Is This Laptop Worth It? (HP Envy 15-AS043TU for $1697)

• 

  Zaenille on 29/12/2016 - 12:52

  +1

  I'm not very aware of the laptop market these days, but with your usage, this is what I would suggest:

  • You don't need dedicated GPU (graphics cards). Laptops with good graphic cards bump the price a huge lot. The particular laptop you mentioned does not have a GPU.
  • 8GB is fine for most. Check out what the recommended RAM your video editing software uses. It is possible that 16GB would help.
  • i7 is overkill for most people, but for you and your photo/video editing, it's fine.
  • Best thing you could ever do to make your laptop better is to swap the HDD to an SSD. If you aren't familiar with them, google them and you'll easily learn a lot of things. They're a lot more expensive than HDDs, so people usually tend to have an SSD-HDD set up, where they put their OS and major programs they use on the SSD, and everything else on the HDD. Look for a laptop that already has an SSD, or ask around the shop if there are SSD alternatives of the same model.
• 

  [Deactivated] on 29/12/2016 - 13:18

  Get a business laptop. It'll last longer. Better build quality and battery life too.

  http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/product…

  Your best bet is to go for a Latitude 14 7000, 1920x1080 display, 4-cell, 55 Wh battery.

  This is also a good deal.
  http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=z510890au&…

  Lenovo has a sale too. Get a Thinkpad business laptop.
  http://www3.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser…

• 

  [Deactivated] on 29/12/2016 - 16:41

  Dell Outlet store will also have a huge range that are pretty reasonable.

  Picked up a decent laptop with a dedicated graphics card for sub-1000 AUD.

  Website: http://www.dell.com/learn/au/en/audhs1/campaigns/dell-outlet…

  Warranties included and pretty reliable - you can find As New/Refurbished stuff for a fraction of the cost.

• 

  ac17 on 30/12/2016 - 08:15

  It not even quad core!

  Gee marketing can dupe people….

  Msi and gigabyte make new laptops with FHD screens and 6700hq (quad core i7) CPUs, 8GB RAM, 1Tb Hdd, and the LATEST SSD M.2 NVME slots etc starting at $1060 (no OS), or $1100 (with). Eg check out techbuy's website…. This would be excessive for your needs and would save you $500 to spend on the latest type of SSD (MAKE SURE YOU RESEARCH THIS because as a poster above mentioned, yes m.2 is fastest, but there are several variants, and you are really only limited by what your motherboard can handle. And in your case, you're unlikely to ever need the full 3GB/s)

  … Or there's Hp, Dell, Lenovo, with outdated motherboard specs and dual core cpus, and slow Hdds for $1600+

  If you want to get a 'U' processor eg 6500U, I wouldn't pay more than $800 to consider it a "good deal". These processors will still eat up anything general you throw at it (eg web browsing and basic video editing) and will give good battery life.

  Touch screen…. Wow (?). Is that really a selling point or necessary? (worth considering)

  The laptop you OP'd doesn't even have the modern USB 3.1 slot. $1600 is NOT a bargain.

  Check out staticice (meta search engine), jbhifi sales, hp sales, Dell refurbished, whirlpool forums, and the comments sections of the Daily laptop deals here on ozbagain.

  I've been doing this for several weeks and I know exactly what's going cheap.

  $800 should get you what you need. Give me the other $800 you save, so I can get what I need lol!

  PS the speed of your HDD wasn't listed. I'll assume it is 5400rpm and a hybrid, at best.

• 

  ac17 on 30/12/2016 - 08:29

  Eg this is good enough for you and saves you much coin!
  Latest gen cpu too

  https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/284899

  Daily Deals (and read all of the comments because people cite pros and cons and even better deals sometimes):

  https://www.ozbargain.com.au/tag/laptop