Need to replace my father in laws laptop. He uses it almost exclusively for basic web surfing at home.
Wheres the best bang for buck around $500? Prefer a full size 15.6"
Best Value Laptop ~ $500
llmoose on 17/05/2022 - 14:23
Comments
No he prefers a laptop.
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/lenovo-15-…
Was looking at that. Seems to do everything he needs, just wanna make sure i'm getting the best value.
- 15.6" LED display with 1366 x 768 resolution.
- Intel Quad-Core 1.1 GHz processor.
- 128GB emmc memory
- 4GB RAM
$497 is terrible value.
How about Acer:
https://www.amazon.com.au/ACER-Aspire-A515-56-35EQ-Laptop-Ch…
- 1920 x 1080 pixels Display
- Intel Core i3-1115G4 (Tiger lake)
- Wifi 6 Supported
- 128GB SATA-based SSD.
$499 free postage
There's also the refurbished options, plenty of Skylake generation laptops like Dell Latitudes, Lenovo Thinkpad T-series which have superior build quality and might last even longer than a cheap IdeaPad, Inspiron or Aspire.
Add another 4GB of ram for $40 to the Acer and it's probably the best value for that budget and will do everything your friend needs - much better screen, processo, memory and running full Windows 11, not the cut down "S" version
That Levono is garbage, do not touch
Otherwise refurbs are a good option and often come with warranty.
@blonky: You can get a 4GB Sodimm module for $26. Certainly a worthwhile upgrade
Edit: the linked module is 2400MHz, not sure the speed the laptop takes. If it’s 3200MHz, the may as well get 8GB since it’s not much more than 4GB
Thank you sir, thats awesome. Not sure why I didn't think of Amazon
You are looking at absolute dog shit bottom of the barrel laptops at $500. The screen will be shit, it will be dual core with 4gb RAM. It will be a terrible experience.
You'd be MUCH better off with a used desktop if you could. Or else a Chromebook if the small screen would suffice.
Any suggestions for quality used desktops at that price? Don't want to have to worry about a refurb gone wrong or support for dodgy builds though
They pop up here a lot. Smartcom and Australian Computer Traders are two businesses on eBay. They are mostly Enterprise grade and you shouldn't have any reliability problems. Assuming you have a screen $200 will get you something acceptable, add some RAM and SSD and you'll be set for under $300.
Wait for these to pop up, we still have some of these in operation in DAF and they're a great quiet little machine highly recommend them, also a great little media PC/plex
the lenovo is quad-core, the acer is dual core
Despite having less physical cores, the 2c/4t i3-1115G4 will beat the 4c/4t Pentium N6000
Benchmarks show the i3 in the Acer is around 60-75% faster than the Pentium N6000 in the Lenovo. Core count is not the most important factor
lmao this is a horrible take
A $500 laptop has done my parents and him plenty fine in the past and will continue to do so. I just want to get the best I can for the money.
I pity anyone using a 1376*768 screen in 2022. Is it elder abuse?!
They’re probably used to standard definition anyway.
Jokes aside, you can get some decent deals as Scrimshaw pointed out above
Dual core, quad thread Tiger lake CPU will be more than fine for web browsing. 4GB might be a bit tight so adding another 4GB module for $26 would be a worthwhile upgrade
Get one of those ex dell-hp gov laptops for $350-500 I5 6500, 8GB ram and -128-256gb ssd inside it with one year warranty
Would a tablet not be a better option for basic web surfing and at that price budget?