Any suggestions for laptops similar to Lenovo Z-500? Losing the will to live.

[Emily1994]

The Lenovo Z-500 seems to be exactly what I'm looking for.
Cheap, decent for low/medium setting gaming, not too hefty, nice brushed metal finish and with a nice few added extras such as the backlit keyboard.
I would be all over it, but the battery life concerns me.
I'm not looking for something that can go on a 7 hour gaming marathon without needing a charge.
I just want maybe 4 hours of light usage out of it.
So does anyone know of any similar laptops that would get the job done?
All I will be doing is playing Sims 3, browsing the net and writing essays.
I'm just so fed up with looking for laptops now. There seems to be something wrong with everything.
I was considering the Asus K55vd but the flexible lid really put me off, as did the 2.6kg weight. It's for uni so should be relatively portable.
Thanks.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Look at my sig.... now what follows is the HONEST BRUTAL truth...lol

As I always tell my customers when they are buying a lappy from us....

You take the manufacturers battery figures and DIVIDE BY THREE for the REAL time the battery will last.....

And thats ALL manufacturers by the way....

You want longer time, you buy a BIGGER EXTENDED battery or 2 batteries....ONLY way....

So buy the Lenovo, if you wish ...others wont be ANY better...

All the best Brett

 

[Emily1994]

Hi

Look at my sig.... now what follows is the HONEST BRUTAL truth...lol

As I always tell my customers when they are buying a lappy from us....

You take the manufacturers battery figures and DIVIDE BY THREE for the REAL time the battery will last.....

And thats ALL manufacturers by the way....

You want longer time, you buy a BIGGER EXTENDED battery or 2 batteries....ONLY way....

So buy the Lenovo, if you wish ...others wont be ANY better...

All the best Brett

Thanks for your help.
I realise battery estimates are bare-faced lies. I never had long between charging this Acer Aspire 4920, 2 hours at most. But now it's about 6 minutes fully charged. Just enough time to plug in the lead before it shuts down. I know that's just down to age though so I can't really blame Acer.
Lenovo seems to be particularly bad though.
I've been doing my homework and reading lots of reviews (I honestly think I must have looked at reviews for pretty much all of the laptops suitable for light gaming within my price range).
Anyway, I found a particularly worrying review stating that the battery lasts an hour at most =S
Your formula proves right, they advertise it to last 3 hours.
I'm not really very good with computers, my mum suggested getting a battery with bigger capacity.
I had a look on ebay and places but I don't really know what I'm looking for to be honest.
I couldn't seem to find any batteries for this laptop, never mind bigger batteries XD
It doesn't seem to a be a very popular machine and that's probably going to cause problems later.
The Dell Inspiron 15r seemed to do much better in tests so I might just avoid the Lenovo altogether.
But then there are problems with the Inspiron.
I never realised searching for a laptop was so stressful!
If it wasn't for my addiction to the Sims 3 I could get away with a £300 laptop. I'm so annoying to myself.
But to be honest, my latop now runs at 1.5ghz and has 2.1gb of ram. Anything's gotta be a step up!
Thankyou for the help anyway, it's much appreciated =)

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Dells have better batteries... and not too expensive to buy a second spare battery... or some models have an EXTENDED battery available as an extra...

All the best Brett

 

[Emily1994]

Just incase people are still coming across this thread, I got a Samsung Series 7 Chronos in the end, and it came advertised with 9 hours battery life and man does it deliver! This lasts at least 8 hours when you're browsing the web, probably about 6 if you're browsing and watching films and about 4 if you're playing a moderately demanding 3D game on high settings. I think Samsung win hands down, I never actually expected it to last anywhere near as long as 9 hours, but I'm pretty sure it's even exceeded that when I haven't been recording. I used my laptop for 5 hours last night, browsing the web and watching a film, and have been on it for 2 hours tonight and I still have 34% battery (or 3 hours 19 minutes) left.