I need some suggestions on a laptop for my 6yr old son, having a hard time finding the right one.

[budmonster]

I've been trying to find a laptop for my 6yr old son for some time now. He wanted one for Christmas so I went to Best Buy and quickly picked up one to make him happy, basically just to try out until I found one that felt like a good deal. I found this Toshiba Satellite Radius Laptop for $529. I wanted to stay in the $500 range, anything lower was a horrible laptop but anything better was $800 at Best Buy.

He needs something for light gaming, example being Minecraft. He'll be watching movies and using the internet a lot for his homework. As him being a 6 year old and most kids having no patience, a laptop that'll do task quickly is probably important. Touchscreen is a great plus for him but if not having a touchscreen will help my search and save me a good bit of money then I'm not open to it but that laptop is much easier for him to use with a touchscreen available. Backlit keyboard is useful as well. 500gb hard drive minimum, a 7200rpm one would be nice but I understand is hard to find. A laptop that I can easily open and upgrade would be a big plus. Down the line if he needs the memory upgraded or a larger hdd or an ssd.

I'm open to suggestions, I really want to stay in the $500 range but want to get him something that he can use past kindergarten. I have about a week before I can't return that Toshiba laptop anymore. I don't know if I should keep it, if it's a good deal or if their is something better out their for the price I paid?

Thanks for the help, it's much appreciated

 

[jaguarskx]

Overall, that Toshiba laptop should be pretty decent. What is your own opinion about the laptop?

It has a good mix of feature

1. A relatively small 14" laptop for a 6 year old
2. Pretty light at 4.5lbs
3. A touchscreen.
4. Pretty decent integrated graphics; the Radeon R7 (Carrizo) is about the equivalent to the nVidia 930m.
5. A decently powerful quad core AMD APU (roughly equivalent to a 4th generation dual core mobile Intel i5 CPU).

The only bad thing I suppose that it is more than $500, but still within your $500-ish range. There is an Acer laptop that sells for $500 that will provide better gaming performance, but it is a 15.6" laptop, and weighs in at about 5.3lbs, and it does not have a touchscreen. The keys are not backlit either. However, it has a 5th generation dual core Intel i5-5200u CPU, a dedicated nVidia 940m GPU and a 1080p screen.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315131&cm_re=acer_940m-_-34-315-131-_-Product

The 940m itself is not a very powerful GPU, but it is more powerful than the Radoen R7 (Carrizo) graphics core. It should be fine for playing Minecraft at 1080p, but you can always decrease the solution to improve performance.

 

[budmonster]

Overall, that Toshiba laptop should be pretty decent. What is your own opinion about the laptop?

It has a good mix of feature

1. A relatively small 14" laptop for a 6 year old
2. Pretty light at 4.5lbs
3. A touchscreen.
4. Pretty decent integrated graphics; the Radeon R7 (Carrizo) is about the equivalent to the nVidia 930m.
5. A decently powerful quad core AMD APU (roughly equivalent to a 4th generation dual core mobile Intel i5 CPU).

The only bad thing I suppose that it is more than $500, but still within your $500-ish range. There is an Acer laptop that sells for $500 that will provide better gaming performance, but it is a 15.6" laptop, and weighs in at about 5.3lbs, and it does not have a touchscreen. The keys are not backlit either. However, it has a 5th generation dual core Intel i5-5200u CPU, a dedicated nVidia 940m GPU and a 1080p screen.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315131&cm_re=acer_940m-_-34-315-131-_-Product

The 940m itself is not a very powerful GPU, but it is more powerful than the Radoen R7 (Carrizo) graphics core. It should be fine for playing Minecraft at 1080p, but you can always decrease the solution to improve performance.

It's a nice looking laptop, great size like you said and is light enough for a small child to carry. I basically only have 3 issues.

It seems to run a little sluggish, starting up, shutting down & transitioning from one program to another. It came with a bunch of preinstalled Toshiba software, I'm wondering if that is causing problems? However I have no idea how to install a fresh copy of Windows without the Toshiba software. Also, I don't know if some of this software is necessary.

Second, the touchpad seems out of whack. Windows, programs, apps, etc. are constantly opening and closing by themselves it seems. Windows are always resizing out of nowhere. It drives me nuts and it causes my son to constantly use the touchscreen instead.

Last, this thing gets so hot, very quickly. I thought I might of had a defective device at first. I'm wondering how I can find out if this laptop just gets hot quickly or the one I purchased is defective.

 

[1shado1]

Are you using the Toshiba on a hard flat surface with room for airflow underneath?

 

[jaguarskx]

You can try to uninstall some of Toshiba's software, maybe that can help.

How long does it take to boot Windows to the login screen? Most laptops with hard drives typcially takes 45 - 60 seconds. Install a SSD can improve responsiveness, but you would need to buy one.