Looking for a new laptop - moderate budget, specific needs

IllogicalGlory

Honorable
Mar 7, 2013
2
0
10,510
(Posting this on behalf of someone else)

Ok so I'm looking to get a new laptop, and I already told my parents that it would make a good Christmas gift. I want a compact laptop because my current one (15 inches or so) is too heavy to lug around on 20 minute walks. I want a good laptop, probably between 11-12 inches. Power is necessary, and possibly even decent graphics to play some games.

I live in Canada, and I don't really have a budget. I'd prefer to keep it around $1000 CAD if possible.

The person I'm posting this for isn't knowledgeable about computer hardware. Going by what the requirements here are, this is what I'd be looking for:

Budget: Nothing in particular, but ideally not exceeding $1400 CAD. Would prefer something around $1000 CAD.

Size: Small. 11-13 inches display, and not too heavy. Nothing specific.

Display Resolution: Could probably settle for 1366x768. 1080p preferred.

Desktop replacement
? No.

Battery life: Nothing particular.

Gaming capabilities: Ideally, but mainly a console gamer. Not required. If possible, somewhere around a 950M. Integrated is an option.

Use cases: General/gaming.

Storage: Probably best to get an HDD with a decent 500GB+ capacity. An SSD would be nice, but probably not possible.

Memory Size: 8GB is a must.

Brands: Don't care.

Country: Canada. If you can find somewhere that ships to Canada for a reasonable price, that could work too.
 
Small laptops between 11" - 13" generally do not have dedicated GPUs. Asus do sell a couple of 13.3" laptops with a nVidia 940m, they are generally around around $1,200 USD and given the US / Canadian exchange rate I would expect those to be out of your budget.

Perhaps something like the 12.5" Lenovo ThinkPad X250 with a base price of $927. It only comes with a Core i3-5005u so I recommend spending $100 to upgrade it to a Core i5-5200u. Actually, they may have some unadvertised discount going on because upgrading to the i5-5200u only increased the price to $1,007.... unless it is an error.

http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x250/

If you want you can upgrade the display to a 1080p IPS screen for only another $150, but when that option is selected the price only goes up to $1,127.


It only has 4GB of RAM but that can be upgrade to 8GB. However, it only has one RAM slot so you need to buy a 8GB stick of RAM for $50 and install it yourself which is cheaper than having the laptop configured with 8GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148679


The ThinkPad X250 is pretty light at about 2.9lbs and has very long battery life.

============================================================


For $1,300 you can buy the 13.3" Dell XPS 13 with the Infinity Screen which basically means it has a very thin bezel making this laptop pretty similar in size to a 11.6" laptop. It has a SSD, but it is only 128GB so is pretty limited storage. It can be swapped out with a higher capacity SSD at a later point in time though. Or you can attach an external hard drive.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/dell-dell-xps-13-3-laptop-silver-intel-core-i5-5200u-128gb-ssd-8gb-ram-windows-8-1-xps9343-5455slv/10377662.aspx?path=a6443533639d42f955418922024ffab0en02
 

IllogicalGlory

Honorable
Mar 7, 2013
2
0
10,510
Great suggestions. I'm really liking the Thinkpad in particular.