$400 laptop for use with Elgato GameCapture HD

[flamefire999]

1. What is your budget? $400- $500

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15.6"

3. What screen resolution do you want? 720p

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? In the middle but more towards desktop replacement.

5. How much battery life do you need? 3-4 hours

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? Yes. I want to play Minecraft, CS: GO, KSP, LoL, Dota 2, The Sims 4, Unturned, DayZ, Terraria, Oblivion and Skyrim. Medium on Skyrim and high on everything else.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Record my console game play with Elgato Game Capture HD (it uses a lot of CPU), record my iphone 5C with AirStream, Light Photoshop, Video editing and programming.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 1tb 7200rpm.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? DVD writer/Rom

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. No Dell laptops.

13. What country do you live in? USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. I'm looking for a laptop because I like to lounge around watching videos and I also like to bring my laptop with me to my friends house. I need an HDMI output so I can connect to my TV to watch streams and such. I also like to use a mouse (my uncles old Razer Deathadder 2013) because I hate trackpads so I want 3 USB ports.

 

[flamefire999]

HP 2000 is one of the best mid-range HP laptop designed for everyday use for each purpose like gaming, social networking, watching movies, chatting, e-mailing etc. You can play your most favorite HD game or blockbuster movies with the luminous 15.6 inch display. Packing with AMD E-300 Accelerated Dual Core Processor and AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics along with 4GB DDR3 SDRAM the HP 2000-2b19wm 15.6-”Laptop PC is always ready to experience you the ultimate gaming fun.

So the thing with that CPU is that it is only 1.3ghz. That's not fast enough to record with Elgato. I know because that's how fast my current laptops CPU is and it can't record at all. Also I don't know where you got "gaming" from because this would be a really bad gaming computer. This has about the same specs as my laptop now and it can't really play games.

 

[zeyuanfu]

A 500$ laptop will NOT game well on games, especially not with high settings. I would recommend at least 1000$ for a laptop.

 

[flamefire999]

I was mainly looking for something to record my Xbox with my Elgato. The games were just an extra thing that I put in just in case.

 

[zeyuanfu]

I was mainly looking for something to record my Xbox with my Elgato. The games were just an extra thing that I put in just in case.

If you don't play games on the laptop, a 300$ one would suffice.

 

[flamefire999]

I would like to be able to still somewhat play games on low settings. And you don't need a $1000 laptop to play games by the way. And the problem with the elgato is that it needs a pretty good CPU. I have a $300 laptop and it doesn't work.

 

[zeyuanfu]

I would like to be able to still somewhat play games on low settings. And you don't need a $1000 laptop to play games by the way. And the problem with the elgato is that it needs a pretty good CPU. I have a $300 laptop and it doesn't work.

Just so you know, mobile CPUs are WAY weaker than their desktop counterparts, so a laptop i7 might be equal to a desktop i5 or maybe even a high-end i3. They also have a very low clock rate.

 

[flamefire999]

I know. I was actually considering a desktop for awhile but then I realized I would need a full PC (monitor, mouse, keyboard etc) and I don't think that would all fit in my budget.

 

[hang-the-9]

I would like to be able to still somewhat play games on low settings. And you don't need a $1000 laptop to play games by the way. And the problem with the elgato is that it needs a pretty good CPU. I have a $300 laptop and it doesn't work.

If someone was looking or a "gaming" laptop, anything under $1,000 or so would be a compromize. When most people reply "you need to spend 1,000, 1,200 etc.. on a gaming laptop" they mean that to be able to actually install a game and not worry about tweaking settings much to get good frame rates on it. Any system with an i5 CPU and at least 4 gig of RAM should be OK for you. Asus and Lenovo are the top laptops I would look at.

 

[flamefire999]

I would like to be able to still somewhat play games on low settings. And you don't need a $1000 laptop to play games by the way. And the problem with the elgato is that it needs a pretty good CPU. I have a $300 laptop and it doesn't work.

If someone was looking or a "gaming" laptop, anything under $1,000 or so would be a compromize. When most people reply "you need to spend 1,000, 1,200 etc.. on a gaming laptop" they mean that to be able to actually install a game and not worry about tweaking settings much to get good frame rates on it. Any system with an i5 CPU and at least 4 gig of RAM should be OK for you. Asus and Lenovo are the top laptops I would look at.

Do you have any recommendations?