Minecraft Laptop for 8 year old

[sierrapup]

My 8 year old has asked for a laptop to play minecraft for his birthday and I have no idea what to get him. These are his requirements:
minimal "lag"
able to edit youtube and gopro videos
able to use mods

He's 8 so I'm not looking to spend a fortune here. I'd like to stay around the $300-500 mark.

Any advice?

PS I tried to convince him to go with a desktop, but he and his friends want to be able to take them with them

TIA!

Amy

 

[jaguarskx]

Minecraft is not that demanding of a game so a relatively inexpensive laptop can be used to play the game. However, if your son wants to use mods which will cause graphics to be more demanding, and also use the laptop to create and edit videos then a somewhat more expensive laptop would be necessary.

The following Acer laptop with a Core i5-6200u and dedicated nVidia 940m costs about $510. For his needs it should be fine, the 940m is more than powerful enough to play Minecraft at 1080p resolution.

https/www.amazon.com/Acer-Flagship-Bluetooth-802-11AC-Webcam-Windows/dp/B01DOA6GAK/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1493202009&sr=8-6&keywords=940m

 

[Carnaxus]

Minecraft is more demanding than it has a right to be, being 8-bit graphics and all that. That said, as jaguarskx pointed out, as games go it's not all that demanding. The biggest thing you'll want to pay attention to for both modded Minecraft and rendering videos is RAM. Minecraft needs a lot of RAM to run smoothly, especially with mods. I used to run 80+ mods on 4GB dedicated (out of 8 total) and it was perfectly playable and not laggy, but it wasn't completely smooth graphics either. I would advise getting at least 16GB RAM regardless of whatever other specs you decide on.

 

[jaguarskx]

I assume an 8 year old kid is not going to be install 80+ mods for Minecraft. While I have no experience with Minecraft at all, the 8GB of RAM that the laptop comes with should be fine to play the game with some mods.

 

[Carnaxus]

He may not have to actually install 80+ mods; all he needs is one of the custom launchers that come with prebuilt modpacks. That being said, 8GB should be enough to keep it from being a slideshow. I was just explaining how Minecraft works.