Solved! Buying a Laptop for an upcoming hospitalisation (Mainly classic gaming and as a media player) (form filled out)

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Mar 29, 2018
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1. What is your budget?

£600- £900

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

15inch or there abouts

3. What screen resolution do you want?

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

At home and in hospital it’d be basically static and plugged into the mains
I do plan on saving up again and building a desktop at that point

5. How much battery life do you need?

I’ve become used to 4hrs but closer to 10 would be nice

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)?

With downtime/recovery in hospital i’m hoping to get through unplayed classics bought in steam sales before buying newer more processor-hungry ones. The first few Batman, witcher and assassin’s creed games, the 2 skyrim dlc similar old titles should take me a few years or until i don’t have time to play again.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

Basic video/ audio editing (ripped vhs and the kid’s birthdays still need cleaning up)

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

I’ve become used to 1tb holding a variety of music , books and videos to suit any random mood

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

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

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

DVD ROM/Writer

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.

Asus and acer laptops seem to have lasted well enough for me on the whole
I am however open to different reliable brands

Don’t like sony, viao (the only laptop i ever had keys snap off)
Don’t like lenovo

13. What country do you live in?

England

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

An old injury is getting worse, fast and the thought of having only my old laptop (with blown speakers and temperamental keyboard) to prevent cabin fever during a hospital stay fills me with dread. My budget can stretch to £900 but i’d rather it didn’t. Any help will be greatly appreciated the temptation to buy the first mid-price laptop to appear in a computer mags top picks is growing. With your help i won’t stupidly impulse buy a dud.
 
Solution
In case you haven't made your decision, I'd like to suggest you take a look at these two £750 machines from saveonlaptops.com:
First up, MSI:
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/9S7-16J942-079-MSI-GP62-7RD(Leopard)-079UK_2068374.html

Then, there's this ASUS:
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/NX.GQUEK.001-Acer-Swift-3-SF314-52G-59DZ_2268981.html

Going by your background info - and especially considering your immediate future circumstances - I'd say the most important parameters should be:

1. A built-in DVD drive for your library of games, movies, and music. Using an external DVD drive in your situation will be a disproportionately cumbersome mess;

2. An IPS panel to improve viewing while in bed. A TN panel will be cheaper and may offer...

zoltan.boese

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Jan 30, 2018
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I hope the optical drive is not a deal breaker. Look for models with 1050ti, and an SSD !
The ASUS FX553VE-DM062 (90NB0DX7-M06020, EAN-Code: 4712900899351 ) is pretty decent, and do not forget about the Acer Aspire Nitro 5 series!
 
Mar 29, 2018
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Follow up. Thanks for the reply just one final judgement call
Acer Nitro 5 15.6-Inch Notebook - (Black) (Intel Core i5-7300HQ Processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD Plus 128 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2 GB Graphics, Windows 10) £800

Acer Nitro 5 15.6-Inch Notebook - (Black) (Intel Core i7-7700HQ Processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD Plus 128 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 4 GB Graphics, Windows 10 £895

Acer Nitro 5, Intel Core i7-7700HQ, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 15.6" Full HD, 16GB DDR4, 1TB HDD, AN515-51-75A2 £930

I have previously been blind-sided by 'better specs', but is the leap worth the extra cash? i could stretch to buy any of these but being an extra £130 away from eventually building a desktop again for a negligible bump in computing power might tempt me towards the £800 option.

Thanks to you and a sister with amazon prime, i could have my new laptop before next friday.
Thanks yet again.
 
In case you haven't made your decision, I'd like to suggest you take a look at these two £750 machines from saveonlaptops.com:
First up, MSI:
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/9S7-16J942-079-MSI-GP62-7RD(Leopard)-079UK_2068374.html

Then, there's this ASUS:
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/NX.GQUEK.001-Acer-Swift-3-SF314-52G-59DZ_2268981.html

Going by your background info - and especially considering your immediate future circumstances - I'd say the most important parameters should be:

1. A built-in DVD drive for your library of games, movies, and music. Using an external DVD drive in your situation will be a disproportionately cumbersome mess;

2. An IPS panel to improve viewing while in bed. A TN panel will be cheaper and may offer superior sharpness but only in very limited situations. IPS is definitely preferable, but also impossible to combine with your other requirements.

3. With the games you've listed, and for basic entertainment, I'd say a 1050 card - even the smaller one - is way over target. Any 900-series GTX card or similar will do.

The MSI gives you the DVD drive - and just about everything else - but no IPS panel. Battery life around 3 hours. The ASUS gives you the IPS panel - and a decent CPU/GPU combo - but no DVD drive and it comes with less storage. Battery life around 8 hours.

Best wishes whatever happens,
GreyCatz.
 
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