Hey guys,
Been a while since I've posted one of these on any forum online as I would usually self-research and compare. However, for the last 5 or so years, I’ve been lucky enough to get a laptop at work which I’ve taken home for any personal use. However, due to a recent career change, I’ll be at uni for the next few months over Christmas before starting as a secondary teacher next year. The days at uni are going to be 8-10 hours and I’ll be riding to uni so the laptop needs to have good battery capacity and lightweight. I believe I’ll get a free laptop at work but the teachers I spoke to said the free ones were very slow and most teachers preferred to bring their own device.
Whilst I know my use is going to be usually quite basic – Microsoft Office (no heavy spreadsheets) and general internet browsing I want it to be quite quick, responsive and well built. I’m not a big PC gamer as I have a switch and ps4 at home so graphics card is not a concern. Apple would probably be a great fit if the retail price hadn’t increased incredibly since I was in the market last.
After having a read on general forums the Dell XPS 13 seems to be ticking a lot of boxes and is available on Good guys commercial for $1470 and the current good guys eBay sale for about $1438. Based on previous posts this seems quite a safe option.I currently use an HP Elitebook X360 G2 at work which has a core I5 7th gen and 8gb of ram and has been great for anything I’ve done at work and has been incredibly reliable it’s 7 months old and I can buy it from work for around $1k. I also took a look at the surfaces but spec wise they didn’t seem to stack up to alternatives. My original budget was $1200 but I’m willing to spend extra if it means a much better quality laptop which will last longer. I'll be spending a lot of time on this over the next few years so i think it's wise to be looking for value for money rather than exercising a tight budget.
I’ve also looked at second-hand laptops on gumtree, eBay and facebook marketplace and nothing has really stood out to me. Given it’ll be used 85-90% for work/study I will be claiming this on tax for over the next four years as well. I think it might be a bit more difficult doing this on a second hand laptop with an invoice in someone elses name.
I know there's a lot of people on this site who know a lot more than what i do so I will appreciate everyone input :)
Thanks guys,
Is laptop price 100% tax deductible