Black Friday & Tech Buying

[LowiePete]

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to replace my laptop in the next Black Friday scramble. Maybe upgrade my separate monitor too.
I've always bought Lenovo laptops (just 2, but they last well) and will probably go with another. Seems like a
solid state hard drive is sensible, but are they upgradeable? 256Gb seems a tad small when 1Tb ones seem
relatively good value. What else to look out for and where to buy without getting your pants pulled down?
Budget around £500/600 with maybe £250 added for a monitor; (present one is Asus and has worked well).

Regards,
Steve

 

[andybond]

Hello Steve! ( @LowiePete )

The devices are fairly upgradeable but you will always get the best bang per buck buying directly from the vendor. Bear in mind the capacity increase in exponentially more expensive.
Personally I would utilise a removable external hard drive from images etc and redirect the pointers in Windows 10 to the removable drive. I would also use a cloud based backup. I used google drive as its very cheap at around £1.60/mo for 100GB.

The nearest I could find to a capacity of 1TB albeit broken down into SSD and SATA is this offering from Asus : Amazon product ASIN B01MXQI2XV
I couldnt find anything with a 1TB SSD under £1000.

Lenovo units are generally pretty good, and I would buy directly from them or via amazon ensuring its fulfilled by amazon.

May I ask why you are considering replacing your monitor?

 

[LowiePete]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply. I think what prompts my questions are tech additions like USB-C.
I've no idea of its importance and whether I should kind of future-proof my purchase with
a machine that has this. Also, is there any other "must haves" for a machine I'm intending
to keep for a bit longer than those with mechanical HDDs? Are you saying I should avoid
the like of Laptops Direct in favour of going direct to Lenovo?

I take the point of detachable drives and that makes the 256Gb inbuilt capacity much more
acceptable. My monitor was probably state of the art when I bought it. It will have seen the
life of two laptops, but will it see out a third? I'm imagining that it could pack in any time
real soon now.

Regards,
Steve

 

[andybond]

Steve,

I wouldn’t recommend any vendor over another. If there is little or no money difference I would purchase directly from the manufacturer.

Regarding USB-C I am firmly in the camp of if you don’t know about it you won’t miss it. Yes it’s a smaller rounded usb with marginally faster speeds and a plethora of functions but I wouldn’t discount a laptop without one.

Regarding monitors. This unit is a 1080p and a IPS panel. It’s substantially under your £250 budget

Amazon product ASIN B06ZZCLDMM
This one is USB-C but £375..

Amazon product ASIN B01GCSUB98

 

[piggz]

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to replace my laptop in the next Black Friday scramble. Maybe upgrade my separate monitor too.
I've always bought Lenovo laptops (just 2, but they last well) and will probably go with another. Seems like a
solid state hard drive is sensible, but are they upgradeable? 256Gb seems a tad small when 1Tb ones seem
relatively good value. What else to look out for and where to buy without getting your pants pulled down?
Budget around £500/600 with maybe £250 added for a monitor; (present one is Asus and has worked well).

Regards,
Steve

Ive bought Intel based laptops the last few times, and Im a software engineer. Now though, the AMD Ryzen CPUs are blowing the equivalent intel core i5 out of the water, and theyre cheaper. I'll personally be looking at something with a ryzen 3500U, 8gb ram with a full HD screen for around 400-500, which is easily achievable, ive seen that spec as low as 350.