Laptops: What To Know Before You Shop

[Guest]

good article and way better replies thanks for sharing

 

[fausto]

good article, thought it only begins to explain the large confusion i have when it comes to the laptop scene.

What can a guy expect from a sub $400 laptop? web cam? 120gb+ HD? dedicated video? HD and Flash video capable? 2+ gigs of ram? Which cpu models?

the cpu is the worst part because i'm an intel guy and i couldn't tell you where interl's own cpu's rank against each other or versus AMD's cpus in the laptop market.

Any infor would be greatly appreciated.

 

[theuerkorn]

[citation]LED screens are similar, but are based on a newer technology, which does away with the need of a backlight, letting the pixels emit the light themselves. This can yield better clarity and color as well as significantly less power consumption. LEDs can be considerably thinner than LCDs. One downside to an LED screen is the price. LED screens are quite a bit more expensive, but if movie or gaming fidelity is important to you, the cost may very well be justifiable.[/citation]
Almost right if it wasn't wrong. LED these days refers to LED backlight unit and only replaces the CFL with more efficient LED lighting which can have a greater spectrum but not guaranteed. Individual pixel lighting will have to wait for OLED.

 

[quantumrand]

[citation][nom]Pooky[/nom]Do you know of any budget priced laptops with an option to upgrade the video card for more demanding gaming tasks? I know laptops in of themselves are not very upgradable, but can;t help but think it may be an option with a lower budget system.[/citation]

Upgrading the video card in a laptop aftermarket isn't really possible. It *can* be done in some very specialized cases, but it's certainly not a cheap endeavor.

The "custom builders" such as Dell and HP, will often have video card upgrade options for their budget systems, but generally it will be an upgrade from an integrated Intel chip to an only slightly better nVidia or ATI chip, such as a GeForce 9300M or Radeon 4330. Some may offer up to a Radeon 4570 though, which will play most games, but dont expect to use high detail settings.

I have found a couple systems under $1000 you might like though:
Acer has an 18" laptop with the specs to play most games at high details http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115681

If you dont like the idea of an 18" laptop (I know I consider it too big), Lenovo has a similarly spec'd 15.6 incher. http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146612

And if you're on a bit more of a bidget, MSI has a great system at $700 right now. http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152126

The biggest sacrifice you'll be making with these Laptops is their screen resolution, but that's to be expected with any budget laptop.

 

[quantumrand]

[citation][nom]fausto[/nom]good article, thought it only begins to explain the large confusion i have when it comes to the laptop scene.What can a guy expect from a sub $400 laptop? web cam? 120gb+ HD? dedicated video? HD and Flash video capable? 2+ gigs of ram? Which cpu models? the cpu is the worst part because i'm an intel guy and i couldn't tell you where interl's own cpu's rank against each other or versus AMD's cpus in the laptop market. Any infor would be greatly appreciated.[/citation]

The sub $400 pricepoint is a pretty small spread. There are Netbooks which are the small 8-10 inchers sporting Intel's Atom CPU. They range from $250-$400 with 4GB-16GB SSD hard drives or up to 160GB HDD's. They usually have cheap integrated video chipsets like the Intel GMA 950, so they're pretty horrible for HD video, and even have trouble with flash. They're designed for maximized battery life and simple tasks like web browsing and basic productivity.

On the actual laptop front, it's tough to find much of anything under $400. Anything that is usually will have a single core CPU, and often the extremely low end Celeron brand. Some manage to squeeze in the older Pentium Dual core CPU which will generally meet most of your needs, but still doesn't compare to the modern Core 2 Duo CPUs.

While that Pentium Dual Core CPU will be able to handle HD video, I can't find it likely that any $400 laptop will come with a video card capable of keeping up with the task. If you can manage to find one with a GeForce 9300M, it should be able to do HD video fine. Odds are it'll also have a 160GB HDD and 2GB of RAM.

 

[deadlockedworld]

"Here response"? Do you proofread at all? Its the first word in a new paragraph....

 

[Guest]

Great article. One thing I was looking for but you didn't address: I want my laptop to also be a desktop replacement and when at my desk (primarily photo or video editing, and the odd game and movie), I hook up to a external 24" monitor. What features do I need to display good color and ensure the video performance on the external monitor is good? Is this the GPU or CPU or both? Recommendations? Thanks.

 

[g00ey]

pjdb: How the colors will show on the monitor depends 95% on the quality of the monitor. To give you a short personal advice; stay away from the TN screens. There are tons of screens out there with breathtaking specs for bargin prices, but when you read the fine-print it is a crappy (in my opinion) TN screen. The best screen type is IPS followed by PVA or MVA. They can be expensive but if I'm going to spend several hours a day in front of it, I consider it to be worth every penny.

A longer advice: The things to look for is the following:
* color gamut which usually is given in percentage of the sRGB specification. This measure however, is often misleading and vendors tend to abuse these measures to make their products look better than they actually are.
* color depth (per channel) which is 8-bit on most screens and 12-bit on some high-end screens

Both of these specs may be taken with a pinch of salt because many designs cheat by letting the picture flicker between two color levels to achieve a hue between them. So I would want to make sure that the panel gives a true color representation without flickering for each of the 256 levels the 8-bit per channel color depth promises.

For example an EIZO ColorEdge or NEC with an H-IPS, S-IPS or AS-IPS is a sure bet, but Samsung, Dell, LG and so on most likely offer good screens too. You may want to make sure the response time isn't to long if you want to watch movies. Most of these have a response time below 10ms so this usually isn't a problem. My screen is 30ms and it works fine with video but I cannot guarantee that every screen with this spec would agree with motion pictures. A 15ms screen would for sure and a screen above that may or may not work well with it.

As for the Laptop, if you want good video performance I recommend a laptop with a DirectX/3D capable card which the majority of the GeForce and ATI series cards are. The 3D features of the card does play a role in the video rendering, so I would stay away from the Intel GMA cards. As for CPU, the recommendations in the article would suffice, remember that HiDef (e.g. BluRay) video is more CPU intensive than Standard Definition. While I believe that most mainstream laptop CPUs are fully capable of HiDef, the harddrive (if you are using it for playback) can be a bottleneck which may cause staggered playback.

 

[evensen007]

I'd like your recommendation since this article was written so well! I am looking at 2 laptops. Moderate gaming (I plan to play Dragon Age and COunter Strike Source, also use for web, word docs, and RDP for work stuff. So I would like a good battery time too (I know, that's a lot to ask).

I am looking at the Asus g51j-a1 (http/www.amazon.com/G51J-A1-15-6-Inch-Gaming-Windows-Premium/dp/B002PAQXCW)

and the Dell XPS 16 configured with the asme core i7 but this one has an ATI 4670 mobile instead of the Gt260m in the Asus. (http/www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-studio-xps-16/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-xps-16&cs=19&s=dhs)

Both have similar specs other than the video card difference. I know the 260m is more powerful than the Ati card, but based on Nvidia's mobile chip problem last year, power usage, heat ect... what do you think?

Thanks!

Chris

 

[evensen007]

I forgot to add, I can get the Dell for about 1350, and the Asus for about 1450. Both have blu ray drives as well and 1920x1080 resolution.

Thanks again,

Chris

 

[g00ey]

Personally, I would go for one of the Asus G71 series laptops that have WUXGA resolution but 17" laptops may not suit everyone.

I would also look into what those build-your-own retailers have to offer. I think Evesham, Clevo and Alienware are such examples. Otherwise, look at rockdirect.co.uk, and see what you like.

 

[b3orion]

Haha!
"Intel Atom 270: Power consumption: 2.5W (Ridiculously Low)"
They could have put "very low", but nooo, Ridiculously low is much cooler! I like it! Good article all around too!!

 

[ExtraTrstl]

I'm looking at two laptops with about a $200 difference with some easily distinguishable hardware differences except for one - the video card. One has a Nvidia 9800M GTS and the other an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670. Which is preferable? Is the difference significant?

 

[g00ey]

It seems like the Nvidia 9800 GTS performs slightly better than the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 after a look at notebookcheck.net. The GTX version is even better than the GTS version of the Nvidia card.

The difference will be significant if you play Crysis on high quality settings where the frame rate of the ATI card is slightly below what is perceived as fluent playback and the Nvidia card is slightly above that threshold. If the game is less demanding than that, the difference won't be noticeable.

 

[ruthierobot76]

I'm returning college student and I need an affordable, reliable, and lightweight laptop. I'll be using it mostly for online learning, webinars, writing papers, and research. Someone advised me to get the best deal for the processor. A 13" would be ideal and something <$600 would be great.

My boyfriend bought me a computer, however I'm not sure if this is a good deal - new 15" Lenovo G505s + MS Office + Norton Antivirus for $670. Any recommendations would be helpful.

 

[ruthierobot76]

I'm returning college student and I need an affordable, reliable, and lightweight laptop. I'll be using it mostly for online learning, webinars, writing papers, and research. Someone advised me to get the best deal for the processor. A 13" would be ideal and something <$600 would be great.

My boyfriend bought me a computer, however I'm not sure if this is a good deal - new 15" Lenovo G505s + MS Office + Norton Antivirus for $670. Any recommendations would be helpful.