Deciding between 2 laptops for school

Arborvitae

Estimable
Oct 22, 2015
1
0
4,510
Hello,

I'm trying to decide on a laptop for my little brother, and I'm between 2 computers on Amazon (note: I have to buy off amazon because that's where my gift credit is).

He's using it for school and light casual gaming. [They are all i5, 15.6", HDD,]

Here are the laptops:

Lenovo Ideapad 510 - 15.6" FHD Laptop (Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, Windows 10) 80SR002SUS

Acer Aspire F 15, 15.6 Full HD, Intel Core i5, NVIDIA 940MX, 8GB DDR4, 1TB HDD, Windows 10 Home, F5-573G-56CG

Thanks!
 

Meister_1

Commendable
Jan 19, 2017
1
0
1,510
Personally i would just get whichever is cheapest currently as both of them are pretty much identical. i think it comes down more to preference on the brand and also maybe design of the laptop.
 

nvincent_08

Commendable
Jun 21, 2016
122
0
1,710
don't get tricked by a laptop because they have i5 or something, because processor have series, some of them good, some bad, which you have to be careful about that, you can actually save money on lower resolution like 1366x768 which probably doesn't really look beautiful and sharp, but it looks good already however, and it probably enough for only casual gaming and school use, especially you can save money a bit usually. both of laptop that you pick is great. but i guess the f15 is cheaper, much more worth it, but if you want to check my recommendation, check out acer e5-475g(14" screen) or e5-575g(15" screen) with some configuration that you decide by your own. acer e5 series probably almost similar to f15, but f15 configuration can reach a bit higher, but their design pretty much the same however. i recommend you to get kaby lake i5-7200u 3.1ghz(7th gen i5) if you want to, because the clock is a bit higher than the skylake i5-6500u 2.8ghz(6th generation i5), the performance for daily use may not noticeable, but for gaming it might be affect the performance a bit
 
Both Acer and Lenovo laptops are pretty the same. Other than price the biggest difference are:

1. The Lenovo has an IPS panel screen while the Acer has a TN panel screen. Generally speaking IPS screens have better viewing angles which mean colors are less likely to washout compared to TN panels can be annoying especially with low quality screens. That is not to say IPS screens are always better than TN screens and not all IPS or TN screens are of the same quality. For example, my 2012 Dell Latitude 3540 has a much better TN screen than the 2017 Dell Inpsiron 15 7567 which has one of the worst TN screen I have seen on a laptop that costs over $600.

2. The Lenovo is a little lighter at 4.84 lbs. vs. 5.1 lbs as stated on Amazon's site. That is a difference of 1/4 of a pound. Not much, but if you brother is going to be carrying a laptop around with him to school along with other things like books, then it could be worth considering the weight.