 256GB SSD Windows 10
That's about what I paid for my Lenovo a couple months ago, but mine has 8GB RAM. Great deals!
Parts are also plentiful and cheap enough when things go wrong or when liquid gets poured in it.
Lenovo has tons of options, IBM is also a certified refurbished reseller of their computers that come with decent 1-3 yr warranties. I have used cheaper laptops from them for about $100-200 for a few years.. worked great with Ubuntu Desktop compared to Windows.. which would only be "good" considering it is Windows.
@raindog309 Why not get a Surface Pro (2/3)? Used ones are pretty cheap; they go for around $400-450 CAD, which in terms of USD, is within your budget
Just make sure to check if it’s damaged (a lot of them have cracked glass on the front).
Third. You can find plenty of babied ex-lease laptops on eBay and whatnot.
Refurb ThinkPad. Have recommended to a few folks and they've all been pretty happy. Eventually need a new battery or an SSD upgrade if you get the cheaper version, but both of those are pretty minor purchases.
Check this hp laptop, i3 8th gen, 8gb memory, 1TB hdd, win10 and touchscreen for $399.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i3-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-hp-finish-in-jet-black/6181603.p?skuId=6181603
You need to swap hdd with ssd.
That'll push it over his budget... plus, HP laptops are notorious for being terrible.
Yes, $60ish more for SSD. However for the price it's not that bad.
I agree. Nowadays most of the HP laptops are pretty terrible. I initially thought it had something to do with shipping low-quality products specifically to the country I'm currently at but realised even the US and NL purchased ones are the same horrible quality as local ones.
I'd also go for a refurb thinkpad. However, I'm not sure the design language of the device matches her preference.