Laptop for Digital photography and travel around £500

Chave

Commendable
May 6, 2016
1
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1,510
I'm looking to buy a laptop for my upcoming travels. Something that can handle lightroom smoothly so quad core. That's well built and has a half decent battery. And a good quality display for processing photos.

I realise I'm probably looking at refurbished machines at my price point.

Do you think it's possible to get something with all this for £500 (I can perhaps stretch to a little more for the right machine)?

If anybody can come up with some suggestions for me I would really appreciate it. As I've been looking for a while with little luck.

Thanks in advance
 
Solution


Here are 2 refurbished quad-core workstations:

15.6" HP zBook 15 from newegg.com, priced at $561...


Here are 2 refurbished quad-core workstations:

15.6" HP zBook 15 from newegg.com, priced at $561:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834266142&cm_re=REFURBISHED_HP_LAPTOP-_-34-266-142-_-Product

15.6" Dell Precision M4600 from Amazon UK, priced at £400:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Precision-Laptop-i7-2720QM-2-20GHz/dp/B0747PGWY4/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1502533000&sr=8-7&keywords=refurbished+dell+precision

Because these are fairly old models, it's not easy to find useful reviews or data sheets. The HP was reviewed by MobileTechReview back in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COOPJQvlpzs
... and that model was fitted with a dedicated Quadro GPU. The HP in my link relies on the HD4600 IGP which should just about do the job in terms of VRAM output for Adobe Lightroom 6. The reviewer also notes that (a) the zBook is heavy, and (b) battery life is for emergency use only. This is largely because of the Quadro GPU and the DreamColor display, and as I suspect that the HP in my link uses a 768p standard panel (and the IGP), you should be able to get rather better battery life (around 3 to 4 hours of actual work).

CNET did a review of the Dell M4600 back in 2011 - as I said, these are fairly old models:
https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-precision-m4600/review/
The verdict on the Precision is more or less the same as for the zBook (heavy and ridiculously short battery life), but the Precision comes with the 2GB Quadro GPU that's "missing" from the zBook. The Quadro card goes some way of compensating for the less powerful 2nd gen CPU.

Finally, I must ask: Are you absolutely sure you need a quad-core CPU? Adobe Lightroom 6 will run on a dual-core CPU with 1GB of VRAM, so unless you also need to do heavy computational runs, going with a dual-core will open a much larger field of laptops to choose from with much more useable battery life (still mostly refurbished, but a few new ones, too).

Best of luck on your travels,
GreyCatz.
 
Solution