chosing between 6 "budget" laptops for video editing

[Robomcduff]

Czech charity working with a budget of around around 20 000 CZK (800 EUR). We work with project funding, so we cannot go higher or much lower either (and the good laptops are all at least 200 € more expensive). We also have to buy in the Czech Republic. We have a very good desktop for video editing, but are working in two different locations and I need to be able to do some work there as well, and while traveling. We work with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. No extensive gaming.

Minimum
Screen: GOOD (but not necessarily perfect) quality 1080p 15" or bigger
CPU: Ivy bridge or Haswell i5 or i7
GPU: dedicated card, preferably NVIDIA GT 740 or up
Ram: preferable 8 GB with upgrade option, 4 GB with upgrade to 8 is ok to.
HDD: 750 GB. I work with external drives a lot, but some storage should be available. SSD is nice but I can live without it.
Ultraportable is not needed. With 6.2 and 227 lbs and mostly driving around, a few grams more do not matter.
DVD is not needed.

In our budget range, there are 200++ possibilities off the shelf and I am out of it too long to know what is good and what is less. We originally looked at Lenovo Ideapad Y510p or Edge E531, but I read several less good reviews about the screens in these two lines and also a less good build.

Think I narrowed it down to the following 6, including the Lenovo’s, but no idea which would be the best for our needs. Any comments?

1) ASUS N56VV-S4027: i7 3630 QM Ivy bridge, 8 GB RAM 1080p mat 15.6 screen, GT 750M, HDD 750 Gb 7200 rpm. $ 1.050

2) Dell Inspiron 15R: i7 4500U Haswell, 8 GB RAM 1080p WLED 15.6 touchscreen, Radeon HD8850M HDD 1Tb 5400 rpm. $ 1.050. The only touch screen. Nice, but not a must for me. Several negative reviews on this type refer to different versions without dedicated GPU and a lower resolution screen. For a similar price you can get the 17R but with the i5 cpu and without touch screen.

3) Acer Aspire V3-772G: i5 4200M Haswell, 4GB RAM 1080p antireflex 17.3 screen, GT 750M, HDD 1 Tb 5400 rpm. (or its older-smaller relative the 771G) $ 1.050

4) MSI GE60 2OC: i5 4200M Haswell, 4GB RAM 1080p antireflex 15.6 screen, GT 750M, HDD 500 Gb. $ 1,000. Completely unknown to me but had some decent reviews.

5) Lenovo Ideapad Y510P: i5 4200M Haswell, 8 GB RAM, 1080p antireflex 15.6 screen, GT 755M, SSHD (hybrid) 1 TB + 8 GB cache, $ 1,000. Reviews mention not really good screen and less quality than the Lenevo Thinkpad line.

6) Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E531: i5 3230 Ivy bridge, 4 GB RAM, 1080p antireflex 15.6 screen, GT 740M, HDD 500 GB 7200 rpm. With this cheaper Edge line thinkpads screens seem to be a problem also.

I have to decide unexpectedly quickly, like yesterday and am running out of time, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Our desktop: Asus P8Z68-V Pro gen 3; i7-2600k; 16 GB RAM, ASUS-NVIDIA GTX 570, 240 GB SSD as OS and 1 TB WD as data drive, Coolmaster Silencio 550 silent case.

 

[whyso]

The 3630m is going to be around twice as fast as the other CPUs listed. Should be only marginally slower than the desktop. Other cpus listed are much less powerful.

 

[Robomcduff]

And the winner is ......number 8 (wink wink, don't look, its not on the list).

With time running out I decided on the ASUS. Basically, a lot of options had much highlights and then some ...but this and that is suboptimal. The ASUS maybe had less highlights, but over the board a very good impression as a solid piece of work.
Went to the collect shop of the online seller and talked how to get the papers for the stuff right. Turned out that I had made a mistake and the ASUS was more expensive than thought because I had not included 20% VAT. However, they happily mentioned that the prices had changed this night so the ASUS was actually about $ 150 cheaper .... and when we finalized it .... they found out its out of stock!!!

So I had to made a snap decision and went for its newer brother, the ASUS N56JR S4044 for $ 1300 (ouch, but only $30 difference with the ASUS N56VV). The project also included an Apple iPad Air and we switched from the planned 32 GB to a 16 GB to cover the difference.

So tomorrow or on Monday I can pick up an ASUS N56JR S4044, i7 4700HQ Haswell CPU, NVIDIA GTX 760M, 6 GB RAM, 7580 GB 7200 rpm HDD 15,6 inch screen.