In the market for a second-hand laptop to take with me when travelling, came across a Dell Latitude 5430 i7-1255U for $450, seller claims the laptop is in excellent condition, and battery lasts about 4 hours.
Is that a good price or should I keep looking for a better deal?
Yeah, that was my concern, he seems to be selling a bunch of different laptops out of a physical newsagent store.
Make sure it actually lasts 4 hours because my dell says it has about 5-6 hours and that very quickly turned into 2 hours the one day I actually tried to run it off the battery.
It's a reasonable price, but I would want to actually check it out first to make sure it is what they say it is in terms of specs and that the bios isn't locked.
Of course the seller says it's in excellent condition, it's in their interest to do so.
Fairly new CPU which means the model should be recent, but 4 hours of (presumably light usage) battery means it's a bit toasted.
I tried asking the seller to drop to $400 as it would need a new battery, but they claimed the battery was fine.
The battery is not 'great'. Very few people have a clue how to gauge battery health even though Dell probably has a util that'll show factory fresh vs current capacity.
Thing is though, I would expect any secondhand laptop to have a mediocre battery- most people keep them plugged in and charged to 100% 24x7 which is the worst storage condition.
TBH if I was selling a laptop with a 4 hour battery life, I would regard that as totally acceptable.
And when I buy secondhand laptops, I do not use battery life as a negotiating point.
Fair enough, I just don't know what's a reasonable price for these kind of laptops, I know Australian Computer Traders recently had a deal on the 5420 i5 11th gen for $300. But I also see all other sellers selling those for about $400+, so that's why I asked to try get an idea of what's a good price.
It's about right for the price.
It's even possible to be warranty remaining if theyre a professional buyer.
Ask for details of battery wear - or test yourself before pickup
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=how+to+ch…
If you get a report that the battery has 80% of it's original capacity then you should get roughly 80% of the battery life when new
Dell says up to 14 hours when new - these are always optimistic - more like 8-10 depending on use
80% of that should still be decent battery
This already indicates it'll at least need a battery replacement. That is quite low.
Otherwise taking a look at other options on eBay it sounds a little too good to be true.