Hi guys, I'm in the market for a laptop with 14-15.6" FHD screen / i7 / 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD.
Want something relatively light weight and with good battery life.
I'm just completely confused with all the options available from Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Surface, HP etc.
What is a good pick and popular right now?
What are you aiming to use the laptop for? Gaming? Video editing? Office work? Just general browsing? Everyone has different usage for their laptop. A student would have different needs to say a videographer for example. And value is subjective.
I'm just completely confused with all the options available from Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Surface, HP etc.
What is a good pick and popular right now?
Have you considered AMD's new Ryzen 4000 series processors? Cheaper and performs amazingly compared to a lot of Intel chips… but again depends on what you doin with your laptop. Heavier gaming you'll need additional graphics performance etc etc etc
Anyways I like the Dell XPS offerings (brother has one), HP with the x360 series (Spectre and Envy), Microsoft and the Surface Laptop 3's (my work switched from Dell to Microsoft last year) or Asus with their Zenbook offerings. I personally use an Asus Zenbook UM425 as my own personal machine with a Ryzen 7 4700Uprocessor and is around $1500-1600 and is a great laptop to use.
Thanks for the responses. Need it for everyday use. Mainly for web browsing, excel, word, personal admin etc. On the odd occassion I play Football Manager which can run laptop hot. Sticking to the Windows platform my research seems to suggest that the Dell XPS, Surface Laptop, and HP Spectre x360 are probably the top picks. But with the mentioned specs they get pretty expensive (3k+). Even the HP Envy is pretty pricey. I'm looking to spend ~2k.
I prefer to get i7 with 16GB RAM more for future proofing rather than need right now. 512GB SSD is for my collection of photos (which I also backup with external hard drive).
Do the Asus Zenbooks have a good reputation?
With Lenovo the X1 Carbon and T Series look too businessy, so stumbled across the Yoga C740 (C940 is again quite expensive). How is this one?
lenovo yoga slim 14 , with amd 4800u (better than i9)
I just picked up a Slim 7 Ryzen 5 8Gb/512Gb for $1,210 as an Education deal. Would have preferred 16Gb but I liked the form factor of the slim and for that price I figured i can flick it to the kids in a few years and upgrade if I really need to; when I checked the resource/RAM usage on my other laptop for the type of things I use it for it barely exceeded 4Gb anyways.
Is that the Yoga Slim or IdeaPad Slim?
@Pbm33: Yoga Slim 7, 14" Part Number: 82A2008PAU
https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/yoga/yoga-s-series/Yoga…
I work in IT and all my friends and family always come to me for advice while buying a laptop. I have always recommended Asus laptops for more than a decade now and not heard any complaints or failures.
Asus Zenbooks are really good if you satisfied with the specs
https://www.shoppingexpress.com.au/search-results?q=asus%20z…
So I decided to do some legwork and came up with the following. Limited my search to Dell XPS, Surface Laptop 3 (found nothing), HP Spectre (nothing) and Envy, Lenovo IdeaPad and Yoga, and the Asus Zenbook.
I searched on HN, JB, OW, Good Guys, Bing Lee, mwave, Scorptec, jw. Trying to buy from retail store.
The Zenbook UX425JA ticks a lot of boxes but I've read the performance is meddling.
Thoughts guys?
I see you are a Excel connoisseur like myself.
From my own usage performance is only really effected only on the most demanding workloads like heavy video editing or heavy gaming… Which this laptop is not designed for.
For your usage scenarios described above for general work and the occasional football manager sesh then I think it should be fine.
The new Asus 2020 line of new Zenbooks will be comming soon in November I believe, as I let another poster know about this and they are waiting.
Is there a reason for looking only at brick n mortar stores? If it's anything to do with warranty Asus have Service Centres around Australia. And turn around was ok and customer service when I dealt with them was pretty good.
A deal if you are an eBay plus member has the exact specs you want for $1669 after discount from Futu Online here's the link eBay Plus 21% disc FUTU Online, Asus Z UX425JA. Looks pretty good to me 🙂
Let us know what U get in the end.
Thanks Danny, are you speaking from experience of having the Zenbook UX425JA?
The thing which does slightly bother me with this laptop also is how slim and lightweight it is. Which inherently I think could lead to heating issues.
Looking at brick n mortar stores only due to my last experience with Dell. Currently own a "cheapie" Dell Inspiron 15 which I bought in 2013 from their website. The laptop had issues when I originally bought it which required it to be shipped to their service centre. When they received the laptop the screen was cracked, and I had packaged it properly and even taken photos. But they would not repair the screen for me without charging me for it. I went to Fair Trading etc. but they could not do anything. Anyway I ended up getting the screen repaired by someone else for like less half the price. The whole experience was pretty off-putting.
From my own experience using it as I have used both the AMD & Intel versions, but I settled on the Ryzen version UM425 and my bro settled on the Intels UX425 version. Fair enough with the service centre issues, once U have a bad experience it leaves a bad vibe.
For me I find going direct is easier than going back to JB or Office works for things as complex as laptop repairs. But that's just me.
It is a very thin and lightweight Ultrabook yes, portability is the big selling point. I haven't experienced major overheating as there is venting at the bottom and near the front. Again, heavy loads U may encounter some throttling of performance but overall for Ur uses I don't see it being a major issue.
Ultrabook reviews do an extensive test on the unit if it is of concern uX425 review. But for my uses and the price I got it for I think it is decent value.
@DannyC: Ok thanks.
I'll stay patient for some good OZBargain deal to pop up. With the 11th gen to be released there may be a drop in price for some of the current gen laptops… but then the 9th gen i7 XPS is still going for 2500..
@DannyC: It's already been announced! And it looks incredible, assuming the new Tiger Lake intel chips perform well.
A few of the models announced already:
Zenbook S UX393EA looks like my jam if those new 11th gen processors can get close to the Ryzen 4000 series.
@ryban3z: Nice. UX393EA has a 3:2 ratio as well, that's great for my sort of workflow. Lookin good. Will check out pricing. If they can price it right it'll be a compelling product. Fingers crossed Asus get the performance just right.
Don't get a Surface Laptop 3 if you care about battery life. I love mine, but I'd be lucky if I managed to crack it to five hours of working before it cries out for a charger. Furthermore, you'd have to buy it from the Microsoft Business store if you want both 15" and i7 as the consumer model is only 13.5" for i7
Asus Zephyrus G14 for gaming.
I'm not actually after a gaming laptop. Would prefer something with a better battery life than gaming laptops.
My partner just ordered the Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen! You should take a look. Currently around ~1850 on the education store and has good reviews!
Don't see a 9th/10th Gen i7 option with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD … and I'm not a student/teacher so would I even have access to education store.
I would ask what software you are going use?