Laptop for School/Uni 2016

[novawing]

So i'm currently in my final year of school and looking for a laptop for the rest of the year and probably University afterwards.

I have a budget of $1500AUD (about $1100USD) and I want something that's portable (can fit in a backpack easily) so preferably something that's not bigger than 14".
It will be used mainly for stuff like MS Office, but I also intend to use it briefly for AutoCAD so I need something with a bit of power (i7/8GB ram maybe) to run that (doesn't have to run well).

EDIT: Something I forgot to mention was that I would like a laptop with a good trackpad (smart gestures are a necessity), and preferably a good keyboard too. That's one of the reasons I'm not interested in buying a $400 laptop.

Can anyone recommend laptops that fit this niche? The Asus UX303UA seems like it might be a good choice, anyone have experience with that one?

Thanks,
Lachy

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

I think that you're asking for too much. Are you buying from a site or locally? I will try to find something that would suit you, but as far as CAD is concerned, it's quite demanding, and laptops with workstation cards aren't that cheap.

 

[Gingerbread]

Well generally for cad there are special GPUS which do it better, however that doesn't mean you can't do it with a normal GPU, just won't be as fast. However in my eyes you should consider a 15.6" laptop so you can do more than just school with that. As long as you carry a normal bag (which everyone does, especially those laptop bags are really comfortable because you can put the laptop with plenty of notebooks in it) you can consider getting a more powerful 15.6" laptop, which will run way better and allow you to play games as well.

 

[novawing]

Well generally for cad there are special GPUS which do it better, however that doesn't mean you can't do it with a normal GPU, just won't be as fast. However in my eyes you should consider a 15.6" laptop so you can do more than just school with that. As long as you carry a normal bag (which everyone does, especially those laptop bags are really comfortable because you can put the laptop with plenty of notebooks in it) you can consider getting a more powerful 15.6" laptop, which will run way better and allow you to play games as well.

The CAD shouldn't be a problem. I was able to run CAD and Revit on an i3 Lenovo Thinkpad, and though it lagged, it was tolerable. Also I have a 15.6" currently, and it's almost too big when it's in a case (my bag isn't small, either). I don't plan on gaming on it either.

 

[Gingerbread]

Well you can check the lenovo yogas then. 14", come with i7 skylake ddr4 and even some models with gt 940m so they will do the job.

 

[spruce11]

With you budget, actually you can get very decent laptop with mainstream spec which you totally required: i7, nice GPU, >8GB ram, and so on. But the bottle neck would be your preferred screen size <14". There will not be too many choices unless you will also consider the mainstream 15"~16". If so, according your preferable trackpad and cool keyboard experience, you will widen the category and into the gaming laptops The selection includes MSI, ROG, Alienware, etc. FYI~