Which Windows laptop should I buy for £500?

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This article titled “Which Windows laptop should I buy for £500?” was written by Jack Schofield, for theguardian.com on Thursday 23rd November 2017 11.43 UTC

If you were in the market for a new laptop, what would you buy if your absolute maximum budget was £500?

I’ve always liked 17in widescreen laptops but will switch to 15in, preferably with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. Stuart

My first thought was that your best bet was a refurbished ThinkPad from Tier1Online, but it turns out that you really can buy new laptops with your preferred specification for less than £500, especially if they are older models at discounted prices. There may be even more examples around tomorrow, which is Black Friday, and over the weekend.

The Windows laptop market is in a period of transition. First, there’s the gradual shift to new processors. Second, there’s a move from traditional “spinning rust” hard drives to faster but smaller chip-based SSDs (solid-state disks). The kind of workhorse you want is going out of style, so it may be more likely to be discounted. If so, you could pick up a bargain.

Chip choice

In the shift to new processors, PC manufacturers are starting to install eighth-generation Core chips, which have numbers like i5-8xxx. However, seventh-gen chips (i5-7xxx) still dominate the market, and there are a few sixth-gen chips (i5-6xxx) hanging around. For your purposes, they are all acceptable. Intel has been focusing on reducing its chips’ power requirements, so that they can be used in thinner laptops with longer battery life. They’re mostly not much faster, and you probably wouldn’t notice the difference.

I think the Core i5 is a good choice. Core i7 chips are faster, but the laptop versions are dual-core, not quad-core – apart from a few eighth-gen chips – so it’s hard to justify a large price premium. Core i3 chips are cheaper and don’t have the i5’s “turbo” or boost mode. However, Core i3-6xxx and 7xxx chips are still nippy enough for most purposes, though they’re less than ideal for video editing and gaming.

Look up the PassMark score for your current laptop’s processor, or check its rank on Notebookcheck’s Comparison of Mobile Processors (CPU Benchmarks). This will give you some idea of how far you can compromise on speed, and prevent you from inadvertently buying something slower.

Other considerations

At this price level you will have to make compromises. There aren’t any sleek 15.6in laptops with high-resolution screens for £500. Even in the workhorse category, you may have to compromise on screen resolution, storage space and memory.

Most 17in Windows laptops have a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, or 1080p, which is also known as “full HD” or FHD for viewing movies. Most small Windows laptops only offer 1366 x 768 pixels, a step down from 1080p to 720p. You can buy 15.6in laptops with either type of screen, but 1080p screens generally cost more.

Every 1920 x 1080 screen will show the same amount of information, but the smaller the screen, the smaller everything will look. (You can compensate for this by setting Windows’ magnification or scaling.) If you buy a laptop with a 1366 x 768 screen then it will show much less information than a 17in laptop’s 1920 x 1080 screen. You may find this limiting or even annoying. There’s less room to move windows around.

When it comes to storage, SSDs are expensive so cheaper machines tend to have less storage space, typically 128GB or 256GB instead of 1TB. However, an SSD makes a laptop much more responsive, which makes it more practical to use with a slower processor.

Memory also has an impact on performance, particularly with bigger jobs such a photo editing. I think 8GB is a good choice. However, you can settle for 4GB if you can expand it yourself later. You can often find out at Crucial’s website, which sells compatible upgrades. Sadly, the cost of memory – roughly £10 per GB – may make big upgrades prohibitive.

Finally, do you want a built-in DVD R/W drive? Until recently, these were standard on 15.6in laptops. The rise of movie streaming and, for backups, cheap external hard drives means they are no longer ubiquitous.

Possible picks

The stylish Lenovo Ideapad 320. Photograph: Lenovo

The 15.6in Windows 10 laptops that meet your requirements include the HP 250 G6 and the Lenovo Ideapad 310. The HP 250 G6 is boring but offers good performance for a low price. It has a 2.5GHz Core i5-7200U processor (PassMark 4677), 8GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive. It also has a 1920 x 1080-pixel FHD screen. It’s available from Laptops Direct for £449.97 or Laptop Outlet on Amazon for £479.99, though you should shop around for alternatives. There are better laptops, but it’s hard to beat the HP 250 G6’s value-for-money.

Incidentally, ebuyer.com offers the same machine with a 256GB SSD instead of a 1TB hard drive for £449.99, as a Black Friday deal. I expect almost every Ask Jack reader would plump for the SSD and use SD cards for extra storage.

The Lenovo Ideapad 310 is a decent mainstream laptop and a step up from the popular 110 model. Currys PC World has a silver version with a Core i5-7200U, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD and DVD for £499.99. It’s good value but with a caveat: it has a 1366 x 768-pixel screen. Search for 80TV0066UK to find other offers.

You can’t buy an Ideapad 310 from Lenovo UK’s website. It has moved on to the more stylish Ideapad 320, which has the same processor, 8GB of memory, and a 1TB hard drive+128GB SSD for £549.99. This version also has a 1920 x 1080-pixel anti-glare screen. It may bust your budget but it’s a much better buy. (Search for 80XL02XHUK for offers.)

I believe Currys PC World sells the same machine, but mysteriously calls it the Lenovo 80XL035QUK. This has an i5-7200U and 8GB of memory but a bigger 2TB hard drive and no SSD. It’s £499.99. It’s worth popping in for a look.

I also like the Asus VivoBook Max X541UA, partly because I used a similar 13.3in Asus laptop for about five years. The X541UA has the required specification – Core i5-7200U/8GB/1TB – but with a 1366 x 768 screen for £449.97 from Laptops Direct or £449.98 from ebuyer.com. (Search for X541UA-GO726T for offers.) The Asus VivoBook X541NA-GO726T (£449.99) appears to be identical to the X541UA-GO726T.

What would I buy?

Your £500 budget is a nice round number but I wouldn’t stick to it. I’d either go for a Lenovo Ideapad 320 at £549.99 or an HP 250 G5 with a faster Core i7-7500U (PassMark 5213) for £527.97 at Laptops Direct or £529.97 at Save on Laptops. (Search for 2EW11ES.) The Core i5 is good but it’s worth going £30 over budget to get a Core i7.

You can also get a Core i7-7500U in the Asus VivoBook Max X541UA-GO799T, so it could be worth searching for a good price on one of those, if you don’t mind the HD screen. I’ve seen them at £499 as recently as yesterday.

Either way, these laptops set good benchmarks to compare with any Black Friday bargains you may find.

Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com

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