Best Bang-for-buck laptop for College Engineering?

[Adam Ferrick]

1. What is your budget? $800 Max

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13-15in

3. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portable, it's for college.

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

5. 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)? Med-low is fine.

6. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) I'm majoring in engineering, so those associated programs (CAD, etc?)

7. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 500GB is probably enough, I might buy an SSD additionally anyway, 128/256GB.

8. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. No specific site

9. How long do you want to keep your laptop? At least the 4 years of undergrad.

10. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? No preference, but I imagine it would be helpful to have initially, though i might remove it to create space for an SSD.

11. 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. I don't have a preference on brands, but I would prefer one with good customer service in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

13. What country do you live in? USA

Suggestions/Recommendations?

(Edited for new information)

 

[sonny8888]

The Y510P is a great laptop, but it's battery life is not very good if you are running at peak performance so I recommend a Y510P with extra batteries. You would still have to plug in the laptop to have the best performance. When I was running games on the laptop, it would have about 30fps ultra settings and stuff, but when I turned on the power, it started running at 50fps.

 

[Alpha3031]

Sager NP7338 aka Clevo W230SS and the Y50 are higher end alternatives with ~4hrs battery life too

 

[Adam Ferrick]

Is it even worth it to go for one that expensive? Would I be limited in any way if I were to go for a cheaper ~$400-$600 option?

 

[Adam Ferrick]

Bump for new information.

 

[dasulman]

If it were me, i'd save up a bit more - buy a cheapy laptop that just does office workk, then buy a desktop to do all your rendering and transfer it over. Rendering requires such high specs to actually make a difference, anything that has those sorts of specs, you'd need to double or triple your budget.

 

[Alpha3031]

Recommend at least a GTX 850M with a 4-8 thread (HyperThreaded 2-4 core Or non-HyperThreaded 4 core) CPU, at least 8 GB ram, That's all. Pref. also get a desktop

 

[Adam Ferrick]

I currently have a desktop that I built, so that part is covered. I was thinking of getting this http/shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z40/?sb=:000001C9:00011E08:
It's a Lenovo Z40 with an i7 and 820M discrete. For the price it sounds pretty good.

 

[sonny8888]

The CPU is really good, but the graphics will not be able to run watch dogs at low settings. I agree with dasulman, so it would work.

 

[Adam Ferrick]

What would be a cheap, yet effective laptop for office work that you'd recommend?

 

[sonny8888]

I think this laptop world be ok. is has a quad core processor

 

[dasulman]

honestly, a chromebook is the cheapest, and is probably the best for it. acer c720 is a good place to start.
if not a lenovo g505 or similar would be another good bet.

 

[Adam Ferrick]

I'm not really looking for a chromebook, as they can only use programs off the Chrome Store; no Windows or Play Store apps either.
For under $700 (699.39 to be exact) I can get an HP Envy 15t-j100 Quad Edition with i7-4700MQ, 840M dedicated graphics, 8GB RAM, and 1080p. It's the stock model with upgrades and a discount.
Thoughts?

 

[sonny8888]

It could play games decently at low-med settings. Should be fine.

 

[Alpha3031]

Nice, Most game should run well at low / mid